stephdau - Slashdot User

Submission + - Microsoft: Open Document won standard war

Submitted by

Elektroschock

on Friday June 20, 2008 @05:15AM

Elektroschock writes: "At a RedHat retrospective panel on the ODF vs. OOXML struggle panel a Microsoft representative, Stuart McKee, admitted that ODF had "clearly won". The Redmond company is going to add native support of ODF 1.1 with its Office 2007 service pack 2. Its yet unpublished format ISO OOXML would not be supported before the release of the next Office generation and is under the looming risk of four national appeals to the ISO decision."

Comment Too busy for that... (Score 2, Funny) 149

by stephdau on Tuesday June 17, 2008 @04:51PM (#23829885) Attached to: US Court Disconnects Canadian Domain Name Scammers

Dudes, c'mon, our law enforcement officers and law makers are way too busy with important things such as a bribe-sponsored copyright reform to worry about such pesky things... :p

Submission + - Fedora Nightlife harnesses idle computer power (ostatic.com)

Submitted by A. B. VerHausen on Thursday May 29, 2008 @07:26AM

A. B. VerHausen writes: If you've given up on SETI, now you can let your idle computer help with other kinds of scientific research. Red Hat employee Bryan Che started a project called Nightlife. He wants people to 'donate idle capacity from their own computers to an open, general-purpose Fedora-run grid for processing socially beneficial work and scientific research that requires access to large amounts of computing power.' In the end, he hopes to have more than a million nodes at Fedora.

Submission + - Net neutrality bill tabled in Canadian parliament (www.cbc.ca)

Submitted by FeatherBoa on Wednesday May 28, 2008 @10:23PM

FeatherBoa writes: A Canadian opposition party has followed through with its promise to introduce legislation that seeks to keep the internet democratic, open and free from control by service providers. This bill is about fairness to consumers. It seeks to amend the Telecommunications Act and prohibit network operators from engaging in network management practices that favour, degrade or prioritize any content, application or service transmitted over a broadband network based on its source, ownership or destination.

Submission + - Private donor saves Fermilab (sciencemag.org) 1

Submitted by sciencehabit on Wednesday May 28, 2008 @06:05PM

sciencehabit writes: In what has to be an embarrasment for the U.S. Department of Energy, an anonymous donor has ponied up $5 million to keep the country's only remaining particle physics laboratory operating efficiently.

Submission + - U.S. plan for 'thinking machines' repository OK'd

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 28, 2008 @03:54PM

An anonymous reader writes: Information scientists organized by the U.S.'s NIST say they will create a "concept bank" that programmers can use to build thinking machines that reason about complex problems at the frontiers of knowledge — from advanced manufacturing to biomedicine. The agreement by ontologists — experts in word meanings and in using appropriate words to build actionable machine commands — outlines the critical functions of the Open Ontology Repository (OOR). More on the summit that produced the agreement here.

Submission + - VLC Hits the Device Market (neurostechnology.com)

Submitted by

JoeBorn

on Wednesday May 28, 2008 @03:49PM

JoeBorn writes: "VideoLAN has long been known as a mature open source project for video playback and transcoding on the PC. Now, Neuros and Texas Instruments have sponsored a port of VLC to their next generation open set-top box. The idea is to allow developers to easily create interesting plug-ins for recording and transcoding applications for the set-top box which will automate functions previously requiring a PC, like formating recordings for a portable player or streaming to another device on the lan or the internet, etc."

Submission + - SPAM: Authentic Viking DNA from 1,000-year-old skeletons

Submitted by

FiReaNGeL

on Wednesday May 28, 2008 @12:05PM

FiReaNGeL writes: "Scientists were able to extract authentic DNA from ancient Viking skeletons, avoiding many of the problems of contamination faced by past researchers. Analysis of DNA from the remains of ancient humans provides valuable insights into such important questions as the origin of genetic diseases, migration patterns of our forefathers and tribal and family patterns. Using freshly sampled material from ten Viking skeletons from around AD 1,000, from a non-Christian burial site on the Danish island of Funen, Dissing and colleagues showed that it is indeed possible to retrieve authentic DNA from ancient humans."
Link to Original Source

Firefox Hits 400 Million Downloads 175

Posted by Zonk on Tuesday September 11, 2007 @09:01AM from the grats-little-browser dept.

Owen Dansley writes "Firefox hit another milestone this past Friday, when it passed the 400 million download mark. From its launch in 2004 it took one year to reach 100 million downloads, hitting 200 million downloads just one year later. According to figures released by US consultancy firm Janco and the IT Productivity Center, Firefox currently has 17.4 percent of the browser market — up 5.6 percentage points in the last year. Also within the last year, Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser dropped 9.6 percentage points to a market share of 63.9 percent."

RIAA Trying To Avoid a Jury Trial 183

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday September 11, 2007 @08:02AM from the judges-are-friendlier dept.

