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XMilkProject writes "A lot of geeks use LinkedIn to keep up with business contacts these days. Now LinkedIn is giving back with "InApps" (short for Intelligent Applications), LinkedIn's answer to the myriad of developer platforms that have emerged in the wake of the Facebook Platform. LinkedIn is also a partner in Google's somewhat stalled OpenSocial initiative, and the company has said that InApps' structure "(includes) the ability to develop applications that will run within LinkedIn using the OpenSocial development model." Is there something interesting going on here? Or is this just another social network playing catch-up?"
http://www.news.com/8301-13577_3-9831130-36.html?tag=newsmap

VicVegas writes "Jeb Corliss is vying to be the first human to jump from an airplane and land safely without using a parachute. He has conducted over 1000 test jumps (with a parachute) donning a suit that makes him look like a Darth Flying Squirrel. All he needs is a little funding to get his dream landing strip (a cool $2M) and he will make history. The flying squirrel outfit is cheap by comparison, coming in at one thousand smackers.

"This spring, Mr. Corliss will attempt the first of three tests to prepare for his goal. Wearing his wing suit, he will jump from a plane, which will then execute a 270-degree turn and descend at a steep angle. He will fly down to the plane and re-enter it." He unsuccessfully attempted this maneuver once already.

Jeb has gone from catching rattlesnakes as a child, to swimming with sharks as a teen, to basejumping off the Eiffel Tower and the Golden Gate Bridge. He was arrested during his attempt to jump off the Empire State Building (he's weighing his legal options). In this context, jumping out of an airplane without a parachute makes sense."
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/10/sports/othersports/10flying.html?ex=1354942800&en=1e74fafc4c1a6007&ei=5089

An anonymous reader alerts us to a story out of Israel in which Google (its Israeli subsidiary) gave up the IP address of a Blogger user without being compelled to do so by a court. A preliminary ruling was issued in which a court indicated that the slander the blogger was accused of probably rose to the level of a criminal violation. Google Israel then made a deal with the plaintiffs, local city councilmen whom the blogger had been attacking for a year. Google disclosed the IP address only to the court, which posted a message (Google says the anonymous blogger got it) inviting him/her to contest the ruling anonymously. When no response was received within 3 days, Google turned over the IP address to the plaintiffs' lawyers.

How Appealing reports that a court has struck down age verification requirements for porn sites, as a First Amendment violation. Here is the ruling (PDF). While the average reader here has never been to such a site, porn has been a driving force in the economics and technology of the Net. The age verification requirements of U.S.C. Title 18, Section 2257 were yet another attempt to regulate to death what the government can't outright prohibit. The requirements intruded on the privacy and safety of performers and created headaches for sites like flickr and photobucket that host images. It is has long been thought that the requirements wouldn't hold up in court, but this is the first actual ruling.

As you may recall, Microsoft's OOXML did not get enough votes to be approved the first time around in ISO/IEC — notwithstanding the fact that many countries joined the Document Format and Languages committee in the months before voting closed, almost all of whom voted to approve OOXML. Unfortunately, many of these countries also traded up to "P" level membership at the last minute to get more influence. Now, the collateral damage is setting in. At least 50% of P members must vote (up, down or abstain) on every standard at each ballot — and none of the new members are bothering to vote, despite repeated pleas from the committee chair. Not a single ballot has passed since the OOXML vote closed, and In his words, the committee has "ground to a halt." Sad to say, there's no end in sight for this (formerly) very busy and influential standards committee.
http://www.consortiuminfo.org/standardsblog/article.php?story=20071016092352827

gihan_ripper writes "Perhaps the ultimate nerd acquisition, the flying car, is to go on sale in a few months. Speaking to the BBC, the inventor Dr Paul Moller described his creation, dubbed the Flying Saucer, as a VTOL aircraft designed to hover at 10 ft. above the ground. The flying saucer has eight engines and is expected to sell for $90,000. Dr Moller expects to produce a successor within six years, a 'Skycar' capable of a climb rate of 6000 ft./min. and an airspeed of 400 mph."

theodp writes "In Congressional testimony last month, Google's VP of People Operations told the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration that, due to limits on the number of H-1B visas, Google is regularly unable to pursue highly qualified candidates. But as Google stock tumbled in after hours trading Wednesday, Google's CEO blamed disappointing profits on a hiring binge and promised Wall Street analysts that the company would keep a careful eye on headcount in the future. So which Google should Congress believe?"

FLOSSisnot4Teeth writes "You probably are familiar with Nagios and Webmin as two of the most widely deployed open source systems management applications. However, this month's SourceForge.net Project of the Month is probably a newcomer to open source systems and network administrators. Zenoss Core is a systems monitoring platform, released under GPL and over the last year it's become one of the most popular SF.net projects. Unlike most of these new "commercially backed" open source projects, Zenoss Core is the only version, their corporate sponsor doesn't offer a "pro version". Also their developers have been committing code back to other projects like RRDTool and Twisted. I have been playing around with Zenoss for about six months and have been totally impressed. Would be curious to see what other Slashdot readers think." SourceForge.net and Slashdot are both owned by OSTG.

destinyland writes "Friday police arrested 64-year-old Keith Henson. In 2000 after picketing a Scientology complex, he was arrested as a threat because of a joke Usenet post about "Tom Cruise Missiles." He fled to Canada after being found guilty of "interfering" with a religion, and spent the next 6 years living as a fugitive. Besides being a digital encryption and free speech advocate, he's one of the original Burr-Brown/Texas Instruments researchers and a co-founder of the Space Colony movement."