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Linux

Submission + - Apple orphans Linux CUPS features- handicaps open source printing

Submitted by
donadony
donadony writes: "CUPS, is the printing standard that open source projects have used successfully to convert desktops and computers to become printer servers, allowing plug-in, modular type of printing. However, now Apple after it acquired it from its developer Michael Sweet, at Easy Software Products, in 2007, has chosen to abandon certain Linux exclusive features, and continuing with popular Mac OS X features.The changeover is being attempted by Appleto set new printing standards that will not require ‘drivers’ in the future. However, the journey in between from the present ‘driver-only’ printers that communities across the world are engaged to Apple’s printer-utopia, just got tougher and essentially involves more work for Linux users."
AMD

Submission + - KDE KWin May Drop Support For AMD Catalyst Drivers (phoronix.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The KWin window manager maintainer for KDE is looking at removing the legacy OpenGL 1.0 renderer from the KWin code-base due to the costs of supporting legacy hardware. This means dropping support for non-GL2+ graphics cards, which are all over six years old, but in the process would mean that for now there is no longer any support for the AMD Catalyst driver on the KDE desktop. Due to driver bugs, AMD's proprietary Catalyst software only works well with the GL1 renderer even though their latest hardware supports OpenGL 4.
Idle

Submission + - Mathematical parrot reveals his genius with posthumous paper (nature.com)

Submitted by ananyo
ananyo writes: Even in death, the world’s most accomplished parrot continues to amaze. The final experiments involving Alex – a grey parrot trained to count objects – have just been published. They show that Alex could accurately add together Arabic numerals to a sum of eight and three sets of objects, putting his mathematical abilities on par with (and maybe beyond) those of chimpanzees and other non-human primates (abstract http://www.springerlink.com/content/q08n44457x236ln6/).
Technology

Submission + - Tongue Drive System allows control of wheelchairs using tongues (gizmag.com)

Submitted by cylonlover
cylonlover writes: For those unfortunate enough to suffer from severe spinal cord injuries, the tongue is often the only extremity still under their control. To take advantage of this fact, engineers at the Georgia Institute of Technology (GIT) have developed what they call the Tongue Drive System (TDS), a wireless, wearable device that allows the user to operate computers and control electric wheelchairs with movements of the tongue. The latest iteration, which resembles a sensor-studded dental retainer, is controlled by a tongue-mounted magnet and promises its users a welcome new level of autonomy with both communication and transportation.
DRM

Submission + - Copy protection advice for ~$10k software 5

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Hi /., I'm a long time reader and would like some advice.

I'm part owner of a relatively small video editing software company. We're not yet profitable, and our stuff turned up on thePirateBay recently. Some of our potential paying customers are using it without paying, and some non-potential customers are using it without paying. Our copy protection isn't that tough to crack, and I'd rather see the developers working on the product than the DRM (I'm convinced any sufficiently desirable digital widget will get copied without authorization).

Would it be insane to release a 'not for commercial use' copy that does some spying and reporting on you, along with a spy-free version for ~$10,000? I feel like that would reduce the incentive to crack the paid version, and legit businesses (In the US anyway but we're trying to sell everywhere) would generally pay and maybe we could identify some of the people using it to make money without paying us (and then sue the one with the biggest pockets). What would you do? I respect the collective wisdom of ./; thanks for your time!
Youtube

Submission + - Recording Industry stealing from YouTube creators (aardvark.co.nz)

Submitted by
dingram17
dingram17 writes: "Bruce Simpson from Aardvark.co.nz has found that the automatic pattern matching used by YouTube to identify copyright violations has flagged his videos. As he says "if the dull monotone voice you'll find on my RCModelReviews channel now qualifies as "music" (as they've claimed it does) then there can be little hope for that industry". Homeshot videos without any music at all are being flagged. The sinister aspect to this is that the 'claimant' then gets the advertising revenue from the video, not the creator that spent all the effort making the video. In Bruce's case, this ad revenue puts food on the table."
Privacy

