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IBM

Campaign to Open Source IBM's Notes/Domino 255

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the if-you-can't-sell-it-use-it-for-free-advertising dept.
Ian Tree, an IT consultant from the Netherlands, has started a campaign to convince IBM to open source the code for Notes/Domino. Hoping for results similar to the push for Sun to open source Solaris, which finally saw success in 2005, Tree makes the simple point that it won't happen until someone asks. "By being an open source product, Tree is also hoping that Domino becomes something schools use to teach groupware and application development concepts, which is the holy grail for future market adoption. This is how various Unixes, relational databases, Linux, and a raft of other products eventually became commercialized. While the idea of open sourcing any proprietary program is appealing, in as much as it sets a program free to live beyond the commitment (or lack thereof) of its originator, it is hard to see why open Notes/Domino would have any more impact than OpenSolaris."

Comment Safe harbor (Score 1) 375

by davburns (#25998635) Attached to: Warner Music Pushing Music Tax For Universities

The DMCA already has a "Safe Harbor" clause. So... the RIAA is only promising to not sue Universities that capitulate, when the law already explicitly says they have no case? Or, did they mean they won't sue the students? (But would require spying on them, which would seem to be a violation of FERPA.)

Even if it were a blanket license to share (which isn't clear in the summary or TFA), that would only seem to help the universities not have to deal with as many DMCA requests -- but they still have to deal with a lot more record-keeping and money-shuffling.

For students, it would seem to be nice to have the option of getting a blanket license (or get-out-of-DMCA-free card); but as many have entertainment budgets in the single-$/week range, that might not be what most would want. (And... just how much does this cost, anyway? cheaper than 1 CD/month for each student? I doubt it...)
Microsoft

Microsoft Announces Windows Azure, Cloud-Based OS 419

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the do-you-feel-azure-after-use dept.
snydeq writes "Microsoft today introduced Windows Azure, its operating system for the cloud. The OS serves as the underlying foundation of the Azure Services Platform to help developers build apps that span from the cloud to the datacenter, to PCs, the Web, and phones. Cloud-based developer capabilities are combined with storage, computational, and network infrastructure services, which are hosted on servers within Microsoft's global data center network."
Image

The Walking House Screenshot-sm 304

Posted by samzenpus from the baba-yaga-eat-your-heart-out dept.
What is 10' tall, has six hydraulic legs, and is powered by the wind and solar panels? The prototype pod house built by art collective N55 in Copenhagen, Denmark. With the help of MIT, N55 built the pod over a two-year period at a cost of £30,000. Designers say it provides a solution to the problem of rising water levels as the house can simply walk away from floods. One of the designers says, "This house is not just for travellers but also for anyone interested in a more general way of nomadic living." It won't be long now until the Japanese make Howl's Moving Castle.
Hardware

Recovering Moldy Electronics? 512

Posted by kdawson from the moldy-oldies dept.
cookiej writes "We just completed having our basement gutted and our house decontaminated from mold. The finished basement is gone, my office floor has been removed as well as 24' of drywall around the base of the room. So, we had a full home theater downstairs along with a couple of computers in the electronics closet that were completely immersed (rainwater, not sewage). We moved them to a sheltered area outside and covered them with a plastic tarp. Since the electronics were off when the water hit them, 1) do I have a chance of recovering them? 2) If so, is there a way to clean them with some sort of liquid bath that would not damage the electronics? and 3) I don't want to bring moldy pieces back in the clean house. How could I decontaminate the electronics themselves, pre-bath? Not looking to save the speakers, just the amp, DirecTV box, video switch, etc. Thanks for any help, here, Slashdot." Read on for more details of this reader's plight.
Image

"Stayin Alive" Helps You Stay Alive Screenshot-sm 31

Posted by samzenpus from the truthful-advertising dept.
In a small study conducted at the University of Illinois medical school, doctors and students maintained close to the ideal number of chest compressions doing CPR while listening to the Bee Gees hit, "Stayin' Alive." At 103 beats per minute, the old disco song has almost the perfect rhythm to help keep accurate time while doing chest compressions. The study showed the song helped people who already know how to do CPR, and the results were promising enough to warrant larger, more definitive studies with real patients or untrained people. I wonder what intrinsic power is contained in "How Can You Mend A Broken Heart?"
Portables (Apple)

Steve Wozniak Predicts Death of the IPod 573

Posted by samzenpus from the for-whom-the-bell-tolls dept.
Slatterz writes "Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, better known in the industry as 'Woz,' believes that the iPod is on its way out and has revealed his discomfort with some aspects of the iPhone. Wozniak said that the iPod has had a long time as the world's most popular media player, and that it will fall from grace due to oversupply. Wozniak also commented on the iPhone's proprietary nature and locked service provider, and compared it to Google's open Android platform. 'Consumers are not getting all they want when companies are very proprietary and lock their products down,' he said. 'I would like to write some more powerful apps than what you're allowed.'"
Transportation

Plug-in Hybrids May Not Go Mainstream, Toyota Says 519

Posted by timothy from the charge-up-before-wyoming dept.
mattnyc99 writes "Honda's challenger to the Prius — the Insight hybrid that we discussed so lividly a month ago — got its official unveiling today at the Paris auto show, with insiders confirming it would be cheaper than the world's most popular 'green' car while still hitting the same fuel-efficiency range. But the hybrid-electric showdown comes in the midst of a sudden rethink by Toyota about plug-in hybrids. Apparently all the recent hype — over the production version of the Chevy Volt, plus Chrysler's new electric trio and even the cool new Pininfarina EV also unveiled today — has execs from the world's number one automaker, and alt-fuel experts, questioning how many people will really buy electric cars, whether people will really charge them at night to keep the grid clear, whether batteries will make them too expensive and more. "
Operating Systems

