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GNU is Not Unix

Submission + - emacs 23 has been released (blogspot.com)

Submitted by djcb
djcb writes: After only 2 years since the previous version, now emacs 23 (.1) is available. It brings many new features, of which the support for anti-aliased fonts on X may be the most visible. Also, there is support for starting emacs in the background, so you can pop up new emacs windows in the blink of an eye. There are many other bigger and smaller improvements, including support for D-Bus, Xembed, and viewing PDFs inside emacs. And not to forget, M-x butterfly. You can get emacs 23 from ftp.gnu.org/gnu/emacs/ or one of its mirrors; alternatively, there are binary packages available, for example from Ubuntu PPA.
Mozilla

Submission + - HSBC drops Firefox & Safari support (ebrahim.org)

Submitted by
aliebrah
aliebrah writes: "HSBC appears to have dropped support for non-IE browsers for their Verified by Visa service. The official line taken by HSBC is that their entire online platform is "built for Internet Explorer". Other browsers such as Firefox and Safari are unsupported. When asked what Mac users should do, the reply: "use Internet Explorer". How many customers is HSBC going to alienate by this move? By many metrics, Internet Explorer's market share is now below 80% worldwide. That leaves a gaping hole for the remaining 20%+ users who aren't on IE but want to shop online."
Debian

Submission + - * Debian decides to adopt time-based release (debian.org)

Submitted by
zsau
zsau writes: "Debian, well known amongst GNU/Linux distributions as having a long and inconsistent release cycle, has just decided to adopt a two-yearly freeze cycle in the December of every odd year. Although this doesn't mean releases happen every two years or that software will be more up-to-date, it could allow some form of co-ordination with software releasers and other distributions, in addition to improving the release and upgrade process for the Debian Project and their users."
Enlightenment

Submission + - 'Battlestar Galactica' Leads to UN Charter Change (myspace.com)

Submitted by
Jim Hutto
Jim Hutto writes: "Olmos: 'Battlestar Galactica' Prompts United Nations To Change Charter.

http://www.airlockalpha.com/node/6569

"Battlestar Galactica" has been influential in the lives of millions of fans, but probably never like this.

Becoming the first television show ever invited to speak at the United Nations last March would be enough for some people. But not series star Edward James Olmos. Instead, he was out to change the very core of the United Nations itself. And he succeeded.

"The United Nations changed their charter three weeks ago after 'Battlestar' went and spoke at the UN," Olmos told G4's "Attack of the Show." "They changed the entire understanding of their charter that was written in 1947 so that they would never use the word 'race' as a cultural determinate again. There is only one race, and that is the human race."

The news of the charter change has not been made public until that announcement, Olmos said. A search for press releases over the past seven months on the United Nations Web site produced no results for "race" and "charter," and there are no other reports that such a change has been made.

"Nobody knows that the charter has been changed," Olmos said. "It's one of the hardest things that happened to me, and it would've never happened but if it weren't for 'Battlestar.' Did they invite 'The Sopranos?' Did they invite 'The West Wing?'

"'Battlestar and its writers decided to take on what was happening now. The reconciliation between the Cylon and the human being. How did that happen? How could it happen? If the Palestinian and the Jew could only see 'Battlestar,' they would understand how to reconcile."

Olmos did not explain how he was allowed to be the first to break the news, and why it seems that nothing about the charter change was made available through the United Nations. In fact, the charter that is still published on the UN's official site still uses the word "race" as part of its cultural determinant, so it's unclear why such changes have not been reflected in official documents.

The charter was not signed in 1947, but rather on June 26, 1945, and was put into full force in October of that year. Among its purposes listed for the United Nations in Article I, it continues to state that "to achieve international co-operation in solving international problems of an economic, social, cultural, or humanitarian character, and in promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction to race, sex, language, or religion."

