Comment: Just what we need... (Score 2, Insightful) 306
... a system that will further reduce transparency regarding MS updates...
+ - BBC backtracks on Linux audience figures
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6031769
6031769 writes "After recently claiming that only 400 to 600 Linux users visit the BBC website, the BBC's Ashley Highfield has now admitted that they got their numbers wrong. The new estimate is between 36,600 and 97,600 according to his blog post. He stops short of describing how Auntie arrives at these two widely different sets of numbers and how their initial estimate is two orders of magnitude out."
+ - PDF adobe history->
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googleman1
googleman1 writes "Wisdom of the PDF Sage
Leonard Rosenthol's thoughts on all things PDF
History of PDF Openness
I thought I would put together a bit of a timeline that covers the history of PDF as an open/published standard, both from Adobe as well as from ISO. After I put that together, I thought it would be interesting to include dates for key open source and other independent implementations of PDF, so I've added those as well."
Link to Original Source
Link to Original Source
+ - Best Buy goes the extra mile - yes it's true
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davidwr
davidwr writes "Miracle of miracles, Best Buy goes the extra mile and gives people who ordered $99 Toshiba DVD players the next version, valued at about $299. I'm no fan of Best Buy but if they keep acting like this and repudiate their historical evil practices they'll be on my Good Vendors list by Christmas '08. I hope other stores follow suit."
+ - States Set to Sue the U.S. Over Greenhouse Gases->
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dnormant
dnormant writes "New York is one of more than a dozen states, led by California, preparing to sue the Bush administration for holding up efforts to regulate emissions from cars and trucks, several people involved in the lawsuit said on Tuesday."
Link to Original Source
Link to Original Source
+ - 30th Anniversary of the Wow! Signal
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Himring
Himring writes "Today marks the 30th anniversary of the single most significant event, to date, that points to possible evidence of ETI. On this day in 1977, Dr. Jerry R. Ehman circled data retrieved from the "Big Ear" radio telescope of the Ohio State University Radio Observatory. The telescope has since been destroyed, and although other, modern telescopes have tried (such as the VLA) none of have successfully reproduced the results of that day. By and large, all possibilities of an earth-based signal causing the event have been ruled out as well as any possible natural phenomenon. Still, Dr. Ehman has remained reserved and stated that he doesn't want to draw, "vast conclusions from half-vast data." Here is the link to Dr. Ehman's 30th Anniversary Report."
+ - Girlfriend Stabs Boyfriend Over Game System->
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An anonymous reader writes "As seen on OLGn
Link to Original Source
"A Warren woman is in jail and the father of one of her children is in critical condition after a stabbing early Monday morning at a Buckeye Avenue N.W. home. Police say an argument that started over a missing video game system led to the arrest of 30-year-old Tara Wheatley and a flight to Cleveland MetroHealth Medical Center for her boyfriend, Andrew P. McMichael, who had stab wounds to his back, neck and left arm.
Link to Original Source
+ - German Government Publication Promotes Pedophilia
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uthus
uthus writes "The German Government's Ministry for Family Affairs has released a publication extolling the virtues of clitoral and vaginal stimulation of daughters as young as one by their fathers.
"Fathers do not devote enough attention to the clitoris and vagina of their daughters. Their caresses too seldom pertain to these regions, while this is the only way the girls can develop a sense of pride in their sex," reads the booklet regarding 1-3 year olds. The authors rationalize, "The child touches all parts of their father's body, sometimes arousing him. The father should do the same.""
"Fathers do not devote enough attention to the clitoris and vagina of their daughters. Their caresses too seldom pertain to these regions, while this is the only way the girls can develop a sense of pride in their sex," reads the booklet regarding 1-3 year olds. The authors rationalize, "The child touches all parts of their father's body, sometimes arousing him. The father should do the same.""
+ - The Weird and Wonderful Gadgets of the Phoenix->
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Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "The Phoenix Mission is on its way to Mars and Gizmodo has a collection of the heavy-duty weird-looking gadgets aboard the spacecraft, like MARDI — the Mars Descent Imager. Its 1,024 x 1,024 pixels CCD and refractive optics will capture 66 wide-angle color images of the landing site — all while plummeting from 5 miles above the planet's surface."
