0rbit4l - Slashdot User

Journal Journal: 2006 warmest year on record in the U.S 2

Journal by whathappenedtomonday on Tuesday January 09, 2007 @06:34PM

The National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) reports that 2006 was the warmes year on record in the US. "No cause for alarm. Enjoy it while you have it," said Mike Halpert, head of forecast operations at the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration's Climate Prediction Center. Jeff Masters disagrees and

Submission + - First Look At Final OLPC Design

Submitted by

blackbearnh

on Tuesday January 09, 2007 @06:30PM

blackbearnh writes: "At the Consumer Electronics Show on Monday, AMD hosted a presentation of the final Industrial Prototype of the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) XO Laptop. Linux Today has extensive reporting, including new photos and details about power consumption, networking details, and the logistics of distributing and servicing what will be the largest rollout of any computing platform in history, 5 million units in the first year. This will represent nearly a 10% increase in the total worldwide laptop production for 2007."

Submission + - Apple Announces Iphone

Submitted by I kan Spl on Tuesday January 09, 2007 @06:29PM

I kan Spl writes: Today,Apple's front page has an announcement of the iPhone, a GSM phone with integrated video ipod. Features include both B/G wireless, EDGE data connectivity, bluetooth 2.0, a touchscreen interface, and sensors to determine which way to display the interface. The device has not yet been FCC approved, and there is no mention of when it might be for sale.

They also put up a page for the Apple TV, which was announced at the keynote last year, and a new version of the Airport Extreme.

Submission + - A new spam research paradigm

Submitted by

The Spam Test

on Tuesday January 09, 2007 @06:26PM

The Spam Test writes: "
We acknowledge the fact that macro-level spam research is valueable. It shows us the magnitude of the spam issue. However, they — and we're talking about the majority of spam statistics here — fail to tackle another important issue: how does spam evolve on a micro-level? That's exactly what we will be focussing on, and we hope you help us to get the right kind of data!
Hope you find our view on spam research interesting..."

Journal Journal: How truly open is Flash? Do we need "Open Flash"? 2

Journal by nickull on Tuesday January 09, 2007 @06:14PM

This is a post made by David Mendels that inspired me to get this message out. I too have noticed that a few people Still perceive Flash as a proprietary technology. If you are one of those, read this then ask yourself the two questions at the end. I had a completely different view of Flash before Adobe and Macromedia merged. David writes: (Some basic points)

The Flash programming language (ActionScript) is 100% ECMASCript, a s

Submission + - YouTube ban reversed in Brazil

Submitted by

xirusmom

on Tuesday January 09, 2007 @05:32PM

xirusmom writes: "From reuters: A Brazilian judge reversed his order to ban the YouTube site in Brazil. MTV Brasil, where the model in the center of the controversy, Daniela Cicarelli, hosts a show, has received thousands of emails of protest. A website urging people to boycott the modelwas set up, and a blogger had an online petition signed by around 7500 people. The ban on the sex video itself is still valid."

Vista Casts A Pall On PC Gaming? 425

Posted by Zonk on Tuesday January 09, 2007 @05:16PM from the stay-oofff-the-mooooors dept.

simoniker writes "In an opinion piece, casual game publisher WildTangent's CEO Alex St. John (himself a Microsoft veteran and one of the DirectX creators) has sharply criticized some of Windows Vista's features as they related to video game creation, noting: 'We have found many of the security changes planned for Vista alarming and likely to present sweeping challenges for PC gaming, especially for online distributed games. The central change that impacts all downloadable applications in Vista is the introduction of Limited User Accounts. LUA's can already be found in Windows XP, but nobody uses them because of the onerous restrictions they place on usability. In Vista, LUA's are mandatory and inescapable.'" Meanwhile, the word has also come down that games will be on the Zune by Summer of next year.

Submission + - Gentoo on the PS3 - Full install instructions

Submitted by on Tuesday January 09, 2007 @05:12PM

An anonymous reader writes: My friend Jake just bought a PS3, and he wanted to install Linux on it. Since he didn't know much about Linux, it was my responsibility to help him with it. His requirements — Install a distribution which is easy to maintain and run. He wanted to make the full use of his Linux install, so he needed a distro which wouldn't hold him back with frustrating problems. The only solution was using a distro which had a better package management system, and did its work without bothering you, the end user. Having used Gentoo extensively, I knew that this would be the solution to my problems. What follows is full install instructions, plus personal opinions, on why Gentoo is better than Fedora Core or YDL on the PS3

Submission + - Build your own supercomputer (relatively) cheap!

