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Comment Re:No offense but sick of hearing this (Score 1) 229

by joe 155 (#24998863) Attached to: Getting an Independent Project Started?
but sometimes people who aren't programmers have good ideas which ought to be implemented but which don't occur to people working in the industry.

For example, why don't we have a root/user distinction on email? you could set it up so the user account could read the mail but not reply or delete it and the root account had full "regular" control - then if you wanted to view mail using an unsecured computer that would be fine; even if someone did steal your password they could at best be an annoyance to you (so long as you don't have loads of passwords stored there). It would make it so much easier to check email whilst you were staying with family who think an unsecured copy of XP is "good enough".

Or why can't we have some sort of news source linking system which can automatically pull stories which were posted after the one you are looking at and place links to them so that you get a better idea of the time-line of progression.

I'm sure the first would be easy to implement into a mail system... the second might be easy but I have no idea how you would do that. Anyway, the point is, if we keep on having the ideas someone who can implement them might do and everyone benefits. If nothing else it might provide prior art to stop some corporate hacks from patenting is
Unix

Submission + - ubuntu survives final day of pwn to own

Submitted by joe 155
joe 155 writes: ubuntu survived the final day of the pwn to own contest, which the MacBook air crashed out of on the second minute of the second day. The final day saw the installation of third party applications which increased the posibility for potential holes. Vista lasted well into the final day as well but eventually fell to a newly discovered exploit in flash. More info at the contest blog http://www.dvlabs.tippingpoint.com/blog/2008/03/28/pwn-to-own-final-day-and-wrap-up
Music

U2's Manager Calls For Mandatory Disconnects For Music Downloaders 658

Posted by Zonk from the got-a-few-things-to-get-off-of-his-chest dept.
sleeplesseye writes "In a speech at the Midem music industry convention in Cannes, Paul McGuinness, longtime manager of the band U2, has called on Internet service providers to immediately introduce mandatory French-style service disconnections to end music downloading, and has urged governments to force ISPs to adopt such policies. McGuinness criticized Radiohead's 'In Rainbows' pay-what-you-want business model, saying that 'the majority of downloads were through illegal P2P download services like BitTorrent and LimeWire'. He also accused ISPs, telcos, device makers, and numerous specifically named companies such as Apple, Google, Yahoo!, Oracle, and Facebook of building 'multi billion dollar industries on the back of our content without paying for it', and of being 'makers of burglary kits' who have made 'a thieves' charter' to steal money from the music industry. The full text of his speech has been posted on U2's website."
Apple

Underground Mac Community Foils a Coup 253

Posted by kdawson from the fortunately-bloodless dept.
An anonymous reader writes "In an attempted palace coup that would not have been out of place in a Shakespearian tragedy, a moderator faction at Mac Serial Junkie, one of the largest underground Mac communities, was shut out this weekend after it was discovered that many staff members were plotting a coup. The plans included a surreptitious takeover of the domain name macserialjunkie.com. In an Open Letter to the Community, the founders of MSJ explain how a number of people at the highest levels of the underground planned their takeover activities for almost two years, only to be foiled at the last minute."
Linux Business

Submission + - Not so implemented: Ubuntu Dell costs $225 more

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: One week ago the post titled Ubuntu Dell $50 Cheaper Than Vista Dell was linked to the Dell IdeaStorm page with the suggestion "Ubuntu $50 less than Windows". The status was "implemented". Today the status has changed on the same pages to "Reneged: Ubuntu Dell is $225 More Than Windows Dell". The full price of a Ubuntu Inspiron 1420N is in fact $50 cheaper compared to the same identical hardware configuration with Vista, except that a $275 free upgrade to 2GB memory and 160 GB hard drive is available for Windows only. At the time of this post, the free disk and RAM promotions are still available for Vista and Vista only on the Dell web site.
Unix

Submission + - Linux Gains Completely Fair Scheduler (kerneltrap.org)

Submitted by SchedFred
SchedFred writes: KernelTrap is reporting that Ingo Molnar's Completely Fair Scheduler, or CFS, was just merged into the Linux Kernel. The new CPU scheduler includes a pluggable framework that completely replaces Molnar's earlier O(1) scheduler, and is described to "model an 'ideal, precise multi-tasking CPU' on real hardware. CFS tries to run the task with the 'gravest need' for more CPU time. So CFS always tries to split up CPU time between runnable tasks as close to 'ideal multitasking hardware' as possible." The new CPU scheduler should improve the desktop Linux experience, and will be part of the upcoming 2.6.23 kernel.
Space

Submission + - Man flies 193 miles in lawn chair (cnn.com)

Submitted by
bradgoodman
bradgoodman writes: "BEND, Oregon (AP) — Last weekend, Kent Couch settled down in his lawn chair with some snacks — and a parachute. Attached to his lawn chair were 105 large helium balloons.

