Comment Re:rights owners? (Score 3, Insightful) 197
And the bucks usually go to the ones the law sides with. Resistance is futile!
Submission + - HP to sell Linux laptops and PCs (idg.com.au)
Titus Germanicus writes: "According to an article on PC World HP is planning to introduce desktop and laptop computers that come with Novell's Suse Linux Enterprise Desktop operating system preinstalled.
In an interview at the Novell Brainshare conference in Salt Lake City, Roger Levy, vice president for open platform solutions with Novell, typified the HP deal as significant. "Having any additional distributor that has worldwide reach and has a large market share who will bring enterprise grade Linux in as an option, is very significant to us," Levy said.
The systems are scheduled to start shipping worldwide in select geographies in the second quarter of 2008, according to a source familiar with the matter. And the two vendors will jointly develop software drivers and provide support to end-users."
Submission + - Summer of Code'08 - Organizations List Announced (blogspot.com) 1
kulbirsaini writes: "Google has announced the list of accepted organizations for the Google Summer of Code 2008. Checkout this for the list. Open Source world is going to see a huge code contributed this summer. Checkout Google Open Source blog for details."
Submission + - Supreme Court Gives WordPerfect Case Thumbs Up (google.com) 1
eldavojohn writes: "Microsoft and Novell make strange bedfellows indeed as despite all prior deals, Novell has been given the go ahead by the U.S. Supreme Court to sue Microsoft in yet another antitrust case (this one has been on hold since 2004). Do you remember WordPerfect and Quattro Pro? Probably not because it seems they couldn't interface with Microsoft's OS as well as Microsoft's publishing tools could. The article cites a memo by Gates that just came to light and reads "I have decided that we should not publish these extensions. We should wait until we have away to do a high level of integration that will be harder for likes of Notes, WordPerfect to achieve, and which will give Office a real advantage... We can't compete with Lotus and WordPerfect/Novell without this." They survived a web browser conviction, can Microsoft make it through another antitrust case as a single company?"
Submission + - Could Geoengineering be used as a Weapon?
tcd004 writes: "Geoengineering presents more than just an environmental question. It also presents a geopolitical dilemma. With processes of this magnitude and degree of uncertainty, countries would inevitably argue over control, costs, and liability for mistakes. More troubling, however, is the possibility that states may decide to use geoengineering efforts and technologies as weapons. Two factors make this a danger we dismiss at our peril: the unequal impact of climate changes, and the ability of small states and even nonstate actors to attempt geoengineering.
It wouldn't be the first time states looked at the environment as a weapon. In the early 1970s, the Pentagon's Project Popeye attempted to use cloud seeding to increase the strength of monsoons and bog down the Ho Chi Minh Trail. In 1996, a group of Air Force and Army officers working with the Air Force 2025 program produced a document titled "Weather as a Force Multiplier: Owning the Weather in 2025""
It wouldn't be the first time states looked at the environment as a weapon. In the early 1970s, the Pentagon's Project Popeye attempted to use cloud seeding to increase the strength of monsoons and bog down the Ho Chi Minh Trail. In 1996, a group of Air Force and Army officers working with the Air Force 2025 program produced a document titled "Weather as a Force Multiplier: Owning the Weather in 2025""
Submission + - U2's manager says all music fans are thieves (timesonline.co.uk)
Monsterdog writes: U2 manager Paul McGuinness recently spoke at MIDEM, railing against filesharers, suggesting blacklisting for designated culprits, and carrying on about legally strongarming ISPs, amongst other things. In the process he also pretty much painted all music fans as a bunch of piratey thieving bastards who'll steal the socks off his feet if given a chance, casting the Radiohead album release as a massive failure as an example — because fans would rather steal what they were being offered for nothing.
Submission + - The True Cost of SMS Messages (gthing.net)
nilbog writes: "How much does it actually cost to send SMS messages? This article outlines the true cost of SMS messages and comes to some pretty startling conclusions. For example, sending an amount of data that would cost one dollar from your ISP would cost over sixty one million dollars if you were to send it over SMS. Why has the cost of bandwidth, infrastructure, and technology in general dropped while the price of SMS messages have risen exponentially? How can carriers continue to justify the high cost of their apparent super premium data transmission?"
