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Software

Submission + - Who thinks Firehose software is working right? 6

Submitted by
NewYorkCountryLawyer
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: "I find the Firehose software to be infuriating. It seems to have no 'stickiness' but constantly reverts to other views and searches than what I was looking at. I'm about ready to give up on it unless they tell me they recognize it's dumb and are doing something to make it work right. Am I the only one who feels this way?"
Programming

Submission + - The Return of Ada 1

Submitted by
Pickens
Pickens writes: "Today, when most people refer to Ada, it's usually as a cautionary tale. The Defense Department commissioned the programming language in the late 1970s but few programmers used Ada claiming it was difficult to use. Nonetheless, many observers believe the basics of Ada are in place for wider use. "We're seeing a resurgence of interest," says Robert Dewar, president of AdaCore. "The thing people have always said about Ada is that it is hard to get a program by the compiler, but once you did, it would always work." Ada's stringency causes more work for programmers, but it will also make the code more secure, Ada enthusiasts say. Last fall, contractor Lockheed Martin delivered an update to ERAM, the Federal Aviation Administration's next-generation flight data air traffic control system — ahead of schedule and under budget, which is something you don't often hear about in government circles. Jeff O'Leary, an FAA software development and acquisition manager who oversaw ERAM, attributed at least part of it to the use of the Ada, used for about half the code in the system."
Graphics

Submission + - SPAM: Advertise On The Moon via Laser Beam

Submitted by
Super Geek
Super Geek writes: "Laser Advertisements on the Moon.
Now Why Didn't I Think of That!This great idea is a long time coming. It seems apparent that with all of todays technology that it one day might happen. Imagine how much money you would be able to charge by placing an laser beam generated advertisement in a place that, for the first time, BILLIONS OF PEOPLE WOULD SEE IT. [spam URL stripped] "
Link to Original Source
Businesses

Submission + - SPAM: Burj Dubai officially the new World's Tallest Stru

Submitted by
twickline
twickline writes: "The Burj Dubai is now officially the World's Tallest free standing Structure, the current height of the newly installed columns is 630.5 meters. The top of the three new columns are 1.7 meters taller than the KVLY-TV Mast. And the current floor count is 160:mezz 2, so officially Tier 18 has now started.

Below is a photo of the first column just after it was installed, this is the one that broke the record! also I have posted two more photos of the Burj Dubai and the city of Dubai. lastly is a diagram showing the current status of progress on the mighty Burj Dubai. Upon completion the Burj is rumored to be a staggering 819 meters in height.

P.S....... There isnt a topic for architecture, so i selected business feel free to edit the topic."
Link to Original Source
Microsoft

Submission + - UK may U-turn and back OOXML (zdnet.co.uk) 1

Submitted by
superglaze
superglaze writes: "An unnamed source has claimed that the UK could be set to back OOXML, despite previously voting against Microsoft's format. It seems that the technical group advising the British Standards Institution is now backing OOXML, with IBM, unsurprisingly, being the sole hold-out. Still, even if the UK says yes, it looks like the format will fail the ISO fasttrack process."
Businesses

Submission + - OOXML: Brazil Says NO. Again. (alkalay.net)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: It is now official. Brazilian vote was decided by consensus of the entire technical team, including Microsoft crew's: OOXML does not deserve to be an international ISO standard. Our first vote, in august, was also NO, due to the same reasons: OOXML is an awful specification. That outcome was expected because we simply followed the process: technically analyze the OOXML specification, make comments, wait for responses, analyze them and see if all problems were fixed. Is there any single remaining unresolved problem? Vote NO. And in fact there were many many unresolved problems. If every country followed this simple process, OOXML would receive a NO from 100% of them.
Wine

Submission + - SPAM: Wine 1.0 Release Criteria updated

Submitted by
twickline
twickline writes: "On March 15th Dan Kegel sent a email to the wine-devel mailing list with a outline of the new release schedule for Wine 1.0

Alexandre Julliard replied with his thoughts on the first draft with some suggestions.

