======================================================================
Who leads the Linux market while offering countless sponsorships, contributions,
and forward-thinking initiatives to support the advance of open source and its community?
HP, of course -- the advisor you can trust today for proven solutions you can value today and tomorrow.
Check out our latest FOSS governance focus involving FOSSBazaar and FOSSology �� the talk of the town.
http://www.linux.com/sponsor_solutions/hpos/
======================================================================
Slashdot Daily Newsletter
In this issue:
* VeriSign Jacks Up .com, .net Prices To the Max
* Quake-Catcher Aims to be Largest Distributed Seismometer Network
* Building the World's 4th Fastest Supercomputer
* All 44 Blackboard Patent Claims Invalidated
* Virgin America Uses Linux to Entertain Inflight
* Creative Goes After Driver Modder
* Huge Interest Brings Wikileaks Offline
* The Rush To Patent the Atomic Bomb
* Last year's CanSecWest Winner Repeats on Vista, Ubuntu Wins
* Jail-Breaking iPhones at the Apple Store
* Open Source Business Model Using Software Patents
* OOXML Vote Tracker and Calculation Guide
* Hacker Club Publishes German Official's Fingerprint
* Griefers Assault Epileptics Via Message Board
* Cisco, Troll Tracker Blogger Sued For Defamation
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
| VeriSign Jacks Up .com, .net Prices To the Max |
| from the greed-is-universal dept. |
| posted by ScuttleMonkey on Friday March 28, @21:37 (The Internet)|
|
http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/03/28/2249213
|
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
se7en writes "VeriSign is [0]jacking up prices for the .com and .net
domains for the second year running, increasing both by the maximum 7%
allowed under its exclusive contract with ICANN. 'Assuming that VeriSign
continues the 7 percent rise each year (which seems reasonable given the
company's history), registrars will be looking at $9.00 for .com domains
by the time the current contract ends in 2012 ��� a 50 percent increase in
six years.' Registrars have no choice but to pony up, and chances are
they'll pass the pain on to customers."
Discuss this story at:
http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=08/03/28/2249213
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Quake-Catcher Aims to be Largest Distributed Seismometer Network |
| from the shake-rattle-and-roll dept. |
| posted by ScuttleMonkey on Friday March 28, @23:22 (Science) |
|
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/03/28/233215
|
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
Nature is reporting that a new distributed computing application is
looking to monitor earthquake data using the accelerometer in many
computing devices. In the long run, "[0]Quake-Catcher" will hopefully be
fast enough to give warning before major earthquakes. "If it works, it
will be the cheapest seismic network on the planet and could operate in
any country. It wouldn't be as sensitive as traditional networks of
seismometers, but Lawrence says that's not the point. 'If you have only
two sensors in an area, you have to have a perfect system. If you have 15
sensors in a system it [can] be less perfect. One hundred, one thousand,
ten thousand -- your need for the system to be perfect becomes much
smaller,' he says. 'That's really our approach -- just to have massive
numbers.'"
Discuss this story at:
http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=08/03/28/233215
Links:
0. http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080326/full/452397a.html
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Building the World's 4th Fastest Supercomputer |
| from the better-faster-stronger dept. |
| posted by ScuttleMonkey on Saturday March 29, @01:31 (Supercomput|
|
http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/03/29/0015208
|
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
[0]ngkabra writes "In November 2007, a previously unheard of
supercomputer called EKA, built by CRL, India came out of nowhere to
become the 4th fastest supercomputer in the world. It is also the only
supercomputer in the top 10 that hasn't taken any government funding ���
which means it has no strings attached against commercial exploitation.
That is one of the reasons why Yahoo! chose EKA for the cloud computing
research that they announced at the Hadoop Summit earlier this week.
Yesterday, I attended a presentation by the team that built EKA, and they
touched upon a lot of the [1]technical details of EKA, and the challenges
faced in designing and building it, which makes for interesting reading."
Discuss this story at:
http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=08/03/29/0015208
Links:
0. mailto:navin@punetech.com
1. http://punetech.com/building-eka-the-worlds-fastest-privately-funded-supercomputer/
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
| All 44 Blackboard Patent Claims Invalidated |
| from the small-victories-still-victories dept. |
| posted by ScuttleMonkey on Saturday March 29, @03:28 (Patents) |
|
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/03/29/0346212
|
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
[0]I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "The US Patent &
Trademark Office has [1]invalidated all 44 claims in Blackboard's patent.
