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Hardware Hacking

Fast-Booting OS for Usually-Off Appliance PCs? 523

Posted by timothy from the zero-to-sixty-in-zilch-dot-two dept.
An anonymous reader writes "I have some older computer equipment at work that I want to re-purpose as application appliances. The machines will sit, unpowered, until needed, then powered up. No way around the 'sitting powered off' — company directive. What is the quickest-booting OS I could use for them? I know about LinuxBIOS, but that would require new hardware, which does not go along which the re-purposing theme. Some of them do not need to be connected to a network, so an old version of Linux or Windows 98 are possible. DOS is too old to consider. So what are my options?"
The Internet

The Pirate Bay's Plans To Encrypt the 'Net 297

Posted by timothy from the pretty-ned8bdrnki(bdr## dept.
Keeper Of Keys writes "According to newteevee.com, The Pirate Bay, those fun- and freedom-loving Swedes, have embarked on a project to encrypt all internet traffic, probably by means of an OS-level wrapper around all network connections, which would fall back to an unencrypted connection when the other end is not similarly equipped. The move has been prompted by a recent change in Swedish law, allowing the authorities to snoop on network traffic. This will be a boon to filesharers and anyone else concerned about authorities and trade groups' recent moves towards 'policing' network traffic at the ISP level."
Math

Edward Lorenz, Father of Chaos Theory, Dies at 90 104

Posted by timothy from the what-are-the-odds-his-middle-name-was-norton dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Professor Edward N. Lorenz, who discovered in 1961 that subtle changes in the initial conditions of a weather simulation program could cause very large differences in its results, died of cancer Wednesday at the age of 90. The contributions of the father of chaos theory, who coined the term 'the butterfly effect' and also discovered the Lorenz Attractor, are best summarized by the wording of the Kyoto Prize in 1991 which noted that his discovery of chaos theory 'profoundly influenced a wide range of basic sciences and brought about one of the most dramatic changes in mankind's view of nature since Sir Isaac Newton.'"
The Internet

AT&T Claims Internet to Reach Capacity in 2010 239

Posted by timothy from the calls-for-even-more-paper-towels dept.
An anonymous reader writes "CNET News has a piece in which AT&T claims that the Internet's bandwidth will be saturated by video-on-demand and such by 2010. Says the AT&T VP: 'In three years' time, 20 typical households will generate more traffic than the entire Internet today.' Similarly: 'He claimed that the "unprecedented new wave of broadband traffic" would increase 50-fold by 2015 and that AT&T is investing $19 billion to maintain its network and upgrade its backbone network.'"
The Internet

Darwin's Private Papers Get Released To The Internet 237

Posted by Zonk from the uncle-charles-is-one-of-my-heroes dept.
bibekpaudel writes "ScienceDaily reports that a wealth of papers belonging to Charles Darwin have been published on the internet, some for the first time. Some 20,000 items and 90,000 images were posted today to http://darwin-online.org.uk/. The new site is the largest collection of Darwin's work in history, according to organizers from Cambridge University Library 'This release makes his private papers, mountains of notes, experiments, and research behind his world-changing publications available to the world for free,' said John van Wyhe, director of the project. The collection includes thousands of notes and drafts of his scientific writings, notes from the voyage of the Beagle when he began to formulate his controversial theory of evolution, and his first recorded doubts about the permanence of species."
Moon

Growing Plants on the Moon May Be Feasible 254

Posted by Zonk from the we-carry-a-harpoon dept.
Smivs writes "European scientists say that growing plants on the moon should be possible. Scientists in the Netherlands believe growing plants on our sister satellite would be useful as a tool to learn how life adapts to lunar conditions. It would also aid in understanding the challenges that might be faced by manned bases. 'The new step, taken in the experiments reported at the EGU, is to remove the need for bringing nutrients and soil from Earth. A team led by Natasha Kozyrovska and Iryna Zaetz from the National Academy of Sciences in Kiev planted marigolds in crushed anorthosite, a type of rock found on Earth which is very similar to much of the lunar surface. In neat anorthosite, the plants fared very badly. But adding different types of bacteria made them thrive; the bacteria appeared to draw elements from the rock that the plants needed, such as potassium.'"
Privacy

