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Journal SPAM: Vanuatu cargo cult marks 50 years 2

Journal by Jeremiah Cornelius

Residents of the South Pacific island of Tanna worship an American "messiah" named John Frum who first appeared to them in the 1930s. According to a village elder quoted in a recent Smithsonian article, John promised to someday return and "he'll bring planeloads and shiploads of cargo to us from America if we pray to him. Radios, TVs, trucks, boats, watches, iceboxes, medicine, Coca-Cola and many other wonderful th
The Internet

Submission + - War of words over Wikipedia ads continues

Submitted by Willis W.
Willis W. writes: Wikipedia founder Jimbo Wales reiterates his opposition to advertising in response to reports that Wikipedia needs a major cash infusion. Responding to Jason Calacanis' charges that he 'has a fringe, anti-corporate bent to him' that is 'holding Wikipedia back,' Wales says that running ads on Wikipedia is not his decision to make. 'Though he personally dislikes the idea of advertising on Wikipedia, any decision to utilize ads would have to come from the community. At the moment, he won't rule anything out. "I can't say if I would ever support something like that," he tells Ars, "but I can say that I currently maintain the same position I always have: I am opposed to it."'
Enlightenment

Submission + - Earth's constant hum explained

Submitted by
MattSparkes
MattSparkes writes: "It has been known for some time that there is a constant hum that emanates from the Earth, which can be heard near 10 millihertz on a seismometer. The problem was that nobody knew what caused it. It has now been shown that it is caused by waves on the bottom of the sea, and more specifically "by the combination of two waves of the same frequency travelling in opposite directions""
Software

Submission + - Apple's Open Calendar Server vs Microsoft Exchange

Submitted by DECS
DECS writes: Apple is leveraging the power of open source development in a new effort to directly target Microsoft Exchange Server. The new standards based, open source Calendar Server will debut this year with Leopard Server; the source itself is already available at MacOSForge.org under the Apache 2.0 license. Rather than trying to copy Microsoft's tools, Apple is building its own vision of collaborative workgroup services. Why Apple is offering a calendar server might come as a surprise. Apple's Open Calendar Server vs Exchange Server puts Apple's efforts in the context of existing collaboration software, from IBM's Lotus Notes, to Novell's GroupWise, Microsoft's Exchange, MeetingMaker and others.
Mozilla

Submission + - Firefox javascript/cookie vulnerability uncovered

Submitted by mybecq
mybecq writes: Michal Zalewski has uncovered and disclosed a serious vulnerability (BugZilla: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=37044 5) in Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.1, whereby a javascript string containing '\x00' (escaped NUL character) can cause Firefox to allow malicious sites to manipulate cookies for third-party webpages.

A demonstration of the vulnerability is available. The vulnerability requires javascript and session cookies to be enabled to be able to be exploited.
Music

Submission + - Music Player Synchronization

Submitted by orn
orn writes: Lots of people have mp3 players in the living room now. Some people have players in the kitchen, bedroom, garage and so on. They are great when it comes to getting to your music from multiple places, but when you walk from room to room, it's almost impossible to get the music aligned. Are there software packages or techniques for synchronizing multiple networked music players? One thought is to use streaming software to stream to all players — but is there any streamer that will let you account for the different delays in different hardware to create a single synchroized whole?
Windows

Submission + - No plans for Windows 7 in 2009

Submitted by Samarin
Samarin writes: Microsoft has clarified that they have no plans to ship a new version of Windows in 2009: "We are not giving official guidance to the public yet about the next version of Windows, other than that were working on it. When we are ready, we will provide updates." Seems like Microsoft heard the laughing all the way in Redmond, and decided to retract Ben Fathis's comments (previous /. coverage).
Google

Submission + - Turns Out Google Really Does Listen

Submitted by
SamThomp
SamThomp writes: "There's a perfect Google underdog story going on right now. It goes like this: A college student named Aaron Stanton has an idea he thinks Google will love. He tries to get in touch via phone, e-mail, and their web forms with no luck. Then, spurred by his father nearly dying of an embolism near Christmas, he takes a chance and flies to Mountain View, CA without an appointment, intending to sit in their lobby "like a spoiled child" until he gets a chance to meet with someone. He's been there about three days, now.