While this is a [2]non-final action [PDF], which means that Blackboard
will be able to appeal, it does represent a win for the Software Freedom
Law Center which had requested the reexamination of Blackboard's patent.
It is not yet known how this will affect the [3]$3.1M judgment Blackboard
won from Desire2Learn."
Discuss this story at:
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=08/03/29/0346212
Links:
0. http://endsoftpatents.org/
1. http://mfeldstein.com/all-44-blackboard-patent-claims-invalidated-by-uspto/
2. http://www.desire2learn.com/patent/USPTO%20Non-Final%20Action.pdf
3. http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/02/25/2345211&tid=155
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Virgin America Uses Linux to Entertain Inflight |
| from the slow-steady-creep dept. |
| posted by ScuttleMonkey on Saturday March 29, @05:42 (Software) |
|
http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/03/29/0357206
|
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
[0]anomalous cohort writes "CrunchGear has an interesting interview of
the Director of Inflight Entertainment for the airline Virgin America
discusses their [1]adoption of Linux for the passenger's seat back
computers. 'The ability to compose a music-video playlist is pretty cool
and on the horizon. The READ section is also awesome in that it takes
what is typically a bunch of wasted trees (excess newspapers,
periodicals) and allows us to be more environmentally friendly and timely
with things like news/event info/sports/entertainment etc.'"
Discuss this story at:
http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=08/03/29/0357206
Links:
0. http://www.transitionchoices.com/projection.html
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Creative Goes After Driver Modder |
| from the shame-on-you-creative dept. |
| posted by ScuttleMonkey on Saturday March 29, @07:33 (Hardware Ha|
|
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/03/29/046201
|
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
[0]FreedomFighter writes "Since the release of Windows Vista, Creative
has promised their Sound Cards as being 'Vista Ready'. Unfortunately, as
many unlucky customers did discover, this is not true. What the users
actually found were buggy, feature crippled drivers. Creative insisted
that features such as Decoding of Dolby�� Digital and DTS(TM) signals and
DVD-Audio which worked fine in WinXP, would not work on windows Vista.
With Creative releasing less than one new driver a year, things seemed
bleak. Fortunately, a talented user, Daniel_K, was recently able to 'fix'
many of the drivers, enabling the incompatible features and also fixing
many bugs. Just today Creative has decided to [1]put a stop to this. They
removed all links to his modified drivers, and banned several users who
were posting links to the now banned drivers."
Discuss this story at:
http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=08/03/29/046201
Links:
0. http://fightingagainstsuppression.blogspot.com/
1. http://forums.creative.com/creativelabs/board/message?board.id=soundblaster&thread.id=116332
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Huge Interest Brings Wikileaks Offline |
| from the yet-drudge-still-stands dept. |
| posted by CmdrTaco on Saturday March 29, @08:55 (News) |
|
http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/03/29/126204
|
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
[0]DragonFire1024 writes "[1]Wikinews.org ��� The Wikileaks website, which
publishes sensitive and censored material submitted by anonymous
contributors, has experienced unprecedented levels of Internet traffic
today through public interest. This interest has caused the website's
servers to be unable to meet the enormous demand of over 164 gigabytes of
download traffic within twenty-four hours, leading the site to be
temporarily inaccessible."
Discuss this story at:
http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=08/03/29/126204
Links:
0. mailto:jason.safoutin@wikinewsie.org
1. http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Huge_interest_brings_Wikileaks_offline
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
| The Rush To Patent the Atomic Bomb |
| from the can-you-sue-a-glowing-man dept. |
| posted by CmdrTaco on Saturday March 29, @09:57 (Patents) |
|
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/03/29/138204
|
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
[0]dooling writes "In case you were thinking of building your own atom
bomb, you may want to weigh your intellectual property liability. It
seems there are over [1]2000 patents covering the atom bomb. To avoid
publishing the patents, a central tenet of the patent system, "the
project made use of an obscure law whereby patent applications could be
filed but no one would actually look at them or evaluate them. They would
just be stamped secret and stored in a vault at the patent office." The
irony here is that while all the patents were essentially stored in the
same place at the patent office and written to be understandable by any
engineer, the Manhattan Project worked diligently to compartmentalize
knowledge, using code names for just about all aspects of the project and
keeping tight security on all information. It seems the patents were
filed to give the U.S. government an essential monopoly on the burgeoning
nuclear industry and protect it against others who might patent similar
technologies later."
