Comment Kermit! (Score 1) 283
Obviously, Kermit is the clear winner. It must be those great songs he sings and all. I will point you to the lovely band called "Dead Muppets".
Feed Wired: Tap Into the 12-Million-Teraflop Handheld Megacomputer (wired.com)
Submission + - Green Roofs on Data Centers (blogspot.com)
gormanw writes: I really think green roofs are the way to go for improving energy efficiency and reducing environmental impact, particularly in commercial construction. But for all of the data centers I have seen, not a one of them has a green roof.
I read this post about a company building an all solar operation, with a green roof on their data center. I thought it was cool and hope that other companies figure out they can save money on their data centers and get lots of "green" publicity by putting on green roofs.
Submission + - Amarok 2.0 Alpha Released (ostatic.com)
ruphus13 writes: An overview of the new features in the popular Amarok's new release — codenamed Malina. From the article, "Linux users have been in love for a long time with the Amarok music player and it's also been gaining attention lately as great alternative to Apple's iPod and iTunes vendor lock-in. In fact, Amarok is even going mainstream, appearing on must-have lists at Web sites like Lifehacker. Developers announced this week that the first alpha release of Amarok 2.0 is available with some great new features and a cool user interface.". The new version is available from the KDE page here.
One of the cool features in the release is the new 'Biased' playlist, which uses fuzzy logic to determine what you might like to hear next.
Submission + - What's Wrong with the Sun? (Nothing)
cathector writes: "Stop the presses! The sun is behaving normally.
So says NASA solar physicist David Hathaway. "There have been some reports lately that Solar Minimum is lasting longer than it should. That's not true. The ongoing lull in sunspot number is well within historic norms for the solar cycle."
This report, that there's nothing to report, is newsworthy because of a growing buzz in lay and academic circles that something is wrong with the sun. Sun Goes Longer Than Normal Without Producing Sunspots declared one recent press release. A careful look at the data, however, suggests otherwise.
There's a cute picture of the current solar cycle prediction here."
So says NASA solar physicist David Hathaway. "There have been some reports lately that Solar Minimum is lasting longer than it should. That's not true. The ongoing lull in sunspot number is well within historic norms for the solar cycle."
This report, that there's nothing to report, is newsworthy because of a growing buzz in lay and academic circles that something is wrong with the sun. Sun Goes Longer Than Normal Without Producing Sunspots declared one recent press release. A careful look at the data, however, suggests otherwise.
There's a cute picture of the current solar cycle prediction here."
Submission + - Death of the Greenphone
phobos13013 writes: Trolltech announced this week that they will discontinue development on their Greenphone platform. The Greenphone was advertised to be the first phone with a user-modifiable environment. Trolltech CTO, Benoit Schilling, stated that they are not really a hardware company and so will focus it's efforts on FIC's Neo 1973, now available. However, FTA, a future wifi-enabled endeavor (possibly a VOIP phone) was hinted at by Schilling.
Submission + - TJX Breach (More Than) Twice As Bad As Reported (eweek.com)
eweekhickins writes: "Attention TJX shoppers! Just when you thought the retailer was fessing up to its failings comes this revelation from courtroom documents and testimony, to the effect that 96 million customer records (not 45 million) have been lost. Talk about discounting!"
Submission + - Verizon Wireless To Sell Personal Information
Aaron Kenny writes: "Verizon Wireless is changing its privacy policy to allow them to sell "Customer Proprietary Network Information" (CPNI). Basically CPNI is information such as the type of phone you use, places you call, and how long you talk. This is information that is typically protected against sharing by the FCC. However, within 30 days everyone will be opted in unless they opt out by calling 1-800-333-9956. The system is automated and takes just a minute."
Submission + - Mobile Phone as Tracking Device a Reality (hindu.com)
MissingRainbow writes: "In India, privacy issues are not taken very seriously. Thats why the news, that a big telecommunications company, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL), is providing a service named 'Target Subscriber Notification', which can be used to track subscribers, did not surprise me much. This is touted as a value added service and is available for both police and common subscribers. There are two problems with this. One is that the procedure for the police to avail this facility against an individual is not very clear. I think it will be available for the asking. Since the news article, doesn't even bother to mention the word privacy anywhere, you know the kind of importance it is given in India. The other problem is in the family. I foresee lot of trouble between husband and wife, parents and children, and between lovers because of this service."
Submission + - Terrorists use Google Earth to target missiles (guardian.co.uk)
arikb writes: "Seems like terrorists are using Google Earth to target their missiles more accurately at civilian targets. "We obtain the details from Google Earth and check them against our maps of the city centre and sensitive areas," Khaled Jaabari, the group's commander in Gaza who is known as Abu Walid, told the Guardian""
Submission + - South Africa adopts ODF as a government standard (tectonic.co.za)
ais523 writes: As reported by Tectonic, South Africa's new Mininimum Interoperability Standards for Information Systems in government (MIOS) explain the new rules for which data formats will be used by the government; according to that document, all people working for the South African government must be able to read OpenDocument Format documents by March, and the government aims to use one of its three approved document formats (UTF-8 or ASCII plain text, CSV, or ODF) for all its published documents by the end of 2008. A definition of 'open standard' is also included that appears to rule out OOXML at present (requiring 'multiple implementations', among other things that may also rule it out).
Submission + - Humanity splitting into 2 (lower+upper) species? (unitedmedia.com)
Dilbert fan writes: "Evolutionary theorist Oliver Curry of the London School of Economics has told the BBC that he expects humanity may likely split into 2 sub-species in about 100,000 years' time", just as HG Wells predicted.
Curry appears to have been quoting the beliefs of the DNRC (Dogbert's New Ruling Class), when he said he expects to see the split being into a "genetic upper class" and a "dim-witted underclass". Interesting an increasing number of people here in the UK actually believe the split has already happened with the emergance of chavs. There are even jokes going around comparing chavs against people in other countries. I wouldn't go as far as describing "chavs" as a new UK species, however there is definately a clear culture split in the UK to the point that the word chav is even now in the Oxford English dictionary. On my travels outside of the UK, I have noted their culture appears to be spreading, however it would seem that some countries are fighting back by banning some of their icons, although Posh and Becks were let in... So is humankind really splitting in this way?"
Submission + - Apple admits 1 in 6 iPhones hacked
thefickler writes: Apple has admitted that one in six iPhones sold (that's over a quarter of a million handsets) has been cracked to allow connection to networks other than AT&T, and that's just counting SIM hacks. Including software modifications that allow the use of unauthorized software the number is thought to be twice that.
Submission + - Naked-eye comet surprise (badastronomy.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Bad Astronomy is reporting that Comet 17P/Holmes, 220 million miles from the Sun, which Monday was a dim magnitude 17 (observable only by a few giant telescopes in remote locations) has overnight become magnitude 3 — easily visible to the naked eye. This is 400,000 times as bright. It's likely due to a sudden breakup of the comet after one too many trips around the sun. Pictures here.
Submission + - Safari beats IE, Firefox in speed trials (computerworld.com.au)
Arashtamere writes: A US web testing firm said Apple's Safari browser is faster than Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox at grabbing pages.
"Safari is faster than rival browsers from Microsoft and Mozilla, a US Web testing firm said this week — putting proof to Apple's June boast that its browser was the quickest...Each browser was pointed at the 16 most-trafficked sites as listed by Alexa at the end of August, and the times it took each to render each site recorded. Results over a two-day period, with multiple tests run at different times, were averaged for a final number. The browsers were also timed as they pulled up those sites' saved HTML, which had been placed on a local server."
http://www.computerworld.com.au/index.php/id;480659220;fp;2;fpid;1
