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Comment Re:google cache (Score 1) 711

Well actually it is not as easy as it seems, because each page had a design of its own. I mean, writing a crawler to go through Google's results list (or any other service that indexes pages) is quite a simple task. But the problem here is that apparently members could customize their journalspaces which means that unless the HTML output was standardized, it would be hell to try to get some sense out of each page.
Robotics

Submission + - Robotic submarine maps worlds deepest sinkhole

holy_calamity writes: The world's deepest water-filled sinkhole has finally been mapped — by a robotic submarine who's descendants may swim on one of Jupiter's moons. The last attempt to find the bottom yielded the SCUBA diving depth record and the death of a diving legend. The sub's SONAR found that the divers were about 10m from the floor, and that the sinkhole which is over 300m deep could be connected to even deeper caves.
Mozilla

Submission + - NYT Shines a Light on Firefox's Financial Sucess

NewsCloud writes: "Noam Cohen raises the issue of Mozilla's amazing financial success with Firefox's Google relationship.:

"Thanks to the Google agreement, the Mozilla Foundation went from revenue of nearly $6 million in 2004 to more than $52 million the next year [similar revenue is expected in 2006]...In 2005, the foundation created a subsidiary, the for-profit Mozilla Corporation,...mainly to deal with the tax and other issues related to the Google contract...By creating a corporation to run the Firefox project, Mozilla was committing to be less transparent. In part, that is because Google insists on the secrecy of "its arrangement and agreements," said board member Mitch Kapor.
The article compares this approach to Wikipedia's ongoing fundraisers and raises the issue of transparency in open source projects. i.e. should Firefox's 1,000 to 2,000 developers and 80,000 evangelists have full knowledge of how revenue is spent as well as the extent to which Google is able to influence strategy vs. other stakeholders."

Comment Re:In unrelated news... (Score 1) 1856

No, wait, you must be joking. I presume you are joking, it's April's fools in Europe already. Where exactly did you get the 51% number? Of the "physical scientists"? How about metaphysical ones? How about self imagined ones?

When asked for proof scientists will say those things? What scientists? That is just plain aberrant beyond any drug induced reason.
Evolution is supported by fossils, by the genetic drift, by gene flow, by artificial hybridization and one of the most important, by speciation.

How the hell can anyone get from evolution to creating life in the lab?
Communications

UK Taps 439,000 Phones, Now Wants To Monitor MPs 290

JPMH writes "With the largest density of CCTV cameras in the world, and an increasing network of automatic number-plate recognition cameras on main roads, Britain has long been a pioneer for the surveillance society. Now new official figures reveal that UK agencies monitored 439,000 telephones and email addresses in a 15 month period between 2005 and 2006. The Interception of Communications Commissioner is seeking the right for agencies to be allowed to monitor the communications of Members of Parliament as well, something which has been forbidden since the 1960s. It must be that it is bringing their numbers down: on the law of averages they should be monitoring at least 5 of the MPs."
Operating Systems

Journal Journal: Linux : Tipping Point !!

I happened to attend a FSG (Free Software Group) meet in Cochin a few years back. One of the hard core 'Free'dom fighters in the group, proclaimed with impunity that Linux has reached the masses and that "even his mom uses it on an everyday basis".

The last part caught my attention. It has always been difficult to measure if Linux was ready for the masses; what better way than to have your mom use it everyday to prove a point !!
PHP

March To Be Month of PHP Bugs 292

PHP writes "Stefan Esser is the founder of both the Hardened-PHP Project and the PHP Security Response Team (which he recently left). During an interview with SecurityFocus he announced the upcoming Month of PHP bugs initiative in March." Quoting: "We will disclose different types of bugs, mainly buffer overflows or double free (/destruction) vulnerabilities, some only local, but some remotely triggerable... Additionally there are some trivial bypass vulnerabilities in PHP's own protection features... As a vulnerability reporter you feel kinda puzzled how people among the PHP Security Response Team can claim in public that they do not know about any security vulnerability in PHP, when you disclosed about 20 holes to them in the two weeks before. At this point you stop bothering whether anyone considers the disclosure of unreported vulnerabilities unethical. Additionally a few of the reported bugs have been known for years among the PHP developers and will most probably never be fixed. In total we have more than 31 bugs to disclose, and therefore there will be days when more than one vulnerability will be disclosed."
Privacy

Submission + - Europe's Plan to Track Phone and Net Use

An anonymous reader writes: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/20/business/worldbu siness/20privacy.html February 20, 2007 Europe's Plan to Track Phone and Net Use PARIS, Feb. 19 — European governments are preparing legislation to require companies to keep detailed data about people's Internet and phone use that goes beyond what the countries will be required to do under a European Union directive. In Germany, a proposal from the Ministry of Justice would essentially prohibit using false information to create an e-mail account, making the standard Internet practice of creating accounts with pseudonyms illegal.

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