The power to amend or modify the charter is listed in Chapter XVIII has to take place after approval by a two-thirds vote of the members of the General Assembly as well as by a vote of nine members of the Security Council. Any alterations would have to be ratified by two-thirds of the members, including all the permanent members of the Security Council.

It is not clear if such a move was made, and if so, how such a massive undertaking was not previously reported in the media.

An attempt late Monday to reach the United Nations by e-mail is pending return, as is a message to G4 asking if they had verified the statement made by Olmos during the interview."
Businesses

Submission + - Everything Linux shopfront to open in Australia

Submitted by sewalg
sewalg writes: CRN reports that Babel Com has picked up the remnants of Everything Linux and plans to open a shopfront in Sydney, Australia.

From the article:

"We've picked up the remnants of the business and have turned it into an outlet for Linux. This includes notebooks (with Linux preinstalled), netbooks, hardware, books, certifications, CDs/DVDs on Linux, but also looking at Red Hat."
Transportation

Submission + - @sshole Drivers Reduce Traffic Jams (physicscentral.com) 3

Submitted by
BuzzSkyline
BuzzSkyline writes: "Traffic jams are minimized if a significant fraction of drivers break the rules by doing things like passing on the wrong side or changing lanes too close to an intersection. The insight comes from a cellular automata study published this month in the journal Physical Review E. In effect, people who disregard the rules help to break up the groups that form as rule-followers clump together. The risk of jamming is lower if all people obey the rules than if they all disobey them, according to the analysis, but jamming risk is lowest when about 40 percent of people drive like jerks."
Announcements

Submission + - Sun's JRuby developers move to Engine Yard (computerworld.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The three core JRuby developers (Thomas Enebo, Nick Sieger, and Charles Nutter) quit Sun as the Oracle aquisition approaches. All 3 will join Engine Yard.
The Internet

Submission + - Average UK Broadband ISP Speeds Increase to 4.1Mb (ispreview.co.uk)

Submitted by
MJackson
MJackson writes: "The UK's telecommunications and media regulator, Ofcom, has revealed that the average UK broadband speed in April 2009 was just 4.1Mbps, which is up from 3.6Mbps reported during January of this year. More than 60 million separate service performance tests were carried out in over 1600 homes between November 2008 and April 2009 to reach the results, which also revealed that the average 'up to' headline (advertised) connection speed stood at 7.1Mbps. The majority of consumers were happy with the speeds they received, yet 26% expressed frustration that the broadband performance was not what they expected. This is hardly surprising given the big gap between real-world performance and the advertised rate."
Quickies

Submission + - New From Coca-Cola ... Fizzy Milk? (foxnews.com) 3

Submitted by suraj.sun
suraj.sun writes: Cows may not think it is the real thing, but Coca-Cola is preparing to launch fizzy milk on the world.

The drink contains skim milk mixed with sparkling water, flavored with fruit and sweetened with cane sugar.

Scientists have developed the drink at the firm's laboratories in Atlanta, Georgia, ensuring it will not curdle in its 8 oz. aluminium bottle.

Going under the name Vio, Coca-Cola has begun test-marketing the carbonated drink at natural food stores and delis in New York. It sells for about $2.50 a bottle, no chilling required. One of Coke's copywriters claims it tastes "like a birthday party for a polar bear."

It comes in four "natural" flavors — peach mango, berry, citrus and tropical colada — and could even be marketed as a healthy nutritional drink. But it has 26 grams of sugar a bottle, on a par with other non-diet Coca-Cola products, and 1.5 grams of fat.

The drink is part of a wider Coke initiative called Project Life to develop milk-based products. If it is a success in the United States it could be launched globally.