Submission + - Anonymous Cowards, Deanonymized (33bits.org) 1

Submitted by mbstone
mbstone writes: Arvind Narayanan writes: What if authors can be identified based on nothing but a comparison of the content they publish to other web content they have previously authored? Naryanan has a new paper to be presented at the 33rd IEEE Symposium on Security & Privacy. Just as individual telegraphers could be identified by other telegraphers from their "fists," Naryanan posits that an author's habitual choices of words, such as, for example, the frequency with which the author uses "since" as opposed to "because," can be processed through an algorithm to identify the author's writing. Fortunately, and for now, manually altering one's writing style is effective as a countermeasure.
Facebook

Submission + - Facebook Also Bypasses Privacy Settings In IE

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Following the news that Google is tricking Apple’s Safari browser by including privacy-circumventing code in its ads, Microsoft is now saying that Google bypassed privacy settings in Internet Explorer as well. The story goes deeper than that. Google isn’t the only one bypassing Microsoft Internet Explorer’s privacy settings: Facebook does it too, as do thousands of other companies.

Submission + - Hunters Shoot Down Drone of Animal Rights Group (thetandd.com)

Submitted by Required Snark
Required Snark writes: A remote control drone operated by an animal rights group was shot down in South Carolina by a group of thwarted hunters.
Steve Hindi, the group president said "his group was preparing to launch its Mikrokopter drone to video what he called a live pigeon shoot on Sunday when law enforcement officers and an attorney claiming to represent the privately-owned plantation near Ehrhardt tried to stop the aircraft from flying." After the shoot was halted, the drone was launched anyway, and at this point it was shot down. "Seconds after it hit the air, numerous shots rang out," Hindi said in the release. "As an act of revenge for us shutting down the pigeon slaughter, they had shot down our copter." "It is important to note how dangerous this was, as they were shooting toward and into a well-travelled highway," Hindi stated in the release.
Patents

Submission + - European Parliament to exclude free software with FRAND

Submitted by jan.van.gent
jan.van.gent writes: The European Parliament is on the verge to adopt a directive about reform of standards, reform which would introduce FRAND patent licensing terms (fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory), an undefined term which has been a direct attack on the fundamental principles of Free and Open source software. The Business Software Alliance (BSA) has been very active before the European Commission proposed the text on trying to get FRAND terms inside the text.
Biotech

Submission + - Russian Scientists Revive Plant From 30,000-Year-Old Seeds (washingtonpost.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: It was an Ice Age squirrel’s treasure chamber, a burrow containing fruit and seeds that had been stuck in the Siberian permafrost for over 30,000 years. From the fruit tissues, a team of Russian scientists managed to resurrect an entire plant in a pioneering experiment that paves the way for the revival of other species. The Silene stenophylla is the oldest plant ever to be regenerated, the researchers said, and it is fertile, producing white flowers and viable seeds. ... 'The squirrels dug the frozen ground to build their burrows, which are about the size of a soccer ball, putting in hay first and then animal fur for a perfect storage chamber,' said Stanislav Gubin, one of the authors of the study, who spent years rummaging through the area for squirrel burrows. 'It’s a natural cryobank.'
Crime

Submission + - The Pirate Bay: Banned in the UK? (ibtimes.com)

Submitted by
redletterdave
redletterdave writes: "Swedish filesharing website The Pirate Bay may soon be blocked in the UK after a London judge ruled that the site breaches copyright laws on a large scale, and that both the platform and its users illegally share copyrighted material like movies and music. In addition to finding legal fault with The Pirate Bay and its users, the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) also wants all British Internet service providers (ISPs) to block access to The Pirate Bay in the UK."
Open Source

Submission + - Hackers In Space: Hackerspace Global Grid Interview (thepowerbase.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: At the Chaos Communication Camp 2011 Jens Ohlig, Lars Weiler, and Nick Farr proposed a daunting task: to land a hacker on the Moon by 2034. The plan calls for three separate phases:

Establishing an open, free, and globally accessible satellite communication network
Put a human into orbit
Land on the Moon
Interestingly enough, there is already considerable work being done on the second phase of this plan by the Copenhagen Suborbitals, and Google’s own Lunar X Prize is trying to spur development of robotic missions to the Moon. But what about the first phase? Answering the call is the “shackspace”, a hackerspace from Stuttgart, Germany, who’ve begun work on an ambitious project they’re calling the “Hackerspace Global Grid“.

We recently caught up with one of the core team members, hadez, who took some time to talk with us a bit about the current state of the project and what we should expect going forward.

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