Here's where it gets interesting. He creates a website called CanGoogleHearMe.com, and uses Google Video to document his journey in hopes that it might be seen by someone at Google and they'll show pity. At first he's turned away (links to Google Video) at the door and doesn't get a chance to talk to anyone. Then, apparently someone in Google does notice the website and it spreads — word of mouth — inside of Google like wildfire; 600 people visit the site in two hours from inside of Google's headquarters at Mountain View.

Then, late last night — three days into his trip — the guy gets an e-mail with the subject line, "We can hear you :)" that says they're willing to listen to him. No meeting for sure yet, but a step in the right direction.

It's like "actual" reality TV. :) If you're looking for an interesting story to pay attention to for the week, it'll be interesting to see how this turns out. So far, Google seems to be living up to their image of being a large company that's open to ideas. As far as I'm concerned, best of luck to them both."
Google

Submission + - Gmail Opens Registration To Everyone

Submitted by magicchex
magicchex writes: Gmail now allows anyone to register, without an invite or a cell phone number. The last three people without an account can now sign up, but what will this mean for Gmail spammers? Will we see an influx of Gmail-originating spam?
Programming

Submission + - The Next Big Programming Language

Submitted by
narramissic
narramissic writes: "In a recent ITworld article, Sean McGrath muses on the future of software development, speculating that the next programming language may not be 'so much a language as a language for creating languages.' From the article:

... Outbreaks of this sort of thinking can be seen in the programming community, typically under the moniker of Domain Special Languages or DSLs. Programming languages are again starting to sprout DSL capabilities. Ruby and Fortress — of the two languages already mentioned — are examples.

I think the time is right for this sort of thinking to become mainstream. The industry is at the point where the irrational exuberance surrounding using XML as a DSL for programming languages has passed (thank goodness!). Something needs to take its place which is significantly — not just incrementally better. I think a DSL-enabling programming language will fit the bill.
"
Privacy

Submission + - U.S. group wants Canada blacklisted over piracy

Submitted by Kaneda2112
Kaneda2112 writes: Again with the

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM .20070214.wblacklist14/BNStory/National/home

Canadian piracy thing! How can these groups continue to spread misinformation and FUD? It is so irritating for those of us up here! Micheal Geist has debunked this baloney (http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/1656/159/ ) "While the reports have succeeded in attracting considerable attention, a closer examination of the industry's own data reveals that the claims are based primarily on fiction rather than fact." Aarrgh!
Programming

Submission + - Heavy criticism of "Linux Driver Development F

Submitted by
Stephan A. Rickauer
Stephan A. Rickauer writes: "The newly announced "Free Linux Kernel Driver Development FAQ" initiated by Linux Kernel Developer Greg Kroah-Hartman, working for Novell, has provoked more negative reactions from prominent Free Software projects, e.g. OpenBSD. Project leader Theo de Raadt writes to Greg: "It is a fucking farce. You are trying to make sure that maintainers of code — ie. any random joe who wants to improve the code in the future — has LESS ACCESS to docs later on because someone signed an NDA to write it in the first place. You are making a very big mistake." Though the short term goal of getting Linux drivers more easily seems to be understandable in the first place, signing NDA's will hurt all Free Software projects in the long run. This short-sighted strategy will lead to the situation where companies are even less motivated to reveal free programming documentation. They will point with fingers to NDA'ed GPL code, which needs to be reverse engineered agin. Theo summarizes: "It is people like you who are closed."."
Sci-Fi

Submission + - D-Wave unveils 16-qubit quantum computer

Submitted by
Coucho
Coucho writes: "An article on The Register gives the scoop on D-Wave System's latest quantum computer with the processing power of 16 quantum bits (or qubits). D-Wave's CTO Geordie Rose stated that "Even millions of qubits today today would consume less power than off-the-shelf processors," but then added "The cooling systems used for past computers are far harder to build and more complicated". Is this a farce? Or is this straight out of science-fiction? You decide. Article: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/02/13/dwave_quan tum/"

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