Discuss this story at:
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=08/03/29/138204
Links:
0. http://politigenomics.blogspot.com/
1. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89127786
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Last year's CanSecWest Winner Repeats on Vista, Ubuntu Wins |
| from the tough-nut-to-crack dept. |
| posted by CmdrTaco on Saturday March 29, @11:02 (Security) |
|
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/03/29/1414218
|
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
DimitryGH followed up on the earlier news that [0]the MacBook Air lost
CanSecWest by noting that "[1]Last year's winner of the CanSecWest
hacking contest has won the Vista laptop in this year's competition.
According to the [2]sponsor TippingPoint's blog, Shane Macaulay used a
new 0day exploit against Adobe Flash in order to secure his win. At the
end of the day, the only laptop (of OS X, Vista, and Ubuntu) that
remained unharmed was the one running Ubuntu. How's that for fueling
religious platform wars?"
Discuss this story at:
http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=08/03/29/1414218
Links:
0. http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/03/28/0126221&tid=184
1. http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/04/21/0336255&tid=172
2. http://dvlabs.tippingpoint.com/blog/2008/03/28/pwn-to-own-final-day-and-wrap-up
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Jail-Breaking iPhones at the Apple Store |
| from the dept. |
| posted by CmdrTaco on Saturday March 29, @12:04 (Hardware Hacking|
|
http://mobile.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/03/29/1514258
|
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
An anonymous reader writes "According to [0]an article in Xconomy, iPhone
hacker and author Jonathan Zdziarski was invited to speak at an Apple
Store in Cambridge, MA last week where he talked about the history of
iPhone hacking, jail-breaking, and limitations of the official SDK. From
the article, "Zdziarski was one of the first software engineers to figure
out how to hack the iPhone, and he's the author of a forthcoming O'Reilly
Media book called iPhone Open Application Development, which gives
readers explicit instructions on jail-breaking iPhones. So for Apple to
give Zdziarski the podium at an Apple retail location is a little like
Steve Ballmer inviting Linus Torvalds to speak at a Windows product
launch." Zdziarski reports in [1]his own blog how the open source
community was on the iPhone developer scene as early as 2007, long before
enterprises got there, and estimates that nearly 40% of all iPhones have
been jail-broken to run the third-party community software installer.
Finally, [2]this story from Top Tech News suggests that open source
software might actually create competition for Apple's "official"
developers, because applications using the open source iPhone compiler
are not subject to the same limitations as official Apple SDK programs
are."
Discuss this story at:
http://mobile.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=08/03/29/1514258
Links:
0. http://www.xconomy.com/2008/03/25/jail-breaking-iphones-and-other-tales-from-the-apple-store/
2. http://www.toptechnews.com/story.xhtml?story_id=130007J0SQWS
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Open Source Business Model Using Software Patents |
| from the say-it-ain't-so dept. |
| posted by kdawson on Saturday March 29, @13:18 (Patents) |
|
http://interviews.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/03/29/1710238
|
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
[0]Joe Barr writes "Robin Miller has an exclusive [1]video interview with
Larry Rosen and Fred Popowich this morning on Linux.com about their new
open source business model which includes software patents in its DNA.
Their motto is 'Free for open source, everyone else pays.' Larry Rosen
was once legal counsel for the OSI." Linux.com and Slashdot share a
corporate parent.
Discuss this story at:
http://interviews.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=08/03/29/1710238
Links:
0. mailto:joe@joebarr.org
1. http://www.linux.com/feature/130947
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
| OOXML Vote Tracker and Calculation Guide |
| from the tools-for-the-impatient dept. |
| posted by kdawson on Saturday March 29, @14:34 (Microsoft) |
|
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/03/29/1758224
|
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
[0]Andy Updegrove writes "The vote on Microsoft's OOXML closes today. The
final result will not be announced (or leak) before sometime early next
week. Meanwhile the votes of individual countries continue to come in,
currently with more reported switching in favor of OOXML than against it.
For the benefit of those who want to keep track of how the vote is
tending until it's official, I'm posting the [1]running tally of which
votes have switched, what the net change has been, now many votes have
come to light, and how many remain to be announced. It's likely that it
will not be possible to know the final result until all votes are in, due
to the complex double test for approval, and the complication that the
final number of abstentions ��� and whether they move from 'yes' or 'no'
votes ��� can decrease the total number of votes that need to switch to
'yes' in order for OOXML to be approved. For that reason, I also include
the algorithm for arriving at a final result."