We need a code freeze and stabilization period before the release. My thinking is that we should have a 1.0rc1 release, probably sometime in May, and from that point on only accept small obvious fixes. Then we'd have rc2, rc3, etc. as needed until the bug list gets small enough. And by rc1 (or even earlier) any bug that requires more than a small simple patch would be deferred to 1.1.0."
Link to Original Source
It's funny. Laugh.

Submission + - US Military Secrets Emailed to Factory Hand

Submitted by
The Narrative Fallacy
The Narrative Fallacy writes: "Factory worker Gary Sinnott had no idea when he set up his website to promote the town of Mildenhall in England that he would end up getting classified e-mails from the United States Air Force. The website has been sent hundreds of emails outlining highly classified information, including emails about military tactics and passwords intended for personnel at the neighboring US airbase. What began as a slow trickle of mundane messages soon escalated and hundreds of classified emails were sent from around the world after people mistook www.mildenhall.com for the military website www.mildenhall.af.mil. Sinnott said that when he initially reported the problem airbase officials did not appear phased. "At first their attitude was we are not worried, we are American, our security is great" but that after he informed the base that he had received information detailing the flight path to be used by the plane carrying President Bush on a visit to the region, officials went 'mental'. Now after years of trying to resolve the issue, Sinnott has been forced to close down his website because he is unable to cope with the sheer number of emails arriving in his inbox every day. A statement released by RAF Mildenhall confirmed that officials had tried to help Sinnott: "In November, we confirmed that our base servers blocked any emails going to this site and we sent out a base-wide email advising everyone to use appropriate government email domains and inform family and friends.""
The Internet

Submission + - SPAM: YouTube Outage Underscores Big Internet Problem

Submitted by
narramissic
narramissic writes: "Pakistan's blocking of YouTube Sunday may be old news, but it reveals a significant Internet design problem, namely the way ISPs share Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) routing information. Now, the accidental denial of service attack that took out YouTube has happened before and will likely happen again, but what if next time it's not accidental? If criminals were able to send BGP information to a larger service provider that didn't properly check its BGP data, they could cause serious problems, says Danny McPherson, chief research officer with Arbor Networks. 'The reality is that if you wanted to cause global instability, you simply compromise one of those people who have access to a BGP-speaking router.'"
Link to Original Source
Novell

Submission + - SPAM: Novell buys open source firm to save GroupWise

Submitted by alphadogg
alphadogg writes: Novell, seeking a real-time makeover for its collaboration wares, announced Wednesday that it has acquired SiteScape, the developer of open source collaboration tools. Novell's current GroupWise collaboration platform had been missing much of the real-time and Web 2.0 technologies that are beginning to define the next wave of collaboration.
Link to Original Source
Biotech

Submission + - SPAM: CSIRO claims revolutionary waste into fuel process

Submitted by
WirePosted
WirePosted writes: "Australia's Commonwealth and Industrial research Organization (CSIRO) and Monash University in Melbourne have developed a chemical process that turns common green waste into a stable bio-crude oil. The reasearchers claim the energy is renewable, greenhouse gas neutral and eliminates the food versus fuel debate."
Link to Original Source
Music

Submission + - Vista's changes rob Creative of PC audio crown 4

Submitted by Dr. Damage
Dr. Damage writes: Creative has ruled PC sound almost since the beginning, but Vista's new audio layer changes the game by essentially killing off 3D positional audio acceleration. The Tech Report has reviewed a pair of post-Vista sound cards, with surprising results. Motherboard maker Asus saw the opening and created perhaps the best consumer-level sound card yet, the Xonar D2X, with quality components, an EMI shield, color-illuminated ports, the best objective measurements and subjective listening test scores we've ever seen, and (finally!) a PCI Express x1 connector. Could the Sound Blaster era finally be over?

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