jeevesbond - Slashdot User

Most Expensive JavaScript Ever? 405

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday July 21, 2009 @08:45AM from the not-their-best-work dept.

ekran writes "A while ago Opera Software needed more servers. Not just a few servers either — they were planning Opera Mini's growth, implementing Opera Link, and My Opera was also growing quickly. Most of the major hardware vendors grabbed their specs and came back with offers and sample servers shipped all the way to Oslo for testing. One of the biggest vendors, however, did not do their homework. They shipped the server, but when the Opera sysadmins started up the web-admin interface, they were met with a JavaScript statement that managed to piss off the whole company including the CTO. The script, apparently, locked out the Opera web-browser."

Submission + - Canonical fully open-sources the Launchpad code. (red-bean.com) 1

Submitted by

kfogel

on Tuesday July 21, 2009 @02:17AM

kfogel writes: "Canonical has just fully open-sourced the code to Launchpad. Although we'd said earlier that a couple of components would be held back, we changed our mind :-). All the code has been released, under the GNU Affero General Public License, version 3."

UK Police Raid Party After Seeing "All-Night" Tag On Facebook 628

Posted by Soulskill on Saturday July 18, 2009 @02:09AM from the clicking-buttons-is-much-easier-than-walking-a-beat dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Apparently the police like to spend their time trawling our private information on Facebook looking for criminals. 'Riot police stormed a man's 30th birthday barbecue for 15 guests because it was advertised as an "all-night" party on Facebook. Four police cars, a riot van, and a force helicopter were dispatched to a privately-owned field in a small village near Sowton, Devon in the UK on Saturday, ordering the party shut down or everyone would be arrested. The birthday barbecue was busted up before they even had a chance to plug the music in, reports the BBC. It was about 4pm when eight officers with camouflage pants and body armor jumped out of their vehicles and ordered everyone out about an hour into the party.' The event's organizer, Andrew Poole, said, 'The police had full-on camouflage trousers on and body-armour, it was ridiculous. There were also several plain-clothes officers as well ... they kept on insisting it has been advertised it as an all-night rave on the internet. The times on it were put as "overnight" in case people wanted to sleep-over, but after being explained this they were still banging on saying it was advertised on the internet. They wouldn't accept it wasn't a rave. It was in a completely isolated field.'"

0 A.D. Goes Open Source 88

Posted by Soulskill on Wednesday July 15, 2009 @01:40PM from the good-on-ya dept.

DoubleRing writes "Wildfire Games has announced that it will be moving its previously closed development process for 0 A.D. to open source. All code will be released under the GPL and all art under CC-BY-SA. 0 A.D. is a historically-based RTS, and while it's not yet complete, this trailer is purportedly actual gameplay footage. With a codebase of over 150k lines of C++ code plus 25k lines in development tools, this is looking like a fairly promising entrant into the open source RTS field. The screenshots are definitely pretty, to say the least."

Launch of First International FOSS Law Review 30

Posted by kdawson on Wednesday July 15, 2009 @01:51AM from the peer-reviewed-copyleft dept.

Graeme West writes "A group of tech lawyers has announced the release of the inaugural issue of the International Free and Open Source Software Law Review (IFOSS L. Rev.) — a place for high-level discussion of issues and best practice in the implementation of FOSS. You can view the announcement, or skip straight to Volume 1, Issue 1. A downloadable PDF file is also available. The journal is open access, and articles are CC licensed."

NASA's Skylab $400 Littering Fine Paid By DJ 111

Posted by samzenpus on Tuesday July 14, 2009 @12:32PM from the you-gonna-pick-that-up? dept.

astroengine writes "Space Disco speaks with a Californian radio DJ about his role in raising, and paying, NASA's 30-year old littering fine levied by a Western Australian town. Skylab parts fell on Esperance in 1979, but the space agency's refusal to pay $400 has resulted in an entertaining annual grudge. Now the Barstow radio DJ is guest of honor at this weekend's 30th anniversary celebrations in Oz and the two small towns at opposite ends of the Pacific will be twinned... all because Skylab had a messy re-entry..."

New Zealand Introduces Internet Filtering 215

Posted by timothy on Tuesday July 14, 2009 @09:47AM from the watch-out-it's-catchy dept.

Thomas Beagle writes "The New Zealand government has been stealthily introducing a centralised internet child-pornography specific filtering system. Voluntary for ISPs but not for their users, ISPs representing over 94% of the market are already intending to join. Read the general FAQ and technical FAQ about the proposed Netclean Whitebox implementation."

Plastic Circuits Designed To Enable Tough, Green Computers 67

Posted by timothy on Sunday July 12, 2009 @01:50AM from the I-believe-the-plastics-are-the-future dept.

