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Comment Correct if me if I'm wrong, M$ (Score 1) 555

by renaissanz (#26744629) Attached to: Why Windows Must (and Will) Go Open Source
The biggest problem threading throughout this entire debate is the feasibility of porting Microsoft's non-OS applications. From the source code that I've seen ('96 all the way up to '08, and don't ask how), the applications that they write are so incredibly intertwined with the OS that they would expend decades worth of man power just to interface with another OS. Yes, there is the Apple stuff, but has anybody closely examined the dependency differences between a win binary & and an Apple binary? Take a look, it's real food for thought...
Communications

Submission + - GAO Report Slams FCC (wirelessweek.com)

Submitted by
eldavojohn
eldavojohn writes: "The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has made a report available today that was requested a year ago by a Democratic senator that finds the Federal Communications Commissions has been favoring lobbyists a little too much. From the article, 'The report says that some people at the commission warn lobbyists when a particular issue is about to come up for a vote. Typically, the commission chairman circulates an item for vote three weeks before a meeting. Under the rules of the FCC, meeting agendas are published one week before a vote is scheduled. Once the agenda is published lobbying is banned. The report says that the two-week window allows lobbyist plenty of time to "maximize their impact."' So I guess that's how people with money influence the law & why communications in America is run by only the big dogs."
United States

Submission + - Soldier of the Future Goes to War

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Land Warrior, the Army's wearable electronics package, was panned earlier this year by the troops who were testing it out. They were forced to take the collection of digital maps and next-gen radios to war, anyway. And now, Wired's Noah Shachtman reports from Iraq, those same soldiers are starting to warm up to their soldier suits of the future.
Programming

Submission + - GPLv3 shunned, survey says (infoworld.com)

Submitted by
willdavid
willdavid writes: "This report by Paul Krill in InfoWorld is interesting: Just 6 percent of developers working with open-source software have adopted the new GNU General Public License version 3, an Evans Data survey has found. Also, two-thirds say they will not adopt GPLv3 anytime in the next year, and 43 percent say they will never implement the new license. Almost twice as many would be less likely to join a project that uses GPLv3 than would be likely to join, Evans said in a statement released on Monday. http://weblog.infoworld.com/techwatch/archives/014044.html"
Wireless Networking

Submission + - NTP sues Verizon, AT&T, Sprint Nextel and T-Mo (networkworld.com)

Submitted by
Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward writes: "Following its successful patent suit against Research in Motion, NTP has now set its sites on the major telcos. NTP, a patent holding company based in Arlington, Va., is suing Verizon, AT&T, Sprint Nextel and T-Mobile USA for infringing on several of its patents, all of which are related to the delivery of e-mail to mobile devices. In their new round of suits, NTP is alleging that some of the telcos' new e-mail-to-mobile services, such as those delivered by the T-Mobile Wing and AT&T Xpress Mail, infringe upon their patent rights. NTP wants an injunction and is demanding unspecified damages. http://www.networkworld.com/news/2007/09120-ntp-sues-verizon-att-sprint-nextel-tmobile.html"
The Internet

Submission + - NSF-funded "Dark Web" to battle terrorists (nsf.gov)

Submitted by
BuzzSkyline
BuzzSkyline writes: "The National Science Foundation has announced a University of Arizona project, which they call the Dark Web, intended to monitor all terrorist activity on the Internet. The project relies on "advanced techniques such as Web spidering, link analysis, content analysis, authorship analysis, sentiment analysis and multimedia analysis [to] find, catalogue and analyze extremist activities online." The coolest part of the project is a tool called Writeprint, which "automatically extracts thousands of multilingual, structural, and semantic features to determine who is creating 'anonymous' content" with an accuracy of 95%, according to the release. Of course, that means that Big Brother will be able to keep en eye on all the Anonymous Cowards posting on /. too."
Space

Opportunity Takes a Dip Into Victoria Crater 79

Posted by CmdrTaco from the probably-not-skinny dept.
Muad'Dave writes "From the NASA News Release 'Today, NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity entered Victoria Crater for the first time. It radioed home information via a relay by NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter, reporting its activities for the day. Opportunity drove far enough in — about four meters (13 feet) — to get all six wheels past the crater rim. Then it backed uphill for about three meters (10 feet). The driving commands for the day included a precaution for the rover to stop driving if its wheels were slipping more than 40 percent. Slippage exceeded that amount on the last step of the drive, so Opportunity stopped with its front pair of wheels still inside the crater.' This marks the beginning of perhaps the greatest 'Opportunity' for new discoveries on Mars."
Security

When Ethics and IT Collide 414

Posted by CmdrTaco from the you-got-peanut-butter-in-my-chocolate dept.
jcatcw writes "IT workers have access to confidential data, and they can see what other employees are doing on their computers or the networks. This can put a good worker in a bad predicament. Bryan, the IT director for the U.S. division of German company, discovered an employee using a company computer to view pornography of Asian women and of children. He reported it but the company ignored it. Subsequently the employee was promoted and moved to China to run a manufacturing plant. That was six years ago but Bryan still regrets not going to the FBI. Other IT workers admit using their admin passwords to snoop through company systems. In a Ponemon Institute poll of more than 16,000 U.S. IT practitioners, 62% said they had accessed another person's computer without permission, 50% read confidential or sensitive information without a legitimate reason, and 42% said they had knowingly violated their company's privacy, security or IT policies. But in the absence of a professional code of ethics, companies struggle to keep corporate policies up to date."

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