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Comment Goverment agencies are sslllooowwww (Score 1) 512

I build web interfaces for use by employees of state & county governments. Most users in large counties like Santa Clara or San Diego are using cookie-cutter machines that are 5-8 years old, locked down at IE6 on Windows 95. One is just getting ready for a bulk purchase of WinXP/IE7 machines (wow!) which took 3 years to plan for and are supposed to last for the next 5+ years.

Sadly, IE6 support must continue for a few more years in many arenas, especially when dealing with slow governments.

Space

Submission + - Carnegie Mellon to build Lunar X-Prize robot

Anonymous Coward writes: "Google's Lunar X-Prize already has a prominent entry, William Whittaker, a researcher from Carnegie Mellon University said that he will be assembling a team to development a robot that will be be competing for the $20 million grand prize. According to this story, Whittaker has some unfair advantage, as he has developed a pretty cool lunar rover for NASA that "can find concentrations of hydrogen, possibly water and other volatile chemicals on the moon that could be mined to produce fuel, water and air that are essential for supporting lunar outposts." The Lunar X-Prize runs until the end of 2012 and Carnegie Mellon's announcement could be a first indication that reserachers are taking this challenge very seriously."
Unix

Submission + - Nasdaq to delist SCO Sep 27 (cnn.com)

symbolset writes: "The Nasdaq Staff has decided to delist SCO at open of business on September 27, 2007 under their discretionary authority and as a result of SCO filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. SCO can get a hearing but "There can be no assurance that the panel will grant the Company's request for continued listing."

The company exects to request a hearing and appeal the decision."

The Courts

Submission + - Lindor Attacks Record Company Copyright-pooling

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: "Back in March, 2006, Marie Lindor called the record companies suing her a collusive cartel, and their joint agreement to pool their copyrights "copyright misuse" (pdf). A year and a half later, the RIAA apparently got nervous about that allegation and made a motion to strike the allegations. But Ms. Lindor has struck back, pointing out to the Judge not only that the RIAA's arguments had no legal basis, but also that its brief was completely silent as to any justification for the record companies' copyright-pooling agreement, which would be necessary for it to pass muster under "rule of reason" analysis mandated by the US Supreme Court. Ms. Lindor, a home health worker who has never even used a computer, let alone infringed anyone's copyrights with a p2p file sharing program, is the same defendant who exposed, with a little help from her friends, some of the weaknesses in the RIAA's expert testimony, and who obtained a ruling that the RIAA's $750-per-song file damages theory might be a wee bit unconstitutional."
Software

Submission + - Showmypc.com, an open source pretender?

shaitand writes: When looking for a remote support application that penetrated firewalls and could be initiated by my clients with a couple clicks I came across http://www.showmypc.com/ . It was a standalone executable but looked like it would work and best of all it was open source. The only thing I didn't like was the interface, so I went to check out the Sourceforge page https://sourceforge.net/projects/showmypcssh/ . I noticed a substantial problem, CVS is empty and the source on the download page is for the 2.6 version. The version of the executable is 3.53. After mailing them that they needed to distribute their modified SSH client and VNC source to be in compliance with the GPL license they said they didn't modify those programs and ignored my request for the current source code. So I ask again, if this is a GPL'd application; where is the source?
The Internet

Gaming is King of Online Entertainment 29

A study done by the market research firm Parks Associates shows that online games are the biggest draw for internet-based entertainment. Online games, including MMOGs, casual games, and free-to-play virtual worlds, had a bigger draw even that social networking sites or YouTube. Some 34% of US internet consumers played online games at least once a week in the second quarter of 2007. "Furthermore, the number of people playing games online seems to be growing by leaps and bounds. Parks' research found that the year-over-year growth rate for frequent online gamers was 79 percent, which easily trumps the growth rate for users of social networking (46 percent). That said, the growth rate for frequent users of video streaming sites was a whopping 123 percent, and that 'could pose a significant challenge to the gaming industry in capturing the online leisure time of Internet users,' Parks cautioned."
Networking

Gunplay Blamed For Cutting Fiber 276

coondoggie writes "Internet service providers in the US experienced a service slowdown Monday after fiber-optic cables near Cleveland were apparently sabotaged by gunfire. TeliaSonera AB, which lost the northern leg of its US network to the cut, said that the outage began around 7 p.m. Pacific Time on Sunday night. When technicians pulled up the affected cable, it appeared to have been shot up over a length of a kilometer. 'Somebody had been shooting with a gun or a shotgun into the cable,' said a TeliaSonera spokesman. The company declined to name the service provider whose lines had been cut, but a source familiar with the situation said the lines are owned by Level 3 Communications Inc. Level 3 could not be reached for comment."

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