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Space

No Space Porn (For Now) 260

With the entry to sub-orbital flight, and even orbital flight, becoming ever so slightly easier, the obvious thought of space porn kicks in. Who wouldn't want to see two or more people going at it like rabbits in a weightless environment (or at least trying to go at it like rabbits in a weightless environment)? Sadly, Virgin Galactic has turned down a $1 million offer to do just that. The offer was made by an unidentified party who was willing to put the money up front to do a space porn movie. Considering that a flight aboard VG costs $200,000 for a two-hour flight, $1 million doesn't seem too bad. Though how much you could actually do and perform in two hours is debatable. And what if one or more of the actors gets sick?
Networking

Comcast Discloses Throttling Practices 206

Wired reports that Comcast finally provided information on its network management practices late Friday. In a report to the FCC (PDF), the cable company admitted to targeting P2P protocols Ares, BitTorrent, eDonkey, FasTrack, and Gnutella. Quoting: "For each of the managed P2P protocols, the [Sandvine Policy Traffic Switch] monitors and identifies the number of simultaneous unidirectional uploads that are passed from the [Cable Modem Termination System] to the upstream router. Because of the prevalence of P2P traffic on the upstream portion of our network, the number of simultaneous unidirectional upload sessions of any particular P2P protocol at any given time serves as a useful proxy for determining the level of overall network congestion. For each of the protocols, a session threshold is in place that is intended to provide for equivalently fair access between the protocols, but still mitigate the likelihood of congestion that could cause service degradation for our customers."
Communications

Cisco To Buy Jabber 66

Danny Rathjens writes "In the continuing trend of big companies buying out small companies with open source products, Cisco has announced that they are buying Jabber. The press release doesn't really talk about the open source aspect of Jabber, and Jabber's website doesn't mention the news yet. I'm sure the question many of us have is whether Jabber's open source status will be changed in any way due to the purchase." Reader Eddytorial had this to contribute: "eWEEK offers a good look into how Jabber's messaging client will fit into Cisco Systems' overall 'presence' strategy in its market wars with Avaya, Microsoft, Nortel, and others. Cisco, which already had a basic instant messaging option, but one that didn't scale for an enterprise nearly as well as Jabber's, has just about everything else in place." It's also worth noting that Cisco open-sourced Etch in recent months.

Feed Linux.com: Academia's Open Access movement mirrors FOSS community (linux.com)

Free and open source software (FOSS) has roots in the ideals of academic freedom and the unimpeded exchange of information. In the last five years, the concepts have come full circle, with FOSS serving as a model for Open Access (OA), a movement within academia to promote unrestricted access to scholarly material for both researchers and the general public.
Wireless Networking

Submission + - Japan MIC (FCC) about to tax Wi-Fi - SERIOUSLY!

An anonymous reader writes: The Japan MIC (their version of the FCC) has proposed to impose a license on Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and other devices. The proposal was July 5th and their is only 2 weeks for the industry to voice their opposition on the matter. This would be a huge cost up action for devices with multiple radios like phones, laptops, etc... http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/content/view/30094/ 97/
Handhelds

New York To Ban iPods While Crossing Street? 487

An anonymous reader writes to mention Reuters is reporting that New York State Senator Carl Kruger is looking to institute a $100 fine for using electronic gadgets while crossing the street. Citing three pedestrian deaths in his Brooklyn district as the main driving reason he believe Government has an obligation to protect its citizens. "Tech-consuming New Yorkers trudge to work on sidewalks and subways like an army of drones, appearing to talk to themselves on wireless devices or swaying to seemingly silent tunes. 'I'm not trying to intrude on that,' Kruger said. 'But what's happening is when they're tuning into their iPod or Blackberry or cell phone or video game, they're walking into speeding buses and moving automobiles. It's becoming a nationwide problem.'"
Music

Submission + - Jobs Calls for End of DRM

Zelet writes: In an open letter, Steve Jobs describes the current and possible future state of DRM. Ultimately, he calls on European customers to push for music companies to distribute non-DRMed music online.

Comment Re:Amazed that people like it so much (Score 1) 433

Hehe, when you were reading the book were you thinking "Good, except for the bad acting..." :-)

Arg! Yes, :-), but that's my point: a movie is a different medium, so it obviously can add to the book. However imho PJ's movie adds almost nothing memorable. It's a pity. We can always hope for the next installments.

And I totally agree with the MSNBC guy: the stuff we like about the book is mostly not in the movie, and there's not much to be liked in the movie otherwise.

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