Link to Original Source
Link to Original Source
+ - Open Sound System (OSS4) goes GPLv2->
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mrcgran
mrcgran writes "The Open Sound System (OSS) is one of the first sound systems for Linux, predating ALSA, but in the last 10 years it's stalled in version 3.8 (the last public GPL version) and it's being replaced by ALSA as the sound system of choice in Linux. ALSA is a Linux-only solution, while OSS works in a range of Unixes as well, and both have advantages and disadvantages over the other.
Now, OSS4 is out under a GPLv2 license, with a number of advanced features over ALSA, like its new dynamic VMIXing capabilities, low-latency kernel modules, simple API and many other features. This release seems to be important enough to shake the foundations of the current desktop sound systems, specially in Linux."
Link to Original Source
Link to Original Source
+ - Ready for a virtual beer?
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Roland Piquepaille
Roland Piquepaille writes "If you're attending SIGGRAPH 2007 next week in San Diego, don't miss a demonstration done by Australian and South Korean researchers. They will pour virtual beer during the conference. They say that 'the physics of bubble creation in carbonated drinks like beer is complex,' but add that their fluid special effects software was able to capture this complexity. Moreover, through what they call smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH), their software 'uses less computer power and takes less time to get better results than other special effects software it has been benchmarked against.' Now the researchers want to sell their approach to Hollywood studios. But read more for many additional references and images showing a simulation of pouring of ale and stout into a beer mug."
+ - Galileo Galileo-> 1
Submitted
by
penisvaginapenisvagi
penisvaginapenisvagi writes "He's just a poor boy from a poor family:
"Queen guitarist Brian May has handed in his astronomy PhD thesis — 36 years after abandoning it to join the band. May recently carried out observational work in Tenerife, where he studied the formation of 'zodiacal dust clouds'."
"The guitarist is scheduled to discuss his thesis with the examining board on 23 August, his spokesman said. The results should be known some time shortly after that date. 'If I fail I will fail big time,' May said. 'It will be a very public failure with all this press.'""
Link to Original Source
"Queen guitarist Brian May has handed in his astronomy PhD thesis — 36 years after abandoning it to join the band. May recently carried out observational work in Tenerife, where he studied the formation of 'zodiacal dust clouds'."
"The guitarist is scheduled to discuss his thesis with the examining board on 23 August, his spokesman said. The results should be known some time shortly after that date. 'If I fail I will fail big time,' May said. 'It will be a very public failure with all this press.'""
Link to Original Source
+ - Mozilla to give away own security testing tools->
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srikas
srikas writes "Mozilla Corp. will release some of its homegrown security tools to the open-source community, the company's head of security said Wednesday, starting with a "fuzzer" it uses to pin down JavaScript bugs in Firefox.
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?com mand=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9028720&intsrc=new s_ts_head"
Link to Original Source
Link to Original Source
+ - Senate Committee Votes to Expand TV Ratings Techno->
Submitted
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UltraAyla
UltraAyla writes "WIRED is reporting that the Senate Commerce Committee voted on Thursday to advance the Child Safe Viewing Act to the Senate floor. From the article:
The article points out that "it's not clear how any filtering technology could work with the explosion of video-sharing sites like YouTube, the amount of content that isn't created by American companies.""
Link to Original Source
The Federal Communications Commission shall consider advanced blocking technologies that — 1. may be appropriate across a wide variety of distribution platforms, including wired, wireless, and Internet platforms; 2. may be appropriate across a wide variety of devices capable of transmitting or receiving video or audio programming
The article points out that "it's not clear how any filtering technology could work with the explosion of video-sharing sites like YouTube, the amount of content that isn't created by American companies.""
Link to Original Source
+ - What film genres really benefit from HD? 1
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thegirlorthecar.com
thegirlorthecar.com writes "I'm thinking your preference of either standard DVDs or HD formats really comes down to whether the kinds of video you like to watch benefit from being in HD. So I'm putting it to the test, and asking what genres of movies you watch, and whether you are, or would like to be buying HD?"