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The Media

Newspapers Cut Wikileaks Out of Shield Law 602

Posted by CmdrTaco from the something-about-clubs-and-members dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The US press has been pushing for a (much needed) federal shield law, that would allow reporters to protect their sources. It's been something of a political struggle for a few years now, and things were getting close when Wikileaks suddenly got a bunch of attention for leaking all those Afghan war documents. Suddenly, the politicians involved started working on an amendment that would specifically carve out an exception for Wikileaks so that it would not be covered by such a shield law. And, now, The First Amendment Center is condemning the newspaper industry for throwing Wikileaks under the bus, as many in the industry are supporting this new amendment, and saying that Wikileaks doesn't deserve source protection because 'it's not journalism.'"
Government

Senate Trying To Slip Internet Kill Switch Past Us 461

Posted by CmdrTaco from the your-govt-at-work dept.
sanermind writes "Sensing Senators don't have the stomach to try and pass a stand-alone bill in broad daylight that would give the President the power to shut down the Internet in a national emergency, the Senate is considering attaching the Internet Kill Switch bill as a rider to other legislation that would have bi-partisan support."
Cloud

Yale Researchers Prove That ACID Is Scalable 272

Posted by CmdrTaco from the i-could-prove-lunch dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The has been a lot of buzz in the industry lately about NoSQL databases helping Twitter, Amazon, and Digg scale their transactional workloads. But there has been some recent pushback from database luminaries such as Michael Stonebraker. Now, a couple of researchers at Yale University claim that NoSQL is no longer necessary now that they have scaled traditional ACID compliant database systems."
Microsoft

Microsoft Patents OS Shutdown 404

Posted by CmdrTaco from the just-press-the-big-button dept.
An anonymous reader writes "You would think that shutting down software could be fairly simple from an end user's view. If I ask you to shut it down, would you mind shutting it actually down, please? Well, it's a bit more complicated than that, because you need to ask the user if they really want to shut down and if unsaved documents should be saved. And that warrants a patent that also covers Mac OS X. Next time you shut down Windows, remember how complicated it is for Windows to shut down. Perhaps that is the reason why this procedure can take minutes in some cases."
Image

Student Shocks Own Nipples, Sues Teacher 10

Posted by samzenpus from the what-a-re-volting-situation dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The Associated Press reports that a New Hampshire high school student who connected electrodes to his nipples that were plugged into the wall, severely shocking him, is suing the teacher, the school district, and the city because the teacher failed to warn him not to do so. Student Kyle Dubois attached a wire to his nipples, cooperated with another student to attach a second wire to the other nipple, and a third student plugged them in. A classmate captured the event on cell phone video. Kyle and his parents claim that he didn't know it was dangerous and the teacher's failure to warn him resulted in permanent brain damage. If I was the teacher's attorney, I would be tempted to argue that there is strong evidence the brain damage was present before the incident took place."
Google

India Now Wants Access To Google and Skype 366

Posted by CmdrTaco from the voip-is-hoip dept.
crabel writes "A couple of weeks ago India went after RIM and its mail service; it has extended its hunger for data now to all telecommunications. All telecom companies have to give them access to all voice over IP services that go in/out or happen within the country. Heck, they are even going after VPNs used by corporate employees working remotely."
Biotech

Ancient Nubians Drank Antibiotic-Laced Beer 249

Posted by timothy from the what's-a-nubian dept.
eldavojohn writes "A new analysis of millennia old mummy bones (abstract; full article is paywalled) shows high concentrations of tetracycline, which indicates empirical knowledge and use of antibiotics — most likely consumed in beer. The researchers traced the source of the antibiotics to the soil bacteria streptomyces present in the grain used to ferment the beer. Astonishingly enough, 'Even the tibia and skull belonging to a 4-year-old were full of tetracycline, suggesting that they were giving high doses to the child to try and cure him of illness.' The extent of saturation in the bones leads the scientists to assert that the population regularly consumed tetracycline antibiotics knowing that it would cure certain sicknesses."
Technology

