jasonCotman - Slashdot User

Submission + - US judge rules against German Microsoft injunction (techworld.com.au)

Submitted by

angry tapir

on Wednesday April 11, 2012 @09:12PM

angry tapir writes: "In an unusual case, a U.S. judge has ruled that Motorola cannot enforce an injunction that would prevent Microsoft from selling Windows products in Germany, should a German court issue such an injunction next week. Microsoft asked the judge for the ruling in anticipation of an injunction that a German court is expected to issue related to a patent infringement suit that Motorola filed against Microsoft in Germany. The suit centers primarily on Motorola licenses that have been declared essential to the H.264 video standard. The German injunction is expected on April 17."

Submission + - We Come From Earth Bearing Life

Submitted by

Hugh Pickens writes

on Wednesday April 11, 2012 @04:41PM

Hugh Pickens writes writes: "About 65 million years ago, Earth was struck by an asteroid some 10 km in diameter with a mass of well over a trillion tonnes that created megatsunamis, global wildfires ignited by giant clouds of superheated ash and, the mass extinction of land-based life on Earth. Now astrobiologists have begun to study a less well known consequence: the ejection of billions of tons of life-bearing rocks and water into space that has made its way not just to other planets but other solar systems as well. Calculations by Tetsuya Hara and his collegues at Kyoto Sangyo University in Japan show that a surprisingly large amount of life-bearing material ended up not on the Moon and Mars, as might be expected, but the Jovian moon Europa and the Saturnian moon Enceladus also received tons of life-bearing rock from earth. Even more amazingly calculations suggest that most Earth ejecta ended up in interstellar space and some has probably already arrived at Earth-like exoplanets orbiting other stars. Hara estimates that about a thousand Earth-rocks from this event would have made the trip to Gliese 581, a red dwarf some 20 light years away that is thought to have a super-Earth orbiting at the edge of the habitable zone, taking about a million years to reach its destination. Of course, nobody knows if microbes can survive that kind of journey or even the shorter trips to Europa and Enceladus. But Hara says that if microbes can survive that kind of journey, they ought to flourish on a super-Earth in the habitable zone (PDF). "If we consider the possibility that the fragmented ejecta (smaller than 1cm) are accreted to comets and other icy bodies, then buried fertile material could make the interstellar journey throughout the Galaxy," writes Hara. "Under these circumstances fragments could continue the interstellar journey and Earth origin meteorites could be transferred to Gl 581 system. If we take it is viable, we should consider the panspermia theories more seriously.""

Submission + - Statcounter: 1366x768 monitors beat 1024x768 monitors for the first time (statcounter.com)

Submitted by

mpol

on Wednesday April 11, 2012 @01:29PM

mpol writes: "Statcounter released new statistics today and 1366x768 monitors feature now the most used screen resolution on the internet.
These screens are available in most cheap laptops, and therefore probably sold and used very much. With 19.2% it is beating the old 4:3 resolution, which still has 18.6% usage share.
And you do know, you have lies, damn lies, and statistics."

Submission + - End of Windows XP support era signals beginning of security nightmare (networkworld.com) 1

Submitted by colinneagle on Wednesday April 11, 2012 @12:01PM

colinneagle writes: Microsoft’s recent announcement that it will end support for the Windows XP operating system in two years signals the end of an era for the company, and potentially the beginning of a nightmare for everyone else.

When Microsoft cuts the chord on XP in two years it will effectively leave millions of existing Windows-based computers vulnerable to continued and undeterred cyberattacks, many of which hold the potential to find their way into consumer, enterprise and even industrial systems running the latest software.

Although most of the subsequent security issues appear to be at the consumer level, it may not be long until they find a way into corporate networks or industrial systems, Miller says.

Even scarier, Sarwate says many SCADA systems for industrial networks still run a modified version of XP, and are not in a position to upgrade. Because much of the software running on SCADA systems is not compatible with traditional Microsoft OS capabilities, an OS upgrade would entail much more work than it would for a home or corporate system.

Comment Debian console install (Score 1) 319

by jasonCotman on Friday March 02, 2012 @09:08PM (#39227941) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: What Is the Best Distro For Linux Lessons?

I would suggest Debian because this question breaks down into two things:

1 - What is a really good, stable, easy-to-use Distro?

Answer: Debian, for one, because it's established, reliable, and dpkg/apt-get is super duper.

2 - How does a user learn about Linux from a distro?

Answer (in my opinion): by installing a base, command-line system and then building it up into the full system of his/her choice. By doing this, you introduce the user to the shell, which is criticial to *learning* Linux. A nice, fancy desktop is useful for *using* Linux but the process of, say, installing xwindows, installing XFCE, uninstalling XFCE, installing GNOME, uninstalling GNOME, and then finally deciding on KDE (for example) teaches the user something about the OS and how to make it useful for his/her purposes. That applies to individual packages, too. "Want to browse the web? Do an internet search for 'Linux web browsers' and apt-get your way to some testing." This gives the user an understanding of how the pieces fit together and it provides the skills necessary to make changes in the future.

Submission + - EPIC sues FTC over Google's planned privacy changes (techworld.com.au)

Submitted by

angry tapir

on Wednesday February 08, 2012 @11:02PM

angry tapir writes: "The Electronic Privacy Information Center has filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, asking a court to force the agency to take action against Google over planned changes in the company's collection of personal data. EPIC, in briefs filed Wednesday, asked the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to require the FTC to enforce a 2011 privacy agreement between the agency and Google over the company's fumbled rollout of its Buzz social networking service."

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