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The Media

Confessions of an Internet "Shock Jock" 194

An anonymous reader followed up on the Windows memory-leak fraud scandal, which is worth reading before you read the perpetrator's justification. "Randall C. Kennedy comes clean about his past, his relationship to Craig Barth and how it all came tumbling down. Includes an inside look at the politics of IDG and why you can never trust an IT publication that's as obsessed with page views as InfoWorld."

Comment This is less about censorship than who is censored (Score 1) 352

I'll say what I said on Reddit...

Consider the source people: the article is hosted by News Corp in Australia, referring to an attack on its paper in South Australia, and is pimping the anti-corruption lobby it started as a source of outrage. "The Right to Know Coalition, made up of Australia's major media outlets including News Limited, publisher of The Advertiser and parent company of news.com.au, has called the new laws "draconian"." The same thing is done by having the Wall Street Journal or Times of London report something, and have Fox News run with it as a lead.

And based on what the AC added earlier, they're crowing about their victory too.
http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/victory-atkinson-loosens-gag/story-e6frea6u-1225826104175
Math

7 of the Best Free Linux Calculators 289

An anonymous reader writes "One of the basic utilities supplied with any operating system is a desktop calculator. These are often simple utilities that are perfectly adequate for basic use. They typically include trigonometric functions, logarithms, factorials, parentheses and a memory function. However, the calculators featured in this article are significantly more sophisticated with the ability to process difficult mathematical functions, to plot graphs in 2D and 3D, and much more. Occasionally, the calculator tool provided with an operating system did not engender any confidence. The classic example being the calculator shipped with Windows 3.1 which could not even reliably subtract two numbers. Rest assured, the calculators listed below are of precision quality."
Earth

Minnesota Introduces World's First Carbon Tariff 303

hollywoodb writes "The first carbon tax to reduce the greenhouse gases from imports comes not between two nations, but between two states. Minnesota has passed a measure to stop carbon at its border with North Dakota. To encourage the switch to clean, renewable energy, Minnesota plans to add a carbon fee of between $4 and $34 per ton of carbon dioxide emissions to the cost of coal-fired electricity, to begin in 2012 ... Minnesota has been generally pushing for cleaner power within its borders, but the utility companies that operate in MN have, over the past decades, sited a lot of coal power plants on the relatively cheap and open land of North Dakota, which is preparing a legal battle against Minnesota over the tariff."
Power

Submission + - Massive Solar Updraft Towers Planned for Arizona (inhabitat.com)

MikeChino writes: Australia-based EnviroMission Ltd recently announced plans to build two solar updraft towers that span hundreds of acres in La Paz County, Arizona. Solar updraft technology sounds promising enough: generate hot air with a giant greenhouse, channel the air into a chimney-like device, and let the warm wind turn a wind turbine to produce energy. The scale of the devices would be staggering — each plant would consist of a 2,400 foot chimney over a greenhouse measuring four square miles. The Southern California Public Power Authority has approved EnviroMission as a provider, although there’s still plenty of work to be done before the $750 million, 200 megawatt project can begin.
Politics

Submission + - Minnesota introduces world's first carbon tariff (boingboing.net)

hollywoodb writes: The first carbon tax to reduce the greenhouse gases from imports comes not between two nations, but between two states. Minnesota has passed a measure to stop carbon at its border with North Dakota. To encourage the switch to clean renewable energy Minnesota plans to add a carbon fee of between $4 and $34 per ton of carbon dioxide emissions to the cost of coal-fired electricity, to begin in 2012... Minnesota has been generally pushing for cleaner power within its borders, but the utility companies that operate in MN have, over the past decades, sited a lot of coal power plants on the relatively cheap and open land of North Dakota, which is preparing a legal battle against Minnesota over the tariff.
Sources: BoingBoing, Scientific American, TreeHugger

Hardware Hacking

Reusing Old TiVo Hardware? 197

buss_error writes "I have old TiVo hardware that I'd like to reuse — however, I find in searching that the most frequent reply is: 'Don't cheat TiVo!' I don't want to cheat TiVo — in fact, I'd like to nuke the drive with a completely open-source distro with no TiVo drivers at all. Some uses I think would be interesting: recording video for security cameras or a drive cam; a unit for weather reporting; fax/telephone; a power monitor for the home; or other home automation. I would prefer a completely TiVo-free install — this is because I have major issues with TiVo and don't want the slightest taint of their intellectual property. But, since I paid for the hardware, I'd like to wring some use out of it rather than simply putting it in the landfill."

Comment I've used dual-stack IPv6 with IPv4 NAT for 2 yrs! (Score 5, Interesting) 438

I'm getting rather sick of reading posts along the lines of "it doesn't work," "it'll never work," and "you need to have one work for the other." In 2006-2007, I tried deploying an IPv4-based TINC setup on my office computers. However, to maintain this, you needed a computer at each of the bigger sites, and smaller systems tied to a common system: I had over 100 nodes chained together like this. By summer 2007, it was unsustainable: I had already been researching IPv6, and decided to start implementing it as a solution for accessing things like Intranet, VNC, and remote file systems. By the end of 2007, I had more or less eliminated the IPv4 chains with a setup of our sites using NAT'd IPv4 in the 192.168-whatever range, and individual IPv6 subnets for each site, tied together by an ethernet-based TINC install on OpenWRT routers. It has worked above and beyond my expectations: we can use regular Internet; we can use IPv6 global and internal resources. If it doesn't support v6 out of the box, chances are it works with "portproxy" fine. With a transition to newer Linux systems and Vista/2008 Windows systems, it becomes more streamlined. You can't avoid v6: its all around you. I believe in it and I've made it work.

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