Upgrades

FreeBSD 8.1 Released 46

Posted by kdawson from the while-it's-hot dept.
hsn and other readers pointed out that FreeBSD 8.1 has been released. "This is the second release from the 8-STABLE branch which improves on the functionality of FreeBSD 8.0 and introduces some new features. Some of the highlights: zfsloader added; zpool version of ZFS subsystem updated to version 14; NFSv4 ACL support in UFS and ZFS; support added to cp(1), find(1), getfacl(1), mv(1), and setfacl(1) utilities; UltraSPARC IV/IV+, SPARC64 V support; SMP support in PowerPC G5; BIND 9.6.2-P2..." ... and much more. See the release notes summary and the details.
Power

Utah State Prof Says Hybrids Don't Kill More Pedestrians 187

Posted by timothy from the hard-experiment-to-re-run dept.
thecarchik writes "Preliminary data seemed to show that hybrids were more likely to be involved in pedestrian crashes or hit cyclists. But now EV enthusiast Mark Larson (he's also an Emeritus Professor of Spanish at Utah State University) has analyzed some additional data and found this not to be the case at all. He used 1994-2008 figures from the Fatality Reporting System maintained by the NHTSA and found that the rate of pedestrian fatalities has in fact fallen over that same period."
Desktops (Apple)

What To Do With an Old G5 Tower? 417

Posted by timothy from the such-a-beautiful-exterior dept.
lunatic1969 writes "I've got an old G5 PowerPC tower that's sitting in a spare room not seeing much in the way of use. I'd like to stick a Linux distribution on it and maybe breathe some life back into it. I've got a few vague ideas — it might be a handy file server, streaming video for a security system, or simply just to have a spare box around. My question is therefore in two parts: First, are there any particularly creative projects or ideas anyone has for an old G5, and second and most important, which distribution currently offers the best support for this box?"
Media

Breaking Open the Video Frontier, Despite MPEG-LA 66

Posted by timothy from the starting-point dept.
JimLynch writes "Did you know that nearly every video produced for Web viewing has been, at one point or another, in MPEG format no matter in what format the video is ultimately saved? According to Chris 'Monty' Montgomery, nearly every consumer device outputs video in MPEG format. Which means that every software video decoder has to have MPEG-licensed technology in order to process/edit video." An interesting snippet: "But there's hope on the horizon. Besides the codecs and formats from the Xiph.Org Foundation, the new WebM format announced by Google in May will ideally provide consumers and developers with another alternative. Montgomery has thrown Xiph.Org support behind WebM, because Google's financial muscle (not to mention their free license) will have a real chance to break the hold MPEG-LA has on the market."
PC Games (Games)

BioWare's Star Wars MMO To Have Space Combat 122

Posted by Soulskill from the just-in-case-they-weren't-busy-enough dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Big news for Star Wars fans looking forward to BioWare's upcoming Star Wars: The Old Republic MMORPG — space combat has been confirmed for the game. Players will be able to fly around the galaxy in their own personal starships, avoiding asteroid belts, landing in dangerous territory and battling other vessels. The initial news makes it sound like a cross between Mass Effect's galaxy map and a traditional space fighting game, where players will have to find 'hotspots' on the galaxy map in order to enter a particular zone."
Software

Google Schedules Chrome 6, 7, and 8 For This Year 138

Posted by Soulskill from the incrementing-and-iterating dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Google said that it will be releasing a new stable version of Chrome every six weeks, which is about twice as fast as the release pace today. The goal is to make new features available when they are done and to make Chrome releases more predictable. Has anyone complained that there were too few new Chrome releases? Mozilla has been releasing a major new browser update twice a year and Microsoft is on an 18-24 month pace. Firefox's 4.0 Beta 2 is scheduled for release soon, and it appears that Mozilla is somewhat paranoid about the Black Hat Conference. 3.6.6 was planned to be the original 'Black Hat release'; now we are at version 3.6.7 and Mozilla has already a build candidate of 3.6.8 that will be released depending on news coming out of Black Hat."
HP

PC Gamers Too Good For Consoles Gamers? 324

Posted by Soulskill from the commence-flame-war-now dept.
thsoundman sends in a blog post from Rahul Sood, CTO of HP's gaming business, who claims there was once a project in development at Microsoft to let Xbox users compete against PC users playing the same game. According to Sood, the project was killed because the console players kept getting destroyed by their PC counterparts. He wrote, "Those of us who have been in the gaming business for over a decade know the real deal. You simply don't get the same level of detail or control as you do with a PC over a console. It's a real shame that Microsoft killed this — because had they kept it alive it might have actually increased the desire of game developers and gamers alike to continue developing and playing rich experiences on the PC, which would trickle down to the console as it has in the past."
Crime

Pentagon Workers Tied To Child Porn 253

Posted by Soulskill from the your-tax-dollars-at-work dept.
finalcutmonstar tips a Boston Globe report on details released today of Operation Flicker (PDF), an investigation of subscribers to child porn websites, which seems to have implicated a number of government employees in sensitive positions. Quoting: "Federal investigators have identified several dozen Pentagon officials and contractors with high-level security clearances who allegedly purchased and downloaded child pornography, including an undisclosed number who used their government computers to obtain the illegal material, according to investigative reports. The investigations have included employees of the National Security Agency, the National Reconnaissance Office, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency — which deal with some of the most sensitive work in intelligence and defense — among other organizations within the Defense Department. The number of offenders is a small percentage of the thousands of people working for sensitive Pentagon-related agencies. But the fact that offenders include people with access to government secrets puts national security agencies 'at risk of blackmail, bribery, and threats, especially since these individuals typically have access to military installations,' according to one report by the Defense Criminal Investigative Service from late 2009."
Cellphones

