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Mozilla

Submission + - Firefox Memory Hogging Is Due to Fragmentation (pavlov.net)

Submitted by A beautiful mind
A beautiful mind writes: It has been long claimed by users that Firefox leaks memory, and on the other hand the developers claimed the number of leaks are minimal. It turns out both groups were right. Stuart Parmenter, one of the authors of the RAMBack extension started investigating and found out that the issue is memory fragmentation. He discovered that while loading about:blank uses 12,589,696 bytes of memory in the test he performed (image), after exercising Firefox with different websites and then clearing the caches with the help of the RAMBack extension the picture is wholly different: "Our heap is now 29,999,872 bytes! 16,118,072 of that is used (up 4,634,208 bytes from before... which caches am I forgetting to clear?). The rest, a whopping 13,881,800 bytes, is in free blocks!"
Transportation

Submission + - 'Near perfect' hydrogen brewing (newscientist.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Penn State researchers have devised a way to make microbes brew up to 99 per cent of available hydrogen out of plant material. The secret is to use a voltage to give them a thermodynamic hand with reactions that limit conventional fermentation to extracting just a third at best of hydrogen locked up in organic material. Hydrogen sourced this way pays back around 1.4 times the energy used to make it, compared to extracting hydrogen from water which pays back only a fifth.
Security

Submission + - One-third of employees violate company IT policies (net-security.org)

Submitted by BaCa
BaCa writes: A national survey of U.S. white-collar workers commissioned by the nonprofit, independent organization ISACA has found that more than one-third (35%) of employees have violated their company's IT policies at least once and that nearly one-sixth (15%) of employees have used peer-to-peer file sharing at least once at their place of business, opening the door to security breaches and placing sensitive business and personal information at risk.
It's funny. Laugh.

Submission + - A Snarky Halloween History: Monsters Edition (omninerd.com)

Submitted by
uriah923
uriah923 writes: "Nick Dilmore has published the second edition in his Snarky Halloween History series, featured on Slashdot last year. This time around, he concentrates on movie monsters: vampires, werewolves and zombies. From the article, "[D]id you know the movie monsters we've all to come to know and love (in a platonic way, of course) have colorful histories stretching back to the earliest civilizations? What, you didn't think some Hollywood hack actually had enough imagination to invent vampires, werewolves, and zombies, did you? Silly, silly non-monster-trivia knowing person.""
It's funny. Laugh.

Submission + - The future of the human species? (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by
martinQblank
martinQblank writes: "The BBC is reporting on one possible path of human development... From the article:

"Evolutionary theorist Oliver Curry of the London School of Economics expects a genetic upper class and a dim-witted underclass to emerge. The human race would peak in the year 3000, he said — before a decline due to dependence on technology. People would become choosier about their sexual partners, causing humanity to divide into sub-species, he added. The descendants of the genetic upper class would be tall, slim, healthy, attractive, intelligent, and creative and a far cry from the "underclass" humans who would have evolved into dim-witted, ugly, squat goblin-like creatures."

Let's see what the choices are here...metrosexual or goblin-like creature. Great. I sure hope this guy is WAY off base."
Privacy

Submission + - Thought crimes as homegrown terrorism (roguegovernment.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: http://www.roguegovernment.com/news.php?id=4682 The U.S. House of Representatives recently passed HR 1955 titled the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007. This bill is one of the most blatant attacks against the Constitution yet and actually defines thought crimes as homegrown terrorism. If passed into law, it will also establish a commission and a Center of Excellence to study and defeat so called thought criminals. Unlike previous anti-terror legislation, this bill specifically targets the civilian population of the United States and uses vague language to define homegrown terrorism. `(3) The Internet has aided in facilitating violent radicalization, ideologically based violence, and the homegrown terrorism process in the United States by providing access to broad and constant streams of terrorist-related propaganda to United States citizens.
Wireless Networking

Submission + - Simple to use, low cost Mesh Wifi nodes?

Submitted by
RapterOfParadox
RapterOfParadox writes: "I'm working with a non-profit group to outfit the downtown area of a small town (1500 residents) with open Wifi. I'm looking for simple to use, simple to setup Mesh networking equipment like Meraki.net, but without the annoying advertising at the top of every page. About 4 months ago I came across Meraki and the San Francisco FreeNet. I went ahead and ordered a few mesh nodes to give it a try and I fell in love with them. An indoor node cost $49 and an outdoor node cost $100. You really couldn't beat the price and everything was plug and play. You type the serial number in to their dashboard and they're on the network. Well, they just came out of "Beta" and now have two different pricing schemes. The standard package includes an annoying ad bar at the top of every page that can't be turned off, but at the same price as the "Beta" version and with less options. The pro version allows you to turn off the ad bar, but the exact same nodes cost $150 and $200 respectively which are out of my price range. The few alternatives out there stopped selling complete setups in 2005 or cost $400 per node. Shouldn't this technology be mainstream by now? Does anyone have suggestions for low cost, simple to use and maintain mesh networking equipment?"
Music

