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Comment Re:Wow just how wrong can one be. (Score 1) 351

by cras (#34018724) Attached to: Why Mozilla Needs To Pick a New Fight

1. An Echange replacement. Not 8 things I can lash up to work but a single system that is easy to install that offers all the features of Exchange with none of the pain. Oh and it must work with Outlook and should have a good client that does everything Outlook does plus a good web interface.

Fully open source Exchange replacement is finally available, thanks to SOGo and Openchange people: http://www.sogo.nu/english.html

It's also awesome that it can use your existing IMAP server for mail storage rather than reimplementing its own. Also if you don't want to lash up 8 things together, they have all-in-one package you can install.

Submission + - The real Free and Open Source Exchange Replacement (www.sogo.nu) 2

Submitted by extrafu
extrafu writes: Recently, the SOGo developers at Inverse developed together with the OpenChange team a storage provider that reuses much of the SOGo code. This means Microsoft Outlook can talk to SOGo just like if it was an Exchange server. This is a major step in the FOSS groupware world as costly MAPI connectors can now be avoided for Microsoft Outlook users and they can benefit from a modern groupware server to handle all their needs. A video demonstrating Outlook connected to SOGo through OpenChange server is available from the SOGo website. And yes, everything is available under the GNU GPL and is under active development.

Comment Re:Explanation / apology (Score 1) 465

by cras (#31197136) Attached to: Distance, in multiples of my height, from my birthplace:

The space for poll questions is limited; I chopped out "x1000" in the question so it would fit in the box, but failed to add "k"

I first thought about that, but it wouldn't make much sense either. Multiplying by 1000 would put pretty much everyone to the 1-3000 option. Even with distance between US and Europe you won't get past the second option, and maybe not even into the second option.

Comment Re:Somewhat unrelated, but (Score 1) 251

by cras (#30986958) Attached to: Nokia N900 Linux Smartphone Running OS X

By default sudo gives just an error about "switch your device to R&D mode if you want to break your device". You have to install a separate gainroot package to do it without R&D mode. Anyone who does either of those should be experienced enough to realize what the consequences are.

Of course, allowing ALL users rather than just the normal "user" to get root privileges is worse. And yes, a quick look at /etc/sudoers does look as if any user could simply do that. But I just tried:

1. start xterm
2. sudo gainroot
3. su (some other user than "user")
4. sudo gainroot -> it asks for password!
5. su user
6. sudo gainroot -> it works (just as in step 2)

So the user named "user" apparently is checked in (all? of) those scripts that sudo is allowed to execute. It's perfect. Just what you'd expect.

Comment Ads with movement (Score 5, Interesting) 507

by cras (#30868548) Attached to: Of the following online annoyances, I most despise ...

I probably never would have bothered to install adblock if ads were just still images. Maybe once in a while I might even see some interesting ad. Facebook and Google ads are like that, they've never bothered me. But pretty much all other ads are animated, so they keep trying to distract me from reading the actual page. Wonder if advertisers could be encouraged switch to still images by having adblock implement a mode where they're not filtered.
Science

How To Build a Quantum Propulsion Machine 392

Posted by kdawson from the magnetoelectric-quantum-wheel dept.
KentuckyFC writes "According to quantum mechanics, a vacuum will be filled with electromagnetic waves leaping in and out of existence. It turns out that these waves can have various measurable effects, such as the Casimir-Polder force, which was first measured accurately in 1997. Just how to exploit this force is still not clear. Now, however, a researcher at an Israeli government lab suggests how it could be possible to generate propulsion using the quantum vacuum. The basic idea is that pushing on the electromagnetic fields in the vacuum should generate an equal and opposite force. The suggestion is that this can be done using nanoparticles that interact with the vacuum's electric and magnetic fields, generating the well-known Lorentz force. In most cases, the sum of Lorentz forces adds up to zero. But today's breakthrough is the discovery of various ways to break this symmetry and so use the quantum vacuum to generate a force. The simplest of these is simply to rotate the particles. So the blueprint for a quantum propulsion machine described in the paper is an array of addressable nanoparticles that can be rotated in the required way. Although such a machine will need a source of energy, it generates propulsion without any change in mass. As the research puts it with magesterial understatement, this might have practical implications."
Censorship

