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Domain: .uk
Stories and comments across the archive that link to .uk.
Stories · 9
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PeerJ, A New Open Access Megajournal Launches
Mirk writes "Academic researchers want to make their papers open access for the world to read. If they use traditional publishers like Elsevier, Springer or Taylor & Francis, they'll be charged $3000 to bring their work out from behind the paywall. But PeerJ, a new megajournal launched today and funded by Tim O'Reilly, publishes open access articles for $99. That's not done by cutting corners: the editorial process is thorough, and they use rigorous peer-review. The cost savings come from running lean and mean on a born-digital system. The initial batch of 30 papers includes one on a Penn and Teller trick and one on the long necks of dinosaurs." $99 entitles you to publish an article a year, for life. $300 nets you unlimited articles published per year. -
Microsoft Investigates Windows 7 "Black Screen of Death"
duguk writes "Microsoft has confirmed that it is investigating a problem described as the 'black screen of death,' which affects Windows 7 — and reports suggest it affects Vista and XP, too. The firm said it was looking into reports that suggest its latest security update, released on Tuesday 25 November, caused the problem. The error means that users of Windows 7 and earlier operating systems see a totally black screen after logging on to the system." Update: 12/01 22:35 GMT by KD : Microsoft now says that its November Windows updates are not causing the BlackSOD: "The company has found those reports to be inaccurate and our comprehensive investigation has shown that none of the recently released updates are related to the behavior described in the reports." -
UK Government Wants To Bypass Data Protection Act
rar42 writes "Clause 152 of the Coroners and Justice Bill, currently being debated by the UK Parliament, would allow any Minister by order to take from anywhere any information gathered for one purpose, and use it for any other purpose. Personal information arbitrarily used without consent or even knowledge: the very opposite of 'Data Protection.' An 'Information Sharing Order', as defined in Clause 152, would permit personal information to be trafficked and abused, not only all across government and the public sector — it would also reach into the private sector. And it would even allow transfer of information across international borders. NO2ID has launched a Facebook group to challenge this threat to data protection." -
Wine vs Windows Benchmarks
PeterBrett writes "Tom Wickline recently posted to the Wine development list announcing that he'd done some benchmarks comparing Windows XP to Wine. They should be taken with the requisite dose of salt, but Wine has certainly come a long way." -
Sony's SunnComm DRM Patch a Security Risk
Spad writes "The BBC is reporting that mere days after the EFF and Sony announced a patch to fix the vulnerability in its SunnComm DRM system, security researchers Ed Felten and Alex Halderman have discovered that the patch itself introduces yet more vulnerabilities. They have now asked users not to apply the patch and are urging Sony to recall all of the affected CDs from sale. Sony has said that approximately six million CDs using [SunnComm] MediaMax have been shipped to stores. Affected artists include Alicia Keys, Britney Spears, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club and Faithless." -
The New C Standard
derek_farn writes "At a very late stage Addison Wesley decided not to publish my book, 'The New C Standard: An economic and cultural commentary'. Now that the copyright issues have been sorted out I am making the pdf freely available. You can download the pdf (mirror 1). The organization is rather unusual in that the commentary covers each sentence of the C Standard (actually the latest draft of C0X, excluding library) one by one (all 2022 of them). One major new angle is using the results from studies in cognitive psychology to try and figure out how developers comprehend code. The aim being to try and produce some coding guidelines that reduce costs (ie, reduce the time needed and bugs created). The book also contains the results of lots of measurements (over 400 figures and tables) in an attempt to back the arguments being made -- another unusual feature since most software related books don't publish any figures to back up what they say. Other subsections discuss common implementations and differences between the latest draft standard and C90/C++. More background on the project is available from the Inquirer. -
Dr Who Rolls On
derek_farn writes "It looks like us lucky Brits will be getting a Dr Who christmas special, plus a third series has been commissioned. Those of you who get their news from the BBC web site will know that the current Dr Who, Christopher Eccleston, left after the first series and was replaced by the actor who recently played Casanova in a mini-series (not quite the same as the women wearing lycra in Star Trek, but we Brits are a bit more reserved)." -
New Disposable Digital Cameras with LCDs
del_ctrl_alt writes "Pure Digital Technologies are set to introduce the world's first ever disposable digital camera [ed. note: see below], retailing in the USA for $19.99. Ritz, CVS, Disney World and Longs Drugs are all going to stock the 2-megapixel camera, which somewhat amazingly has a color preview screen and allows you to delete images before you take it to the store for processing (where you will receive a free picture CD along with your prints)." It's not the first disposable digital camera, which was hacked shortly afterwards, but these include a LCD display (they're made by the same company which made the first ones). Have fun! -
Australian Parliament Accepts EFA Statement
NickFitz writes "The Register is reporting that the Australian Parliament has accepted a statement by the Electronic Frontiers Australia association denying claims by Senators Harradine and Alston that the EFA sought information concening outlawed material in order to promote the offshore hosting of illegal porn, among other wild and specious allegations. The EFA's statement has now been included in Hansard, the parliamentary record, under a regulation allowing a right of reply to persons named in Senate."