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Operating Systems

Submission + - Linux kernel 2.6.31 released

Submitted by
diegocgteleline.es
diegocgteleline.es writes: "The Linux kernel v2.6.31 has been released. Besides the desktop improvements and USB 3.0 support mentioned some days ago, there is an equivalent of FUSE for character devices that can be used for proxying OSS sound through ALSA, new tools for using hardware performance counters, readahead improvements, ATI Radeon KMS, Intel's Wireless Multicomm 3200 support, gcov support, a memory checker and a memory leak detector, a reimplementation of inotify and dnotify on top of a new filesystem notification infrastructure, btrfs improvements, support for IEEE 802.15.4, IPv4 over Firewire, new drivers and small improvements. The full list of changes can be found here."
Education

Submission + - Historic Feynman Physics Lectures Available Online (microsoft.com)

Submitted by burgessms
burgessms writes: An acclaimed lecture series by the iconic physicist Richard Feynman is now freely available to the general public for the first time on a new Web site launched by Microsoft Research, in collaboration with Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates. The lectures, which Feynman originally delivered at Cornell University in 1964, have been hugely influential for many people, including Gates.

Gates privately purchased the rights to the seven lectures in the series, called "The Character of Physical Law," to make them widely available to the public for free with the hope that they will help get kids excited about physics and science.
The historic lectures and related content can be seen at http://research.microsoft.com/tuva. The name "Tuva" was chosen because of Feynman's lifelong fascination with the small Russian republic of Tuva, located in the heart of Asia.
Security

Submission + - The iPhone SMS Hack Explained

Submitted by GhostX9
GhostX9 writes: Tom's Hardware just interviewed Charlie Miller, the man behind the iPhone remote exploit hack and winner of Pwn2Own 2009. He explains the (now patched) bug in the iPhone which allowed him to remotely exploit the iPhone in detail, explaining how the string concatenation code was flawed. The most surprising thing was that the bug could be traced back to several previous generation of iPhone OS's (he stopped testing at version 2.2). He also talks about the failures of other devices such as crashing HTC's Touch by sending a SMS with "%n" in the text.
Security

Submission + - Nmap 5.00 Released! (nmap.org)

Submitted by
iago-vL
iago-vL writes: "The long-awaited Nmap Security Scanner version 5.00 was just released (download)! This marks the most important release since 1997, and is a huge step in Nmap's evolution from a simple port scanner to an all-around security and networking tool suite. Significant performance improvements were made, and dozens of scripts were added. For example, Nmap can now log into Windows and perform local checks (PDF), including Conficker detection. New tools included in 5.00 are Ncat, a modern reimplementation of Netcat (with IPv6, SSL, NAT traversal, port redirection, and more!), and Ndiff, for quickly comparing scan results. Other tools are in the works for future releases, but we're still waiting for them to add email and ftp clients so we can finally get off Emacs!"
Google

Submission + - New Binary Diffing Algorithm Announced by Google

Submitted by
bheer
bheer writes: "Google's Open-Source Chromium project announced a new compression technique called Courgette geared towards distributing really small updates today. Courgette achieves smaller diffs (about 9x in one example) than standard binary-diffing algorithms like bsdiff by disassembling the code and sending the assembler diffs over the wire. This, the Chromium devs say, will allow them to send smaller, more frequent updates, making users more secure. Since this will be released as open source, it should make distributing updates a lot easier for the open-source community."
Space

Submission + - New map hints at Venus' wet, volcanic past (spacefellowship.com)

Submitted by
Matt_dk
Matt_dk writes: "Venus Express has charted the first map of Venus' southern hemisphere at infrared wavelengths. The new map hints that our neighbouring world may once have been more Earth-like, with a plate tectonics system and an ocean of water. The map comprises over a thousand individual images, recorded between May 2006 and December 2007. Because Venus is covered in clouds, normal cameras cannot see the surface, but Venus Express used a particular infrared wavelength that can see through them."
Idle

Submission + - Texting Teen Takes Tremendous Tumble

Submitted by
The Narrative Fallacy
The Narrative Fallacy writes: "We've all heard about the dangers of texting while driving, but 15-year-old Alexa Longueira from Staten Island recently learned a painful lesson about the hazards of texting while walking when, preparing to send a text, she stepped into an open manhole, scraping her arms and back as she slid into the sewer, which had some muck at the bottom. The manhole had been left open briefly by the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) just as workers were grabbing some cones to cordon off the area. "It was four or five feet, it was very painful. I kind of crawled out and the DEP guys came running and helped me," Longueria said. "They were just, like, 'I'm sorry! I'm sorry!" DEP spokeswoman Mercedes Padilla said in a statement that crews were flushing a high-pressure sewer line at the time. "We regret that this happened and wish the young woman a speedy recovery." After being released from Staten Island University Hospital, Longueria's parents say they are planning to file a lawsuit and displayed their daughter's injuries to a photographer from the "Staten Island Advance". Longueria's mother said doctors were concerned about possible spine damage suffered in the fall and want a follow-up MRI. Her mother added that she was particularly upset about the sewage. "Oh my God, it was putrid. One of her sneakers is still down there.""
The Internet

Submission + - Pandora Wants Radio Stations to Pay for Music, too (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by suraj.sun
suraj.sun writes: US radio stations don't pay performers and producers for the music they play, but the recording industry hopes to change that with a new performance rights bill in Congress. Webcaster Pandora has jumped into the fray on the side of the artists and labels, asking why radio gets a free ride when Pandora does not.