Joe Elliot writes "Faced with a jury trial set to begin on October 1, the RIAA has filed a motion for summary adjudication of specific facts: that the RIAA owns the copyrights to the songs in a file-sharing case; that the registration is proper; and that the defendant wasn't authorized to copy or distribute the recordings. If the judge rules in their favor, Ars notes that it may turn into a Novell v SCO situation where the only thing left to be decided are the damages. There are some significant problems with the copyright registrations — they don't match up. 'Thomas argues that since she lacks the financial means to conduct a thorough examination of the ownership history (e.g., track the ownership of "Hysteria" from Mercury to UMG) for the songs she is accused of infringing the copyright to, her only opportunity to determine their true ownership is either via discovery or cross-examination at trial.' Ars also notes that the RIAA's biggest fear is of losing a case. 'A loss at trial would be catastrophic for the RIAA. It would give other defense attorneys a winning template while exposing the weaknesses of the RIAA's arguments. It would also prove costly from a financial standpoint, as the RIAA would have to foot the legal expenses for both itself and the defendant. Most of all, it would set an unwelcomed precedent: over 20,000 lawsuits filed and the RIAA loses the first one to go to a jury.'"

Brain Differences In Liberals and Conservatives 1248

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday September 11, 2007 @05:25AM from the thinking-differently dept.

i_like_spam writes "Scientists from NYU and UCLA report in Nature Neuroscience that the brains of Democrats and Republicans process information differently. This new study finds that the differences are apparent even when the brain processes common information, not just political topics. From the study, liberals were more likely to be accurate and showed more brain activity in the region associated with analyzing conflicts. A researcher not affiliated with the study stated, liberals 'could be expected to more readily accept new social, scientific or religious ideas.' Moreover, 'the results could explain why President Bush demonstrated a single-minded commitment to the Iraq war and why some people perceived Sen. John F. Kerry... as a flip-flopper.'"

Entry-Level Astronomy? 358

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday September 11, 2007 @02:43AM from the getting-started-for-a-grand dept.

brobak writes "I'm getting ready to move into a new home on a couple of acres of rural property a significant distance from any large source of light pollution. I've always been interested in astronomy in general, and I would like to put my dark skies to use by picking up decent telescope and learning a bit about the skies over my head. The overall budget for this project is going to be around $1,000. I am particularly interested in astrophotography, but I understand that that may carry me outside the scope of the initial budget. I've already signed up for my local astronomy club's next monthly meeting. I have been doing Web research, but I thought that the Slashdot community would be the perfect place to get opinions on entry-level equipment, websites, and books."

Broadcasters Oppose Wireless Net Service 146

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday September 11, 2007 @12:01AM from the may-look-like-white-space-to-you dept.

kaufmanmoore writes "The AP reports that the National Association of Broadcasters is launching ads to target lawmakers over a push by a consortium of technology companies including Google, Intel, HP, and MSFT who want to use unused and unlicensed TV spectrum (the so-called 'white space') for wireless broadband. Broadcasters are airing concerns about the devices creating interference with broadcast television. In a statement, NAB chairman Alan Frank takes a swipe at technology companies: 'While our friends at Intel, Google and Microsoft may find system errors, computer glitches and dropped calls tolerable, broadcasters do not.'"

French Threat To ID Secret US Satellites 355

Posted by kdawson on Monday September 10, 2007 @10:43PM from the i-spy-with-my-little-radar dept.

SkiifGeek brings to our attention a story that ran on space.com a few months back but didn't get much wider notice at the time. "The French have identified numerous objects in orbit that do not appear in the ephemeris data reported by the US Space Surveillance Network. Now, the US claims that if it doesn't appear in the ephemeris data, then it doesn't exist. The French insist that at least some of the objects they have found boast solar arrays. Therefore it seems that the French have found secret US satellites. While they don't plan to release the information publicly, they do intend to use it as leverage to get the US to suppress reporting of sensitive French satellites in their published ephemeris."

Jatol.com Disappears, Stranding Customers 179

Posted by kdawson on Monday September 10, 2007 @09:27PM from the back-up-everything dept.

J Cardella writes "On August 31, Jatol.com — a hosting company that had operated for five years, providing excellent support and reasonable prices — disappeared, leaving hundreds, if not thousands of people without access to their Web content and email. There is speculation that Jatol may have stopped paying their host, Fastservers. The evidence is that Fastservers has been turning off the machines with Jatol's customers' content. Jatol had already collected September hosting fees from their customers (including myself). The story gets stranger. The owner of Jatol.com, Tim Tooley, has also disappeared. He was apparently very ill for some time, and speculation on the thread goes from his skipping the country to lying dead in his home. Fastservers apparently is unwilling to turn the machines back on, so people could get their content, without authorization from Tooley."

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