The Iso - Slashdot User

Submission + - gcc says -10==10 (lkml.org) 6

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 20, 2007 @03:12PM

An anonymous reader writes: A bug in gcc causes it to think -10*abs(x) and 10*abs(x) have the same value. Just compile the following small program:

int main( void )
{
int i=2;
if( -10*abs (i-1) == 10*abs(i-1) )
printf ("OMG,-10==10 in linux!\n");
else
printf ("nothing special here\n") ;
return 0 ;
}

Submission + - Supreme Court To Rule on Second Amendment (dcguncase.com)

Submitted by

djmoore

on Tuesday November 20, 2007 @02:56PM

djmoore writes: "The Supreme Court has granted cert in District of Columbia v. Heller. This is the first case examining the Second Amendment to reach SCOTUS since the much-misunderstood Miller case in 1939. The SCOTUS asks the question,[PDF] "Whether the following provisions, D.C. Code 7-2502.02(a)(4), 22-4504(a), and 7-2507.02, violate the Second Amendment rights of individuals who are not affiliated with any state-regulated militia, but who wish to keep handguns and other firearms for private use in their homes?" Some links to background information on this case and the Second Amendment can be found here. Oral arguments will likely be heard in March or April.

Roughly speaking, the question is, does an enumerated "right of the people" have as much weight as, say, the unenumerated right to an abortion? Or does the 2nd Amendment, uniquely in the Constitution, use the phrase "the people" to grant coercive power to the state?

Mandatory Geek Link: Eric S. Raymond's "Ethics From the Barrel of a Gun"."

Submission + - DirectX 9.0c on Linux with Wine (blogspot.com)

Submitted by

Tom Wickline

on Tuesday November 20, 2007 @01:53PM

Tom Wickline writes: "I have posted a howto install DirectX 9.0c into Wine and it passes each of the test that is included in dxdiag.exe.. after the install only five dlls need to be set as builtin Wine dlls and the rest can be run as native Windows dlls. its not 100% DirectX on Linux but its 95% and that's as close as your going to get... as the five dlls that have to be set to builtin need direct access to hardware. http://wine-review.blogspot.com/2007/11/directx-90c-on-linux-with-wine.html"

Submission + - Man marries young daughter; Lynching unsuccessful (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by

Cal

on Tuesday November 20, 2007 @09:14AM

Cal writes: "The BBC reports that a West Bengali man has married his 15 year old daughter in the name of Allah, his heathen god. The constabulary obstructed angry neighbours from bringing him to justice for this sin, and he and his confused wife are currently in hiding at the Holiday Inn in nearby Jaipalguri. Map and driving directions from Calcutta at link."

Submission + - Bill Nye The Science Guy Wants Restraining Order

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 20, 2007 @12:52AM

An anonymous reader writes: The popular science guru Bill Nye the Science Guy has applied for a restraining order against a woman who he almost married last year. Blair Tindall appeared in Nye's garden at night, dressed in black, with bottles of herbicide, apparently attempting to wreck Nye's vegetables. He was also worried that she would squirt him with the toxic herbicide, but she denies being a threat to him. Tindall accuses Nye of "emotional cruelty" after their marriage turned out to be invalid.

Submission + - Bye Bye Movies

Submitted by

davetree

on Monday November 19, 2007 @11:01PM

davetree writes: "First Demonoid.com and now Mininova servers are kaput. CRIA is making a sweep. For all of us in far rural areas this is more than unfortunate. Will hybrid clients like Azureus stay up?"

Submission + - Close but no Cigar from Netflix 1

Submitted by

Ponca City, We Love You

on Tuesday November 13, 2007 @08:57PM

Ponca City, We Love You writes: "In October 2006, Netflix, the online movie rental service, announced that it would award $1 million to the first team to improve the accuracy of Netflix's movie recommendations by 10% based on personal preferences. Each contestant was given a set of data from which three million predictions were made about how certain users rated certain movies and Netflix compared that list with the actual ratings and generated a score for each team. More than 27,000 contestants from 161 countries submitted their entries and some got close, but not close enough. Today Netflix announced that it is awarding an annual progress prize of $50,000 to a group of researchers at AT&T Labs, who improved the current recommendation system by 8.43 percent but the $1 million grand prize is still up for grabs and a $50,000 progress prize will be awarded every year until the 10 percent goal is met. As part of the rules of the competition, the team was required to disclose their solution publicly. (pdf)"

