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Companies Liable for deals with terrorists->

Submitted by
Dionysius, God of Wine and Leaf,
Dionysius, God of Wine and Leaf, writes "The Red Flag program, which takes effect Nov. 1, requires enterprises to check their customers and suppliers against databases of known online criminals — much like what OFAC does with terrorists — and also carries potential fines and penalties for businesses that don't do their due diligence before making a major transaction.

http://www.darkreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=151872&WT.svl=news1_1

(Soon all transactions will be processed through terrorist databases, just like they use Telecheck to verify checks and credit cards?)"
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Programming

Are C and C++ Losing Ground?

Submitted by
Pickens
Pickens writes "Dr. Dobbs has an interesting interview with Paul Jansen, the managing director of TIOBE Software, about the Programming Community Index that measures the popularity of programming languages by monitoring their web presence. Since the TIOBE index has been published now for more than 6 years, it gives an interesting picture about trends in the area of programming languages. Jansen says that not much has happened in the top ten programming languages in the last five years with only Python entering the top 10, replacing COBOL but that C and C++ are definitely losing ground. "Languages without automated garbage collection are getting out of fashion," says Jansen. "The chance of running into all kinds of memory problems is gradually outweighing the performance penalty you have to pay for garbage collection." On the other hand the winners of the last couple of years have been Visual Basic, Ruby, JavaScript, C#, and D."

Engadget: PS3 to get smaller Cell and/or RSX chips in August?->

From feed by engfeed

Filed under: Gaming

Nikko Citigroup upgraded its rating on Sony this morning in anticipation of it breaking even on PS3 costs earlier than expected. At the moment, Sony sells the PS3 at a loss. The respected group of analysts is now earmarking August as the milestone month. Sony's CFO recently suggested that the move would occur in the second half of year -- a date analysts then pegged at November. No details behind the new upbeat expectations were provided by Nikko CG. However, it's safe to assume that the PS3's break-even event will be realized by a switch to a sub-65nm cell processor, sub-90nm RSX graphics chip, or both, since the smaller chips are less-costly to manufacturer.Read|Permalink|Email this|Comments


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Businesses

Open Source Software Costing Vendors $60 Billion-> 2

Submitted by
OpenSourceWatch
OpenSourceWatch writes ""Open Source software is raising havoc throughout the software market. It is the ultimate in disruptive technology, and while to it is only 6% of estimated trillion dollars IT budgeted annually, it represents a real loss of $60 billion in annual revenues to software companies," said Jim Johnson, The Standish Group International. Five years of research has gone into this new report titled "Trends in Open Source."... If the $60 billion is anywhere closer to the real figure, then it is time to re-look at open source world, and its impact on traditional vendors. We've known there is a big effect, but it is only now that we have some concrete numbers ($60 billion is a mind boggling). And this is now real competition, real money, real business strategies. I am sure biggies at Microsoft and Oracle are reading this report now. Full Story"
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Portables

The end of non-widescreen laptops? 3

Submitted by
Santi Ontañ&#
Santi Ontañ&# writes "Today Lenovo made me (and most developers out there) misserable...

They just retired the last NON-widescreen laptop they offered (the T61 14.1) from the market, and Lenovo is just an example (Apple, Sony, HP, etc. are the same). I understand the motivation behind all the laptop manufacturers to move to widescreen: they can still advertise that they offer 14.1 or 15.4 screens, but the screen area is smaller, and thus they save more money. Some people might like widescreens (they are useful for some tasks), but any developer knows that vertical space matters! Less vertical space = less lines of code in the screen = more scrolling = less productivity. How can laptop manufacturers still claim that they look after their customers when the move to widescreens is clearly a selfish one? I just wish they offered non-widescreen laptops, even if it were for a plus (that I'd be more than happy to pay)."
The Media

Red scientology tomato rotting in Firehose?-> 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "A posting to the Slashdot Firehose related to a Wikinews story on Wikileaks and legal threats from Scientology, seems to be stuck in the Slashdot firehose red as a ripe tomato for more than 24 hours.
The story that covers a recent press release on Wikileaks relating to copyright claims made by the Church's legal representatives towards the published "Operating Thetan" cult manual, worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in scam money, already spawned a hot discussion on the Wikinews portal. With critics of cult-critics trying to shut the story down for hours, it finally went online. And now seems stuck in the Firehose. One can only hope not for the wrong reasons."
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Space

Our time dimension is about to become space-like?-> 2

Submitted by VincenzoRomano
VincenzoRomano writes "The physics arXiv blog has a rather old posting, yet as much intriguing as interesting.
To put it simple, "the universe is about to lose its dimension of time".
Marc "Bars" Mars and a few pals in Salamanca, Spain say that the Universe's signature might be about to flip from Lorentzian to Euclidean. In other words, our dimension of time is about turn space-like. Gulp: you'd better be prepared by that time!
The full blog entry is here while the original academical article can be found, of course, in the arXiv "
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Education

Peckers! 1

Submitted by relliker
relliker writes "I have been touch-typing since I was about 12 years old (a good 26 years ago, ahem!) learning it the old-fashioned way on a mechanical typewriter (yep, those with the black/red ribbons). Today, I see software engineers, programmers and developers still pecking away at their keyboards with two fingers at a frustratingly slow pace. Isn't it time that proper use of the keyboard is taught as part of all curriculums where most of your future income can depend on fast and proper use of said tool?"
The Internet

Why the Internet Can't Remain Free-> 3

Submitted by
rabblerouzer
rabblerouzer writes "We're headed for a major Internet traffic jam in just 2 years. In a new video on Net neutrality (roughly 4 minutes long), Gary Beach at CIO offers stats about the reasons why (largely blaming YouTube) and a plea for a solution/compromise between Internet pipe owners like AT&T and Verizon and bandwidth hogs. The bottom line: You use the bandwidth, you pay."
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Software

Feds lie about software piracy, terrorism link->

Submitted by
Lucas123
Lucas123 writes "Attorney General Michael Mukasey claims that terrorists sell pirated software as a way to finance their operations, without presenting a shred of evidence for his case. He's doing it to push through a controversial piece of intellectual property legislation that would increase IP penalties, increase police power, set up a new agency to investigate IP theft, and more, according to a Computerworld blog. "Criminal syndicates, and in some cases even terrorist groups, view IP crime as a lucrative business, and see it as a low-risk way to fund other activities," Mukasey told a crowd at the Tech Museum of Innovation last week."
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Music

Even Charles Manson Digs Creative Commons->

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "Good old Charles Manson of the Tate and LaBianca murders has done the same thing. His recent album One Mind (recorded in jail, you can hear other prisoners in the background) is licensed in a way that allows anyone to share it with others, remix it and use it for non-commercial uses. The exact legal details are http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/"
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The Almighty Buck

California bill would make downloads "tangible

Submitted by NotQuiteReal
NotQuiteReal writes "California Assemblyman Charles Calderon, D-Whittier, has introduced a bill that would allow sales tax to be collected on "media downloads". Assembly bill AB1956 would be able to do this only by reclassifying such downloads as "tangible personal property".

My first thought is that would suck yet another tax. My second thought was — hey "isn't that how they got Al Capone?" — yes, the old tax evasion trap. If you thought the RIAA was bad, just wait until the Tax Man comes after your for your untaxed P2P!"

Do not use that foreign word "ideals". We have that excellent native word "lies". -- Henrik Ibsen, "The Wild Duck"