Submission + - Cheney Calls for Permanent Warrantless Wiretaps (washingtonpost.com) 1
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes: "Vice President Cheney called upon Congress today to make the Protect America Act permanent. Cheney said that the law must include retroactive immunity for the telecoms; a provision that would be unnecessary if he believed their actions to have been lawful at the time. He's also worried that Congress might "impose undue operational burdens" on the collection of "foreign intelligence information on U.S. persons.""
Submission + - Tools for Understanding Code 2
ewhac writes: "Having just recently taken a new job, I find myself confronted with an enormous pile of existing, unfamiliar code written for a (somewhat) unfamiliar platform, and an implicit understanding that I'll grok it all Real Soon Now. Simply firing up an editor and reading through it has proven unequal to the task. What sorts of tools exist for effectively analyzing and understanding a large code base? (You should not assume the development or target platform is Windows.)
I'm familiar with cscope , but it doesn't really seem to analyze program structure, per se. It's just a very fancy 'grep' package with a rudimentary understanding of C syntax. As such, I've only put minimal effort in to it. A new-ish tool called ncc looks very interesting, as it appears to be based on an actual C/C++ parser, but the UI is klunky, and there doesn't appear to be any facility for integrating/communicating with an editor."
I'm familiar with cscope , but it doesn't really seem to analyze program structure, per se. It's just a very fancy 'grep' package with a rudimentary understanding of C syntax. As such, I've only put minimal effort in to it. A new-ish tool called ncc looks very interesting, as it appears to be based on an actual C/C++ parser, but the UI is klunky, and there doesn't appear to be any facility for integrating/communicating with an editor."
Submission + - Canada Puts US on 'Torture List' (bbc.co.uk)
juancnuno writes: "The United States has been listed as a country where prisoners are at risk of torture in a training document produced by the Canadian foreign ministry. It also classifies some US interrogation techniques as torture."
Submission + - Church of Scientology tries to take down video (gawker.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Gawker.com was threatened by Church of Scientology lawyers to take down a video showing Tom Cruise claiming that Scientologists are "the authorities on the mind and.. the way to happiness". Site says they won't comply. Reuters coverage here http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080116/wr_nm/cruise_video_dc_1
Submission + - RIAA Pursues Legal Action Against GWU Student (gwhatchet.com)
Anonymous Student writes: "A student at the George Washington University in Washington, D.C. is having legal proceedings brought before her on the charge that she shared eight songs via Limewire. Although the student admits to the infraction, the fact that she works two jobs and has no information regarding the charges being brought against her make it a bit difficult for her to represent herself in Federal court.
"When it comes down to it, of all the resources we've looked at, we've noticed that there is a disproportionate share of illegal sharing on college networks," Duckworth said. "This is not a step we took lightly, to bring law suits against students was not our first preference."
"The students who settle do so because they know they have broken the law', she added.""
Submission + - How to Effectively Manage Software Memory Leaks? 2
cbart387 writes: I recently worked on a C++ project that I had to track down memory leaks (that I'm sad to say I created). I found that by using Valgrind I was able to track down the leaks fairly quickly. My question to slashdot is if anyone, from experience, has a memory leak tool that they found particularly effective and would recommend trying? (It doesn't necessarily have to be for C/C++).
Submission + - Dr. Doolittle in silicon (texttechnologies.com) 1
CurtMonash writes: In a paper appearing this week in Animal Cognition, Hungarian scientists report on a computer system that interprets canine vocalizations. In other words, they've built a primitive woof-to-Magyar translator, albeit one that only purports to identify the doggies' general emotional states. They claim 43% accuracy, versus 40% for human interpreters. This raises a big question, however: How did they measure those results — did they sit down and interview the pooches afterwards?
Submission + - Geist's Fair Copyright for Canada Principles
An anonymous reader writes: Canadian law prof Michael Geist has been leading the charge against a
Canadian DMCA including the creation a Fair Copyright
for Canada Facebook group that now has more than 38,000
members. Having delayed the legislation, he now outlines
what Canadians should be fighting for — more flexible fair dealing, a
balanced implementation of the WIPO Internet treaties, an ISP safe
harbour, and a modernized backup copy provision.