Droid X Gets Rooted 97

Posted by Soulskill from the root-root-root-for-the-home-team dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The Droid X forums have posted a procedure to root the new Motorola Droid X, putting to rest Andoid fans' fears that they would never gain access to the device's secrets due to a reported eFuse that would brick the phone if certain boot files were tampered with. Rooting the phone is the first step in gaining complete control over the device."
Businesses

Open Source Participation Gains Support In China 35

Posted by Soulskill from the community-growth dept.
eldavojohn writes "ZDNet blogger Fred Muller notes that a Chinese company called Taobao has become one of the first in the country to participate in open source. After years of Chinese companies using Linux, Taobao has announced they are open sourcing TAIR, and they revealed what is believed by Muller to be the first open source repository hosted by a Chinese corporation. Muller tracked down the originator of this information and was also informed that the Linux kernel can expect contributions soon from Taobao. Several people involved with bringing open source to China have expressed concerns over a cultural divide (PDF) in regards to opening your corporation's source code to potential competition. Some people speculated that the culture created by an open source movement was irreversibly foreign to Chinese culture. Taobao is exhibiting cracks in that assumption — exciting times for open source advocates as code contributions to open source become even more multicultural."
Space

Saturn's Moon Prometheus Spawning Moonlets 47

Posted by Soulskill from the hi-NerdyMcNerderson-i-am-Soulskill-on-reddit dept.
astroengine writes "For the first time ever, astronomers have witnessed the formation of celestial objects... in Saturn's rings. As the Saturnian moon Prometheus dashes through the gas giant's rings, it leaves large formations of ice behind, some as large as 12 kilometers in diameter. When the small moon makes another pass, it is not known whether these giant 'snowballs' remain or get destroyed, but according to Linda Spilker, from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory: 'You can think of Saturn's rings as miniature versions of the disks where planets form. The same physical processes are occurring.'" The Planetary Society blog has further explanation, as well as pictures and a movie of Prometheus' interaction with Saturn's rings. The Cassini team has released some fantastic images of the fans and clumps in the F ring, as well as a simulation showing how the ring's particles are affected by the moon's passing.
Education

Google Engineer Decries Complexity of Java, C++ 878

Posted by Soulskill from the keep-it-simple-stupid dept.
snydeq writes "Google distinguished engineer Rob Pike ripped the use of Java and C++ during his keynote at OSCON, saying that these 'industrial programming languages' are way too complex and not adequately suited for today's computing environments. 'I think these languages are too hard to use, too subtle, too intricate. They're far too verbose and their subtlety, intricacy and verbosity seem to be increasing over time. They're oversold, and used far too broadly,' Pike said. 'How do we have stuff like this [get to be] the standard way of computing that is taught in schools and is used in industry? [This sort of programming] is very bureaucratic. Every step must be justified to the compiler.' Pike also spoke out against the performance of interpreted languages and dynamic typing."
The Media

Newspapers' New Revenue Plan — Copyright Suits 123

Posted by Soulskill from the works-better-than-paywalls dept.
SpicyBrownMustard writes "Wired magazine has coverage of the numerous lawsuits recently filed by Righthaven, LLC regarding the content of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. 'Borrowing a page from patent trolls, the CEO of fledgling Las Vegas-based Righthaven has begun buying out the copyrights to newspaper content for the sole purpose of suing blogs and websites that re-post those articles without permission. And he says he's making money.' The owner of the LVRJ has commented on the strategy, and the Las Vegas Sun has extensive coverage of each suit filed. The owner of one site has apparently settled for more than the site has made in six years. Media Matters suspects many of the suits may be politically motivated, and thus violate federal election law."
Bug

BSOD Issues On Deepwater Horizon 383

Posted by Soulskill from the blue-screen-of-literal-death dept.
ctdownunder passes along this excerpt from a NY Times article about a rig worker's testimony concerning the April 20 accident at the Deepwater Horizon well: "The emergency alarm on the Deepwater Horizon was not fully activated on the day the oil rig caught fire and exploded, triggering the massive spill in the Gulf of Mexico, a rig worker on Friday told a government panel investigating the accident. ... On Friday, Mr. Williams added several new details about the equipment on the vessel, testifying that another Transocean official turned a critical system for removing dangerous gas from the drilling shack to 'bypass mode.' When he questioned that decision, Mr. Williams said, he was reprimanded. ... Problems existed from the beginning of drilling the well, Mr. Williams said. For months, the computer system had been locking up, producing what the crew deemed the 'blue screen of death.' 'It would just turn blue,' he said. 'You’d have no data coming through.' Replacement hardware had been ordered but not yet installed by the time of the disaster, he said." The article doesn't mention whether it was specifically a Windows BSOD, or just an error screen that happened to be blue.
Books

Top Authors Make eBook Deal, Bypassing Publishers 297

Posted by kdawson from the what's-mine-is-mine dept.
RobotRunAmok writes "Home to 700 authors and estates, from Philip Roth to John Updike, Jorge Luis Borges, and Saul Bellow, the Wylie Agency shocked the publishing world yesterday when it announced the launch of Odyssey Editions. The new initiative is selling ebook editions of modern classics, including Lolita, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and Updike's Rabbit tetralogy, exclusively via Amazon.com's Kindle store, leaving conventional publishers out of the picture. The issue boils down to who holds digital rights in older titles published before the advent of ebooks, with publishers arguing that the ebook rights belong to them, and authors and agents responding that, if not specifically granted, the digital rights remain with the author. Publishers and authors are also at loggerheads over the royalty that should be paid for ebooks: authors believe they should be getting up to double the current standard rate of 25%, because ebooks are cheaper to produce than physical editions. (Amazon pays authors 70%.)"

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