New Silicon-Based Memory 5X Denser Than NAND Flash 162

Posted by timothy from the promising-stuff dept.
Lucas123 writes "Researchers at Rice University said today they have been able to create a new non-volatile memory using nanocrystal wires as small as 5 nanometers wide that can make chips five times more dense than the 27 nanometer NAND flash memory being manufactured today. And, the memory is cheap because it uses silicon and not more expensive graphite as been used in previous iterations of the nanowire technology. The nanowires also allow stacking of layers to create 3-D memory, even more dense. 'The fact that they can do this in 3D makes makes it highly scalable. We've got memory that's made out of dirt-cheap material and it works,' a university spokesman said."
Businesses

Why Microsoft Is Being Nicer To Open Source 231

Posted by timothy from the in-some-markets-at-least dept.
itwbennett writes "Is open source's growth in emerging markets what is driving Microsoft to say 'we love open source' with an attempt at a straight face? 'The emerging markets (like the BRIC nations) are a huge potential market for Microsoft,' says Brian Proffitt. 'And I believe Redmond is wisely not taking the FUD route on open source software in those markets. Why? Because open source already has some strong roots in the BRIC nations (heck, in Brazil, open source is the whole darn tree), and any attack on open source would be seen as a foreign company attacking local software projects. If Microsoft attacked open source publicly in this environment, a lot of potential customers and developers in those countries could react in a protectionist manner and start giving Microsoft the stink-eye.'"

Comment Re:And... (Score 1) 342

by ci4 (#33250522) Attached to: The Future of OpenSolaris Revealed

I run NetBSD-Current (amd64) on my T61p; basically everything works as expected (including the graphics, i.e. non-accelerated). That is not a problem for me, as I triple-boot it (the others are W7/64 and, of course, OpenSolaris build 134).

Actually the latter runs best. NVidia acceleration out from the CD, all the keys work, suspend-resume without any problem, Java, AcroRead, even RealPlayer if you wish... W7 is as good as one can expect, but took some time to get all the drivers and the rest; NetBSD lacks the 3D NVidia stuff. I stay mostly under W7 (the VPN client I have to use is only Windows, although I have a spare VirtualBox m/c under OpenSolaris for that), use Crossbow/VirtualBox for network simulations under OpenSolaris, mostly pkgsrc under NetBSD (plus tracking -current).

It is the best laptop I've ever had, though. I wouldn't replace it even if it is almost three years old (especially with the maxed-out memory and a decent black scorpio disk).
Privacy

Why Online Privacy Is Broken 220

Posted by Soulskill from the too-many-people-who-don't-care dept.
Trailrunner7 writes "One of the more trite and oft-repeated maxims in the software industry goes something like this: We're not focusing on security because our customers aren't asking for it. They want features and functionality. When they ask for security, then we'll worry about it. Not only is this philosophy doomed to failure, it's now being repeated in the realm of privacy, with potentially disastrous effects. A quick search of recent news on the privacy front reveals that just about all of it is bad. Facebook is exposing users' live chat sessions and other data to third parties. Google is caught recording not only MAC address and SSID information from public Wi-Fi hotspots, but storing data from the networks as well. But the prevailing attitude among corporate executives in these cases seems to be summed up by Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who famously said this not too long ago: 'If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place.' If you look beyond the patent absurdity of Schmidt's statement for a minute, you'll find another old maxim hiding underneath: Blame the user. You want privacy? Don't use our search engine/photo software/email application/maps. That's our data now, thank you very much. Oh, you don't want your private chats exposed to the world? Sorry, you never told us that."
Image

New Speed Cameras Catch You From Space 351

Posted by samzenpus from the no-place-to-run-or-speed dept.
A new kind of speed camera that uses satellites to measure average speed over long distances is being tested in Britain. The "Speedspike" system combines plate reading technology with a global positioning satellite receiver to calculate average speed between any two points in the area being monitored. From the article: "Details of the trials are contained in a House of Commons report. The company said in its evidence that the cameras enabled 'number plate capture in all weather conditions, 24 hours a day.' It also referred to the system's 'low cost' and ease of installation." I can't wait to see the episode of MythBusters where they try to avoid getting a speeding ticket from a satellite.

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