How American Homeless Stay Wired 287

Posted by timothy on Saturday May 30, 2009 @07:12PM from the works-best-in-san-francisco dept.

theodp writes "San Franciscan Charles Pitts has accounts on Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. He runs a Yahoo forum, reads news online and keeps in touch with friends via email. Nothing unusual, right? Except Pitts has been homeless for two years and manages this digital lifestyle from his residence under a highway bridge. Thanks to cheap computers, free Internet access and sheer determination, the WSJ reports that being homeless isn't stopping some from staying wired. 'You don't need a TV. You don't need a radio. You don't even need a newspaper,' says Pitts. 'But you need the Internet.'"

Harsh Words From Google On Linux Development 948

Posted by timothy on Saturday May 30, 2009 @02:49PM from the constructive-criticism dept.

jeevesbond writes "The alpha version of Google Chrome is now available for GNU/Linux. Google Chrome developer and former Firefox lead Ben Goodger has some problems with the platform though. His complaints range from the lack of a standardised UI toolkit, inconsistencies across applications, the lack of a unified and comprehensive HIG, to GTK not being a very compelling toolkit. With Adobe getting twitchy about the glibc fork and previously describing the various audio systems as welcome to the jungle, is it time to concentrate on consolidation and standardisation in GNU/Linux in general, and the desktop in particular?"

Comment Re:I hate Hollywood. (Score 1) 410

by RomeReactor on Thursday October 16, 2008 @07:54PM (#25407093) Attached to: First Official Photos From New Star Trek Movie

Are there any beloved childhood memories that Hollywood hasn't raped the corpse of yet?

Speed Racer: check
Battlestar Galactica: check
Star Trek: check
Buck Rogers: pending

There's also a new Flash Gordon movie down the line, and--while not previoulsy a movie--a John Carter of Mars project for 2012; hell, there's even a new Barbarella due out this year. However, just becuase this is a remake of TOS (and because this is J.J. Abrams) doesn't necessarily mean the movie will be that bad, or bad at all. Granted, M:I III was terrible, and I never cared for Lost or Alias, but I actually liked what he tried to do with Cloverfield, even if the end result was stunted by the awful dialogue and its delivery and some of the behavior of the characters. Revisiting the original Trek characters might be daunting, but the cast, while younger-looking, seems spot on. Time will tell, though. And while few of his movies are actually good, Kevin smith praised both Watchmen and Star Trek after private screenings of both, for what that's worth.

He is a geek, after all.

Submission + - The UK Fastest Machine (guardian.co.uk)

Submitted by

bmsleight

on Wednesday January 02, 2008 @05:25AM

bmsleight writes: "The Guardian has a story on the HECToR, The largest supercomputer in the UK — around five times more powerful than its predecessor, HPCx, which is also at the University of Edinburgh. It measures up well internationally, sitting at 17 in the top500.org list of the most powerful computers in the world."

Submission + - SquirrelMail Repository Poisoned (beskerming.com)

Submitted by

SkiifGeek

on Tuesday December 18, 2007 @11:05AM

SkiifGeek writes: "Late last week the SquirrelMail team posted information on their site about a compromise to the main download repository for SquirrelMail that resulted in a critical flaw being introduced into two versions of the webmail application (1.4.11 and 1.4.12).

After gaining access to the repository through a release maintainer's compromised account (it is believed), the attackers made a slight modification to the release packages, modifying how a PHP global variable was handled. As a result, it introduced a remote file inclusion bug — leading to an arbitrary code execution risk on systems running the vulnerable versions of SquirrelMail.

The poisoning was identified after it was reported to the SquirrelMail team that there was a difference in MD5 signatures for version 1.4.12.

Version 1.4.13 is now available."

Submission + - Sun to seek injunction against NetApp products

Submitted by Zeddicus_Z on Monday November 05, 2007 @10:43PM

Zeddicus_Z writes: Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz has outlined Sun's response to Network Appliance's recent patent infringement lawsuit over ZFS:
"As a part of this suit, we are requesting a permanent injunction to remove all of their filer products from the marketplace, and are examining the original NFS license — on which Network Appliance was started. In addition to seeking the removal of their products from the marketplace, we will be going after sizable monetary damages. And I am committing that Sun will donate half of those proceeds to the leading institutions promoting free software and patent reform".

Schwartz goes on to outline NetApp's demands in order for its existing patent infringement case against Sun to be dropped:"...unfree ZFS, to retract it from the free software community" and "to limit ZFS's allowable field of use to computers — and to forbid its use in storage devices."