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Submission + - Damian Conway On Perl 6 And The Philosophy Of Programming

Submitted by M-Saunders
M-Saunders writes: Perl 6 has been in development since 2000. So why, 14 years later, hasn't it been released yet? Linux Voice caught up with Damian Conway, one of the architects of Perl 6, to find out what's happening. "Perl 6 has all of the same features [as Perl 5] but with the rough edges knocked off of them", he says. Conway also talks about the UK's Year of Code project, and how to get more people interested in programming.

Submission + - Is Microsoft modding slashdot submissions?

Submitted by XB-70
XB-70 writes: I put what I thought was a witty comment on a Microsoft article and got modded troll.

I don't mind it — but it leaves me to wonder: Are Microsoft employees modding down non-supportive comments? What do Slashdot readers think?

Submission + - New Class of Stars Are Totally Metal, Says Astrophysicist (medium.com)

Submitted by KentuckyFC
KentuckyFC writes: Stars form when clouds of gas and dust collapse under their own gravity, generating enough heat and pressure to fuse the atoms inside them together. When this cloud of dust and gas is the remnants of a supernova, it can contain all kinds of heavy elements in addition to primordial hydrogen, helium and lithium. Now one astrophysicist has calculated that a recently discovered phenomenon of turbulence, called preferential concentration, can profoundly alter star formation. He points out that turbulence is essentially vortices rotating on many scales of time and space. On certain scales, the inertial forces these eddies create can push heavy particles into the calmer space between the vortices, thereby increasing their concentration. In giant clouds of interstellar gas, this concentrates heavy elements, increasing their gravitational field, attracting more mass and so on. The result is the formation of a star that is made entirely of heavy elements rather than primordial ones. Astrophysicists call the amount of heavy elements in a star its "metallicity". Including preferential concentration in the standard model of star formation leads to the prediction that 1 in 10,000 stars should be totally metal. Now the race is on to find the first of this new class of entirely metal stars.

Submission + - Poor ethics could poison the big data well for everyone (citeworld.com)

Submitted by Copy that 2
Copy that 2 writes: It's a cliché to say that with great power comes great responsibility, but it's true and the same applies to great opportunity. Big data is the next big opportunity, but if companies are going to get the most out of it, they need to be open, transparent, responsible and ethical.

Submission + - WebODF: An ODF text editor in pure client-side JavaScript (themukt.com)

Submitted by oever
oever writes: TheMukt chides Google for not supporting OpenDocument Format well and claims that the newly released WebODF 0.5.0 in combination with ownCloud is the answer to this deficiency.

A WebODF developer blog highlights all the goodies in the first WebODF release where the text editor is considered stable and made available as an easy to use component. These include extensive benchmarking, unit testing, and advanced HTML5 techniques to give the editor a native feel.

Submission + - Norway scraps online voting (bbc.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The BBC writes that Norway will no longer experiment with online voting.

Submission + - The Next Big Thing in FOSS, according to the author of Linux Cookbook (linux.com)

Submitted by trogdoro
trogdoro writes: Command-line lovers, allow me to introduce you to Xiki, the incredibly interactive, flexible, and revolutionary command shell. I do not use the word "revolutionary" lightly. The command shell has not advanced all that much since the ancient days of Unix. Xiki is a giant leap forward. If you're looking for the Next Big Thing in FOSS, Xiki is it.

Submission + - Korean government switches to open source by 2020 (etnews.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: As the support for the Microsoft (MS) Windows XP service is terminated this year, the government will try and invigorate open source software in order to solve the problem of dependency on certain software. By 2020 when the support of the Windows 7 service is terminated, it is planning to switch to open OS and minimize damages. Industry insiders pointed out that the standard e-document format must be established and shared as an open source before open source software is invigorated.

Submission + - Germany Scores First: Ends Verizon Contract Over NSA Concerns (phys.org)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: The German government is canceling a contract with Verizon over fears the company could be letting U.S. intelligence agencies eavesdrop on official communications. The Interior Ministry says it will let its current contract for Internet services with the New York-based company expire in 2015. The announcement comes after reports this week that Verizon and British company Colt provide Internet services to the German parliament and other official entities.

Germany has been at the forefront of international outrage over alleged electronic eavesdropping by the U.S. National Security Agency and Britain's GCHQ, revealed last year by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

Ministry spokesman Tobias Plate said Thursday that Germany wants to ensure it has full control over highly sensitive government communications networks. Verizon didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

Submission + - Open-Source NVIDIA Driver Steps Up Its Game & Runs Much Faster (phoronix.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: With the Linux 3.16 kernel the Nouveau driver now supports re-clocking for letting the NVIDIA GPU cores and video memory on this reverse-engineered NVIDIA driver run at their designed frequencies. Up to now the Nouveau driver has been handicapped to running at whatever (generally low) clock frequencies the video BIOS programmed the hardware to at boot time, but with Linux 3.16 is experimental support for up-clocking to the hardware-rated speeds. The results show the open-source NVIDIA driver running multiple times faster, but it doesn't work for all NVIDIA hardware, causes lock-ups for some GPUs at some frequencies, and isn't yet dynamically controlled. However, it appears to be the biggest break-through in years for this open-source NVIDIA driver that up to now has been too slow for most Linux games.

Submission + - Why I Built OwnCloud on Open Source (linux.com)

Submitted by LibbyMC
LibbyMC writes: ownCloud Founder Frank Karlitschek explains why he built the file storage service as open source software.

"I believe that file storage is not just another web service or IT infrastructure. This is where people and companies store and manage their most important data. Because of that it is essential to have it as secure and safe as possible. With proprietary software you can never be sure if there are any back doors or other security problems with the software. Open source is the only option for file storage that is really safe and secure."

Submission + - Red Hat Assistant General Counsel Analyses Super Court's Patent Ruling (opensource.com)

Submitted by ectoman
ectoman writes: Yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a groundbreaking decision concerning software patents, claiming that abstract ideas are not by themselves patentable. The ruling was a cause for celebration among those opposed to software patent abuse, like Red Hat's Vice President and Assistant General Counsel, Rob Tiller. Today, Tiller analyzes and offers some context for the Court's ruling, which "uses the traditional common law methodology of comparing one case to previous similar cases and harmonizing with those most similar."

Submission + - Microsoft outed for attempting to hire shills (brightsideofnews.com) 1

Submitted by kelemvor4
kelemvor4 writes: On sites like Slashdot that large corporations such as Microsoft pay shills to post on their behalf. Here we have someone who Microsoft would have liked as a shill outing them for the practice. A Twitter employee named Paul Stamatiou outed the scheme in a tweet. Michael Arrington of TechCrunch fame also outed them for the same activity. However he went so far as to post a screenshot with the proof.

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