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7 jaren 30 weken geledenoktober 26, 2005
12:26
denis-The-menace writes "According to an article from newscientist, scientists have devised a system to use microwave energy for surveillance. If people are speaking inside the room, any flimsy surface, such as clothing, will be vibrating. This modulates the radio beam reflected from the surface. Although the radio reflection that passes back through the wall is extremely faint, the kind of electronic extraction and signal cleaning tricks used by NASA to decode signals in space can be used to extract speech. Although, I doubt it would work in this room"
10:31
chris81 writes "For the first time ever, the Apache Web Server is powering more than 50 million websites, according to Netcraft's Web Server Survey for October. Although relative share fell by 0.67 percent, the total number of sites powered by Apache grew to over 52 million. Microsoft's IIS finished second with more than 15 million sites served."
08:28
Noksagt writes "The Washington Post is reporting that recently discovered documents indicate serious intelligence violations by the FBI. This comes just months after the U.S. House voted to extend the Patriot Act, EPIC (the Electronic Privacy Information Center) has obtained documents through the Freedom of Information Act of thirteen cases of possible misconduct in intelligence investigations. The case numbering suggests that there were at least 153 investigations of misconduct at the FBI in 2003 alone."
06:34
wayward writes "Students at Pope John XIII, a Catholic high school, were told to take down their blogs from sites like Xanga and MySpace or face suspension. Rev. Kieran McHugh, the school's principal, said that he was trying to protect students from online predators. Not too surprisingly, free speech advocates got more than a little concerned.
04:27
FatMacDaddy writes "The SFGate is reporting on a remote control for manipulating humans through electrical stimulation of the inner ear nerves.The author of this article describes his experience with having a "remote control for humans" device used on him. The developers hope to use this with video games and other entertainment, but it might also be used as a weapon to disable people. An interesting read with perhaps some disturbing implications. Better get a second layer on those tinfoil hats!"
02:32
* * Beatles-Beatles tells us that Google is entering into a $350,000 joint open source technology venture with both Oregon State and Portland State Universities. From the article: "With the grant, the universities will collaborate to encourage open source software and hardware development, develop academic curricula and provide computing infrastructure to open source projects worldwide. The universities will also help provide a bridge between Oregon's universities and Oregon's growing open technology industry." Google also has their version of the announcement on blogspot.
01:29
Kailash Nadh writes to tell us ABC News is reporting that IBM is teaming up with several other companies to form a group called Aperi. This group will attempt to "push the open source idea deeper into computing" and "free up the bottlenecks that can occur when a business has bought tape and disk storage systems from a variety of vendors." The partnership is to include companies like Cisco, Sun, Fujitsu, and several others.
00:47
QuantumT writes "Ars Technica has the details on the unannounced Google Base service that will allow anyone with a Google Account to post information and other types of data into a massive, Google-run database. Ars believes that the company is gearing up to take on eBay and Craiglist, which makes sense given the Google Payment service that is in development. Google has commented, saying, 'This is an early-stage test of a product that enables content owners to easily send their content to Google. Like our web crawl and the recently released Google Sitemaps program, we are working to provide content owners an easy way to give us access to their content.' There's a few screenshots as well."
00:05
Duke Weber writes "Microsoft sometimes gets it right after three tries. Not so with Windows Media Center 2005. You do get a dancing Scooby Doo. You don't get much Media." From the article: "As a DVR, one tuner was just OK, with a second tuner working, it was still OK, provided you weren't too picky about mouths moving at the same time words came out. Out with the snazzy Realtek integrated sound on the ASUS-A8V motherboard. In with an Audigy 2ZS to lessen the load on the AMD 64 3000+ processor. More gadgets. That cured the synch. The picture still was no where close to a vintage Tivo. But it does keep track of the programs, important with a terabyte of disc."
oktober 25, 2005
23:21
Nattfodd writes "Almost two months after the projects, deadline, partial (but fairly complete) results of Google Summer of Code are here. The completion rate of projects (and thus payment of the students) was approximately 90%, which would certainly qualify for a 'huge success' of the operation. Summer of Code paid more than 400 students of 49 countries to spend their summer helping open-source projects, 4500$ on completion. Now we just have to wait for the T-shirts..."
oktober 24, 2005
06:39
Kannappan writes "'You somehow have to forget everything you know about life', says Steen Rasmussen, a colleague of Norman Packard. Packard and his team are working on creating life artificially, nicknamed The Los Alamos bug (pdf). It will be created out of a molecule called Peptide Nucleic Acid(PNA), with a blend of three different factors crucial to life, viz. containment, heredity and metabolism. The researchers believe that the synthetic lives so created will have an enormous practical value in producing clean fuels, healing injured bodies and acting as tiny diagnosticians roaming our bodies."
