MasterDirk - Slashdot User

Submission + - Wikirage: What's being edited now on Wikipedia (wikirage.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 01, 2007 @05:51PM

An anonymous reader writes: This site lists the pages in Wikipedia which are receiving the most edits per unique editor over various periods of time. Popular people in the news, the latest fads, and the hottest video games can be quickly identified by monitoring this social phenomenon.

Submission + - Java SOA picking up, .NET slowing down (itjungle.com)

Submitted by dwarfking on Tuesday August 28, 2007 @01:01PM

dwarfking writes: There have been some pretty lively debates recently on Slashdot about whether Java is dying or not. This article discusses a survey that shows Java use for SOA going up while .NET use is dropping.

What was interesting though is the comment

"There's currently a lot of activity in the open source world, and particularly in the Eclipse communities, around SOA" says John Andrews, chief executive officer at Evans Data. "Most of the major players in that space are introducing new solutions aimed at SOA, and they are almost invariably Java-based. Open source SOA looks poised to become a real force in the industry and consequently a serious contender to .NET."

So is it the Eclipse tool which is able to compete with Visual Studio, or simply because Java is not vendor locked that is driving this?

Submission + - Hackers Extract Main Key to iPhone Unlocking (gizmodo.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 05, 2007 @07:39AM

An anonymous reader writes: After reverse-engineering Nucleus, the iPhone's radio/multimedia chip RTOS, the iPhone Dev Team has achieved the next big milestone to free the iPhone from the AT&T network: they have extracted the full content of the S-Gold2 chip's NOR memory. Bluntly put, these are the plans for the damn Death Star and "is the main key to achieve true unlocking." They are also calling for donations to help them keep their efforts.

Submission + - Heading off Skycar hype (sec.gov)

Submitted by

Leemeng

on Sunday August 05, 2007 @01:44AM

Leemeng writes: "We're starting to hear from Moller International again about its skycar, which is variously billed as a flying saucer, flying car, or flying vehicle.

This time around, there seem to be photos and videos of the product, plus you get the inevitable Jetsons references. Now this kind of story always gets writers and editors excited; just search Google News for "skycar" and you'll get a bunch of stories, with more probably on the way.

The problem is, Moller Int'l has tried to sell this concept before and was later revealed to be quite a dodgy company.

So much so that the SEC (The Securities and Exchange Commission, a U.S. regulatory body) filed a lawsuit against Moller Int and Paul Moller in 2003. The details are available on the SEC website at: http://www.sec.gov/litigation/complaints/comp17987 .htm

In fact, just google "Moller International" and the SEC page is the third link, just below Moller's own website.

In the introduction to the suit, the SEC said:

"This matter involves a fraudulent, unregistered offering and the filing of a fraudulent Form 10-SB by Moller International, Inc. ("MI" or "the company"), a California company engaged in the development of a personal aircraft known as "the Skycar."

Under the heading, "False and Misleading Statements and Omissions", the SEC said:

>>19. The promotional material used in this solicitation campaign contained materially false and misleading information.

20. For example, the Skycar, according to Moller, would allow any person to travel at speeds over 400 miles-per-hour in the uncluttered airspace above the roadways for about the same price as a luxury automobile. In MI investor newsletters, Moller projected that 10,000 Skycars would be sold by the end of 2002.

21. In reality, the Skycar was and still is a very early developmental-stage prototype that has no meaningful flight testing, proof of aeronautical feasibility, or proven commercial viability.

Maybe things have changed since then, but I feel this is really a case of caveat emptor, and the media should not get overly excited over this "flying saucer" until more tests are conducted."

Submission + - Geeks triumph over Defcon mole,offline and online (statcounter.com)

Submitted by destinyland on Sunday August 05, 2007 @01:28AM

destinyland writes: An undercover reporter at Defcon was identified, lured into an auditorium, and publicly called out. If you're "exposing" geeks talking about illegal activities at a security convention, it would work better if they didn't know you were there. Dateline's Michelle Madigan claims she was exposing federal agents in attendance at the conference. But the funny aftermath may be a milestone for the mainstream media. In a matchup against a handful of geeks armed with YouTube — they lost.

Submission + - iD and Valve violating GPL

Submitted by frooge on Saturday August 04, 2007 @09:54PM

frooge writes: With the recent release of iD's catalog on Steam, it appears DOSBox is being used to run the old DOS games for greater compatibility. According to a post on the Halflife2.net forums, however, this distribution does not contain a copy of the GPL license that DOSBox is distributed under, which violates the license. According to the DOSBox developers, they were not notified that it was being used for this release.

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