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Mozilla

Mozilla Rolls Out Firefox 3.6 RC, Nears Final 145

CWmike writes "Mozilla has shipped a release candidate build of Firefox 3.6 that, barring problems, will become the final, finished version of the upgrade. Firefox 3.6 RC1, which followed a run of betas that started in early November, features nearly 100 bug fixes from the fifth beta that Mozilla issued Dec. 17. The fixes resolved numerous crash bugs, including one that brought down the browser when it was steered to Yahoo's front page. Another fix removed a small amount of code owned by Microsoft from Firefox. The code was pointed out by a Mozilla contributor, and after digging, another developer found the original Microsoft license agreement. 'Amusingly enough, it's actually really permissive. Really the only part that's problematic is the agreement to "include the copyright notice ... on your product label and as a part of the sign-on message for your software product,"' wrote Kyle Huey on Mozilla's Bugzilla. Even so, others working on the bug said the code needed to be replaced with Mozilla's own."
NASA

Simulation of Close Asteroid Fly-By 148

c0mpliant writes "NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory have released a simulation of the path of an asteroid, named Apophis, that will come very close to Earth in 2029 — the closest predicted approach since humans have monitored for such heavenly bodies. The asteroid caused a bit of a scare when astronomers first announced that it would enter Earth's neighborhood some time in the future. However, since that announcement in 2004, more recent calculations have put the odds of collision at 1 in 250,000."
Image

Best Man Rigs Newlyweds' Bed To Tweet During Sex 272

When an UK man was asked to be the best man at a friend's wedding he agreed that he would not pull any pranks before or during the ceremony. Now the groom wishes he had extended the agreement to after the blessed occasion as well. The best man snuck into the newlyweds' house while they were away on their honeymoon and placed a pressure-sensitive device under their mattress. The device now automatically tweets when the couple have sex. The updates include the length of activity and how vigorous the act was on a scale of 1-10.
Open Source

Linux Kernel 2.6.32 Released 195

diegocg writes "Linus Torvalds has officially released the version 2.6.32 of the Linux kernel. New features include virtualization memory de-duplication, a rewrite of the writeback code faster and more scalable, many important Btrfs improvements and speedups, ATI R600/R700 3D and KMS support and other graphic improvements, a CFQ low latency mode, tracing improvements including a 'perf timechart' tool that tries to be a better bootchart, soft limits in the memory controller, support for the S+Core architecture, support for Intel Moorestown and its new firmware interface, run-time power management support, and many other improvements and new drivers. See the full changelog for more details."

Comment Why do we have names anyway? (Score 1) 688

Seriously, the whole point of DNS was to provide a name that humans can remember. Ask to me remember "bob" or "elephant" or "pilsner" and I can tell you exactly where that machine is and what it does. I know you're asking about workstations, but here's a printer and its server that I actually use at work (XX denotes the company initials so that I dont get in trouble with the Man) 5C106HPCLJ4650 on XXsny195prt2. I think it would be easier to remember a dotted quad...put the info in a spreadsheet like others have suggested and give the workstations names people can remember and use. Maybe even have a little fun with.

Comment Re:More H1B cap lobbying (Score 2, Informative) 727

This is misguided. H1Bs arent the problem, and it is specious to suggest that they are. The quota for h1bs at its peak was less that 200,000 per year. This is a tiny drop in the bucket given the size of the IT industry in the US, and so small as to be insignificant with respect to your salary.

In fact, had we *increased* the number of h1b's, we may have limitted the number of jobs being shipped offshore to places like India. In 2000 there was a shortage of good programmers - and a limit on h1bs, so the marketplace found a way. Although there are some exceptions, the vast majority of h1bs here stay here and become permanent residents and often American citizens, either way paying our taxes. A job that moves "offshore" has no such effect.

What causes the decline in enrollment is the hype associated with both of these effects - in large part they are small in comparison to the size of the IT marketplace. And if you are a programmer, be rest assured, good programmers are hard to find no matter what country you look in.

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