How Kernel Hackers Boosted the Speed of Desktop Linux 380

Posted by timothy from the mild-claims dept.
chromatic writes "Kernel hackers Arjan van de Ven and Auke Kok showed off Linux booting in five seconds at last month's Linux Plumbers Conference. Arjan and other hackers have already improved the Linux user experience by reducing power consumption and latency. O'Reilly News interviewed him about his work on improving the Linux experience with PowerTOP, LatencyTOP, and Five-Second Boot."
Privacy

Submission + - Overwhelming Interest Crashes Do Not Call registry (www.ctv.ca)

Submitted by jamacdon
jamacdon writes: An overwhelming amount of interest in the Canadian national Do Not Call List for telemarketers crashed the website the day registration for the service opened up to the public. The CRTC says about 200,000 people had registered for the service by about 9 a.m. Tuesday. The site and hotline were activated at 12:01 a.m. Both CBC and CTV have more information.
Software

Submission + - SPAM: Software improves airdrops by 70%

Submitted by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes: "When it comes to airdropping tons of water on a huge forest fire or loads of food to flood survivors, dropping things from an airplane to a precise spot on the ground in the face of wind and nasty weather can be a black art. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) scientists have developed wind-forecast software that promise to improve aircraft airdrop target accuracy up to 70%. The US Air Force is already using they system for dropping Army cargo and paratroopers into Iraq and Afghanistan, but the package can be used for releasing almost any cargo from an airplane into a target area: water over a blazing wildfire, food to a famine-stricken population, or supplies, tanks, and Humvees into a war zone, NOAA said. [spam URL stripped]"
Link to Original Source
Security

Submission + - The malware that security software doesn't detect (infoworld.com)

Submitted by
GMGruman
GMGruman writes: "Many sandbox security vendors — the "hot" antimalware approach of the moment — claim that their products stop all known and unknown attacks. Even assuming the ability to curtail all known attacks could be proven, it's simply impossible to believe that any piece of software could halt all unknown attacks. Of course, that doesn't prevent the vendors from making empty promises or the malware authors from proving them wrong. The InfoWorld Test Center's exhaustive tests of tehse tools show that two popular malware attacks — Adobe Flash clipboard hijack exploit and the XP Antivirus malware program — evade these sandbox security tools. And the tests further show the quality of protection from sandbox security tools is highly uneven, so people and businesses may not be as prptected as they believe."
Encryption

Submission + - Company steals Truecrypt source code

Submitted by Anonymous
Anonymous writes: During a late night session on a private IRC channel used by security researchers one of the members discovered that Wideband's GoldKey encryption device uses software that includes a good deal of Truecrypt's source code as determined by a strings analysis of the portable executable. Others in the channel downloaded and confirmed the findings even going so far to point out that Truecrypt's help menu and donation button is still mentioned in the strings of the code as well as all of the Truecrypt encryption modes where GoldKey only supports AES 256 bit in XTS mode.

The GoldKey software can be downloaded from Goldkey Downloads and after install the strings program from sysinternals can be used to see the proof for yourself in the main Goldkey.exe file. Take your time and look through the strings and anyone familiar with Truecrypt will see what we found. This type of exploitation of open source by a large company seeking to make money off of someone else's work is something that can't be tolerated.
Cellphones

Submission + - Using Cellphones for SMS Notification 3

Submitted by
btm
btm writes: "I get too much information delivered to my cellphone these days, making it terrible for receiving nagios notifications. I really want to be woken up at 4am if the server room is over 100 degrees because it's on fire, but not because I just got some spam in my email or one of my dodgeball friends is up all night drinking somewhere.

Major cellphone providers appear to be getting rid of pager service. I'd really like a second 'phone' just to receive SMS to act like a pager. It has to be tough enough to sit on a belt clip and survive my bicycle commute and other adventures. The battery must last multiple days (preferable a month or more). I don't want to have to open a phone and hit a bunch of keys to review the messages, and I shouldn't have to open a flip or slider of any kind to check the notification.

Really, I just want a device. Not a solution using an OpenMoko or an iPhone. Just hardware that stupid yet tough and takes an SIM card. (For use in the USA). Anyone found a solution to this dilemma that they're happy with?"
Graphics

Submission + - Is Nvidia Corking their Graphic Benchmarks Again

Submitted by Nom du Keyboard
Nom du Keyboard writes: In an outraged article Nvidia lover Charlie Demerjian [/sarcasm] takes point-by-powerpoint issue with Nvidia's grand planned announcement of their new integrated 9300/9400 chips on Tuesday. Not bound by an NDA (since Nvidia has long quit talking to him) he takes issue with nearly every claim Nvidia makes, taking care to point out the flaws, smoke and mirrors, and outright lies about to be dropped on a less than critical press and public. While Nvidia is hardly alone in corking their benchmarks in the past, neither has anybody else done it better. So do we just accept this as business as usual and wait for real benchmarks to arrive, or protest that we're not that stupid?

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