mbc2000 - Slashdot User

Submission + - China Embargos Rare Earth Exports to Japan (nytimes.com)

Submitted by

Hugh Pickens

on Thursday September 23, 2010 @12:56AM

Hugh Pickens writes: "The NY Times reports that the Chinese government has placed a trade embargo on all exports to Japan of a crucial category of minerals used in products like hybrid cars, wind turbines and guided missiles. China mines 93 percent of the world’s rare earth minerals, and more than 99 percent of the world’s supply of some of the most prized rare earths, which sell for several hundred dollars a pound. The embargo comes after a dispute over Japan’s detention of a Chinese fishing trawler captain whose ship collided with two Japanese coast guard vessels as he tried to fish in waters controlled by Japan but long claimed by China. The Chinese embargo is likely to have immediate repercussions in Washington. The House Committee on Science and Technology is scheduled to review a detailed bill to subsidize the revival of the American rare earths industry and the House Armed Services Committee is scheduled to review the American military dependence on Chinese rare earth elements."

Submission + - US Payroll Tax Exemption Sought for H-1B Workers

Submitted by theodp on Thursday September 23, 2010 @12:56AM

theodp writes: Worried about a rising tide of protectionism and looking to improve their ability to compete in the worldwide market, India's government and IT industry wants the U.S. to stop collecting Social Security taxes from H-1B workers and their employers. Anand Sharma, India's minister of commerce and industry, argued Wednesday that a totalization agreement granting the exemption would be 'mutually beneficial' for U.S. workers in India, although immigration policy analyst Daniel Costa noted that the waiver 'would give companies another incentive to hire H-1Bs because that's an extra 14% of savings.' Speaking of payroll tax exemptions, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has introduced the Creating American Jobs and Ending Offshoring Act, which aims to provide businesses with relief from the employer share of the Social Security payroll tax on wages paid to new U.S. employees who replace employees who had been performing similar duties overseas.

Submission + - Stallman crashes talk, fights 'war on sharing' (itnews.com.au)

Submitted by schliz on Thursday September 23, 2010 @12:08AM

schliz writes: Free software activist Richard Stallman has called for the end of the 'war on sharing' at the World Computer Congress in Brisbane, Australia. He criticized surveillance, censorship, restrictive data formats and software-as-a-service in a keynote presentation, and asserted that digital society had to be "free" in order to be a benefit, and not an attack.

Earlier in the conference, Stallman briefly interrupted a European Patent Office presentation with a placard that said: "Don't get caught in software patent thickets". He told journalists that the Patent Office was "here to campaign in favor of software patents in Australia", arguging that "there's no problem that requires a solution with anything like software patents".

Submission + - Flash Player 10.2 for x86, x86-64 released

Submitted by g-to-the-o-to-the-g on Thursday September 16, 2010 @12:53AM

g-to-the-o-to-the-g writes: A preview version of Adobe Flash for Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows has been release for 32 and 64 bit Intel platforms. Codenamed "Square", this version features support for DX9 acceleration in IE9 among other things. See the release notes [PDF] for details, or head over and grab a copy for yourself.

Journal Journal: Dates not represented in WikiLeaks "Afghan War Diary, 2004-2010"

Journal by mbc2000 on Friday August 06, 2010 @12:51PM

5 Jan 2004, 2 Feb 2004, 7 Feb 2004, 23 Feb 2004, 24 Feb 2004, 23 Apr 2004, 4 Jan 2005

Over a Third of the Internet Is Pornographic 247

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday June 16, 2010 @04:20PM from the filthy-web dept.

Th'Inquisitor writes "Pornography makes up 37% of the total number of web pages online, according to a new study published by Optenet, a SaaS provider. According to the report, which looked at a representative sample of around four million extracted URLs, adult content on the Internet increased by 17% in the first quarter of 2010, as compared to the same period in 2009."

Newsweek Easter Egg Reports Zombie Invasion 93

Posted by kdawson on Monday June 14, 2010 @10:56PM from the it-takes-braaains dept.

danielkennedy74 writes "Newsweek.com becomes the latest in a long list of sites that will reveal an Easter egg if you enter the Konami code correctly (up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, b, a, enter). This is a cheat code that appeared in many of Konami's video games, starting around 1986 — my favorite places to use it were Contra and Life Force, 30 lives FTW. The Easter egg was probably included by a developer unbeknownst to the Newsweek powers that be. It's reminiscent of an incident that happened at ESPN last year, involving unicorns."

Ubuntu Replaces F-Spot With Shotwell 361

Posted by timothy on Sunday June 13, 2010 @09:37PM from the such-pretty-pictures dept.

climenole writes "Finally! The much discussed F-Spot vs. Shotwell battle is over. The new default image organizer app for Ubuntu Maverick 10.10 is going to be Shotwell. This is a much-needed change; F-Spot was simply not enough. Most of the times when I tried F-Spot, it just keeps crashing on me. Shotwell on the other hand feels a lot more solid and is better integrated with the GNOME desktop. Shotwell is also completely devoid of Mono."

Microsoft Kills Support For XP SP2 315

Posted by timothy on Thursday May 13, 2010 @02:41PM from the too-soon? dept.

Trailrunner7 writes "Microsoft's announcement this week that it is preparing to end support for machines running Windows XP SP2 not only represents a challenge for the thousands of businesses still running SP2, but also is the end of an era for both Microsoft and its customers. It wasn't until 2004 that the final release of XP SP2 hit the streets, but when it did, it represented a huge step forward in security for Windows users. It wasn't necessarily the feature set that mattered as much as the fact that the protections were enabled by default and taken out of the users' hands."

New Linux Petabyte-Scale Distributed File System 132

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday May 05, 2010 @08:14PM from the check-it-out dept.

An anonymous reader writes "A recent addition to Linux's impressive selection of file systems is Ceph, a distributed file system that incorporates replication and fault tolerance while maintaining POSIX compatibility. Explore the architecture of Ceph and learn how it provides fault tolerance and simplifies the management of massive amounts of data."

Killer Convicted, Using Dog DNA Database 97

Posted by timothy on Thursday March 18, 2010 @03:04PM from the what-about-concealed-dog-licenses? dept.

lee1 writes "It turns out that the UK has a DNA database — for dogs. And this database was recently used to apprehend a South London gang member who used his dog to catch a 16-year-old rival and hold him while he stabbed him to death. The dog was also accidentally stabbed, and left blood at the scene. The creation of human DNA databases has led to widespread debates on privacy; but what about the collation of DNA from dogs or other animals?"

How the Internet Didn't Fail As Predicted 259

Posted by samzenpus on Monday March 08, 2010 @12:22PM from the series-of-popular-tubes dept.

Lord Byron Eee PC writes "Newsweek is carrying a navel-gazing piece on how wrong they were when in 1995 they published a story about how the Internet would fail. The original article states, 'Nicholas Negroponte, director of the MIT Media Lab, predicts that we'll soon buy books and newspapers straight over the Intenet. Uh, sure.' The article continues to say that online shopping will never happen, that airline tickets won't be purchased over the web, and that newspapers have nothing to fear. It's an interesting look back at a time when the Internet was still a novelty and not yet a necessity."

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