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The Courts

Submission + - Internet tax held off for seven more years (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by
Christopher Blanc
Christopher Blanc writes: "With the ban on taxing Internet connections set to expire at the end of October, both houses of Congress are taking action. Last night, the Senate passed a bill that would extend the 1998 Internet Tax Freedom Act yet again, this time for seven years. A version of the legislation passed by the House earlier this week would only extend it for another four years.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071026-senate-passes-internet-tax-moratorium-extension.html"
Software

Submission + - Firefox working to fix memory leaks (squarefree.com)

Submitted by
Christopher Blanc
Christopher Blanc writes: "Many Mozilla community members, including both volunteers and Mozilla Corporation employees, have been helping to reduce Firefox's memory usage and fix memory leak bugs lately. Hopefully, the result of this effort will be that Firefox 3 uses less memory than Firefox 2 did, especially after it has been used for several hours. http://www.squarefree.com/2007/09/20/firefox-memory-usage-and-memory-leak-news/"

Comment Forced patching (Score 2, Insightful) 326

by Christopher_Blanc (#20385675) Attached to: The Downsides of Software as Service
SaaS offers manufacturers the ability to update every existing installation of their software.

Whether open source or closed source, once you find a bug, you have to assume the "bad guys" know as well.

At that point, you wonder about the guy who's on a fishing trip and has no idea his small business server can be randomly pwnt by a published exploit.

If a major blog software author found they had a crucial vulnerability in a software version shipped two version numbers ago, they would like to be able to update it before the bad guys found it.

That is what SaaS offers that desktop software doesn't. The exception is if a very simple runtime is created within a client environment, like a browser, which also makes the installations simpler and more uniform.

400 years of industrial history suggests that streamlining and creating uniformity increase reliability and profits.

Microsoft is wishing they had SaaS'd Windows in 1995, as all those creaky old machines running windows 98, 2000, and early versions of XP get pwnt by trojans run amuck.
Space

Submission + - Lunar Eclipse Next Tuesday Morning (space.com)

Submitted by
Raver32
Raver32 writes: "Tuesday morning, Aug. 28 brings us the second total lunar eclipse of 2007. Those living in the Western Hemisphere and eastern Asia will be able to partake in at least some of this sky show. The very best viewing region for viewing this eclipse will fall across the Pacific Rim, including the West Coast of the United States and Canada, as well as Alaska, Hawaii, New Zealand and eastern Australia. All these places will be able to see the complete eclipse from start to finish. Europeans will miss out on the entire show, as the Moon will be below the horizon during their mid and late morning hours."
Businesses

Submission + - Open Source license proliferation threat to users?

Submitted by
E5Rebel
E5Rebel writes: "Business is embracing open source like never before, but the effective demise of SCO's claims against Linux don't mean an end to licensing problems warns an analyst. The debate on Slashdot seems to focus on GPL and its virtues but there are 1,000 plus open source licenses and businesses face having to manage multiple licenses within a single open source product we are being told. Time to 'impose' some order before we face another backlash? http://www.computerworlduk.com/management/it-busin ess/services-sourcing/news/index.cfm?newsid=4829"
Power

Submission + - Invasion of the jivin' nano-shrooms (arxivblog.com)

Submitted by
KentuckyFC
KentuckyFC writes: "A pendulum converts the constant force of gravity into an oscillation — a useful trick by anyone's standards. But nanotechnologists have yet to match it — they just haven't been able to build nano-oscillators. Now arxivblog.com reports that a group at the University of the Madison have made mushroom-shaped nanopillars that oscillate in a constant DC field, like metronomes."
The Internet

Submission + - Senators call for universal internet filtering (pressesc.com)

Submitted by
Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward writes: "US senators today made a bipartisan call for the universal implementation of filtering and monitoring technologies on the Internet in order to protect children at the end of a Senate hearing for which civil liberties groups were not invited. Senators call for universal Internet filtering Senators call for universal Internet filtering"

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