Comment Re:Debian. (Score 1) 622
Hi there. Ubuntu community member here.
We have the "Ubuntu Foundation", which is a trust with 10 Million in it if Canonical folds.
Kthx, have a nice day,
Comment House, MD. (Score 1) 272
Saw it on House, so it must be true!
Comment Re:Ultrafast search and metadata filesystem (Score 1) 356
You're not wrong at all, and I agree -- it's just that the source document has to "live" somewhere. If I were to be happy with it, I'd have to be able to create "debian/manual_on_this", then link it to my "ubuntu/" folder. When I add a change that's no longer "debian/" qualified, I should be able to "rm debian/manual_on_this", but have it live in "ubuntu/".
What I'm getting at is that tags let the filesystem ( or database, whatever ) manage the documents and present you with "links", rather then having original documents in the tree. It's like saying that C has pointers like Java (in before Java jokes), ignoring the fact you have to malloc / free.
Perhaps I'm ranting at this point, but I think it'd be a nice way forward :)
Off to implement it in fuse!
Comment What morons (Score 5, Insightful) 705
What a bunch of dipshits.
Traffic is just a routing / scheduling algorithm, if anything his background in Computer Science should *help* him present his case.
God, what morons. He just did all that work for you, it's not like you won't review it anyway. Suck it up and do a review. It's your *job*.
How a Leather Cover Crashes the Kindle 280
An anonymous reader writes "Amazon has started offering refunds to Kindle owners who own the unlit leather case who claim that it causes their Kindles to reboot, but are playing dumb on the cause: "our engineering team is looking into this." People have been wondering how a leather cover could possibly crash an electronic device, and why is Amazon offering money back if they don't think there's a problem? It seems that some of the folks over at Connectify have figured it out, and it's a doozy!"
Vuvuzelas Blare On Pirated Copies of Music Game 320
An anonymous reader sends this quote from Wired:
"A novel anti-piracy measure baked into the Nintendo DS version of Michael Jackson: The Experience makes copied versions of the game unplayable and taunts gamers with the blaring sound of vuvuzelas. Many games have installed switches that detect pirated copies and act accordingly, like ending the user's game after 20 minutes. Ubisoft has come under fire multiple times for what players have seen as highly restrictive anti-piracy measures that annoy legitimate users as much or more so than pirates. But some more-mischievous developers have used tricks similar to the vuvuzela fanfare to mess with pirates. Batman: Arkham Asylum lets unauthorized users play through the game as if it were a normal copy, with a single exception: Batman's cape-glide ability doesn't work, rendering the game impossible to finish — although you might bash your head against it trying to make what are now impossible jumps. If you pirate Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2, brace yourself for an explosion, as your entire base will detonate within 30 seconds of loading the game."
Consumer Reports Gives AT&T Lowest US Carrier Rank 187
tekgoblin writes "Consumer Reports has just released results for consumer satisfaction across all US cell phone carriers. The survey covered around 58,000 Consumer Reports subscribers. Over half of the respondents who used AT&T used the iPhone when taking the survey. According to Consumer Reports, iPhone users were less satisfied with AT&T than other users with different phones. An AT&T spokesman responded by citing independent speed tests, as well as higher subscriber numbers and a dropped call rate within 0.1% of the industry leader."
Update: 12/07 01:49 GMT by S : Corrected last sentence to indicate the 0.1% dropped call rate statistic is the difference between AT&T and another carrier, not 0.1% overall.
Researchers Tracking Emerging 'Darkness' Botnet 85
Trailrunner7 writes "Researchers are tracking a new botnet that has become one of the more active DDoS networks on the Internet since its emergence early last month. The botnet, dubbed 'Darkness,' is being controlled by several domains hosted in Russia and its operators are boasting that it can take down large sites with as few as 1,000 bots. The Darkness botnet is seen as something of a successor to the older Black Energy and Illusion botnets and researchers at the Shadowserver Foundation took a look at the network's operation and found that it is capable of generating large volumes of attack traffic. 'Upon testing, it was observed that the throughput of the attack traffic directed simultaneously at multiple sites was quite impressive,' Shadowserver's analysts wrote in a report on the Darkness botnet. 'It now appears that "Darkness" is overtaking Black Energy as the DDoS bot of choice. There are many ads and offers for DDoS services using "Darkness." It is regularly updated and improved and of this writing is up to version 7. There also appear to be no shortage of buyers looking to add "Darkness" to their botnet arsenal.'"
