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Linux Business

Submission + - "We're Linux" Finalists announced (ostatic.com)

Submitted by ruphus13
ruphus13 writes: In an effort to drive more awareness to Linux, the Linux Foundation announced the "We're Linux" contest. Over 90 entries were received, and the finalists are now out. From the article, "The contest was spawned from the idea that other software companies were paying millions of dollars to celebrities for endorsements, while Linux was promoted and shared by enthusiastic, passionate, actual users. Contestants were given a simple directive: tell the Linux Foundation what Linux is for you, why you use it, and why you'd encourage others to do the same. Humor and professional production quality weren't required — it just had to be genuine." Details on the finalists can be found on the Linux Foundation Video site here.
Idle

Submission + - UK Home Office Site Links to Porn 1

Submitted by Azaril
Azaril writes: The British home office had an embarrassing incident this morning, when it was discovered that a link to the new legistlation on data retention actually linked to a Japanese porn site. Apparently, the home office forgot to renew the domain name, and didn't change the link when it was bought by a japanese company. This of course comes after the news that the home secretary claimed pornographic films on her expense account.
Microsoft

Submission + - Cloud control: the ways Microsoft is battling (networkworld.com)

Submitted by
Julie188
Julie188 writes: "Microsoft has announced its next iteration of .NET Services, which in which it promises that .Net in the cloud will be interoperable with other cloud services written in any other language. Live Framework, and its underlying sync services, could be one of the most interesting aspects of the Azure platform. It's unique and no one else is seriously tackling that part of the problem. These are just a few of the ways Microsoft will do battle with the so-called Cloud Manifesto club (Sun, IBM, Red Hat, Amazon and Google), says blogger Mitchell Ashley."
Software

Submission + - Design software giants target the unemployed

Submitted by
avishere
avishere writes: "People may be losing their jobs, but for savvy/vulture-like execs, the economic meltdown is the perfect time to get their software into the hands of who can't afford their multi-thousand-dollar price tags. Software giants Autodesk and SolidWorks have each latched onto the worst-economic-disaster-since-the-Great-Depression meme and released free versions of their flagship computer-aided-design brands before their potential users are forced to sell their laptops on Craigslist. "In these uncertain economic times," Autodesk coos sympathetically, it will give away temporary licenses of AutoCAD and others ($5,000+) to those unemployed in the fields of architecture, engineering and design. (They are also developing a Mac version, two decades too late.) SolidWorks was quick to respond with its subtly titled Engineering Stimulus Package. So if anyone out there has their weekdays free, jumpstart your hardware and design projects for cheap. Legally, too."
Government

Submission + - All your dollars are belong to us!

Submitted by blastard
blastard writes: The U.S. Treasury website is currently unreachable, requiring all visitors to login in with username and password. No word on when the U.S. Department of Treasury will stop being super secret.
Links

Submission + - Nine words from Science which originated in SciFi (oup.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: This is a blog post on Oxford University Press USA, listing nine words used in science and technology which were actually dreamed up by fiction writers. Perhaps Slashdot readers can come up with a few more?
Education

Submission + - Human Eyes Speak Volumes to Birds (scienceblogs.com)

Submitted by
GrrlScientist
GrrlScientist writes: "Those of you who go birding will know what I am talking about when I say that birds are so capable of reading human body language that they know when we are looking at them, which frequently causes them to hide from our gaze. However, this capacity has never before been scientifically studied in birds, until now, that is. A newly published paper has found that Eurasian jackdaws, a member of the crow family, are so socially sophisticated that they are better at interpreting human eye gaze and body language than are dogs or even our closest relatives, chimpanzees."
Space

Submission + - View From Inside a Black Hole Calculated (technologyreview.com) 1

Submitted by
KentuckyFC
KentuckyFC writes: "Physicists have calculated what the universe would look like from inside a black hole. Contrary to popular belief, an individual falling into a black hole would not be engulfed in darkness. Instead, the view in the horizontal plane would become highly blue-shifted, but all directions other than horizontal would appear highly redshifted. The exercise is important, they say, because it allows them to study how the laws of physics might break down in the extreme conditions inside a black hole. For example, the principle of locality would be severely tested inside a black hole. One of the foundations of relativity, this is the idea that a point in space can only be influenced by its immediate surroundings. But when space is infinitely stretched, as physicists think it is at the heart of a black hole, the concept of "immediate surroundings" doesn't make sense and the concept of locality begins to lose its meaning too. To illustrate these ideas, the team has produced a set of impressive videos showing what it would look like when were you unlucky enough to fall into a black hole."
Idle

Submission + - Did You See That Woman...Wait...She's A Robot! (singularityhub.com) 4

Submitted by
Singularity Hub
Singularity Hub writes: "Check out the HRP-4C robot, one of the first humanoid robots to boldly sidestep the typical transformer look, instead posing as an attractive manga style woman. Is anyone else having flashbacks of the movie Blade Runner where robots are indistinguishable from humans? The HRP-4c robot is slated to strut down the catwalk March 23 (tomorrow) as a model in a Tokyo fashion show."

GCC 4.2.1 Released 449

Posted by Zonk from the licensing-with-drama dept.
larry bagina writes "GCC 4.2.1 was released 4 days ago. Although this minor update would otherwise be insignificant, it will be the final GPL v2 release; all future releases will be GPL v3. Some key contributors are grumbling over this change and have privately discussed a fork to stay as GPL v2. The last time GCC forked (EGCS), the FSF conceded defeat. How will the FSF/GNU handle the GPL 3 revolt?"

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