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HP

Submission + - HP Unwilling to Fix BIOS for Linux Users (mattparnell.com)

Submitted by
ilikenwf
ilikenwf writes: "Many users have had issues with the HP laptops that are currently on the market as a result of a BIOS bug persists to pop up on HP's laptops, regardless of the various updates. This causes users to have to disable lapic, which keeps features like high resolution timers from being used to increase speed and drastically increase battery life. Contacting customer support has been less than helpful, as displayed by HP's arrogance. Any BIOS hackers out there?...And no, LinuxBIOS will not work on these laptops."
Supercomputing

Submission + - students power supercomputer with bicycles (computerworld.com.au) 1

Submitted by
inkslinger77
inkslinger77 writes: "A team of ten MIT students powered a supercomputer for twenty minutes by pedalling bicycles. They duly claimed the world record for human-powered computing (HPC). They powered a SiCortex SC648 supercomputer with a Linux cluster of 648 CPUs and almost 1TB of main memory in a single cabinet. The system is low-powered and draws 1,200 watts without needing special power supplies or cooling..."
Sony

Submission + - Sony silently drops PS3 linux support. (ps2dev.org) 4

Submitted by
t0qer
t0qer writes: "Up until this week, hackers at the PS2dev.org forums have been hot on the trail of writing a hardware accellerated driver for the PS3 RSX chip until Sony released thier new firmware. Now it seems that updating to the new 2.10 version of PS3 firmware not only blocks RSX access completely, but breaks linux installs as well. This is a harsh blow to the PS3 linux community."
Government

Submission + - 7 Years of the Patriot Act

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Recently, my father and I were debating certain aspects of the government. I'm fairly libertarian, he is extremely republican. During the conversation, we were debating the PATRIOT act and how it has been misused. He challenged me to do some research and provide him with one documented instance of the act being misused; for every one I can find, he will donate $5 to the political charity of my choice. I'm thinking EFF or ACLU, leaning towards EFF. I would like to maximize the charity donation, so I thought I would ask the /. community for help locating as many misuses as possible.

To qualify as misuse, the case must have no legitimate connection to terrorism, and the victim of the abuse must be an American citizen. The case of the attorney in Portland, OR being imprisoned without trial does not count; my father believes that while they arrested the wrong man they did it on evidence that would have held up in a court regardless.

So, help me make money for the EFF!
PC Games (Games)

Submission + - Blizzard may be crossing ethical boundaries

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: With the most recent patch to World of Warcraft, Blizzard has introduced new code for their Warden client that may be crossing ethical boundaries. There is now a near impossible solution for checks and balances. Lax, one of the few known people to have explicit knowledge on the innerworkings of Blizzard's Warden client, posts details about this most recent patch in his blog. http://onwarden.blogspot.com/

Quote from the blog about the new patch: "Given the fact that the randomly generated hash algorithm can be replaced at Blizzard's sole discretion with any other algorithm, including ones that retrieve and use personal, private and/or otherwise confidential information, with only their server to be required to know about the changes, this should be considered a very scary thing for the rest of us. "
The Internet

Submission + - How Cox joined the teleworking revolution (networkworld.com)

Submitted by
Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward writes: "Cable TV provider Cox Communications uses Citrix desktop virtualization technology to make work software applications travel to an employee's home rather than the employee traveling to work. About 2,000 of Cox's 22,000 employees are teleworkers, many of which are call center operators providing customer service to Cox's 6 million subscribers, according to a case study provided by Citrix. http://www.networkworld.com/news/2007/111407-cox-teleworking.html"
PHP

Submission + - A more fun php captcha for your forms, choose the (codeassembly.com)

Submitted by
codeassembly
codeassembly writes: "Tired of those strange letters and numbers captcha ? I know how frustrating is to try reading those distorted images. Don't stress your users in the same way, try something easier to keep those bad spam robots.Try the cat dog captcha.

http://codeassembly.com/A-more-fun-php-captcha-for-your-forms,-choose-the-cats-from-the-dogs/"
The Internet

Submission + - Comcast Sued Over BitTorrent Blocking

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: From the other-shoe-dropping dept?
WIRED's Threat Level blog reports that cable ISP Comcast is being sued by a California man over it's interference with the BitTorrent use of its customers, "arguing that the company's secret use of technology to limit peer-to-peer applications such as BitTorrent violates federal computer fraud laws, their user contracts and anti-fraudulent advertising statutes."

Comcast maintains that "Comcast does not, has not, and will not block any websites or online applications, including peer-to-peer services." And says, "...we use the latest technologies to manage our network so that they can continue to enjoy these applications."

The plaintiff wants the court to force Comcast to stop interfering with the traffic, and also wants the court to certify the suit as a class action.

Related stories on Slashdot:
FCC Complaint Filed Over Comcast P2P Blocking
Comcast Confirmed as Discriminating Against FileSharing Traffic
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft and Kyocera Mita patent cross-licensing (cnn.com)

Submitted by
AlexGr
AlexGr writes: "CNN Money / PRNewswire: Agreement will cover intellectual property contained in hardware and software products, including certain Linux-based technologies. Microsoft Corp. and Kyocera Mita Corp. have signed a patent cross-licensing agreement to allow access to each company's respective patent portfolio. The agreement encompasses a broad range of patents and will help further each company's research and development (R&D) efforts. Through this agreement, Kyocera Mita will gain access to Microsoft's patents for Kyocera Mita's current and future product lines, including multifunction products (MFPs), printers, copiers and certain Linux-based embedded devices. Microsoft will gain access to Kyocera Mita patents for Microsoft's current and future product lines, including Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Office and other IT product lines http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/prnewswire/AQTU19713112007-1.htm"
Sci-Fi

Submission + - A new, simple unifying theory of the universe (telegraph.co.uk)

Submitted by aalobode
aalobode writes: In an article titled "Surfer dude stuns physicists with theory of everything" the Times of London evaluates an article from New Scientist and reports that one Garret Lisi, a 39 year old physicist with a doctorate but no affiliation has come up with a testable theory that shows great promise. The theory's simplicity is also highlighted: needing 1 dimension of time and 3 of space as opposed to eight or more for competing theories. The theory is still being developed, and the crucial tests will be to make predictions that can be tested. String theory, one of the competing ideas, has failed to produce viable predictions. Fortunately, the Large Hadron Collider is due to come on line in Geneva in the near future and he can test his predictions there. It's always possible that beauty hides in simplicity — but the long shadow of cold fusion reminds us to take every new theory with a generous pinch of salt.
Biotech

Submission + - Breakthrough in primate cloning (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by Frost_Azimov
Frost_Azimov writes: Experts have for the first time created cloned embryos from an adult monkey — a technical breakthrough that could bring efficient human cloning a step closer.
Input Devices

Submission + - Iphone dead zone (news.com)

Submitted by surgediadem
surgediadem writes: The Iphone has got an issue that PDA phone users will be used to. "After a particularly wet bike ride on Saturday here in the Bay Area, my iPhone got somewhat damp. (You know, the type of rain that soaks through a coat but doesn't ruin anything.) After the ride, I wanted to text people and noticed the top row of the text keyboard was not responding. I had to press, no squish, down to get a letter. And the cursor would flip out. And the screen looked bad when I did so, just like when you press down on an LCD screen too hard."

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