Explosive-Laden California Home To Be Destroyed 424
wiredmikey writes with this snippet from an AP report:
"Neighbors gasped when authorities showed them photos of the inside of the Southern California ranch-style home: Crates of grenades, mason jars of white, explosive powder and jugs of volatile chemicals that are normally the domain of suicide bombers. ... Now authorities face the risky task of getting rid of the explosives. The property is so dangerous and volatile that they have no choice but to burn the home to the ground this week in a highly controlled operation involving dozens of firefighters, scientists and hazardous material and pollution experts. ... Some 40 experts on bombs and hazardous material from across the country and at least eight national laboratories are working on the preparations. They have analyzed wind patterns to ensure the smoke will not float over homes beyond the scores that will be evacuated. They have studied how fast the chemicals can become neutralized under heat expected to reach 1800 degrees and estimate that could happen within 30 minutes, which means most of the toxins will not even escape the burning home."
NASA Launches Micro Solar Sail 90
greyarea67 writes with news that NASA has successfully used a "microsatellite" (a term given to satellites weighing between 10kg and 100kg) to deploy a "nanosatellite" (a term given to satellites weighing between 1kg and 10kg). The deployed object, the first of six in the microsatellite's payload, was the NanoSail-D flight unit. NanoSail-D masses 4kg and is "about the size of a loaf of bread" until it deploys its solar sail.
"...when the NanoSail-D sail is deployed it will use its large sail made of thin polymer material, a material much thinner than a single human hair, to significantly decrease the time to de-orbit the small satellite without the use of propellants as most traditional satellites use. The NanoSail-D flight results will help to mature this technology so it could be used on future large spacecraft missions to aid in de-orbiting space debris created by decommissioned satellites without using valuable mission propellants."
Google eBookstore Launched 88
angrytuna writes "The New York Times is running an article this morning about the launch of the Google ebook store. Independent bookstores such as Powell's, based in Portland, OR, have partnered with Google in this, selling the format directly in addition to their other ebook offerings. The ebooks appear to rely on Adobe Digital Editions for DRM; instructions are provided to transfer from the 'cloud' to a handheld device. iOS and Android have a dedicated app for accessing the store, and will download for offline immediately; other clients like the Nook and Sony eReader seem to be relying on the ADE platform to manage the transfer for offline reading."
NPR tried it out on a few different devices and posted their experience.
Sorting Algorithms — Boring Until You Add Sound 118
An anonymous reader writes "Anyone who's ever taken a programming course or tried to learn how to code out of a book will have come across sorting algorithms. Bubble, heap, merge — there's a long list of methods for sorting data. The subject matter is fairly dry. Thankfully, someone has found a way to not only make sorting more interesting, but easier to remember and understand, too."
Introducing JITB — a Flash Player Built On the JVM 126
MBCook writes "Joa Ebert has started working on a new program called JITB. Announced in a talk at FITC San Fran, it's a Flash player written to use the Java JVM to run ActionScript, and in a simple graphics test case (making 1 million calls to flash.geom.Point) was 30x faster than Adobe's Flash player. There is an impressive demo video on YouTube showing the point test."
Apple Patents Remotely Disabling Jailbroken Phones 381
An anonymous reader writes "Apple yesterday applied for a patent to allow remotely disabling electronic devices when 'unauthorized usage' is detected. The patent application covers using the camera to take pictures of the unauthorized user and using GPS to determine location, and it involves ascertaining whether the phone has been hacked or jailbroken, using those as criteria for detecting 'suspicious behavior.' The patent would allow the carrier or any other 'authorized' party to disable or restrict the functionality of the device. Is this Apple's latest tool to thwart jailbreaking?"
Serious Apache Exploit Discovered 160
bennyboy64 writes "An IT security company has discovered a serious exploit in Apache's HTTP web server, which could allow a remote attacker to gain complete control of a database. ZDNet reports the vulnerability exists in Apache's core mod_isapi module. By exploiting the module, an attacker could remotely gain system privileges that would compromise data security. Users of Apache 2.2.14 and earlier are advised to upgrade to Apache 2.2.15, which fixes the exploit."
Note: according to the advisory, this exploit is exclusive to Windows.
