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Submission + - A Quiet Sun (journalofcosmology.com)

Submitted by guigue
guigue writes: Although NASA revealed this week a spectacular movie of a Solar Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) that produced intense geomagnetic activity on Earth, including aurorae, some scientists believe that the Sun entered a long Quiet phase that will last at least 100 years. Similar long calm periods are known in the past history of the Sun, and are called "Grand Minima". It is expected that during the maximum of the current solar cycle, late in 2013, the Sunspot Number will be no greater than 55, a value less than one third smaller than the one registered during the previous solar maximum in 2001, and the smallest during the last century.
Politics

Submission + - Weblogger questioned by police for retweeting (webwereld.nl)

Submitted by Halueth
Halueth writes: Dutch weblogger Bert Brussen is suspect in a case where he used a screenshot of a tweet done by a radical muslim leader. That muslim leader sent out a death threat to Geert Wilders and Bert Brussen linked to that tweet in order to let the world see what is going on (Dutch article here: http://www.bbrussen.nl/2010/03/03/wilders-met-de-dood-bedregen-doe-je-zo/. Now the Dutch justice department is not only considering that muslim leader a suspect, but also the weblogger linking to it. Police will question him later this month.
Microsoft

Submission + - RMS: Apple Is More Evil And Restrictive Than MS (blogspot.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Florian Mueller of FOSS Patents translated a quote from an interview Richard Stallman (RMS) recently gave to Spanish newspaper El Mundo: "Apple is more evil and much more restrictive than Microsoft because it even limits our right to run applications." That says something, considering that RMS said in the same interview that Microsoft should not exist either. Florian's article explains why he believes Microsoft's use of patents isn't a threat to open source projects and companies. So far at least.
The Military

Submission + - This It How It Feels to Be Under a Nuclear Attack (gizmodo.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: "We're used to see atomic bombs images. From afar, they even look beautiful. But when one explodes near you, that immaculate light will burn your skin and make you bleed spontaneously. 65 years ago today, this is how that horrible flash felt." These are some truly amazing testimonies from the kids and adults who survived the Hiroshima attack.
Movies

Submission + - Films that were rumoured to be ghost-directed (denofgeek.com)

Submitted by brumgrunt
brumgrunt writes: Just because a director gets credit on a film, that doesn't necessarily mean they did the work. For in Hollywood, ghost directors are at work, it seems, and Den of Geek has picked up on ten examples of where that may have been the case... http://denofgeek.com/movies/469105/10_films_that_were_rumoured_to_be_ghostdirected.html
Apple

Submission + - Apple to buy ARM? (thisislondon.co.uk)

Submitted by gyrogeerloose
gyrogeerloose writes: An article in the London Evening Standard claims that Apple has made an $8 billion offer to acquire ARM Holdings. For those few Slashdotters who don't already know, ARM makes the processor chips that power Apple's iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch. However, ARM processors are also used by other manufacturers, including Palm and, perhaps most significantly, companies building Android phones. This explains why Apple might be willing to spend so much on the deal--almost 20% of it's cash reserves. Being able to control who gets to use the processors (and, more importantly, who doesn't) would give Apple a huge advantage over it's competitors.

Submission + - Escapist Website Mass Bans Adblock Users

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Website TechDirt writes that Escapist website recently decided it would be a good idea to ban users from their forums simply for mentioning Adblock. The thread in question started after a user complained that an add for Time Warner Cable was slowing down his computer. Apparently, users who responded to the poster by suggesting the user "get Firefox and AdBlock" found themselves banned from the forums. Users didn't even need to admit they even used AdBlock to get banned — they simply had to recommend it as a solution to a seemingly-annoying ad. Looking at the forums recently amended posting guidelines does confirm that the folks at the Escapist believe that giving browsing preference advice is a "non forgiveable" offence.

Submission + - EFF Assails YouTube for Removing 'Hitler Finds Out (slyck.com)

Submitted by Locke2005
Locke2005 writes: In what promises to be one of the quickest threads to become Godwinned, YouTube has pulled scores of parodies of the "Hitler Finds Out" scene from the movie Downfall. Ironically, I had never heard of this movie before this — and now I want to watch it.

Submission + - Transitioning to the new GRUB2 boot loader

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The tools used to boot Linux are changing. Specifically, the Grand Unified Bootloader (GRUB) is now officially in maintenance mode only, and GRUB's developers have abandoned the original GRUB in favor of an entirely rewritten package, known as GRUB 2. Discover GRUB 2's new capabilities and how to use it.
Data Storage

Submission + - Tape, Fibre Channel and Technology Innovation (enterprisestorageforum.com)

Submitted by storagedude
storagedude writes: In this meditation on why technology gets developed, the author notes that sometimes a lack of innovation can be the biggest driver of technological change, citing the case of how the slow evolution of Ethernet killed tape storage and gave rise to Fibre Channel — and how the rise of 10Gb Ethernet may finally kill Fibre Channel.

From the article:

"If 10 GbE was available at reasonable prices in 2005, we might not have seen the significant investment in dedupe hardware and software because streaming tape would have worked just fine. But the development of dedupe had another consequence: By lowering the cost of disk so it approached that of tape, it has relegated tape more and more to a deep archiving role, and that may come with its own unforeseen consequences. If tape sales continue to drop, what happens to the backup market segment that still needs tape, and what happens to the huge archiving market that requires tape — and where most, if not all, of the data cannot be deduped? And don't think of this as a small business problem — some of the biggest organizations on the planet are heavy tape users for archiving."

"Technology markets can be driven as much by a lack of innovation as they can by innovation (1 Gb Ethernet lasted far too long, opening the door for disk backup and dedupe). The commoditization of technology is another enduring trend contributing to the tenuous state of some technologies. What this means to you depends on your window for technology planning. I didn't see all the changes coming as a result of 1 Gb Ethernet overstaying its welcome, but I did recognize Fibre Channel's limitations when it failed to get placed on the motherboard despite the big "Fibre-On" push in the early 2000s. Once that happened, it was clear that Fibre Channel would someday be relegated to the back burner; the only surprise was how long it took the Ethernet folks to make that happen.

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