Roland Piquepaille writes "According to RFID Journal, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department is about to launch a pilot program to track 1,800 inmates using RFID devices. If the test is successful, the technology will be deployed for the 18,000 inmates of the L.A. county jails. With this system, inmates carry a wrist bracelet which issues a signal every two seconds and is caught by RFID readers installed everywhere in the prison. Officers and staff also carry a RFID device attached to their belts. And a central server keeps track in real time of the position of all prisoners and guardians. Besides tracking locations, the system also intends to reduce violence within the jail and to avoid escapes. If this system works as its promoters think, the potential market to equip all federal, state and county jails in the U.S. exceeds $1 billion. This overview contains other details and references, including a picture of a wristwatch transmitter worn by inmates."

norhtec writes "Puppy Linux is a small distribution that fits on a business card-size CD-ROM or on a USB thumb drive. Puppy allows users to write data back onto their CD-ROM or thumb drive and features a complete assortment of office applications."

guptaparesh asks: "The Chinese government is currently engaged in a comprehensive overhaul of its procurement policies and regulations. These regulations would ban non-Chinese firms from selling software to the Chinese government. Given that how much trade all the countries in the world are engaged in with China, isn't this a unfair trade move by the Chinese government?" A better question would be how this might affect the worldwide economy, particularly that of the U.S. and China. What benefits and drawbacks may China see as a result of this new policy? What steps might the U.S. take to attempt to counter it?

Timmus writes "If you thought the $500 GeForce 6800 Ultra and $550 Radeon X850 XT PE were excessive, wait until you see nVidia's GeForce 6800 Ultra 512MB: it officially retails for $999.99! Firingsquad has a review of the card manufactured by BFG. They ran tests with 6 different configurations (including a pair of 512MB cards running in SLI) with widescreen benchmarks at 1980x1200 as well."

dsginter asks: "This year's spring Networld+Interop has ended with little fanfare. However, I noticed that a small nugget slipped between the cracks - HD video-conferencing. Two different manufacturers demonstrated such products which means that we'll probably have interoperability soon. After seeing the massive pricing estimates for such products, I couldn't help but think that I should try my hand at my own HD product (a Mac Mini, some H.264, a pinch of AAC and the glue that is H.323 or SIP). However, I'm missing one piece - a small, 720P camera for video acquisition. I've scoured Google but can't come up with anything suitable. Is there an answer? HD video-conferencing is an important step in complete communication between remote parties. While there will be those that joke about the possibilities, it is important to remember that the bulk of business travel still happens for the sake of face-to-face communication. HD video-conferencing might prove to be a panacea."

wallykeyster asks: "I'm an IT Director for a small private university in the U.S., and we are largely a Microsoft shop. We pay over $15,000 each year for our Campus Agreement so that we can upgrade the desktop OS to our version of choice, run Office, and have some Client Access Licenses. I would like to move to FOSS solutions, but I'm having trouble finding support for Enterprise management. For example, OpenOffice and Firefox (both of which I use personally) would be easy first steps, but IE is updated automatically via our SUS server (and settings pushed to clients via group policies) and Office updates will be included soon. How are other larger organizations (i.e. more than 200 desktops) dealing with software deployment and updates? Is anyone using Zen with Novell Desktop Linux?"

Professor Cool Linux writes "From IsComputerOn: Adi, over at DarkWyrm's page, has posted a progress status of Haiku's window manager, and the good news is that it's almost complete. They have, for example, support for normal, floating app/subset/all and model app/subset/all windows, as well as workspace support. All that's left are smaller things like not allowing windows to be moved or resized and focus follow mouse (among a few others) remain to be implemented still. But along with the status report, Adi was kind enough to post a plethora of screenshots, showing many examples of how the window manager is working. Full report and the screenshots."

Don Melanson writes "Following up on the MPAA going after torrent sites, you may be interested in Mindjack's latest feature - Piracy is Good? How Battlestar Galactica Killed Broadcast TV by Mark Pesce. It includes a post-script written in reponse to the recent Torrent site shutdowns." From the article: "While you might assume the SciFi Channel saw a significant drop-off in viewership as a result of this piracy, it appears to have had the reverse effect: the series is so good that the few tens of thousands of people who watched downloaded versions told their friends to tune in on January 14th, and see for themselves. From its premiere, Battlestar Galactica has been the most popular program ever to air on the SciFi Channel, and its audiences have only grown throughout the first series. Piracy made it possible for 'word-of-mouth' to spread about Battlestar Galactica."