|
Slashdot News for nerds, stuff that matters Oracle Drops Sun's Commitment To Accessibility An anonymous reader writes "What I feared has come true: after buying Sun, Oracle had a look at its accessibility group and made big cuts in it by firing the most important contributors to the Linux accessibility tools. This is a very sad day for disabled people, as it means we do not really have full-time developers any more." The coverage in OSTATIC has a few more details, including the caution: "This just shows that all too few companies are sponsoring a11y work. If one company laying off a couple of developers spells trouble for the project, then there were problems before that happened" (thanks to reader dave c-b for pointing this out). Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Virtualizing a Supercomputer bridges writes "The V3VEE project has announced the release of version 1.2 of the Palacios virtual machine monitor following the successful testing of Palacios on 4096 nodes of the Sandia Red Storm supercomputer, the 17th-fastest in the world. The added overhead of virtualization is often a show-stopper, but the researchers observed less than 5% overhead for two real, communication-intensive applications running in a virtual machine on Red Storm. Palacios 1.2 supports virtualization of both desktop x86 hardware and Cray XT supercomputers using either AMD SVM or Intel VT hardware virtualization extensions, and is an active open source OS research platform supporting projects at multiple institutions. Palacios is being jointly developed by researchers at Northwestern University, the University of New Mexico, and Sandia National Labs." The ACM's writeup has more details of the work at Sandia. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Study Says OOXML Unsuitable For Norwegian Government angry tapir writes "Microsoft's XML-based office document format, OOXML, does not meet the requirements for governmental use, according to a new report published by the Norwegian Agency for Public Management and eGovernment (DIFI). The agency wants to start a debate over the report as part of its work on standards in the Norwegian government. (As we discussed a week ago, Denmark has already decided to choose ODF over OOXML)" Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Virus-Detecting "Lab On a Chip" Developed At BYU natharward writes "A new development in nano-level diagnostic tests has been applied as a lab on a chip that successfully screened viruses entirely by their size. The chip's traps are size-specific, which means even tiny concentrations of viruses or other particles won't escape detection. For medicine, this development is promising for future lab diagnostics that could detect viruses before symptoms kick in and damage begins, well ahead of when traditional lab tests are able to catch them. Aaron Hawkins, the BYU professor leading the work, says his team is now gearing up to make chips with multiple, progressively smaller slots, so that a single sample can be used to screen for particles of varying sizes. One could fairly simply determine which proteins or viruses are present based on which walls have particles stacked against them. After this is developed, Hawkins says, 'If we decided to make these things in high volume, I think within a year it could be ready.'" Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Google Shooting For Smartphone Universal Translator nikki4 writes to tell us that in giving some major improvement tweaks to its existing voice recognition tool for the Smartphone, Google is aiming for new translator software that will provide instant translation of foreign languages. "The company has already created an automatic system for translating text on computers, which is being honed by scanning millions of multi-lingual websites and documents. So far it covers 52 languages, adding Haitian Creole last week. Google also has a voice recognition system that enables phone users to conduct web searches by speaking commands into their phones rather than typing them in. Now it is working on combining the two technologies to produce software capable of understanding a caller’s voice and translating it into a synthetic equivalent in a foreign language." Read more of this story at Slashdot.
New Material Transforms Car Bodies Into Batteries MikeChino writes "As battery manufacturers race to produce more efficient lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles, some scientists are looking to make the cars themselves a power source. Researchers are currently developing a new auto body material that can store and release electrical energy like a battery. Once perfected, scientists hope the substance will replace standard car bodies, making vehicles up to 15 percent lighter and significantly extending the range of electric vehicles." Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Verizon Blocking 4chan An anonymous reader writes "According to 4chan's owner and administrator 'moot,' Verizon has explicitly blocked all traffic on their network from boards.4chan.org, where all of 4chan's boards are located. Moot explains that only traffic to and from port 80 is being dropped and they were able to confirm that it was intentional. 4chan's downtime for Verizon users has been in effect for at least 72 hours since Saturday, February 7." Read more of this story at Slashdot.
A Reflection On Sun Executive Payouts For Failure With the Oracle/Sun merger finally completing at the end of January, one former Sun worker has taken the time to reflect a bit on the extravagant compensation and golden parachutes that the former executives at Sun are receiving for failing at their jobs. "I think it's fair to say that, for all the miscues that eventually led to its demise, the company created many products and technologies of value along the way, enough so that Oracle thought it was worth it to acquire them and try to keep them going. However, I think that it's equally fair to conclude that, after years of running losses, including about $2 billion in fiscal 2009, so that a buyout was necessary to avoid looming bankruptcy, Sun's executives did nothing to deserve lavish rewards, by any conceivable meaning of the word 'deserve.' But what actually happened is by now a familiar story. [...] And here's a prediction that I feel quite certain of: if, against expectations and my hopes, Ellison drops the ball and things start going south for Oracle, it's the employees who will suffer for it, and he'll be doing just fine." Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Turns Out You Actually Can Be Bored To Death A study conducted by researchers at University College London shows that boredom can kill you. The researchers found that people who reported feeling a great deal of boredom were 37 per cent more likely to have died by the end of the study. Martin Shipley, who co-wrote the report said, "The findings on heart disease show there was sufficient evidence to say there is a link with boredom." Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Cacti 0.8 Network Monitoring GJdeBoer writes "The book is aimed at people who are managing a network and would like to get insight into the performance of that network. It covers the installation and configuration of the Cacti application. In the preface the book states that it's not necessary to be a Linux Guru to use the book and that exactly is the case. The book builds up your knowledge about Cacti and the necessary steps to configure it for your network, and it teaches you about Net-SNMP and RRDTool, the building blocks of Cacti." Read on for the rest of GJdeBoer's review. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
What Are the Best Valentine's Day Stunts? With the oh-so-dreaded Hallmark holiday on the horizon we are flooded with tips and tricks (mostly designed to sell us things our mates cannot live without) of how to please/capture/sedate the ones we care for. One writer even suggests ways to capture the interest of a geeky girl. That said, what are some of the crazier romantically inspired, geeky V-day stunts or activities that you or someone you know has executed to terrible success or failure? Read more of this story at Slashdot.
