NetBSD 5.0 RC1 Released 158
jschauma writes "The first release candidate of NetBSD 5.0 is now available for download from the NetBSD FTP site. Here is the Release Engineering status of 5.0."
Comment Re:Now it makes sense (Score 1) 231
I'm guessing you're a blast at parties.
Submission + - Is it possible to make a game with only 4KB? (java4k.com)
ArniArent writes: "A game programming competition, at Java4K.com (http://www.java4k.com), has just started. This is the fifth time it's running and might be one of the largest game programming competition in the Java community, with over 50 games submitted each year!
Everyone are allowed to submit their game, as long as it follows the simple rules; the game must be written in Java and final package 4KB max!
You might ask, what can you do with only 4KB? Are these text based games? Amazingly they have managed to create very nice looking 2D and also 3D games that are fun to play.
This might be a good start for anyone interested in learning game programming, and is also a good time consumer for anyone who got nothing better to do over the holidays! :)
Check out http://www.java4k.com for more information."
Submission + - Electric vehicles to back up the power grid 1
holy_calamity writes: Researchers in Delaware are working with electricity grid giant PJM on a scheme to use the batteries of electric vehicles to backup the grid while parked. Cars typically spend 23 hours a day off the road. During that time electric or plug-in hybrid vehicles can soak up excess generated power or trickle juice into the grid to smooth out mis-matches between supply and demand. Just 100 electric vehicles running the vehicle-to-grid software like their current prototype can provide 1MW of storage. City officials in Austin, Texas are keen to try the idea.
Submission + - Today is "Day of the Ninja"
lucabrasi999 writes: While I give the ninjas some credit for trying, it still is just a cheap imitation of Talk Like a Pirate Day.
Submission + - California Testers Find Flaws in Voting Machines (arstechnica.com) 1
quanticle writes: According to Ars Technica, California testers have discovered severe flaws in the ES&S voting machines. The paper seals were easily bypassed, and the lock could be picked with a "common office implement". After cracking the physical security the device, the testers found it simple to reconfigure the BIOS to boot off external media. After booting a version of Linux, they found that critical system files were stored in plain text. They also found that the election management system that initializes the voting machines used unencrypted protocols to transmit the initialization data to the voting machines, allowing for a man-in-the-middle attack.
Altogether, it is a troubling report for a company already in hot water for selling uncertified equipment to counties.
Altogether, it is a troubling report for a company already in hot water for selling uncertified equipment to counties.
Submission + - Abstinence Debunked: Lessons from the Front Lines (blogspot.com)
Mike Kuykendall writes: "A social worker and activist excoriates the Bush administration's abstinence-only education programs."
Submission + - 99% recognition accuracy on thousands of voices! (blogspot.com)
Wireless speech recognition writes: "IBM Research announces the new Cell Broadband Engine(tm) Cell/B.E processor; capable of literally perfect recognition on thousands of voices, at once. This new Cell/B.E. is a streaming multiprocessor who's architecture contains a general-purpose IBM PowerPC processor, working with additional special-purpose processing cores jointly designed by Sony, Toshiba, and IBM.
The Cell/B.E. can handle thousands of simultaneous voice channels in real time, and IBM states "On both the Cell/B.E. processor and the software platforms, recognition accuracy was 99%".
The research team goes on to conclude:
"We have implemented and demonstrated a prototype speech recognition engine that is capable of processing approximately 1,000 speech channels on a single Cell/B.E. processor. The kernel computations are designed to be highly scalable, and we expect this performance result to generalize well to commercial speech systems."
The Cell/B.E. can handle thousands of simultaneous voice channels in real time, and IBM states "On both the Cell/B.E. processor and the software platforms, recognition accuracy was 99%".
The research team goes on to conclude:
"We have implemented and demonstrated a prototype speech recognition engine that is capable of processing approximately 1,000 speech channels on a single Cell/B.E. processor. The kernel computations are designed to be highly scalable, and we expect this performance result to generalize well to commercial speech systems."
Submission + - Samsung's 64GB SSD drive review (computerworld.com) 4
Lucas123 writes: "Computerworld's Rich Ericson reviewed Samsung's first large capacity solid state disk drive and says it's heartier and faster than the drive in Sony's new flash-based notebook. It's also got an impressive mean time between failure of more than 2 million hours, versus under 500,000 hours for the Samsung's other traditional hard drives and the company says the drive can withstand an operating shock of 1,500Gs at .5 miliseconds (versus 300Gs at 2 miliseconds for a traditional hard drive. "Power consumption is just 1 watt when the system is active, 0.1 watt when idle, and .06 watt in standby mode. (Equivalent power consumption figures with hard drives are 2.1, 1.5, and .2 watts, respectively.) That could explain why we got 5 hours, 22 minutes of power in Max Battery mode when surfing the Web, creating documents with OpenOffice, or uploading and downloading files to an FTP server.""
