America's War on the Web 428

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the controlling-the-flow-of-information dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The Sunday Herald is reporting that while the US is continuing to pursue traditional means of protecting national security, they are also planning to launch a new wave of 'information warfare' to help combat a perceived growing threat of IT security. From the article: 'The Pentagon has already signed off $383 million to force through the document's recommendations by 2009. Military and intelligence sources in the US talk of "a revolution in the concept of warfare". The report orders three new developments in America's approach to warfare [...] the Pentagon says it will wage war against the internet in order to dominate the realm of communications, prevent digital attacks on the US and its allies, and to have the upper hand when launching cyber-attacks against enemies.'"

New Conservancy Offers Gratis Services to FOSS 30

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the banding-together dept.
Anonymous Coward writes "Yahoo! News is reporting on the launch of the Software Freedom Conservancy. The new organization, started by Bradley Kuhn, Eben Moglen, and Daniel Ravicher, will serve to provide member projects with free financial management and administrative services. The new group was established by the Software Freedom Law Center, which was started by Moglen and Ravicher one year ago."

£52 Million Govt Funding for New UK Supercomputer 135

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the more-flops-a-good-thing dept.
Lancey writes "The BBC reports that the UK government has contributed £52 million towards the building of the High-End Computing Terascale Resource to replace two existing supercomputers currently in use by British scientists. The story claims a maximum speed of 100 teraflops, although it is unlikely that the machine will ever be pushed to this limit. Some of the government funding will also be used to train scientists and programmers to develop software capable of exploiting the machine's potential."

State of the Pen and Paper Industry 153

Posted by Zonk from the now-we're-talking-real-roleplaying dept.
Syberghost writes "Kenneth Hite's annual 'State of the Industry' report has been released in his online column Out of the Box for gamer news site http://www.gamingreport.com. Among other interesting bits; Margaret Weis Productions is the sixth-largest RPG maker, on the sales of their sole RPG product line, the Serenity RPG. Sales overall were down, again; the RPG industry as a whole isn't doing well." Sad but not surprising.

Open Source For Perimeter Security 56

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the people-still-afraid-of-oss dept.
An anonymous reader writes "IT Observer has a look at some of the perceived problems with an OpenSource approach to security and what could be done to improve the situation. From the article: 'There is a widespread and wholly inaccurate impression that open source development is somehow haphazard and undisciplined, a free-for-all among brilliant but uncoordinated individuals. In fact, most major open source projects are very tightly managed highly disciplined teams. This article gives examples of very successful Open Source security projects -- netfilter and Snort -- and also describes some weaknesses that need to be addressed by IT organizations or vendors.'"

SplunkBase Brings IT Troubleshooting Wiki to the Masses 128

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the room-full-of-support-techs-is-usually-a-bad-thing dept.
OSS_ilation writes "IT troubleshooting firm Splunk is using LinuxWorld Boston as a platform to formally launch Splunk Base, a global wiki that will offer IT pros a free-of-charge venue to exchange troubleshooting information, tools and fixes. Splunk is promising that the wiki is completely vendor neutral, and can be compared to Wikipedia, the online open encyclopedia that is regulated and updated by the community-at-large. Users don't even have to have a copy of Splunk Professional to use it. From the article: 'If you believe the research from firms like Framingham, Mass.-based IDC, then Splunk Base has arrived at a key moment. According to IDC, companies will spend more than $100 billion this year on managing the world's data centers. And with virtualization quickly becoming an IT buzzword in 2006, the complexity and costs could increase.'"

Bacteria Propel Themselves with Slime Jets 50

Posted by Hemos from the ka-WHOOSH dept.
galactic_grub writes "Scientists have discovered that some bacteria propel themselves along using tiny jets of slime. According to this story on NewScientistTech, the researchers previously thought the slime was a lubricant. They believe the same technique could be used to move nano-devices around."

A Decrease in M-Rated Sales to Kids 118

Posted by Zonk from the laudible dept.
hammersuit writes "GameDaily Biz reports on a new undercover FTC study. From the article: 'Forty-two percent of the secret shoppers - children between the ages of 13 and 16 - who attempted to buy an M-rated video game without a parent were able to purchase one. In the 2003 shop, 69 percent of the shoppers were able to buy one. National sellers were much more likely to restrict sales of M-rated games. Only 35 percent of the secret shoppers were able to purchase such games there. Regional or local sellers sold M-rated games to the shoppers more frequently - 63 percent of the time.'"