DanS writes "Computerworld has an article about two Australian engineers who have invented 'Circuits in Plastic' technology. CIP designs aim to be more environmentally friendly than traditional circuits as they can be made from recycled plastic, don't contain any hazardous substances, and since packaging is part of the base circuit board, there is no need for additional packaging material. As an added bonus, different 3D shaped circuits can be made using CIP, which are also waterproof. No more ruining cell phones by getting them wet! The hope is that the technology will reduce the amount of toxic electronic waste in landfills, as even with lead-free technology, etching of existing printed circuit boards (and disposal of the chemicals) is a significant issue during manufacturing."

Comment Actually there is (Score 2, Informative) 778

by jeevesbond on Saturday July 11, 2009 @03:39PM (#28662531) Attached to: British Men Jailed For Online Hate Crimes

Actually, freedom of speech is guaranteed in the Bill of Rights, 1689. However, keeping a freedom requires the populace to care about it. In Britain's case everyone's too busy hating Europeans (then going on holiday there), being paranoid about jails full of paedophiles and being scared of terrorists and KnifeCrime(tm) to worry about the finer points of freedom of speech. Obviously these two are a pair of scum bags, so no-one cares to defend them, for what it's worth I believe their freedom of speech should be guaranteed, but try telling that to the populace.

Here are a few ideas of w h o, and wh at, might be responsible for this situation. :)

The 1285 Statute of Westminster even gave the English people the right (actually it was a requirement) to bear arms, it was due to this -- and technologically 'advanced' longbows -- that we managed to trounce those ghaslty frogs at Agincourt, but that's another story.

Pirate Party Coming To Canada 394

Posted by timothy on Sunday July 05, 2009 @05:08AM from the but-the-vikings-hit-canada-hundreds-of-years-ago dept.

An anonymous reader writes "After scoring a surprise electoral win in Sweden and getting high-profile support in Germany, The Pirate Party is coming to Canada. The party's goals are fairly simple. People should have the right to share and copy music, movies and virtually any material, as long as it is for personal use, not for profit. It opposes government and corporate monitoring of Internet activities, unless as part of a criminal investigation. It also wants to phase out patents."

UK Launches Dedicated Cyber Security Agency 60

Posted by CmdrTaco on Thursday June 25, 2009 @10:08AM from the bet-they-get-free-foil-hats dept.

Jack Spine writes "The UK government is launching an office dedicated to cyber attack and defence. The Office of Cyber Security will focus on protecting Britain's IT infrastructure, and will be similar to the US Cyber Command model. While the Pentagon Cyber Command will be lead by the NSA, the UK Cyber Security Operations Centre, which will coordinate UK cyber efforts, will be based at GCHQ in Cheltenham."

Canadian Politicians Reverse Course On DMCA 95

Posted by kdawson on Wednesday June 24, 2009 @12:39AM from the sudden-outbreak-and-so-forth dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Michael Geist reports that the two Canadian Ministers responsible for copyright seem to have reversed course on copyright and now appear to oppose a Canadian DMCA. At a government event this week, Industry Minister Tony Clement spoke of how things have changed and of the need for consultation, while Canadian Heritage Minister James Moore emphasized the great potential of the Internet and how older politicians often don't get it."

The Commodore 64 vs. the iPhone 3G S 238

Posted by timothy on Tuesday June 23, 2009 @11:19AM from the next-week-chocolate-torte-vs.-charles-manson dept.

Harry writes "The unfortunate news about Apple rejecting a Commodore 64 emulator from the iPhone App Store inspired me to compare the C64 to the new iPhone 3G S, in more detail than any rational person is likely to compare them, ever again. If nothing else, it's a snapshot of just how far technology has come since the C64's release in August of 1982."

Newspaper Crowdsources 700,000-Page Investigation of MP Expenses 188

Posted by timothy on Friday June 19, 2009 @04:50AM from the would-like-to-see-this-for-the-us-federal-budget dept.

projector writes with an interesting project from the UK: "The Guardian are crowd-sourcing the investigation of 700,000 pages of UK MPs' expenses data. Readers are being invited to categorize each document, transcribe the handwritten expenses details into an online form and alert the newspaper if any claims merit further investigation. 'Some pages will be covering letters, or claim forms for office stationery. But somewhere in here is the receipt for a duck island. And who knows what else may turn up. If you find something which you think needs further attention, simply hit the button marked "investigate this!" and we'll take a closer look.'"

Canada Telecoms Launch Mobile Payment Service 107

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday June 15, 2009 @05:12PM from the can-i-request-money-all-day dept.

GregDz11 writes to inform us that Canada's three main wireless companies will be launching a service that allows customers to send, request, and receive money via their mobile phones. "The service, called Zoompass, will be managed by Enstream, a joint venture the three carriers first established in 2005, when it was called Wireless Payment Services, to investigate the potential of mobile commerce. [...] Money can be drawn from an account the user sets up or from their credit card. Each withdrawal will cost 50 cents from the account, or 3.5 per cent of the transaction if from a credit card. (As a result, sending dollar amounts under $15 are actually cheaper to do using a credit card.)"

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