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Communications

Submission + - Mot Finally Ships Linux Mobile Phones in the U.S.

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: At long last, Motorola has finally shipped its first Linux-based mobile phone 'bound for North America.' The RAZR2 V8, which quietly became available last month, is a highly multimedia-oriented quad-band GSM/GPRS phone, with features such as Windows Media Player 11 codec, a USB 2.0 interface supporting 480Mbps file transfers, and a 'music touchscreen' on the external display. The company is also going to supplying a development toolsuite aimed at encouraging the development of third-party native Linux apps. Motorola announced plans to adopt Linux more than four years ago, but has shipped Linux phones in volume only in Asia and Latin America, to date.
Slashback

Submission + - How eBay doesnt collapse. Scientific American

Submitted by David Greenspan
David Greenspan writes: Ever wonder why sellers on eBay aren't more dishonest? Scientific American did. In an article titled "Is Greed Good?" they discuses how it is possible for eBay to function since many scientists believe in the concept of "Homo economicus (economic man)" that a man is "a rational, selfish person who single-mindedly strives for maximum profit." According to that concept every seller should simply flee with the buyers' money yet this is clearly not the case, Scientific American discusses why. Scientific American
Movies

Submission + - NVIDIA Premieres "The Plush Life" (hothardware.com)

Submitted by
bigwophh
bigwophh writes: "To showcase the advanced rendering features of NVIDIA's Gelato GPU-accelerated rendering software, Timothy Heath and his team from the NVIDIA Digital Film Group put together a short film dubbed "The Plush Life" featuring Lundo and Flint, two plush characters with a penchant for joyriding in their 1969 Buick Electra. The Plush Life is the first release in a planned series of animated short films created with Gelato using some of its more advanced features like subsurface scattering, depth-of-shadows, and a new shader technology used to create the velvety appearance of the "Flint" character. HotHardware has more information regarding the short film and an array of impressive screenshots that are as good as any animated feature film released to date."
Books

Submission + - New Explanation for the Industrial Revolution (hughpickens.com)

Submitted by
Pcol
Pcol writes: "The New York Times is running a story on Dr. Gregory Clark's book "A Farewell to Alms" with a new explanation for the Industrial Revolution and the affluence it created. Dr. Clark, an economic historian at the University of California Davis, postulates that the surge in economic growth that occurred first in England around 1800 came about because of the strange new behaviors of nonviolence, literacy, long working hours and a willingness to save. Clark's research shows that between 1200 and 1800, the rich had more surviving children than the poor and that this caused constant downward social mobility as the poor failed to reproduce themselves and the progeny of the rich took over their occupations. "The modern population of the English is largely descended from the economic upper classes of the Middle Ages," Clark concludes. Work hours increased, literacy and numeracy rose, and the level of interpersonal violence dropped. Around 1790, a steady upward trend in production efficiency caused a significant acceleration in the rate of productivity growth that at last made possible England's escape from the Malthusian trap. Why did the Industrial Revolution first occur in England instead of the much larger populations of China or Japan. Clark has found data showing that their richer classes, the Samurai in Japan and the Qing dynasty in China, were surprisingly unfertile and failed to generate the downward social mobility that spread production-oriented values."
Security

Submission + - Administrators watch out: "Chaos" about to (heise-security.co.uk)

Submitted by
juct
juct writes: "The CCC summer camp is about to start and administrators are advised to check their web pages more often than usual to check whether geeks have wreaked havoc there. The number of web page manipulation incidents always increases during CCC events. During the 21st Chaos Communication Congress in 2004, about 18,000 web sites suffered intrusions, this year there are already three sites listed as being hacked before the event even started."
PC Games (Games)

Submission + - Too old to game? 1

Submitted by Jeek Elemental
Jeek Elemental writes: Ive been gaming for pretty much my whole life, starting on the venerable Vic-20. Other interests around computers have waxed and waned, though gaming has always had its hooks deeply embedded.
Lately, at 32 years old, I just cant seem to get into any games at all. Every one I try is a disappointment and quickly put away.
I should note I speak of straight-pc games, not them new-fangled Sousaphone-hero or what have you on the consoles. My all-time favorites would have to be UT2k4 and Neverwinter Nights, both online.