SourceForge Removes Blanket Blocking Recently there was much gnashing of teeth as SourceForge (who shares a corporate overlord with Slashdot) started programmatically blocking users in certain countries to comply with US export restrictions. Thankfully they didn't let it end there and have found a way to put the power back in the hands of the users. "Beginning now, every project admin can click on Develop -> Project Admin -> Project Settings to find a new section called Export Control. By default, we've ticked the more restrictive setting. If you conclude that your project is *not* subject to export regulations, or any other related prohibitions, you may now tick the other check mark and click Update. After that, all users will be able to download your project files as they did before last month's change." Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Nexus One First Phone Linus Torvalds "Doesn't Hate" SpuriousLogic writes "Linus Torvalds, the inventor of the Linux kernel, has an absolute disdain for mobile phones. All of the ones he has purchased in the past, the man writes on his personal blog, ended up being 'mostly used for playing Galaga and Solitaire on long flights' even though they were naturally all phones run on open source operating systems. Things have changed now, he adds, now that he has caved and bought Google's Nexus One a couple of days ago." Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Zero-Day Vulnerabilities On the Market An anonymous reader writes "Zero-day vulnerabilities have become prized possessions to attackers and defenders alike. As the recent China-Google attack demonstrated, they are the basis on which most of the successful attacks are crafted these days. There is an underground market growing around these vulnerabilities, but there are also 'white markets' — set up by VeriSign, TippingPoint, Google — where they buy zero-day flaws and alert the companies so that they can patch their products before the vulnerabilities can be taken advantage of." Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Mozilla Puts Tiger Out To Pasture Barence writes "Mozilla is ready to exorcise support for Mac OS X 10.4 from Firefox's development code, closing the door on Apple's aging OS. The foundation stopped supporting 10.4, codenamed Tiger, in September 2009, but, according to Josh Aas, a Mozilla platform engineer, "we left much of the code required to support that platform in the tree in case we wanted to reverse that decision." We had come to a point where we need to make a final decision and either restore 10.4 support or remove this (large) amount of 10.4 specific code," he notes on the Mozilla developer planning forum." Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Newsfeed display by CaRP |
|
CNN.com - Technology CNN.com delivers up-to-the-minute news and information on the latest top stories, weather, entertainment, politics and more. World War II navigation system dies The U.S. Coast Guard is shutting down a mapping service called Loran-C, which has been in use since World War II. Some advocates say killing Loran will make the U.S. too reliant on its replacement: GPS. China: Hacker training site shut down Police in China have shut down what is believed to be the largest Web site for training computer hackers, according to local media reports. Endeavour lifts off on two-week mission Mission managers loaded the crew into the space shuttle Endeavour early Monday for a second attempt in as many days at getting into orbit. Google analyst: U.S. Internet needs to get faster Google long has been an advocate of a single Web, one that's free of government censorship and barriers to information access. Google-France book partnership stirs fears A proposed partnership between the French government and Google is stoking fears in France that the country's literary treasures will fall under commercial control of a U.S. technology company. High-tech kept the Super Bowl on track As the players, coaches and halftime performers -- not to mention the Lombardi Trophy -- made their way to Miami's Sun Life Stadium for the Super Bowl on Sunday, Jerry Hunter and company were keeping a close eye on them. 'Off grid' brings power to the people The price of power has always been a political issue -- but now campaigners argue it could be the key to starting a green energy revolution. NASA head concerned about possible job losses On the eve of Sunday's launch of space shuttle Endeavour, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said he supports President Obama's goal of making the space industry a commercial venture, but is concerned about potential job losses at the agency. Facebook gets birthday face-lift Facebook updates its homepage to emphasize games and apps and make it easier to find updates from friends. The site now has 400 million users. 'MAG' brings worldwide war to PS3 If you subscribe to the adages "the more, the merrier" or "bigger is better," then you should be plenty happy with Sony's MAG -- a PlayStation 3 exclusive that lets you battle with up to 256 players over the Internet in a number of near-future skirmishes. Newsfeed display by CaRP |
|
CNN.com - Science & Space CNN.com delivers up-to-the-minute news and information on the latest top stories, weather, entertainment, politics and more. Mars Science Lab launch delayed two years NASA's launch of the Mars Science Laboratory -- hampered by technical difficulties and cost overruns -- has been delayed until the fall of 2011, NASA officials said at a news conference Thursday in Washington. Shuttle lands at California air base NASA officials Sunday waved off the first opportunity for space shuttle Endeavour to return to Earth, citing poor weather conditions. iReporters watch planets, moon align Inspiration for 'Contact' still listening From a remote valley in Northern California, Jill Tarter is listening to the universe. Indian lunar orbiter hit by heat rise Scientists have switched off several on-board instruments to halt rising temperatures inside India's first unmanned lunar spacecraft. Newsfeed display by CaRP |