04:31
satosphere writes "TG Daily has an article on EULA Gems, priceless statements that companies want you to agree to in their End User License Agreement." From the article: "You agree, if purchasing by credit card or charge card, that you permanently and irrevocably waive any and all right to cause a 'chargeback' ... You agree that, if you institute such a "chargeback", it constitutes a material violation of this license, and damages Company in ways impossible to calculate, and with long-term adverse effects to the Company."
02:29
It doesn't come easy wrote to mention the announcement that Madison, Wisconsin will soon be home to the newest Municipal Wi-Fi network. From the article: "'I made a commitment in 2004 to bring Wi-Fi to Madison,' said Madison Mayor Dave Cieslewicz in a statement. 'This is an important new service for Madison residents and businesses.' The Madison network will be rolled out at no cost to the city and the providers have secured initial funding from service agreements from ISPs. The initial phase of the Madison network will cover users in the downtown region of the city with plans to later cover the entire city." I love my town. Zombies and Wi-Fi. What more could you want?
01:38
meehawl writes "A video of what is currently thought to be the closest star to the supermassive black hole at the centre of our galaxy. The star orbits the black hole in a highly elliptical orbit with a period of 15 years or so, but at its closest approach it swings within 17 light hours of the black hole (around three times the distance between the Sun and Pluto). In the video, you can see the star ricochet past its closest approach to the black hole. This slingshot effect enabled astronomers to further pinpoint the mass of the black hole, which is confidently estimated at 2 million suns or so. The mass observation, coupled with the size constraints observed, indicates the object at the centre of the galaxy is definitely composed of some exotically dense form of matter."
00:50
TossCobble asks: "With table-top roleplaying giant Wizards of the Coast (makers of Dungeons & Dragons, for those not in the know) broadcasting an open call for adventure designers and developers (including an entertaining developer test to gauge your own game-design talent and knowledge), I found myself once again considering the odd appeal of gaming for us programming types. It's interesting that something so free-form-ishly creative, socially dynamic, and utterly fantastical be fun for folks so grounded in logical programming. Of course, my theory is that gaming and programming actually have more in common than we might think. Tabletop roleplaying involves coming up with creative solutions to problems set in a clearly-defined ruleset, involve constant data-tracking and minor mathematical equations, and involve working together with small groups of people toward like-minded goals. Conversely, love of roleplaying can illustrate how important creativity is to good programming. What do you think?"
oktober 23, 2005
23:42
An anonymous reader writes "This week's Economist has a number of stories in its survey of the state of IP (link to lead article), written from a balanced, business-oriented perspective. If you do not have a web subscription it is worth picking up a newsstand edition, if only to read a defense of open source from being seen as a 'flaky, radical, pinko strategy not related to the competitive marketplace'." From the article: "In recent years intellectual property has received a lot more attention because ideas and innovations have become the most important resource, replacing land, energy and raw materials. As much as three-quarters of the value of publicly traded companies in America comes from intangible assets, up from around 40% in the early 1980s."
22:33
vinohradska writes "Eric Schmidt has written a good article called the The point of Google Print. It clearly lays out the argument against the current lawsuit: 'Even those critics who understand that copyright law is not absolute argue that making a full copy of a given work, even just to index it, can never constitute fair use. If this were so, you wouldn't be able to record a TV show to watch it later or use a search engine that indexes billions of Web pages.'"
21:41
Ruvim writes "A Michigan State audit shows a software glitch let some prisoners get out early. From the article: 'The audit report shows errors in the release dates of 23 prisoners between October 2003 and March 2005. Some were let out early, while others were let out late... A flaw in computer programming caused State jails to release 8 prisoners anywhere from 39-161 days early, prisoners who were doing time for everything from embezzlement and drugs to bad check writing.'"
20:45
TechScam writes "A new resolution was introduced in Congress that aims to backup the Bush administration over retaining U.S. control of the Internet's core infrastructure. From the article: 'The resolution, introduced by two Republicans and one Democrat, aims to line up Congress firmly behind the Bush administration as it heads for a showdown with much of the rest of the world over control of the global computer network.'"
19:51
alabamarasta writes "In a recent report from China titled "Embattled Linux fights back", it appears that Microsoft is just as embattled." From the article: "Citing an executive at Microsoft headquarters, Lu said Linux and Windows should co-exist. Microsoft in recent years has been struggling with an increasing number of security flaws on its Windows platforms while Linux is generally regarded as more secure. 'For users, openness increases the trustworthiness,' said Lu."