The campaign to get radio stations to pay up for the music they play marches on. With revenues from recorded music sales declining, rightsholders have turned their eyes in recent years to commercial US radio, which currently pays songwriters (but not performers or record labels) for the tunes that power their business.

The record labels now have Pandora on their side. The influential webcaster just wrapped up its own music licensing negotiations with rightsholders last week as both sides at last agreed to a deal that each could live with. With its own future secure for the next few years, Pandora is now turning its attention to the public performance debate here in the US, saying that the issue is a simple matter of fairness: why should webcasters have to pay more for music than traditional radio does?

ARS Technica : http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/07/pandora-now-pushing-radio-to-pay-for-music-too.ars
Space

Submission + - NASA has the lost tapes (nasa.gov)

Submitted by
caffiend666
caffiend666 writes: "A Speculated a few weeks ago, NASA has found and is starting to restore the lost Apollo 11 tapes. A Briefing will be held July 16th "at the Newseum in Washington to release greatly improved video imagery from the July 1969 live broadcast of the Apollo 11 moonwalk. " "The original signals were recorded on high quality slow-scan TV (SSTV) tapes. What was released to the TV networks was reduced to lower quality commercial TV standards.""
Google

Submission + - Behind the "My Location" Errors in Google (xconomy.com)

Submitted by
waderoush
waderoush writes: "Ever since Google added the "My Location" feature this week to the desktop and laptop version of Google Maps, allowing Firefox and Chrome users to see their current location on a map, people have been reporting bizarre location errors — Manhattanites, for example, are being told by Google that they're in Austin, TX. Ted Morgan, the CEO of Boston-based location software provider Skyhook Wireless, talked about the problems in an interview Friday. Skyhook's Wi-Fi-based location-finding technology was passed over when Mozilla adopted Google's own location services toolkit for Firefox 3.5 in April; Morgan says that was unfortunate for Web app developers, because Google's "crowdsourced" database of Wi-Fi access point locations is far less reliable than Skyhook's."
Mozilla

Submission + - FireFox To Get Multi-Process Separation

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: FireFox 3.5 is a very strong contender in the browser market but one feature it lacks that Google Chrome and Internet Explorer 8 has is multi-process browsing. Multi-process browsing gives the browser ultimate stability and performance for computers with multiple processors or CPU cores by having each page or tab, run in a separate process. This means each tab could theoretically could be on separate processors or cores giving you a performance boost over having just one process (the browser) running on just one CPU or core. We gain not only performance from this type of process separation, we also gain security because if one page ends up being malicious its process can be closed and is segregated from the remaining browser processes.
Announcements

Submission + - Human sperm produced in the laboratory (bbc.co.uk) 1

Submitted by duh P3rf3ss3r
duh P3rf3ss3r writes: The BBC is carrying a report from a team of researchers at Newcastle University who claim to have developed the first "artificial" human sperm from stem cells. The research, reported in the journal Stem Cells and Development involved selecting meristematic germ cells from a human embryonic stem cell culture and inducing meiosis, thus producing a haploid gamete. The authors claim that the resulting sperm are fully formed, mature, human sperm cells but the announcement has been greeted with mixed reaction from colleagues who claim the procedure is ethically questionable and that the gametes produced are of inferior levels of maturation.
PC Games (Games)

Submission + - Experimental Video Game Evolves Its Own Content (ucf.edu)

Submitted by
Ken Stanley
Ken Stanley writes: "Just as interest in user-generated content in video games is heating up, a team of researchers at the University of Central Florida has released an experimental multiplayer game in which content items compete with each other in an evolutionary arms race to satisfy the players. As a result, particle system-based weapons, which are the evolving class of content, continually invent their own new behaviors based on what users liked in the past. Does the resulting experience in this game, called Galactic Arms Race, suggest that evolutionary algorithms may be the key to automated content generation in future multiplayer gaming and MMOs?"
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft Puts C# and the CLI under Community Prom (technet.com) 3

Submitted by FishWithAHammer
FishWithAHammer writes: Peter Galli of Microsoft posted a blog entry on Port25 today, regarding the explicit placement of C# and the Common Language Infrastructure (the ECMA startard that underpins .NET) under their Community Promise:

It is important to note that, under the Community Promise, anyone can freely implement these specifications with their technology, code, and solutions. You do not need to sign a license agreement, or otherwise communicate to Microsoft how you will implement the specifications. ... Under the Community Promise, Microsoft provides assurance that it will not assert its Necessary Claims against anyone who makes, uses, sells, offers for sale, imports, or distributes any Covered Implementation under any type of development or distribution model, including open-source licensing models such as the LGPL or GPL.

This clears the way for Mono to be fully integrated into GNOME, and Boycott Novell can go back to crying in their corner.

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