Aryabhata - Slashdot User

Submission + - Rush Limbaugh & Heavy metal used to control pe (discovery.com)

Submitted by Aryabhata on Wednesday February 10, 2010 @03:58PM

Aryabhata writes: According to scientist, climate change and human activity has allowed beetles to take over and destroy trees in the ecosystem way more than they should. They decided to use
"nastiest, most offensive sounds" which included recordings of Guns & Roses, Queen, Rush Limbaugh and manipulated versions of the insects' own sounds on the beetles.
The research project titled "Beetle Mania" has concluded that acoustic stress can disrupt its feeding and even cause the beetles to kill each other.

Submission + - Swiss banks making concessions on bank secrecy 1

Submitted by Aryabhata on Saturday March 14, 2009 @09:47PM

Aryabhata writes: Economic Times & Reuters report: "Under pressure from the US and other troubled economies, the Swiss government announced on Friday that it would cooperate in international tax investigations, breaking with its long-standing tradition of protecting wealthy foreigners accused of hiding billions of dollars. Austria and Luxembourg also said they would help. "

Submission + - Open Source Highly Available Storage Solutions?

Submitted by Gunfighter on Tuesday March 27, 2007 @03:46PM

Gunfighter writes: I run a small datacenter for one of my customers, but they're constantly filling up different hard drives on different servers and then shuffling the data back and forth. At their current level of business, they can't afford to invest in a Storage Area Network of any sort, so they want to spread the load of their data storage needs across their existing servers like Google does. The only software packages I've found that do this seamlessly are Lustre and NFS. The problem with Lustre is that it has a single metadata server unless you configure failover, and NFS isn't redundant at all and can be a nightmare to manage. The only thing I've found that even comes close is Starfish. While it looks promising, I'm wondering if anyone else has found a reliable solution that is as easy to set up and manage? Eventually, they would like to be able to scale from their current storage usage levels (~2TB) to several hundred terabytes once the operation goes into full production.

Submission + - IBM Asks Court to Declare Linux Non-Infringing

Submitted by

A Cyclic Graph

on Tuesday March 20, 2007 @03:59PM

A Cyclic Graph writes: "We finally have a redacted version of IBM's Reply Memorandum in Support of Summary Judgment on Counterclaim 10 in SCO v. IBM. In short, IBM is asking the Court to declare that Linux doesn't infringe upon any of SCO's purported intellectual property. This document is the last word on that matter until the Court either declares there to be no doubt that Linux is free of infringement, or decides that that issue has to be decided by the jury. In their brief, IBM points out that SCO puts forth a convoluted set of non-answers referencing each other to disguise it's inability to answer IBM. Their set of cross-references is so complex that Groklaw readers graphed the claims to make what little sense of them they could."

Submission + - The French Parliament switches to Ubuntu

Submitted by

atamyrat

on Sunday March 11, 2007 @09:24PM

atamyrat writes: "The French Parliament looks to be the next big Ubuntu switcher according to reports. Recently the Parliament produced an official government report that recommended the use of free software over proprietary software. The switch to free software is expected to provide a substantial savings to the tax-payers according to the government study.
Following this recommendation two companies, Linagora and Unilog, have been selected to provide the members of the Parliament as well as their assistants new computers containing free software. This will amount to 1,154 new computers running Ubuntu prior to the start of the next session which occurs in June 2007.
http://fridge.ubuntu.com/node/814
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513-6138372.html"

Submission + - GoDaddy v DST, DST won

Submitted by iffn on Sunday March 11, 2007 @02:12PM

iffn writes: GoDaddy claimed not to need DST patches for this weekend due to their Arizona location. At this time however E-Mail and hosting are down. Glad I have hosting there for a "just for fun" website. I'd hate to be running a business with them. Looks like they're going to owe their customers for their losses since this outage was completely within their control to prevent from occuring.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,129718/article.h tml

Submission + - Top 22 Mac OS X Software Tools

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 10, 2007 @08:39AM

An anonymous reader writes: Mac advocate John C. Welch is at it again, this time weighing in with his list of Top 22 Mac OS X Products. The collection of software tools ranges from the obvious — Boot Camp — to the obscure but perhaps more useful. That'd be little-known apps like Peter Borg's Lingon, for creating launchd configuration files, and BBEdit a professional HTML and text editor. (A collection of screen shots is here.) What's on your personal list of indispensable Mac productivity aids and programming tools? Also, do you think Welch pays too much attention to built-in OS X tools such as Workgroup Manager and Sync Services at the expense of third-party products like NetworkLocation?

Submission + - No passport for Britons refusing mass-surveillance

Submitted by

UpnAtom

on Saturday March 10, 2007 @08:29AM

UpnAtom writes: "From the And you thought Sweden was bad dept:

People who refuse to give up their bank records, tax records & details of any benefits they've claimed and the records of their car movements for the last year, or refuse to submit to an interrogation on whether they are the same person that this mountain of data belongs to will be denied passports from March 26th.