Discuss this story at:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=08/03/29/1758224
Links:
0. http://www.gesmer.com/attorneys/updegrove.php
1. http://www.consortiuminfo.org/standardsblog/article.php?story=20080329071456170
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Hacker Club Publishes German Official's Fingerprint |
| from the sauce-for-the-goose dept. |
| posted by kdawson on Saturday March 29, @15:50 (Hardware Hacking)|
|
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/03/29/1941206
|
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
A number of readers let us know about the Chaos Computer Club's latest
caper: they [0]published the fingerprint of German Secretary of the
Interior Wolfgang Sch��uble (link is to a Google translation of the
[1]German original). The club has been active in opposition to Germany's
increasing push to use biometrics in, for example, e-passports. Someone
friendly to the club's aims captured Sch��uble's fingerprint from a glass
he drank from at a panel discussion. The club published 4,000 copies of
their magazine [2]Die Datenschleuder including a plastic foil reproducing
the minister's fingerprint ��� ready to glue to someone else's finger to
provide a false biometric reading. The CCC has a page on their site
detailing [3]how to make such a fake fingerprint. The article says a
ministry spokesman alluded to possible legal action against the club.
Discuss this story at:
http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=08/03/29/1941206
3. http://www.ccc.de/biometrie/fingerabdruck_kopieren.xml?language=en
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Griefers Assault Epileptics Via Message Board |
| from the not-funny-mcgee dept. |
| posted by kdawson on Saturday March 29, @17:05 (Security) |
|
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/03/29/206207
|
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
An anonymous reader tips us to a story up at Wired reporting on what may
be the first computer attack to inflict physical harm on victims. Last
Saturday, griefers posted hundreds of bogus messages on the support
forums of the nonprofit Epilepsy Foundation that used JavaScript and
strobing GIFs to [0]trigger migraines and seizures in users. For about 3%
of the 50 million epileptics worldwide, flashing lights and colors can
trigger seizures. "'I don't fall over and convulse, but it hurts,' says
[an IT worker in Ohio]. 'I was on the phone when it happened, and I
couldn't move and couldn't speak.' ... Circumstantial evidence suggests
the attack was the work of members of Anonymous, an informal collective
of griefers best known for their recent war on the Church of Scientology.
The first flurry of posts on the epilepsy forum referenced the site
EBaumsWorld, which is much hated by Anonymous. And forum members claim
they found a message board thread ��� since deleted ��� planning the attack
at 7chan.org, a group stronghold."
Discuss this story at:
http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=08/03/29/206207
Links:
0. http://www.wired.com/politics/security/news/2008/03/epilepsy
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Cisco, Troll Tracker Blogger Sued For Defamation |
| from the sleeping-under-bridges dept. |
| posted by kdawson on Saturday March 29, @18:11 (Patents) |
|
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/03/29/223256
|
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
[0]Joe Mullin writes "We've discussed [1]Troll Tracker here before ��� the
anonymous blogger who was outed last month as Rick Frenkel, a Cisco
lawyer. Since then, two lawyers from the notoriously patent-friendly
Eastern District of Texas have filed defamation suits against Frenkel and
Cisco, and [2]Frenkel's blog has been [3]shuttered. One of the
plaintiffs, a renowned patent judge's son, may have been [4]hunting the
anonymous blogger for months. This week Cisco [5]announced new blogging
guidelines in response to the Troll Tracker fiasco. The company
acknowledged that 'a few Cisco employees used poor judgment' during
secret-blog-time, but they're largely [6]standing by their man. Cisco's
new rules will prohibit only anonymous blogging by employees about issues
for which 'they have responsibilities at Cisco.'"
Discuss this story at:
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=08/03/29/223256
Links:
0. http://thepriorart.typepad.com/
1. http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/02/26/1827225&tid=155
2. http://trolltracker.blogspot.com/
3. http://thepriorart.typepad.com/the_prior_art/2008/03/judge-wards-son.html
4. http://thepriorart.typepad.com/the_prior_art/2008/03/ward-jr-may-hav.html
5. http://blogs.cisco.com/news/2008/03/lessons_learnedcisco_updates_p_1.html
6. http://thepriorart.typepad.com/the_prior_art/2008/03/troll-tracker-l.html
Copyright 1997-2008 SourceForge, Inc.. All rights reserved.
======================================================================
You have received this message because you subscribed to it
on Slashdot. To stop receiving this and other
messages from Slashdot, or to add more messages
or change your preferences, please go to your user page.
http://slashdot.org/my/messages
You can log in and change your preferences from there.
No comments:
Post a Comment