Submission + - Ham Radio Operator Finds Cure For Cancer (latimes.com) 5

Submitted by

CirReal

on Tuesday November 13, 2007 @07:31PM

CirReal writes: "John Kanzius, K3TUP, himself suffering from cancer with nine months to live, used nanotechnology and a radio transmitter to kill cancer cells. "Kanzius did not have a medical background, not even a bachelor's degree, but he knew radios. He had built and fixed them since he was a child, collecting transmitters, transceivers, antennas and amplifiers, earning an amateur radio operator license. Kanzius knew how to send radio wave signals around the world. If he could transmit them into cancer cells, he wondered, could he then direct the radio waves to destroy tumors, while leaving healthy cells intact?" Reseachers "recently killed 100% of cancer cells grown in the livers of rabbits, using Kanzius' method.""

Submission + - SCO found guilty of lying about Unix code in Linux (linux-watch.com)

Submitted by

mlauzon

on Tuesday November 13, 2007 @02:22PM

mlauzon writes: "In the United States, SCO's Linux/Unix litigation has been stalled out while the company's bankruptcy trial is being dealt with. In Germany, however, several court cases have found SCO Group GmbH, SCO's Germany branch, guilty of lying about Linux containing stolen Unix code.

In the first case, reported on by Heise Online, the pro-Linux German companies, Tarent GmbH and Univention found that SCO was once more making claims that Linux contained Unix IP (intellectual property). Specifically, SCO GmbH made the familiar claims that "As we have progressed in our discovery related to this action, SCO has found compelling evidence that the Linux operating system contains unauthorized SCO UNIX intellectual property (IP)." This was followed by the usual threat "If a customer refuses to compensate SCO for its UNIX intellectual property found in Linux by purchasing a license, then SCO may consider litigation."

The German Linux companies had already successfully protested against these statements in 2003. Then they were granted an injunction against SCO from making its claims that Linux contains illegally obtained SCO IP, a.k.a. Unix source code. If SCO violated this injunction, SCO would have to pay a fine of 250,000 Euros.

Since Tarent and Univention brought the matter to the attention of the courts, SCO has taken down the offending page with its claims.

Of course, in the U.S. court system, it has already been ruled that SCO has no Unix IP. Novell, not SCO, owns Unix.

Tarent's managing director told Heise Online that he found "It disconcerting, though not surprising, to see SCO trying to do towards the end what it is really being paid for by its supporters: spreading falsities as disparaging as possible about Linux." Unlike 2003, where Linux companies had to nip things in the bud, exercising vigilance is due now where things are coming to an end: "Even though SCO has reached the end of the line in our opinion, one should not let them get away with this."

In a similar case, Andreas Kuckartz, a German Linux advocate, had been publicly stating since 2003 that "SCO IP Licenses for Linux" amounted to little more than "protection money pricelists" and that SCO is "spreading rumors about copyright violations in Linux." Further, Kuckartz claimed that "The SCO Group Inc. is probably is involved in crimes such as stock manipulation and filing a fraudulent complaint against IBM."

SCO took him to court over these claims and SCO has lost (German PDF document). The Higher Regional Court in Munich ruled, Kuckartz said in e-mails to Linux-Watch, "that my statements are allowed because none of the factual statements I made to support those accusations are false. I can now even go to a business partner of The SCO Group GmbH and tell him or her that SCO is probably involved in the named crimes."

Kuckartz claim that he believes is the most important one is that in the four years the case has dragged out, SCO never objected "to my statement that SCO has not presented any proof of copyright violations in the lawsuit SCO vs. IBM."

In the United States, however, SCO, even now, continues to drag out its unsubstantiated claims that IBM has stolen SCO's Unix IP. In the SCO bankruptcy hearing, SCO attorney Arthur Spector once more claims, "Our litigation is a tremendous asset" and "Our litigation with IBM could bring in hundreds of millions of dollars.""