FoxNews : http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,534917,00.html
Media

Submission + - Music industry thrives in an era of file sharing (zeropaid.com)

Submitted by
levicivita
levicivita writes: "Zero Paid analyzes a recent study "Adding up the Music Industry for 2008" by "Will Page, the Chief Economist for PRS for Music, a UK-based royalty collecting group for music writers, composers, and publishers" which found that "total music industry revenues are up 4.7% since 2007 [which] corroborates what many studies have shown, that P2P actually increases music consumption." How is that possible? Will reports that "sales of recorded music fell 6% [...], digital was up 50% while physical dropped 10%, but concert ticket sales grew by 13%.""
Enlightenment

Submission + - Reviving the RPG in MMORPG

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: MMORPGs like World of Warcraft are, to the chagrin of consumers and the delight of publishers, entertaining to the point of being addicting. Yet when the definition of RPG is applied in full, most of these MMORPGs either neuter or flat-out ignore the RPG element. Though the notion at first appears to be a pile of semantic nitpicking (especially given the overwhelming success of these games), a slew of recent updates and a few notable examples prove that the inclusion of the RPG element can be beneficial for all involved parties, and that the ability for players to have lasting influence true to the definition of RPG may turn out to be more a necessity than a nicety.
Digital

Submission + - Jeff Bezos: 'Sorry for remotely erasing "1984& (nytimes.com)

Submitted by levicivita
levicivita writes: From the down-but-not-out NYT comes an article (warning login may be required) about user backlash against Kindle's embedded DRM: "Last week, Jeffrey P. Bezos, chief executive of Amazon, offered an apparently heartfelt and anguished mea culpa to customers whose digital editions of George Orwell's "1984" were remotely deleted from their Kindle reading devices. Though copies of the books were sold by a bookseller that did not have legal rights to the novel, Mr. Bezos wrote on a company forum that Amazon's " 'solution' to the problem was stupid, thoughtless and painfully out of line with our principles." Jeff's post is here.
Censorship

Submission + - AT&T Censors 4chan server 13

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/94pf2/att_is_now_blocking_all_access_to_img4chanorg/ Details how img.4chan.org (home of the notorious /b/ — "Random" image board) is being actively blocked by AT&T. According to the scant details available on 4chan and Reddit there are reports that img.4chan.org has become inaccessible from California to Texas and some reports claim as far east as Connecticut. Supposedly this is to stop a ring of pedophiles, but as one Reddit poster said it best "First the came for the pedophiles and I was not a pedophile..."
Disturbing news indeed.
Google

Submission + - Crowdsourcing the Google Books Settlement (thepublicindex.org)

Submitted by
oliphaunt
oliphaunt writes: "The folks at NY Law have launched The Public Index to explore the proposed settlement agreement that would end all of the various class-action lawsuits that were filed to stop Google from scanning every book in the world. They've republished all the litigation documents and the proposed agreement, and they're inviting world + dog to post commentary. Even if you're not a lawyer, here's your chance to post a comment that might end up in a legal brief.

The Public Index is a project of the Public-Interest Book Search Initiative and the Institute for Information Law and Policy at New York Law School. We are a group of professors, students, and volunteers who believe that the Google Book Search lawsuit and settlement deserve a full, careful, and thoughtful public discussion. The Public Index is a site for people from all points of view to learn from each other about the settlement and join together to make their voices heard in the public debate.

"
Idle

Submission + - A bear who's smarter than the average engineer

Submitted by gyrogeerloose
gyrogeerloose writes: The San Diego Union-Tribune reports in a New York Times wire service story that a black bear known as "Yellow-Yellow" (named for the two yellow ear tags she sports) has solved the problem of opening a food container that was previously thought to be bear-proof. The container, known as The Bear Vault, was constructed in a manner similar to a child-proof pill bottle and had passed tests at zoos where bears were given a certain time to break in. The only bears able to open it were grizzlies large and strong enough to rip the lid off using brute force--up several years ago, when campers in the High Peaks region of New York's Adirondack Mountains started reporting successful break-ins. A redesigned canister was introduced last year; Yellow-Yellow, a relatively petite 120-pound black bear, figured that one out too. The manufacturer is working on a new design expected to be released next year. New York state officials have agreed to test it by filling it with food and placing it in Yellow-Yellow's territory.

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