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IBM

Rivals Say I.B.M. Stifles Competition to Mainframe->

Submitted by
Mihaela Lica
Mihaela Lica writes "I.B.M. is now negotiating to buy Sun for about $7 billion, and if the deal were to occur, I.B.M. would also gain a monopoly on the key storage systems used for mainframes. Mainframes crunch the data just about every time someone withdraws money from an automated teller machine, uses a credit card or buys a product from a large retailer. I.B.M. contends that the continued popularity of mainframes stems from its efforts to modernize the systems so that they can run more contemporary business software."
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PC Games (Games)

Battle for Wesnoth Version 1.6 Released

Submitted by bomanbot
bomanbot writes "The team of the great turn-based, open-source strategy game Battle for Wesnoth have just released the new stable version 1.6 of their popular title.

Some of the highlights of the new version include a new campaign, new multiplayer scenarios, improved graphics and user interface and new background music. The entire release notes are here, source code and binary downloads for many different platforms including Linux, Windows and Mac OS X can be found on the Downloads page."
The Almighty Buck

Bill to require Open Access to Scientific Papers 2

Submitted by
Ponca City, We Love You
Ponca City, We Love You writes "Congress is expected to vote this week on a bill requiring investigators funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to publish research papers only in journals that are made freely available within one year of publication. Until now, repeated efforts to legislate such a mandate have failed under pressure from the well-heeled journal publishing industry and some nonprofit scientific societies whose educational activities are supported by the profits from journals that they publish. Scientists assert that open access will speed innovation by making it easier for them to share and build on each other's findings. The measure is contained in a spending bill that boosts the biomedical agency's effective budget by 3.1%, to $29.8 billion in 2008. The open-access requirement in the bill would apply only during fiscal year 2008; it would need to be renewed in yearly spending bills in the future."
Networking

Using OpenDNS to filter out porn sites->

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "The Washington Post has a blog entry today about use of OpenDNS to block porn sites from one's computers at home (e.g. to keep children from accidentally going the wrong place).

It is an interesting approach, one that some Corporate IT Departments might want to consider. This approach also doesn't raise broader political issues of censorship."
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Security

Does 'Hacker' Still Mean What It Did?->

Submitted by
Rea Maor
Rea Maor writes "One of the flame-wars that breaks out across the web is the usage of the word 'hacker'. To some, 'hacker' is what MIT programmers are: smart, competent, revolutionary, and professional. To others, 'hacker' is that silly Hollywood image of an electronic locksmith, or the ridiculous crackers of copy-protection software. But maybe this is changing.



The bottom line is: All proprietary media is in trouble. Music, movies, literature, images, software, you name it. If it can be sent somewhere else electronically, it will be cracked, ripped, copied, and end up on PirateBay, BitTorrent, or eMule. Regardless of past differences, those who break protected content to copy illegally and those who create content that's legally free in the first place are finding themselves more closely aligned every day.



The time is coming when we will just have to say "free everything". All the code, all the data, all the media. It's impossible to make money at it anymore, so do it for hire or do it for fun, but once it's published, it's owned by the world. Yes, that would mean saying goodbye to the corporate empires and all the works they produced, but there was a time before the printing press when producing media wasn't profitable, and there will come that time again.



The encyclopedia Britannica has a blog, whose sole purpose seems to be to whine about how people are using free community databases on the Internet to replace encyclopedias. Give it up, old man! It's dead! $150+ for an encyclopedia set, vs. taking two seconds to search Wiki for free when all I wanted to know is what order bats belong to? Even if encyclopedias were printed and handed out free, most people would still use the web; the web is faster to search and nobody ever dropped the Internet on their foot when they were trying to re-shelve it.



Back to software, the outlook does not look good for software as a commodity. You would need draconian laws beyond any on the books now, and you would need to turn every country on the planet into a Fascist dictatorship to enforce them. The return on investment just isn't good anymore.



The hacker showed the world the way. Whether it's the pirate-hacker or the coder-hacker, one does depend on the other to some degree — however minor — for their success. Perhaps in the future, we'll see the hacker mythologized like the cowboy and the knight. Whoops, happened already."
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It's funny. Laugh.

How Long Could You Live For Without Your Gagdets?

Submitted by DruCipher
DruCipher writes "CNet.co.uk is running a very funny article about Andrew Lim, the resident mobile phone reviewer, trying to live without all his favourite gadgets. The article sees Andrew try to survive without a mobile phone, a computer, an MP3 player and a TV. At the end of his technology detox he feels more relaxed without all his gadgets but cracks after a few days, "Like all proper detoxes, though, my zen-like calm didn't last for long. Once I'd finished my gadget starvation, I was straight back to the tech bingeing. A remote control gun you say? Yes please!". Could you survive without all your favourite gadgets?"
Microsoft

Microsoft thinks a VAX is an Itanium!?->

Submitted by
mikefoley
mikefoley writes "This picture on the Microsoft Itanium website does not show Itanium systems. http://www.microsoft.com/library/media/1033/server s/graphics/hero/itanium_header.jpg This picture is of some old DEC VAXen. I think the guy is typing on a keyboard on top of an HSC. (Hierarchical Storage Controller) Next to that is a VAX 6xxx, a VAX 8xxx then an empty cabinet (probably a Star Coupler), a VAX 8500 and another VAX 6xxx. Closest to you is the RA82 in a four unit config. That holds a whopping *3.5GB*. As an old ex-DECcie who managed all of these systems at one time, I found it both amusing and sad to see this picture. Long live VMS!"
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Announcements

Kodak announces new extra sensitive camera sensor->

Submitted by shrimppoboy
shrimppoboy writes "Eastman Kodak Company introduced a new sensor technology that is claimed to provide a 2x to 4x increase in sensitivity to light (one to two f-stops). Such an increase will have great benefit in many cameras. Especially, perhaps, in camera phones which suffer from small apertures. Great, just when I was planning to go out and spend a ton of money on a high end DSLR. Well, at least, it appears that products with the sensor won't be available for at least a year."
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Heavier than air flying machines are impossible. -- Lord Kelvin, President, Royal Society, c. 1895