Balloons suspend Kent Couch in a lawn chair as he floats in the skies near Bend, Oregon, on Saturday.

With instruments to measure his altitude and speed, a global positioning system device in his pocket, and about four plastic bags holding five gallons of water each to act as ballast — he could turn a spigot, release water and rise — Couch headed into the Oregon sky."
Security

Submission + - Secretly monopolizing the CPU without being root

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: This year's Usenix security symposium includes a paper that implements a "cheat" utility, which allows any non-privileged user to run his/her program, e.g., like so

cheat 99% program

thereby insuring that the programs would get 99% of the CPU cycles, regardless of the presence of any other applications in the system, and in some cases (like Linux), in a way that keeps the program invisible from CPU monitoring tools (like 'top'). The utility exclusively uses standard interfaces and can be trivially implemented by any beginner non-privileged programmer. Recent efforts to improve the support for multimedia applications make systems more susceptible to the attack. All prevalent operating systems but Mac OS X are vulnerable, though by this kerneltrap story, it appears that the new CFS Linux scheduler attempts to address the problem that were raised by the paper.
Announcements

Submission + - Mythbuntu 7.10 Public Alpha 2 (mythbuntu.org)

Submitted by
superm1
superm1 writes: "Today the Mythbuntu team is announcing our second alpha image. This is being deliberately released shortly after Ubuntu 7.10 Tribe-2 because Mythbuntu is now tracking Ubuntu 7.10 for all packages. Also, all of our derivative specific changes are being submitted into the 7.10 repositories. Consequently, by tracking Ubuntu 7.10, we will adapt an identical target release date. See the Mythbuntu website for more information."
The Courts

Submission + - Is RIAA's Linares Affidavit Technically Valid? 1

Submitted by
NewYorkCountryLawyer
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: "In support of its ex parte, "John Doe", discovery applications against college students, the RIAA has been using a declaration by its "Anti-Piracy" Vice President Carlos Linares" (pdf) to show the Judge that it has a good copyright infringement case against the "John Does". A Boston University student has challenged the validity of Mr. Linares's declaration, and the RIAA is fighting back. Would appreciate the Slashdot community's take on the validity of Mr. Linares's "science"."
Software

Submission + - Open Source File Transfer Server Software?

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: My company is looking for a solution to securely transfer files between our branches, clients, etc. It has to be stable, support multiple platforms, multiple protocols, be very auditable, allow secure access, provide reporting capabilities, send status emails, and (hopefully) expandable. I'm way beyond the simple sftp or rsync scripting, but not quite to EDI (yet). I need to support multiple simultaneous transfers, and prove beyond doubt that file "x" (in a wildcarded list of unknown size) got picked up at such-and-such a time from server "A", was a certain number of bytes, was no longer being written to, and that yes, it *did* in fact get transfered to it's destination (on yet another server) safely after trying a given number of times to do so. Afterwards the source copy was archived by various means, and now peacefully reposes in another location or format. I've found a goodly number of closed solutions that do this kind of thing, from simple software to enterprise EDI solutions, but I'm having trouble finding open solutions. My boss is willing to consider them, but they have to compete feature-wise with the closed choices. Has anyone done this before with open solutions? Do you have any software recommendations?
Security

Submission + - Grand Theft Auto mod virus uses YouTube to spread

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: According to CNET, someone is using a Grand Theft Auto mod video as a way to trick viewers into infecting themselves. Although YouTube videos remain safe to view, that hasn't stopped criminals from finding new ways to entice YouTube viewers to get infected with the latest Trojan horse. The latest example is a Grand Theft Auto video for a mod called Hood Life. Watching the You Tube video is safe. The danger comes at the end when the video displays a site where you can download the game mod itself. Should you download the file and install, your computer will be compromised upon reboot.
Data Storage

Submission + - New Mass. draft proposal allows OOXML (consortiuminfo.org)

Submitted by
mw13068
mw13068 writes: "New story from Standards Blog:

The Massachusetts Information Technology Division (ITD), the state agency that effectively launched the voyage of ODF around the world in August of 2005, has released a new version of its Enterprise Technical Reference Model. And this new draft includes Microsoft's OOXML formats as an acceptable "open format." http://www.consortiuminfo.org/standardsblog/articl e.php?story=20070702101415578"

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