kripkenstein writes "Jim Zemlin (executive director for the Linux Foundation) gave a talk at LinuxWorld saying that the open source community should stop poking fun at Microsoft. From the VNU article: 'Open source vendors have to recognize that Windows is here to stay and that together with Microsoft it will form a duopoly in the market for operating systems. This also requires that the Linux community respects Microsoft rather than ridicule it. "There are some things that Windows does pretty well," Zemlin said. Microsoft for instance has excelled in marketing the operating system, and has a good track record in fending off competition.'"

Ian Lamont writes "Female workers are losing ground in the IT profession, reports Computerworld, citing statistics which show a sharp drop in the number of female CS grads since the 1980s, and a decline in the percentage of women in the IT profession since 2001. According to the article, causes include pervasive stereotypes and the locker-room atmosphere found in some IT shops — attitudes which some readers may recognize from the comments in a Slashdot thread last week. The IT professionals interviewed in the Computerworld article discuss a variety of strategies for coping. They range from trying to 'out-boy the boys' to watching what you say, as one Sun Microsystems executive describes:'It's not unusual to be the only woman at a meeting, she says, and because of that, there's often a tendency to remain silent unless you think you have something really remarkable to say. "As one member of a small group, you feel you have no right to be mediocre ... You're not just representing yourself; you're representing [females] with a capital F.'"

UnknowingFool writes "A customer named Jose Trujillo has filed a class-action lawsuit against Apple over the iPhone batteries. According to the suit, Apple did not disclose that the batteries of the iPhone were not user-replaceable. Also the plaintiff alleges that the battery will need to replaced every year. When a battery needs to be replaced, the customer will be without a phone for several days unless the customer pays $29.95 for a loaner phone service. Lastly, the plaintiff alleges that the battery information was difficult to find on Apple's website."

bl8n8r writes "In July of 1982, an infected Apple II propogated the first computer virus onto a 5-1/4" floppy. The virus, which did little more than annoy the user, Elk Cloner, was authored in Pittsburgh by a 15-year-old high school student, Rich Skrenta. The virus replicated by monitoring floppy disk activity and writing itself to the floppy when it was accessed. Skrenta describes the virus as "It was a practical joke combined with a hack. A wonderful hack." Remember, he was a 9th grader when he did this."

xnuandax writes "The army's explanation of weather balloons in the Roswell, New Mexico incident 60 years ago has been dealt a serious public relations blow. Late Army Lt. Walter Haut had signed a sealed affidavit prior to his death last year asserting that he had witnessed the wreckage of an egg-shaped craft and its extraterrestrial crew while working at the Roswell Army Air Field. An article at News.com.au reviews how Haut had worked as public relations officer for the Roswell base and was involved in the original weather balloon explanation of events at the time. This recent evidence would seem to confirm speculation that egg-shaped saucers are notoriously difficult to fly safely at low altitude."

Jared writes "Michael Moore was afraid the Feds might sieze his new documentary Sicko, a scathing indictment of the US health-care system, because part of it was filmed in Cuba despite the US embargo. So he stashed a copy of the film in Canada just to be safe. He might as well not have bothered — the film has shown up on BitTorrent and P2P networks everywhere. So it's safe now."

David Kesmodel writes "Several online-video efforts are under way that offer a more cerebral alternative to the typical fare seen on the Web, the Wall Street Journal reports. The ambitious Fora.tv, for example, intends to establish relations with all of the lecture series from the nation's scores of think tanks, civic groups, bookstores and the like, and then put tapes of their speeches and panel discussions online in an easily searchable fashion."

Josh Fink writes to tell us that Yahoo has announced that they will be offering unlimited email storage starting this coming May. The launch is all a part of Yahoo's ten year anniversary. While not all users will see their storage caps disappear right away Yahoo is promising that this feature will eventually reach their entire population.

writes "According to WorldNetDaily, Youtube is engaging in censorship. A quote from the article summarizes well: The popular video-sharing YouTube site, which is being purchased by Google for $1.65 billion, limited access to a political ad that mocks the Clinton administration's policy on North Korea, but contains no profanity, nudity or other factors generally thought objectionable." It's also worth pointing out that WorldNetDaily could be described as just wee bit conservative

rkcallaghan writes "The Washington Post is reporting that the House passed a measure that makes it illegal for banks in the US to handle online gambling transactions." There's still no such move in the Senate, but it's a step towards banning online gambling nonetheless. Since this bill isn't expected to affect the usual, legal ways of gambling domestically, one wonders if such legislation would be sought after, were online gambling to be headquartered here in the states, rather than overseas.

lisah writes, "The Linux distribution Gentoo has a hard-core following, and with good reason. Gentoo is known for its configurability and choices. It's not known, however, for its easy installation. NewsForge's Joe Barr outlined his painful installation experience with Gentoo in an article that explains why, after 10 days, he finally gave up and went with Debian Etch. From the article: '[B]ack in the day, Gentoo users first had to rip the source code from the bone with their teeth before compiling and installing it, but now the live CD had sissified the process to the point that anyone could do it... I exaggerated the ease of installing Gentoo.' And: 'Gentoo doesn't ask what it can do to make things easier, it asks you exactly what it is that you want it to do, and then does precisely and only that.'" Slashdot and NewsForge are both owned by OSTG.

pin_gween writes "The Mercury News has an AP wire that shows science uncovering history. 800 years ago a monk scrubbed the text off a goatskin parchment to write prayers. Nothing unusual there, except the parchment contained writings from a copy of Archimedes' Palimpsest. Now scientists are using x-rays, generated by a particle accelerator, to cause tiny amounts of iron left by the original ink to glow without harming the delicate goatskin parchment. It takes 12 hours to scan one page, then the information is posted online."

An anonymous reader writes "Steven Rombom -- a.k.a. "Steven Rambam" -- the licensed private investigator who was arrested Saturday by FBI agents minutes before his talk on privacy at the Hope Number Six hacker convention in New York -- is being charged with witness tampering and obstruction of justice in a money laundering case the government is pursuing against Albert Santoro, a former Brooklyn assistant district attorney, according to Washingtonpost.com's Security Fix blog. The government alleges that Santoro hired Rombom to locate a government confidential informant whom Santoro accuses of entrapment, and that Rombom visited the informant's in-laws under the guise of an FBI agent and tried to convince them tha their son-in-law was a danger to their daughter and grandkids."