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Seventh Harry Potter Book Named 449

Posted by CowboyNeal from the and-the-last dept.
Croakyvoice writes "JK Rowling has today given fans of the Harry Potter books the name of Book 7 of the very popular series via a Christmas present on her site, to get to the name you need to follow a complicated procedure but thankfully the name of the book has been revealed as Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows."
Red Hat Software

Submission + - Red Hat Sales Surge

Submitted by
head_dunce
head_dunce writes: "Red Hat reported on it's third quarter earnings, and it did quite a bit better than expected even with the Oracle and SuSE/Microsoft new kids on the block.

From the conference call:
CFO Charlie Peters said that the company is "cautiously optimistic that competitive efforts by some of the largest technology companies in the world are actually expanding our opportunity."

Trip Chowdhry, managing director Global Equities Research, said Oracle has misread the market for open source software. "Oracle thinks Linux support is a cost issue; it isn't. It's a business issue."
So it looks like all these companies trying to be like Red Hat has only validated Linux in big business. And all it takes is one tech support call to Microsoft to understand the value of support. Congrats to Red Hat!"
Linux Business

Submission + - Samba creator quits Novell, picked up by google

Submitted by bl8n8r
bl8n8r writes: As many of you will guess, this is due to the Microsoft/Novell patent agreement, which I believe is a mistake and will be damaging to Novell's success in the future. But my main issue with this deal is I believe that even if it does not violate the letter of the licence it violates the intent of the GPL licence the Samba code is released under, which is to treat all recipients of the code equally.

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=200612210 81000710
Television

Submission + - Rosie ODonnell defends herself with Wikipedia

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Rosie O'Donnell cites Donald Trump wikipedia entry on her website as defense for her statements about Donald Trump. O'Donnell goes on to claim her affinity towards wikipedia "loving the wiki, i use it, do u." The question is: will her citation of wikipedia help her case or hurt it?
PHP

Submission + - Generate Flash movies on the fly with PHP

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Rich Internet Applications is the new buzz-phrase for Web 2.0, and a key component of the substance behind Web 2.0 is Adobe Flash. Learn how to integrate Flash movies into your application and generate Flash movies dynamically using the Ming library. It's worth understanding Flash and what it can do to extend the reach and interactivity of a Web 2.0 PHP application.
Security

Submission + - Mozilla Firefox Multiple Vulnerabilities

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Whitedust are reporting on Multiple vulnerabilities in Mozilla Firefox, "which can be exploited by malicious people to gain knowledge of certain information, conduct cross-site scripting attacks, and potentially compromise a user's system." including "1)Various errors in the layout engine and JavaScript engine can be exploited to cause memory corruption and some may potentially allow execution of arbitrary code. 2) An error when reducing the CPU's floating point precision, which may happen on Windows when loading a plugin creating a Direct3D device, may cause the "js_dtoa()" function to not exit and instead cause a memory corruption." Bad day for Mozilla?
Handhelds

Submission + - Why Palm still covets Palm OS

Submitted by munchola
munchola writes: In an unsurprising but symbolically important move, handheld and smartphone maker Palm this month signed a perpetual license with Access Systems Americas, which gives Palm the right to use Access' Palm OS operating system in whole or in part in any Palm device forever more. It sounds like a no-brainer, but according to CBRonline the context is interesting, in particular what it means for the army of Palm OS developers out there. Believe it or not there are at least 160,000 Palm OS developers — and they're just the ones that Palm knows about.
Google

Google Deprecates SOAP API 240

Posted by kdawson from the washed-up dept.
Michi writes "Brady Forrest at O'Reilly Radar reports that Google has deprecated their SOAP API; they aren't giving out any new SOAP Search API keys. Nelson Minar (the original author of the Google SOAP API) argues that this move is motivated by business reasons rather than technical ones. Does this mark the beginning of the end for SOAP or for ubiquitous middleware in general?" Forrest's post quotes developer Paul Bausch: "This is such a bad move because the Google API was the canonical example of how web services work. Not only is Google Hacks based on this API, but hundreds of other books and online examples use the Google API to show how to incorporate content from another site into a 3rd party application."