Senator Proposes to Monitor All P2P Traffic for Illegal Files 626

Posted by Zonk from the kind-of-strains-the-mind-to-think-about-huh dept.
mytrip writes "Senator Joe Biden (D-Del) has proposed an ambitious plan, costing on the order of $1 billion, aimed at curtailing illegal activities via P2P networks. His plan involves utilizing new software to monitor peer-to-peer traffic on an ongoing basis. 'At an afternoon Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing about child exploitation on the Internet, Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.) said he was under the impression it's "pretty easy to pick out the person engaged in either transmitting or downloading violent scenes of rape, molestation" simply by looking at file names. He urged use of those techniques by investigators to help nab the most egregious offenders."
Space

Two Totally Unique Star Systems Discovered 141

Posted by Zonk from the two-of-a-kind-beats-ace-high dept.
esocid writes "Astronomers have spied a faraway star system that is so unusual, it was one of a kind — until its discovery helped them pinpoint a second one that was much closer to home. In a paper published in a recent issue of the Astrophysical Journal Letters, Ohio State University astronomers and their colleagues suggest that these star systems are the progenitors of a rare type of supernova. In research funded by the National Science Foundation, they found a star system that is unusual, because it's what the astronomers have called a 'yellow supergiant eclipsing binary' — it contains two very bright, massive yellow stars that are very closely orbiting each other. In fact, the stars are so close together that a large amount of stellar material is shared between them, so that the shape of the system resembles a peanut."
Businesses

Submission + - How to recognise a good programmer (inter-sections.net)

Submitted by KDan
KDan writes: How do you recognise good programmer? It's not as easy as it sounds. CV experience is only of limited use here, because great programmers don't always have the "official" experience to demonstrate that they're great. In fact, a lot of that CV experience can be misleading. Yet there are a number of subtle cues that you can get, even from the CV, to figure out whether someone's a great programmer. This article presents those cues in a way that non-programmers should be able to understand and use.
Programming

Submission + - Rails sucks? (inter-sections.net)

Submitted by KDan
KDan writes: With astonishing regularity, articles or posts come out claiming that the popular Ruby on Rails framework sucks in some way or another. People complain that Rails isn't as easy to deploy as PHP, that Rails just didn't do it for project XYZ. They range from the articulate and well thought out to the frankly inane and stupid (and wrong). Recently, there's also of course been the spectacular nuclear rant by Zed Shaw, which was more a rant against random elements of the community than against Rails, but was still presented as a rant against Rails.
Here's an article that tries to put some perspective on why these opinions are irrelevant to whether or not Rails suck.
Microsoft

States Claim There is No Match for Microsoft 533

Posted by samzenpus from the ants-and-elephants dept.
Bergkamp10 writes "State antitrust regulators have dismissed companies such as Google and Mozilla Corp, and software technologies such as AJAX and SaaS as "piddling players that pose no threat to Microsoft's monopoly in the operating system and browser markets". According to the report ten US states, including California, New York and the District of Columbia have called for an extension of monitoring of Microsoft's business practices until November 2012. They claim that little has changed in the OS and browser spaces since the 2002 antitrust case ruled against Microsoft. In their most recent brief, the states countered Microsoft's contention that Web-based companies — Google, Salesforce.com, Yahoo, eBay and others — and new Web-centric technologies constitute what Microsoft dubbed a "competitive alternative to Windows." Not even close, said the states, claiming that while these companies' products provide functionality for users they still rely on Operating Systems and browsers — the two spaces where Microsoft dominates. Experts were apparently even more damning, claiming competition in the market has not been restored since 2002 and that the collective powers of Google, Firefox and Web 2.0 are about as effective as a one legged man in a butt-kicking contest when it comes to unsettling Microsoft's monopoly of the market."

iPhone Keyboard Leads to Typso 394

Posted by CmdrTaco from the see-get-it-i-was-being-funny dept.
jfruhlinger writes "One of the selling points of the iPhone was its revolutionary touch-screen full keyboard. But a study has shown that text messages sent from iPhones contain significantly more typso than messages from phones with other kinds of keyboards — and aren't entered any faster."
Linux

The Linux Identity Crisis 364

Posted by CmdrTaco from the wants-to-be-called-linuxette-now dept.
Jayze Calrtini writes "From an article from ZDNet:"If you've been following the current rift in the Linux community between Linus Torvalds and his minions squaring off against Con Kolivas and the mainstream Linux fanatics, you probably know that it's getting quite heated. You also probably know that these two entirely different ideas could create three possible paths Linux can take for the future: stay geeky and appeal to the advanced tech guru in all of us; go mainstream and leave the advanced functionality and reliable kernel behind to compete with Microsoft and Apple; or face a "civil war" that could lead to total Linux annihilation."

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