Submitted by

IheatMyAptWithCPUs

on Tuesday January 09, 2007 @05:03PM

IheatMyAptWithCPUs writes: "By 2010, the standard PC is going to have somewhere between 30 and 70 cores. Why wait? This story shows you how to build your own supercomputer for the cheap cheap cost of 20 cheap normal computers!"

Open nVidia Linux Driver Pledge Nearly Complete 221

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday January 09, 2007 @05:01PM from the encouragement dept.

Ciarán Mooney writes to let us know that the Pledgebank drive to raise $10,000 for Project Nouvaeu is almost complete — at this moment it needs only 196 more people to sign up. Project Nouveau aims to provide open source 3D acceleration for nVidia cards. The drive was started by David Nielsen, whose blog explains what he hopes will happen.

Submission + - Mac OS X Versus Vista: The Podcast

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 09, 2007 @04:32PM

An anonymous reader writes: As a follow on to InformationWeek's Mac OS X Versus Vista review, they've posted a podcast with review author and Mac advocate John Welch, who talks about what's happening at Macworld and his reasoning for favoring OS X over Vista, which provoked so much comment here on Slashdot.

Submission + - How to pull a guy in Silicon Valley

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 09, 2007 @04:25PM

An anonymous reader writes: Proving once again how much the internet relies on tubes for its underlying usefulness to humanity, youtube has a video How to pull a guy in Silicon Valley . A music video with advice on how to use your Apple laptops to seduce the opposite sex. Uploaded by Randi Jayne and Jenny Lee of http://www.randiandjen.com/ (Quicktime movs on those pages)
Word on the pipes seems to be its a corporate trick to disguise advertisements as user generated content but this anonymous coward has yet to turn up anything with meat on its bones either way.

Submission + - Net Neutrality: Professor Yoo Responds To Comments

Submitted by

boyko.at.netqos

on Tuesday January 09, 2007 @04:16PM

boyko.at.netqos writes: "Professor Yoo responds to comments left on Network Performance Daily and on Slashdot regarding his views on Network Neutrality: "Thanks to Network Performance Daily for giving me the chance to discuss some of my ideas and to the various readers on Network Performance Daily and Slashdot.com for their comments. The comments suggesting that QoS and optimizing networks have nothing to do with network neutrality are a testament to how much the network neutrality debate has changed over the last year and a half. For example, the network neutrality Policy Statement [PDF] issued by the FCC in August 2005, which remains the focus of the network neutrality conditions in the AT&T-BellSouth, Verizon-MCI, and SBC-AT&T mergers, it focuses on providing differential service on the basis of application and devices as well as content source.""

Submission + - Critical Security Issues 2006: Firefox vs. IE

Submitted by

bean_tmt

on Tuesday January 09, 2007 @04:04PM

bean_tmt writes: "SecurityFocus has a nice little quip about the number of days IE and Firefox both spent in 2006 with unpatched critical security issues. As you might have guessed, IE had more days with unpatched critical security issues than Firefox, but check out the numbers! The article states that based on information published by Microsoft and from information gathered by interviews with researches, the Washington Post learned that these critical security issues put IE users were at risk for 284 days in 2006. Firefox only had *one* instance of a critical security issue that was patched after nine days."

Submission + - Why are free-desktop developers wedded to Linux?

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 09, 2007 @03:48PM

An anonymous reader writes: We have been hearing promising predictions like "This year will be the year of Linux on the desktop" for the last decade. But Linux today seems to be as far away as ever from realizing the explectations of mass adoption we once had for it, without significant growth in home usage since the late 90s. Clearly, if Linux is unable to reproduce a third of Firefox's end user uptake over a much longer timeframe, there are deficiencies with the direction the GNU/Linux/X/Gnome/KDE system has taken. But almost all free software and desktop efforts and development remain unquestioningly oriented around Linux. Other free-desktop operating system projects which take different and innovative approaches like ReactOS, AROS, Mona and Syllable remain comparitively starved of developers and interest. An often cited reason for using a non-Microsoft OS is to avoid a monoculture, but free-desktop efforts have created a total monoculture around developing and promoting Linux, despite a decade of failure in supplanting Microsoft's properterial OSes with it. Why are free-desktop developers neglecting to consider an alternative to the penguin?

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