Submission + - Radiohead's In Rainbows - Is The Album Dead? (theseminal.com) 1

Submitted by
Snocrash23
Snocrash23 writes: "Last week, Radiohead released their latest album, In Rainbows, for free, asking fans to pay whatever they liked for the full length downloadable work. A week later, the "sales" numbers for In Rainbows are starting to leak. By my calculations, Radiohead made out with a ton of money."
United States

Submission + - US Mint Distributing Counterfeit Coins (coincommunity.com)

Submitted by
bobby131313
bobby131313 writes: "Well ignorance would make it appear so anyway...

The investigation of four gold-colored coins believed to be counterfeit will be turned over to the U.S. Secret Service.

Macomb police said a teenage male passed the four $1 coins at the McDonald's restaurant on East Jackson Street. The teen's mother has reimbursed the store, and no arrests will be made as a result of the case.

Police said the teen received the coins as a gift in a collector's set. It is believed the coins in the proof set are not actually legal tender.

Officers said markings missing on the coins made them appear counterfeit, such as three connected hash marks. The lettering on the sides of the coin is also too close together.

Police said the teenager didn't know the coins could not be spent.

The coins had the faces of presidents George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. The Madison coin was identified as suspicious by a local bank because that coin has not yet been released to the public.

** This story is being discussed on Coin Community Forum"
Music

Submission + - Slashdot Reverses Facts about Radiohead 1

Submitted by Apro+im
Apro+im writes: The popular news aggregation website, Slashdot today reported that the new Radiohead album, In Rainbows was pirated more than it was procured via legitimate means, setting off a flurry of speculation on their online discussion board as to the implications of this "fact". Strangely overlooked in much of the discussion, however, was the fact that the article they linked contained the exact opposite information, stating:

"The file was downloaded about 100,000 more times each day — adding up to more than 500,000 total illegal downloads. That's less than the 1.2 million legitimate online sales of the album reported by the British Web site Gigwise.com"
Questions about what this implies about Slashdot's editorial practices and readership remain unanswered.
Operating Systems

Submission + - Ubuntu Replacing Windows (tgdaily.com)

Submitted by Genocaust
Genocaust writes: During a phone conference today, Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth made the comment that he's seeing Ubuntu move into spaces which are not just horizontal migrations away from UNIX or other Linux distributions. He's actually seeing Ubuntu as a cost-effective and viable out-of-the-box alternative OS on new machines, even as a Windows replacement. When asked about Ubuntu's future he said, "Ubuntu is on the map. I believe [we're] here to stay".
Emulation (Games)

Submission + - Transgaming abondoning cedega Or unable to fix WoW (thejemreport.com) 3

Submitted by Anonymous
Anonymous writes: Traditionally, TransGaming has responded quickly to WoW patch issues and not only communicated its efforts via its Web site and user forum, but issued a game engine update that fixes the problem within a matter of days. This time around, though, TransGaming representatives have ignored the 2.2.0 patch problems and refused to respond to bug reports and forum posts related to these issues. When I sent TransGaming a press request email asking what was going on, I was not given the benefit of a reply. ........ The only good news is, the latest Wine release solves all of the problems that Cedega has with WoW patch 2.2.0, so you don't need to go running back to Windows just yet, but you do need to install and configure Wine. Hope you're not missing out on any raids in the meantime.
Music

Submission + - Yahoo Music Not Interested in "User Inconvenie

Submitted by KingAdrock
KingAdrock writes: In a presentation at a digital music conference last week the head of Yahoo! Music, Ian C Rogers, denounced the tactics being used by major music labels.

If the licensing labels offer their content to Yahoo! put more barriers in front of the users, I'm not interested. Do what you feel you need to do for your business, I'll be polite, say thank you, and decline to sign. I won't let Yahoo! invest any more money in consumer inconvenience. I will tell Yahoo! to give the money they were going to give me to build awesome media applications to Yahoo! Mail or Answers or some other deserving endeavor. I personally don't have any more time to give and can't bear to see any more money spent on pathetic attempts for control instead of building consumer value. Life's too short. I want to delight consumers, not bum them out.
The Courts

Submission + - Jammie Thomas to Appeal RIAA's $222k verdict

Submitted by
NewYorkCountryLawyer
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: "Just got word that Jammie Thomas is filing an appeal from the verdict in Virgin v. Thomas (renamed Capitol v. Thomas), in which a jury awarded the RIAA a verdict of $222,000, based on a finding Ms. Thomas infringed $23.76 worth of recordings. Contributions to Ms. Thomas's defense can be made via PayPal at freejammie.com."

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