Am I just gamed-out? Are new games crap? Should I let Wii woo mee? When did you stop gaming and if you didnt what do you play?
Movies

Submission + - Tom Cruise to appear in the next Star Trek film? (ign.com) 1

Submitted by
RyGuy
RyGuy writes: "IGN has learned from a trusted source that director J.J. Abrams would like to have an A-list star cameo in his forthcoming big-screen reboot of Star Trek. According to our source — whose scoops have always panned out in the past — Abrams is wooing [...] Tom Cruise to cameo in Star Trek ... as Captain Christopher Pike!

Trekkers know that Pike was James T. Kirk's predecessor as captain of the U.S.S. Enterprise and Mr. Spock's first commanding officer. Pike was the captain in the original and unaired TV pilot, "The Cage," where he was portrayed by the late Jeffrey Hunter."
Operating Systems

Submission + - Majority of businesses will not move to Vista

Submitted by oDDmON oUT
oDDmON oUT writes: An article appearing today in Computerworld quotes polling results from a PatchLink Corp. survey, saying that the majority of it's enterprise customers feel there are no compelling security enhancements in Windows Vista, that they have no plans to migrate to it in the near term and that many will "...either stick with the Windows they have, or turn to Linux or Mac OS X".

A majority, 87%, said "they would stay with their existing version(s) of Windows".

This comes on the heels of a disenting view of Vista's track record in the area of security at the six month mark, which sparked discussion on numerous forums.
Space

Submission + - Satellite Shootdown Simulation (hamptonroads.com)

Submitted by dprovine
dprovine writes: A professor at Old Dominion University using the commercial satellite tracking program Orbitron worked out a simulated trajectory for shooting down a satellite with a medium-range ballistic missile. It's wouldn't be easy or cheap for a terrorist cell to actually do it, but this suggests it wouldn't actually be very hard for a government to do it.
Linux Business

Submission + - Data partition as Linux PC value add?

Submitted by
g8orade
g8orade writes: "As the
  • Open Document Format forces compete with Microsoft OOXML,
  • Applications via the internet become possible (terminal applications),
  • PC makers start offering Linux pre-loaded but the "distro wars" continue, and
  • some writers think package management is a true Linux differentiator,
wouldn't it be a good idea for the Linux PCs to come set up with a data partition separated from the OS / Applications partition? Alternately even a separate (portable) data drive / data port for your files?

It wouldn't hurt for consumers to get used to the idea of their files being separate from the programs that use them. This would also allow them to put any OS and applications on that partition over any timeframe, but leave their files alone.

Why don't PC makers do this by default, does MS not want it? Because, wouldn't this advance the cause of open document formats?"
Businesses

Submission + - Adblock plus users "accused" of stealing (mozilla.org) 1

Submitted by
derrida
derrida writes: "There is this Firefox Add-on called Adblock plus that promises (and delivers) removal of "all those ads and banners on the internet that often take longer to download than everything else on the page". And there is also an ongoing debate whether this is stealing or not. Quoting two different views:
"Do you have a devise that automatically blocks all commercials on television.[?] There's a difference between ignoring commercials and blocking them." and
"My a** it is [stealing]! If your going to argue I'm taking something from you by not waiting for your ads to load, I'm going to argue you are "stealing" bandwidth.".
Going one step further some web developers released scripts that blocks Adblock (watch the oxynoron!).
How is really slashdot going to react if Adblock plus is heavily used by its readers?"
Republicans

Submission + - USA 63billion arms deal to stablise middle east

Submitted by mr_musan
mr_musan writes: a few sources are reporting on this, it seems Condoleezza Rice wants to send guns to make peace and increase the "balance" of power in the middle east, some of the benefactors might surprise you.
Israel — $30bn
Egypt — $13bn
Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman and UAE — to share $20bn

read all about it on bbc http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6923430.stm or voanews http://voanews.com/english/2007-07-31-voa5.cfm

whats that old hippy saying "fucking for virginity" ?

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