darthcamaro and several other readers have noted that the Linux Foundation has bought Linux.com from SourceForge Inc. (Slashdot's corporate parent). The Linux Foundation (employer of Linus Torvalds) will take over the editorial and community stewardship for the site; SourceForge will continue to supply advertising on it. "[Linux Foundation Executive Director Jim] Zemlin says the Linux Foundation wants to build a collaborative forum where Linux users can share ideas and get information on the Linux operating system. A beta of the site will be released in the next few months. ... Linux.com is being redesigned as a central source for Linux software, documentation and answers regardless of platforms, including server, desktop/netbook, mobile and embedded areas." What do you think should be on Linux.com?

igrigorik writes "The generality and simplicity of Google's Map-Reduce is what makes it such a powerful tool. However, what if instead of using proprietary protocols we could crowd-source the CPU power of millions of users online every day? Javascript is the most widely deployed language — every browser can run it — and we could use it to push the job to the client. Then, all we would need is a browser and an HTTP server to power our self-assembling supercomputer (proof of concept + code). Imagine if all it took to join a compute job was to open a URL."

Al writes "Microsoft demonstrated new augmented-reality software for cell-phones at the 2009 TechFest conference, which was held this week in Redmond. Instead of using GPS or WiFi triangulation, the prototype system relies entirely on scene-recognition to identify its position and add virtual objects to a video picture of the real world. TechFest is a showcase for lots of projects at Microsoft's various research labs. Other technologies on show included Photosynth for video, an image-tracking system for handwriting, a way of refining image searches using colors, and a 3-D version of Microsoft Surface."

theraindog writes "Intel's X25-E Extreme SSD is easily the fastest flash drive on the market, and contrary to what one might expect, it actually delivers compelling value if you're looking at performance per dollar rather than gigabytes. That, combined with a rackmount-friendly 2.5" form factor and low power consumption make the drive particularly appealing for enterprise RAID. So just how fast are four of them in a striped array hanging off a hardware RAID controller? The Tech Report finds out, with mixed but at times staggeringly impressive results."

Tibor the Hun writes "NPR reports that Susan Solomon, one of the world's top climate scientists, finds in her new study that global warming is now irreversible. The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, concludes that even if we could immediately cease our impact on pollution and greenhouse gasses emissions, global climate change would continue for more than a thousand years. The reason is the saturation of oceans with carbon dioxide. Her study looked at the consequences of long-term effect in terms of sea-level rise and drought."

nk497 writes "The worm that's supposedly infected almost nine million PCs running Windows, dubbed Cornficker or Downadup, could lead to a massive botnet, security researchers have said. The worm initially spread to systems unpatched against MS08-067, but has since 'evolved and is now able to spread to patched computers through portable USB drives through brute-force password-guessing.'"

Dynamoo writes "The good news is that Microsoft have announced free anti-virus software for consumers, dubbed Morro, available late next year. The bad news is ... well, exactly the same. Although Microsoft's anti-malware products are pretty good, this move could drive many competitors out of business and create a dangerous security monoculture; major rivals will be lawyering up already. On the other hand, many malware infections could be prevented even by basic software. So is this going to be a good or bad thing overall?"

miller60 writes "An air conditioning technology called the 'heat wheel' is getting a test drive in data centers, and early adopters cite impressive reductions in their power bills. The heat wheel — also known as a rotary heat exchanger or Kyoto Cooling — is a refinement of cooling systems using outside air. Rather than introducing exterior air directly into the server room (the air economization we discussed recently), the heat wheel briefly mixes the outside air and exhaust air to create an air-to-air heat exchanger. A data center in the Netherlands using this approach only has to use chillers 11 days a year." The article points out that the heat wheel is not new, but it hasn't been applied to data centers until recently.

jeevesbond writes "PHP is finally getting support for namespaces. However, after a couple hours of conversation, the developers picked '\' as the separator, instead of the more popular '::'. Fredrik Holmström points out some problems with this approach. The criteria for selection were ease of typing and parsing, how hard it was to make a typo, IDE compatibility, and the number of characters."

Albert writes "Storm shows several key characteristics, some new and advanced. It uses cunning social engineering techniques — such as tying spam campaigns to a current event or site of interest — as well as a blend of email and the Web to spread. It is highly coordinated, yet decentralized — and with Storm using the latest generation of P2P technology, it cannot be disabled by simply 'cutting off its head.' In addition, Storm is self-propagating — once infected, computers send out massive amounts of Storm spam to keep recruiting new nodes."