Sun's Open Source DRM 274

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the get-ready-for-some-resistance dept.
DigDuality writes "Wired has an interesting look at Sun's proposed 'Open Source DRM'. From the article: 'Its goal is to promulgate an open-source architecture for digital rights management that would cut across devices, regardless of the manufacturer, and assign rights to individuals rather than gadgets [...] If DReaM works, consumers will be able to access their purchased songs through a number of providers, and using a wide variety of devices." Slashdot took a first look at Sun's DReaM last August.

DS Web Browser in June 89

Posted by Zonk from the something-wrong-about-pr0n-on-a-nintendno-console dept.
Eurogamer reports that the Opera DS Browser will be available in June, though so far only in Japan. From the article: "In fit-to-width mode, Opera uses both screens for scrolling up or down a page with both screens completing the view. In DS mode, an overview of the Web page is displayed on the lower screen and a pink square can be moved around an area of the page. The area you have selected is shown on the upper screen."

The State of Web 2.0, The Future of Web Software 216

Posted by Hemos from the navel-gazing-or-does-it-truly-matter dept.
SphereOfInfluence writes "Despite some disdain for the term Web 2.0, the underlying ideas seem to be genuinely taking off from the seed of successful techniques of the first generation of the Web. Here's an in-depth review of the future of Web 2.0 and online software from Web 2.0 proponent, Dion Hinchcliffe. Like or hate the term, the actual ideas in Web 2.0 are turning out to not only usable but a growing cadre of companies are actively being successful with them. This includes the Ajax phenomenon being actively pursued by Microsoft and Google, widespread social software, and massive online communities like MySpace. These trends are all leading to predictions on the ultimate fallout of these changes, something increasingly called social computing. "

Bob Ross And The Joy of Painting 78

Posted by Zonk from the happy-little-trees dept.
hmccabe writes "'The Joy of Painting', the PBS show that taught many of us how to paint 'happy little trees,' is being made into a videogame. Apparently Nintendo's DS and Revolution systems, and PC computers will be seeing the title, which has been confirmed as not-an-april-fools-joke." From the article: "Hatcher himself admits to being a big Ross fan, which is partly why he wants to make games based on his work. 'I personally loved watching Bob Ross growing up and I enjoyed watching how easily he created his paintings. We want to translate that same feeling of watching the TV show into playing a Bob Ross game," he said. "Whether you are an eight-year-old child, or a 65-year-old grandma, we want anyone to be able to pick up the game to create and play to your heart's content.'" "

Copyright Study Group Seeks Comments 45

Posted by Hemos from the single-copyright-group-likes-walks-on-beach-romantic-ip-discussion dept.
jeh0bu writes "The Section 108 Study Group, a group of copyright experts, has been meeting to discuss Section 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law. It is focusing on preservation of websites and access to digital copies of library materials. Representatives of Internet Archive, including Brewster Kahle, went to the group's public roundtable sessions in March. Google did not register to attend the roundtable sessions even though the findings of the Section 108 Study Group may impact Google's Library Project. The Section 108 Study Group seeks written comments through April 17, 2006, according to this Federal Register notice."

Prayer Does Not Help Heart Patients 1156

Posted by Hemos from the oh-noes-time-to-stop-smoking dept.
mu22le writes "A recent study conducted by the Duke University Medical Center on 700 patients, found that having people pray for heart bypass surgery patients had no effect on their recovery. Researchers emphasized their work does not address whether God exists or answers prayers made on another's behalf. This result seems to contradict a previous study by the same authors that reported "cardiac patients who received intercessory prayer in addition to coronary stenting appeared to have better clinical outcomes than those treated with standard stenting therapy alone"."

Revolution Worldwide Launch Possible 77

Posted by Zonk from the anything-is-possible dept.
hammersuit writes "GameDaily Biz reports that a Nintendo Revolution simultaneous global launch is still in the cards. From the article: 'Bloomberg.com suggested that Nintendo would avoid a global launch. However, a Nintendo representative today said that those comments were misinterpreted. 'The comments have been taken out of context,' said the Nintendo spokesperson. 'What he's actually saying is that we're not holding a worldwide launch just because everyone else is doing one too. It's just another re-iteration of the fact that we're not looking at what Sony or Microsoft are doing.'"

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