Submission + - Applications go outside of Facebook
An anonymous reader writes: Up until now facebook applications have been inaccessible to the millions of people on the Internet that haven't joined Facebook yet. This policy also prevented applications from being indexed by search engines had the potential to fuel their growth significantly.
As of now facebook has started allowing people to access application canvas pages even when not logged in to Facebook, whilst still respecting their users' privacy. This means that user-specific data available on public canvas pages will be first name and profile picture (and then only if the user's profile picture is already publicly searchable). A fantastic example of this at work is Sponsor Me (http://apps.facebook.com/sponsor-me/), a facebook application which allows users to setup and run campaigns for any purpose. As you can see due to the recent facebook changes, Sponsor Me campaigns are now available to external users, giving the ability for campaigns to be discovered by the millions of non-facebook users which otherwise wouldn't be able to help out.
This can surely only help attract more user to facebook, as application developers find all new ways to tempt users into facebook with the variety of applications.
As of now facebook has started allowing people to access application canvas pages even when not logged in to Facebook, whilst still respecting their users' privacy. This means that user-specific data available on public canvas pages will be first name and profile picture (and then only if the user's profile picture is already publicly searchable). A fantastic example of this at work is Sponsor Me (http://apps.facebook.com/sponsor-me/), a facebook application which allows users to setup and run campaigns for any purpose. As you can see due to the recent facebook changes, Sponsor Me campaigns are now available to external users, giving the ability for campaigns to be discovered by the millions of non-facebook users which otherwise wouldn't be able to help out.
This can surely only help attract more user to facebook, as application developers find all new ways to tempt users into facebook with the variety of applications.
Submission + - Users, Web Developers Vent Over IE7's First Year (pcworld.com)
outlando writes: After a year of IE7, Tony Chor at M$ has written a glowingly self-congratulatory entry in the IE blog. The comments, from various developers, designers and other industry professionals, tell a rather different story to the one outlined in the blog entry itself.
PC World's story is here: http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,140299/article.html
Unfortunately, PC World neglected to provide a link to the blog entry itself. You can find it at http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2007/11/30/the-first-year-of-ie7.aspx
PC World's story is here: http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,140299/article.html
Unfortunately, PC World neglected to provide a link to the blog entry itself. You can find it at http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2007/11/30/the-first-year-of-ie7.aspx
Submission + - Mounties claim major movie-piracy bust (theglobeandmail.com)
An anonymous reader writes: The RCMP says it has nabbed a major player in the lucrative world of Internet movie piracy.
Montreal resident Geremi Adam, 25, is considered by the FBI as a world leader in Internet movie piracy.
Submission + - Evel Knievel Dies at 69 (blogspot.com)
jazmynmarie writes: Evel Knievel died Friday after 69 years, which is more than twice as long as it by all rights should have taken him. Knievel, who had been in poor health...
Submission + - New Game Trading Site (gamezola.com)
Frank writes: "Ever since launching a few months ago, Gamezola.com has been taking the gaming industry by storm. We have been featured in prominent gaming websites such as gamespress.com and gameplaymonthly.com. Recently we have been the gold winner of the 2007 WWW awards. We have thousands of gamers registered on our site, who are actively listing and trading video games. We have hundreds of listing on our site, from older to the hottest and latest video games.
In celebrating of E-4-All, Gamezola is launching a special deal of $1 per trade. That is a saving of over 40%. Also, look for us at E-4-All (Los Angeles Convention Center) with special coupons for free trades!"
In celebrating of E-4-All, Gamezola is launching a special deal of $1 per trade. That is a saving of over 40%. Also, look for us at E-4-All (Los Angeles Convention Center) with special coupons for free trades!"
Submission + - Radiohead with "name your own price" LP7
JP writes: "Radiohead have announced a new record http://www.inrainbows.com/ via their blog http://www.radiohead.com/deadairspace. The album is to be released ten days from now. What is particularly novel is that you can choose whatever price you wish to pay for the digital download only version of the record or you can purchase an LP/CD combo box. It's already sorta "slashdotted" via pitchfork and a million other news sites. Merge records also has seemed to follow this pattern of giving fans inexpensive downloads (with merge it's via emusic.com) or premium physical goods with high grade vinyl and artwork etc. I'm sure we are seeing the intermediate future of popular music distribution, although Radiohead have an obvious unique existing "marketshare" to be able to pull this off more easily."