Submission + - Book copies Wikipedia; Publisher aggressive on IP. (wikipedia.org) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 12, 2007 @06:41AM

An anonymous reader writes: Two pages of a book, Black Gold: The New Frontier in Oil for Investors, consist of a direct copy from the English Wikipedia article on the Khobar Towers Bombing. The book is published by John Wiley and Sons, the same publisher who, earlier this year, threatened a blogger with legal action over a clear case of fair use commentary.

Submission + - Are these the worst tech ads ever made?

Submitted by thingsinyoursocks on Sunday November 04, 2007 @05:24AM

thingsinyoursocks writes: The technology industry is guilty of some really terrible commercials and CNET has rounded up what it thinks are the worst of them in two installments, here's the first and here's the second. "The tech industry has a rich and hilarious history of being unable to promote itself as anything other than unutterably dorky. Originally we were going to call this 'The top ten worst tech ads', but as we hunted around we discovered these are pure gold. They are shockingly bad, but you'll derive so much pleasure from watching them it didn't seem right to use 'worst' anymore."

Journal Journal: Writing for Wikipedia has its Perks 1

Journal by pickens on Saturday November 03, 2007 @10:01AM

There are many tasks on Wikipedia. Some people fact check. Some people control vandalism. Some people correct spelling and punctuation. The activity that I most enjoy is doing the research to write in-depth articles for Wikipedia. I like to find a musician, an actor, a politician, or a scientist that I am interested in learning more about and write their biography from scratch. Last week my wife and I went to a concert by one

Submission + - Should Ubuntu Fans Root for the Boston Celtics? (networkworld.com)

Submitted by

LotTS

on Saturday November 03, 2007 @07:38AM

LotTS writes: "The Boston Celtics pro basketball team has adopted the African term "Ubuntu" as their rallying cry because it roughly translates to, "I am because we are." Although unrelated to the Linux distro (allegedly), should the Ubuntu community try to ride the coattails of the Celtics for free publicity, especially since they are a favorite to win the NBA championship this year?"

Submission + - Could a mega-OS vender become less relevant?

Submitted by NoOnesMessiah on Friday November 02, 2007 @01:47PM

NoOnesMessiah writes: It has finally happened in my little corner of Corporate America. I heard the words, "Mega$quish is irrelevant here. We're talking about Apache, PHP and MySQL," from senior management. And just the day before I heard, "...I don't care if you did just upgrade (to Awfulness 2007), you'll have to re-save them (all of those documents) so that the OpenOffice users can open them."

Do my ears deceive me? Is it possible that hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing fees, obfuscated formats, and a sociopathic desire to jerk with anyone who might develop something compatible/inter-operable might have finally caused a reasonably large company to push their chair back from the Mega-OS table? It's happening, little by little. It IS happening.

So how can I help? I'm an Open Source advocate and a FreeBSD disciple, but... where can I send middle managers for an "objective" view of alternative OS-es and applications that isn't sullied by my (in their eyes) tree-hugging, hippie, free-software-loving views?

Yeah yeah, sure, FSF and EFF. Those are the obvious ones. Check.
FreeBSD and Ubuntu, check.
I even have PortableApps.Com and Groklaw on the list.

But does there exist a links site for the non-technical (mildly-retarded/ADD) middle management crowd? I'm interested in rational, reasonable, and justifiable views. No sensationalism. No bashing. I want some long-term traction on this "brand new" concept. The message I'm trying to send out is, "Hey, these are easy to use too, and they can add value in this way. We're not replacing the old, we're just augmenting it with something new."

So what resources are out there? Has someone already built such a beastie? I don't want to re-invent the wheel, so to speak, but I'll do it if I need to.

Thanks for listening.

Submission + - Linux notebooks under $300

Submitted by

Aditi.Tuteja

on Friday November 02, 2007 @08:45AM

Aditi.Tuteja writes: "After introducing a $198 Linux desktop on Wednesday, PC vendor Everex said it will bring Linux laptops under $300 to users next year. These Linux laptops that will have 12.1-inch to 17-inch screens and would run on GOS version of OS, built with Ubuntu Linux 7.10. It will include icons providing one-click access to Web sites like Facebook and multiple Google Web applications."

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