Swedish Regulators Ban Word "Bank" In Domain Names For Non-Banks 175

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the nanny-state-to-the-rescue dept.
It seems that Swedish regulators have decided to extend the requirement of not calling yourself a bank to the registration of domain names. Now anyone that tries to register a .SE domain name with the word "bank" in it will need to prove they are a legitimate bank. Hopefully there are no blood banks or anyone with the last name of "Banks" that might want a .SE domain. Here is a Google translation of the demand issued by the authorities to the .SE registry.

Comment Re:He makes one excellent and crucial point (Score 4, Informative) 427

by cras (#28396957) Attached to: State of Sound Development On Linux Not So Sorry After All

Is there any document out there which explains why /dev/dsp doesn't get mixing with ALSA? And why nobody tried to patch that yet?

Yeah, TFA explains it.. Here's it in short: /dev/dsp goes to kernelspace, while ALSA does mixing in userspace. I've no idea how difficult it would be to make ALSA do sound mixing in kernelspace.
Encryption

The Emerging Science of DNA Cryptography 46

Posted by timothy from the tight-genes dept.
KentuckyFC writes "Since the mid 90s, researchers have been using DNA to carry out massively parallel calculations which threaten encryption schemes such as DES. Now one researcher says that if DNA can be used to attack encryption schemes, it can also protect data too. His idea is to exploit the way information is processed inside a cell to encrypt it. The information that DNA holds is processed in two stages in a cell. In the first stage, called transcription, a DNA segment that constitutes a gene is converted into messenger RNA (mRNA) which floats out of the nucleus and into the body of the cell. Crucially, this happens only after the noncoding parts of the gene have been removed and the remaining sequences spliced back together." (More below.)
Software

Linux 2.6.27 Out 452

Posted by timothy from the not-all-fancy-like-gnu dept.
diegocgteleline.es writes "Linux 2.6.27 has been released. It adds a new filesystem (UBIFS) for 'pure' flash-based storage, the page-cache is now lockless, much improved Direct I/O scalability and performance, delayed allocation support for ext4, multiqueue networking, data integrity support in the block layer, a function tracer, a mmio tracer, sysprof support, improved webcam support, support for the Intel wifi 5000 series and RTL8187B network cards, a new ath9k driver for the Atheros AR5008 and AR9001 chipsets, more new drivers, and many other improvements and fixes. Full list of changes can be found here."
It's funny. Laugh.

XKCD Improving the Internet ... Yet Again 204

Posted by CmdrTaco from the oh-oh-monroe dept.
netbuzz writes "Comic creator Randall Monroe suggested in a recent xkcd strip that YouTube comments would be better — or, more precisely, less idiotic — if only those posting them were forced to hear their words read aloud first. Well, YouTube has gone and made this "audio preview" a reality, albeit an optional one. And, it's not the first time that xkcd has contributed to the betterment of the Internet, as those who are familiar with last year's "Internet census" and its use of a Hilbert curve may remember."
Censorship

Submission + - Finnish Internet censorship (effi.org)

Submitted by
Thomas Nybergh
Thomas Nybergh writes: "The Finnish National Bureau of Investigation maintains a secret list of "child pornography" sites. Some major Finnish ISPs, although currently not required by law to do so, do block access to sites on this list.

The blocking, which is performed by crippling DNS, has been criticized, especially since lapsiporno.info ("childporn.info"), a site discussing the practice, but not containing any illegal material, was added to the list of blocked sites, despite the fact that only sites hosted outside of Finland are allowed to be blocked (Real child porn sites hosted inside Finland are to be shut down and the maintainers prosecuted).

Quite a lot of other sites that have nothing whatsoever to do with "child pornography" are also on the list, and critics of the practice of crippling DNS say that it's only a matter of time before other inconvenient or controversial material will be censored, too. This article on Electronic Frontier Finland's site is the most adequate summary of the situation available in English."

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