The Blair Govt has already admitted that this and other data will be cross-linked so that the Home Office and other officials can spy on the everyday lives of innocent Britons.

Britons were already the most spied upon nation in Western Europe. Data-mining through this unprecedented level of mass-surveillance allows any future British govt to leapfrog even countries like China and North Korea."

Feed Your Money: Getting Out of a 2-Year Cellphone Contract Alive (nytimes.com)

From feed by nytfeed on Friday March 09, 2007 @11:12PM

It’s not easy to escape a two-year cellphone contract. But it can be done by turning to the innovators on the Internet.

Submission + - Remote Control To Prevent Aircraft Hijacking

Submitted by

Snad

on Tuesday March 06, 2007 @10:03PM

Snad writes: "The UK's Evening Standard is reporting that Boeing plans to roll out aircraft remote controls systems in a bid to eliminate the threat of terrorist hijackings, and prevent any repetition of the events of September 11 2001.

"Scientists at aircraft giant Boeing are testing the tamper-proof autopilot system which uses state-of-the-art computer and satellite technology. It will be activated by the pilot flicking a simple switch or by pressure sensors fitted to the cockpit door that will respond to any excessive force as terrorists try to break into the flight deck.
Once triggered, no one on board will be able to deactivate the system. Currently, all autopilots are manually switched on and off at the discretion of pilots. A threatened airliner could be flown to a secure military base or a commercial airport, where it would touch down using existing landing aids known as 'autoland function'.""

Helping Dell To Help Open Source 177

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday March 06, 2007 @05:34PM from the skunkworks dept.

Glyn Moody writes "Dell's IdeaStorm is turning into a fiasco — for Dell, and for open source as well. Instead of just shouting at the company to sell pre-installed GNU/Linux systems, how about helping them find a way to do it? Here's a suggestion that I've posted on the IdeaStorm site: that Dell set up an independent business unit for GNU/Linux systems, just like The Innovator's Dilemma tells us to do when faced with a disruptive technology."

Submission + - RFID Passports Cloned Without Opening the Package

Submitted by

Jeremy

on Tuesday March 06, 2007 @04:01PM

Jeremy writes: "Using some simple deduction, a security consultant discovered how to clone a passport as it's being mailed to its recipient, without ever opening the package. These are the kinds of things that people need to understand are possible now that our governments are trying to use wireless technology (inherantly insecure) for security."

Submission + - Black Holes Discovered as Source of Gamma Rays

Submitted by

eldavojohn

on Tuesday March 06, 2007 @11:16AM

eldavojohn writes: "A very recent paper has been published that gives a very sound explanation for the source of gamma rays that permeate our galaxy. Objects like the Milky Way's central supermassive object (Sagittarius A*) are now suspected to be the culprit but since these are widely believed to be a black holes, little is known and skepticism is high that even gamma radiation could escape them. All that has been observed is gamma rays seem to coming from black holes. To test this theory, two scientists created a computer model and found that intense gravity near the event horizon caused protons to fling outward at near light speeds where some would randomly make it beyond 10 light years of the black hole after thousands of years. Once they are sufficiently far away, these super high-energy protons would collide with low-energy protons to form pions which decay into gamma radiation emanating in all directions from the collision. If their simulation holds to be accurate and survives the skepticism of the community, the source of some gamma rays that were believed to all be remnants of the big bang could instead be signals from just outside black holes. Not only does a rapidly rotating Wolf-Rayet star collapsing into a black hole cause narrow streams of gamma radiation but apparently they continue to emit them long after their formation."

Submission + - A Free XML-Based Operating System

Submitted by

Dotnaught

on Friday March 02, 2007 @03:06PM

Dotnaught writes: "For the past five years, Xcerion has been working on an XML-based Internet operating system (XIOS) that runs inside a Web browser and promises radically reduced development time. To provide developers with an incentive to write for the platform, Xcerion's back-end system is designed to route revenue, either from subscription fees or from ads served to users of free programs, to application authors. Think of it as Google AdSense, except for programmers rather than publishers. Is it absurd to think this poses a threat to Google and Microsoft?"

Submission + - Build an Environmental-Friendly PC

Submitted by

ThinSkin

on Friday March 02, 2007 @02:34PM

ThinSkin writes: "While gas-guzzling cars are greatly to blame for releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, computers play their role in warming up the Earth too. ExtremeTech has an informative how-to article on building a green PC that will not only help save the planet, but will also slim down that energy bill. An important component, or culprit, to consider is the power supply, so investing in an 80 PLUS PSU is a step in the right direction. The article also discusses how to configure Windows Vista to utilize its power-saving options."

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