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Rusty Foster Isn't Dead 162

Posted by timothy from the pass-it-on dept.
While he was vacationing with his wife, Kuro5hin founder Rusty Foster was killed — at least in the eyes of Facebook. NBC News details how it happened: a "pal" pranked both Foster and Facebook by notifying the social site of Foster's supposed death, providing as documentation the obituary of another, much older man by the same name. Getting the Facebook version of his life back took some doing; based on this article it seems much easier to convince Facebook that you're dead than that you're alive.

Comment "Intellectual property" (Score 1) 97

You can encourage clear thinking, and avoid gratuitous confusion, by
shunning the term "intellectual property" when you write about this
case.

This case is about one specific law -- patent law. The term
"intellectual property" identifies that law with a dozen or so
unrelated disparate laws, which have nothing in common in practice.
They don't work the same, and their good or bad effects are different
too. The only way to understand any of them is to keep them mentally
separate. You can help readers do that by not mixing them up.

See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.html for more explanation.

Comment What about the freedom of the viewers? (Score 1) 393

by Richard M. Stallman (#41238885) Attached to: Hugo Awards Live Stream Cut By Copyright Enforcement Bot

This story doesn't mention that Ustream is bad for another reason even
when it does "work": because it requires viewers to run nonfree
software.

If a con or any event is going to do streaming, the organizers should
contact me; I can put them in touch with people who can show them how
to stream it themselves with free software. One secondary advantage
is that no company can censor the transmission.
Math

Goldbach Conjecture: Closer To Solved? 170

Posted by timothy from the eventually-knock-it-down-to-one dept.
mikejuk writes "The Goldbach conjecture is not the sort of thing that relates to practical applications, but they used to say the same thing about electricity. The Goldbach conjecture is reasonably well known: every integer can be expressed as the sum of two primes. Very easy to state, but it seems very difficult to prove. Terence Tao, a Fields medalist, has published a paper that proves that every odd number greater than 1 is the sum of at most five primes. This may not sound like much of an advance, but notice that there is no stipulation for the integer to be greater than some bound. This is a complete proof of a slightly lesser conjecture, and might point the way to getting the number of primes needed down from at most five to at most 2. Notice that no computers were involved in the proof — this is classical mathematical proof involving logical deductions rather than exhaustive search."

Comment Say it out loud and wake up the other passengers (Score 1) 1059

You could turn it into an opportunity for organizing. Say, loud
enough for other passengers to hear, "You are working for the people
that hate our freedoms. You are not protecting us, you are the
threat. Your job is to make Americans scared so we will give up our
freedom without a fight. But we the American people will overcome
you. If you are a patriot you should quit your job."

The idea isn't that you convince the cops, it's to wake up the other
passengers.

Be prepared with responses to the usual fallacious arguments of the
other side, and if the cop spoke quietly, your response needs to tell
passersby what the issue is as well as respond to it.
Idle

Submission + - The RMS Rider (mysociety.org)

Submitted by larry bagina
larry bagina writes: It's no secret that rock stars have riders — provisions on their contractual appearances that require a bowl of brown-free m&ms or specify the exact brand of bottled water, cocaine purity, etc. Well, Richard Stallman has his own list of provisions. Nothing about toe jam, oddly enough.

I can't wait to see Eric Raymond's rider!
Security

Prototyping Boards Make It Easier To Find Flaws in Specialized Hardware 56

Posted by timothy from the arduino-nuclear-plant dept.
wiredmikey writes "Author Robert Vamosi writes an interesting piece on how security researchers are using open source 'prototyping boards' and other open source tools now available via the Internet for rapid prototyping of tools used in hardware analysis. 'The days of saying it would take the resources of a nation-state to discover or exploit vulnerabilities in a particular piece of hardware in an industrial control system or a healthcare environment are rapidly fading,' he writes. Vendors who do not test their products before selling them into the field are doomed to be targets of future research and, perhaps, attacks."

Comment Re: Paid Developers Power the Linux Kernel (Score 1) 191

by Richard M. Stallman (#34532372) Attached to: Paid Developers Power the Linux Kernel

It's a useful thing that so many people are paid to contribute to a
free software program such as Linux, the kernel typically used with
the GNU system. Much of the development of the GNU Compiler
Collection, which I started in the 1980s, is also done by paid
programmers, and we appreciate their contribution.

However, in trying to clear up the misconception that free software
development is done only by volunteers, it spreads another
misconception: that volunteers must be unemployed. Most free programs
are written by volunteers, and these volunteers typically have jobs of
some sort. They contribute to free software in their free time.

If you happen to become unemployed, as so many have due to the insane
deregulation of the banks, using your time to write free software is
one way to draw something positive out of this trouble. But when you
find work again, you won't have to stop contributing.

Submission + - Music while programming 6

Submitted by BubbaDoom
BubbaDoom writes: In our cublicle-ville, we have programmers intermixed with accounting, customer support and marketing. As a programmer, it is our habit to put on our headphones and listen to our portable music players to drown out all of the noise from everyone else. The boss recently sent an email just to the programmers demanding that we do not use our music players at work because he thinks it distracts us from our jobs and causes us to make mistakes. Of course we've explained to him that the prattle from the other people is much much more distracting but he insists his policy is the right one. What is the /. community's experience with music at work for programmers?
Mozilla

Firefox 3.0 Makes Leap Forward 401

Posted by Zonk from the go-you-crazy-dino-go dept.
Kurtz'sKompund writes "Mozilla has announced that Firefox 3.0 has passed a major milestone! The Places feature has been added to the alpha client slated for release next week. Places is a complete re-work of the bookmarking and history browser functions. It was at one point slated for Firefox 2.0, but will instead see release in Mozilla's next major version. '"We enabled the Places implementation of bookmarks on the trunk," said the Places team in a post to the Mozilla developer center blog. "Although there is still much to be done, this is an important milestone for us." Firefox 3.0 alpha 5 is scheduled to launch June 1. Because Places uses the open-source SQLite database engine to store and retrieve bookmarks and history entries, it's incompatible with earlier Firefox editions' bookmarks. Alpha users must convert their existing entries, Mozilla developers said."
Red Hat Software

Raymond Knocks Fedora, Switches to Ubuntu 608

Posted by Zonk from the one-unhappy-penguin dept.
narramissic writes "After 13 years as a loyal Red Hat user, Eric Raymond, co-founder of the Open Source Initiative, is switching to the Ubuntu distribution. In a message distributed to Linux mailing lists and news organizations, Raymond cited technical issues with Red Hat, such as the way repositories are maintained, the submission process and 'stagnant' development of Red Hat's packaging technology, as well as governance problems, the failure to gain desktop market share and the failure to include proprietary media formats. 'Over the last five years, I've watched Red Hat/Fedora throw away what was at one time a near-unassailable lead in technical prowess, market share and community prestige,' Raymond wrote. 'The blunders have been legion on both technical and political levels.'"

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