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Communications

Piracy law cuts internet traffic by 33%

Submitted by
Linux Admin Blog
Linux Admin Blog writes "Sweden's new anti piracy laws are based on an EU directive. From the BBC "Internet traffic in Sweden fell by 33% as the country's new anti-piracy law came into effect, reports suggest. Sweden's new policy — the Local IPRED law — allows copyright holders to force internet service providers (ISP) to reveal details of users sharing files.""
Robotics

Robot does science without human help

Submitted by
holy_calamity
holy_calamity writes "An automated genetics lab hooked up to artificial intelligence software has become the first robot to make scientific discoveries without human help. Adam, in Aberystwyth, UK, worked out the function of several yeast genes by performing experiments and interpreting the results — work apparently equivalent to that usually performed by grad students."
Linux Business

The Open Source Enterprise Trap->

Submitted by AndyST
AndyST writes "Dj Walker-Morgan writes about a lock-in effect with vendors of open source enterprise software, apparently similar to what you know from the proprietary world. He calls this "limited support lock in".

By only supporting binary versions that they have supplied to enterprise customers, [open source enterprise vendors] have taken away the advantages of open source from the customer. What open source does for [the vendor] is give them a cheaper way of developing their software by allowing people to take the community code and enhance it, and they get the benefits of those enhancements. [...] An enterprise has to be prepared to ensure that the enterprise open source vendor they are dealing with is really as open as they need.

He closes with a checklist which helps to receive all advantages and freedom open source software."
Link to Original Source

SuSE

openSUSE 11.0 Beta 1 Has Been Released->

Submitted by
Francis Giannaros
Francis Giannaros writes "The first beta release for openSUSE 11.0 is now available. Some of the highlights include the fast package management, KDE 3.5.9 and 4.0.3, GNOME 2.22.1 and an impressive new installer using Qt4 CSS-like stylesheets. Changes behind the scenes include switching to RPM LZMA payload, making RPMs smaller (faster to download), and quicker to decompress (faster installation)."
Link to Original Source
Security

Software to Randomize Police Operations at LAX 221

Posted by samzenpus
from the random-protection dept.
owlgorithm writes "A USC research group has created software, named ARMOR (Assistant for Randomized Monitoring over Routes), that will be used at LAX Airport to make security and police operations there truly unpredictable. The software records the locations of routine, random vehicle checkpoints and canine searches at the airport, and police provide data on possible terrorist targets, based in part on recent security breaches or suspicious activity. The software then makes random decisions (which are thankfully based on calculated probabilities of terrorist attacks) and tells the police where to dispatch and when. The most notable detail is that terrorists who had access to ARMOR still wouldn't be able to predict the searches."
Robotics

The Inside Story of the Armed Robot Pullout Rumor 105

Posted by Zonk
from the see-how-these-things-get-started dept.
An anonymous reader writes "It appears that the initial rumor of the SWORDS robots being pulled out of Iraq — and its subsequent correction — were just that: sensationalizing in the blogosphere. Popular Mechanics has a lengthy update to its original scoop, digging into the sketchy responses from defense contractors when pressed about the bot's actual duties in battle. From the article: 'Although others have used our story to generate a false online rumor about these armed UGVs, the nature of those "technical issues" that Gotvald mentioned in his statement, and that Qinetiq and Foster-Miller have yet to address directly, remains a mystery. Until someone can explain why SWORDS lost its funding, and what exactly it is — and isn't — being used for in Iraq, the rumors are likely to continue. If this is the dawn of the era of robotic infantry, things are off to a decidedly rocky start.""
Microsoft

EU hits Microsoft with record 899 million euro fne->

Submitted by
jd
jd writes "Microsoft has been slammed with a 899 million euro (1.4 billion dollars) fine for perpetuating violations of the 2004 antitrust ruling. It is the first company to be fined for non-compliance, the amazing thing being that the EU expects Microsoft to comply now and "close a dark chapter" in their history. There is something seriously wrong about this, in light of all the other accusations being made. Will Microsoft comply at long last, or does this hint at the battle intensifying?"
Link to Original Source
Businesses

Personal computer seized by employer 11

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "I was recently laid off from my job as a developer / sys admin. The company I worked for was a small family owned company. The computer I was provided (and pretty much all computer systems) was very old and was not really useable as a development machine so on the days I was programming I brought my computer in from home. On the day I was let go they refused to let me take my computer home with me and threatened to call the police if I tried to take it. When the computer was returned to me 6 days later I was told they had made an image of the hard drive and deleted all files related to their business. After getting the PC home I discovered they had deleted many files not related to their business. They had even deleted software that I was developing in my own time for another purpose. My question is do they have the right to do this or would my personal files (or my wife's or my kid's) be protected under the Fourth amendment? The company has no written computer usage policy. I have lost weeks of development time and I can't imagine that this is legal."
Security

Antivirus protection worse than a year ago->

Submitted by
juct
juct writes "In a test of 17 antivirus products, the german magazine c't concluded, that the effectiveness has fallen off, and more and more pests can now slip past these barriers. Most of the products perform reasonably well if they can rely on their database of signatures. But if they have to detect new malware with heuristics, the results were worse than last year. Besides this c't did the first comprehensive test of behaviour blocking in antivirus products and found that more than half of them did not react on suspicious behaviour at all. The test itself is available only in the printed magazine, heise Security published a summary."
Link to Original Source

It is sweet to let the mind unbend on occasion. -- Quintus Horatius Flaccus (Horace)