Online Store to Sue Blogger Over Google Ranking? 365

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the all-this-effort-could-have-gone-to-fixing-his-site dept.
An anonymous reader writes "An online business owner is threatening to sue blog owner Dean Hunt (DeanHunt.com) because he is upset that the blog owner is doing better than his business in the Google search rankings. After an initial threat, Dean received a follow-up threatening to take legal action against him. So far Dean has elected not to name and shame this business owner."
Software

Geographical Mapping of Website Traffic? 20

Posted by Cliff from the where-do-your-hits-come-from? dept.
inputsprocket asks: "Having gotten into a project that involves doing some geo-statistic data mining analysis on Apache log files, I couldn't believe how there seems to be such a large chasm, in open source's vast library, for such a powerful analytical tool. Unless I'm wrong, then there is no such open source project available for *nix variants. There appears to be a great deal of brand software (heh — only for Windows off-site analysis though), yet there is are great open source tools for generic mapping tools (GMTs). The available GMTs seem to be overkill for mapping of weblogs and require a lot of in-house programming to map IP addresses to cartographic data using free geo-location databases. The closest I found was Palentir. Does one really have to rely on the powerful needs of Map Server, MapTools, Carto Web, or Map Builder to draw simple maps with statistics on web usage, given the extra programming needs required to do this?

FBI File of Lie Detector's Creator 181

Posted by kdawson from the lasso-of-truth dept.
George Maschke writes, "It appears that the FBI considered William Moulton Marston (1893-1947), who invented the lie detector and created the comic book character Wonder Woman under the pseudonym Charles Moulton, to be a 'phony' and a 'crackpot.' He is alleged to have misrepresented the result of a study he conducted for the Gillette razor company in 1938, for which he reportedly received some $30,000, a handsome sum in those days. Despite these misgivings, the FBI today uses Marston's creation (the polygraph, not the Lasso of Truth) to guide investigations as well as to screen applicants and employees. You can download Marston's FBI file here (736 KB PDF)."

Fastest Waves Ever Photographed 167

Posted by kdawson from the wakefield-at-.9997-C dept.
starfoot writes, "Pictures of the fastest waves ever photographed, traveling at 99.997% of the speed of light, were presented today at the APS Division of Plasma Physics meeting in Philadelphia. The waves were formed in the wake of an intense laser pulse passing through a plasma of electrons and ionized atoms. The waves create enormous electric fields (over 100 billion electron volts/meter), which can be used to rapidly accelerate charged particles to high energies in the span of a few meters. The pictures will help scientists better understand wakefield interactions — an important factor in their quest to replace machines that accelerate particles over the course of miles with compact, tabletop versions. High energy particle accelerators are vital for cutting edge physics and many types of medical therapy, and miniaturizing them would be a boon for both basic physics research and medicine."

GPS Phone Tells Others Where You Are 161

Posted by kdawson from the twig-me dept.
An anonymous reader writes, "According to CNet, a company called Benefon has launched a cell phone with a built in GPS receiver — nothing new there. However, this particular GPS cell phone, called the Twig, does something extra. It can send your GPS coordinates to another Twig owner and then that person can navigate directly to you using the preloaded navigation software. Sounds like this could save a lot of time and effort when trying to explain to the in-laws where your new apartment is." The article says that the phone will cost £330 in the UK, or about $625.

How Many Windows? 327

Posted by Cliff from the can-you-multitask-better-than-your-OS dept.
youthoftoday asks: "As part of a recent piece of coursework (I'm a student) I talked to a number of people about how many windows they typically have open at any one time. I received a startling range of responses, and that got me thinking about what people consider a 'normal' working environment in terms of the number of windows they have open and what they like to get done. I usually have about 25 windows open and about 15 tabs in my browser (over two monitors) as a standard working environment in Mac OS X. I usually keep a set of windows in position for about 5 days between restarts. Others prefer to close windows for applications they're not using right at this minute. And we all know people who are scared to have more than one window open. So, how do Slashdot readers use their OSes?"

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The computer is to the information industry roughly what the central power station is to the electrical industry. -- Peter Drucker

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