Slashdot Mirror

eldavojohn writes "An interesting article from National Geographic points out that other solar systems which contain planets like a 'Hot Jupiter' have a higher chance of also containing Earth-like planets." From the article: "'We now think there is a new class of ocean-covered--and possibly habitable--planets in solar systems unlike our own,' Raymond said. The simulations also showed that rocky planets known as hot Earths may often form when hot Jupiters push material forward during their inward treks. But hot Earths, which can be up to five times bigger than our Earth, orbit closer to their stars and are not likely to support life. Even if water does contribute to their formation, most hot Earths probably end up dry, study co-author Raymond says. "

eldavojohn writes "An electrical short cause the space shuttle Atlantis to be delayed since a lightning strike to the pad and Tropical Storm Ernesto caused delays. From the article: 'Liftoff was only hours away Wednesday morning when engineers reported a short in one of three fuel cells that supplies electricity for all the on-board systems, including the crew compartment.' It also points out that 'The faulty cell is currently operational even with the short. But after the 2003 Columbia disaster, which killed all seven astronauts, NASA says it has adopted an aggressive, safety-conscious approach to launching.' It causes one to wonder whether pre-Columbia-disaster NASA would have just replaced the fuel cell on the fly without telling anyone — and whether or not that is an ethically sound choice."

eldavojohn writes "Recently, setting up prediction markets that people play was the big thing to guess the future. But is there a chance that computers will replace investors? From the article: 'Quantitative investment managers use a model to identify sets of characteristics for their investments. Computing power is now relatively cheap. Obviously, computing power can access data almost instantaneously and simultaneously. Asset classes and financial instruments within those asset classes can then be screened and investments are selected. They reflect the manager's views.'"

eldavojohn writes "A giant explosion on the sun in January of 2005 allowed SMART-1 (a European spacecraft orbiting the moon) to detect what elements the moon is made up of based on the X-rays from the sun's explosion. This allows scientists to speculate on the moon's origins while seeing data from all over the moon as opposed to the core samples we have collected and returned in the past. From the article: 'Scientists responsible for the D-CIXS instrument on SMART-1 are also announcing that they have detected aluminium, magnesium and silicon. "We have good maps of iron across the lunar surface. Now we can look forward to making maps of the other elements." said SMART-1's Principal Investigator.'"

eldavojohn writes "The Yankee Group (a Boston Technology firm) recently announced that it predicts Sony's PS3 to lead the market with a 44% share through 2011. Most interesting is their prediction that the Wii will maintain only 16% of the market share. From the article: 'The analyst group believes Sony will lead in next-gen market share by 44% in 2011, with Xbox 360 taking a close 40% share, followed by Wii with a wee little bitty 16% share.'"

eldavojohn writes "In what may be a case of trademark trolling, Apple has issued warnings to makers of other electronic devices containing the word 'pod.' Two companies have been asked to remove the word from their products. Why might this be a mean action by Apple? These two companies don't manufacture MP3 players as one would think would cause confusion. From the article:

Profit Pod is a device that compiles data from vending machines, while TightPod manufactures slip-on covers designed to protect electronic products such as laptops and MP3 players.

Back in the day, if someone was calling an electronic device a 'pod,' I would have thought they were talking about Line 6's Guitar and Bass pods (which I believe have been around for a while). How come they aren't warning Apple about their iPod naming?"

eldavojohn writes "In a brief article on CNet, a company named Coverity announced that Firefox is using software to detect flaws in Firefox's source code. Even more interesting is the DHS initiative for Coverity to use this same bug detection software on 40 open source projects." An interesting tidbit from the article: "Most of the 40 programs tested averaged less than one defect per thousand lines of code. The cleanest program was XMMS, a Unix-based multimedia application. It had only six bugs in its 116,899 lines of code, or .51 bugs per thousands lines of code. The buggiest program is the Advanced Maryland Automatic Network Disk Archiver, or AMANDA, a Linux backup application first developed at the University of Maryland. Coverity found 108 bugs in its 88,950 lines of code, or about 1.214 bugs per thousand lines of code." We've covered this before, only now Firefox is actually licensing the Coverity software and using it directly.

eldavojohn writes "Windows' PatchGuard seems to be upsetting third party security vendors such as Symantec, Sana Security and Agnitum. It sounds like the 'black hats' will be able to bypass this security feature (which will be in all copies of Vista) but force security software companies to give up developing software for Windows. From the article: 'PatchGuard will make it harder for third parties, particularly host intrusion-prevention software, to function in Vista,' said Yankee Group analyst Andrew Jaquith. 'Third parties have two choices: continue to petition Microsoft to create an approved kernel-hooking interface so products like theirs can work, or use "black hat" techniques to bypass the restrictions.' Apparently, using these techniques is not a difficult trick."

Slashdot tonight brings some corrections, clarifications, and updates to previous Slashdot stories, including a few thoughts on the McKinnon situation, New Zealand revises their views on OSS, Korean cloners facing possible jail time, the fight for .xxx continues, more details on Diebold problems, the Supreme Court sides with eBay, AT&T denied a closed hearing, and Sony's Blu-Ray demo on the level. -- Read on for details.

Mathew Bevan speaks out on McKinnon case. mrkuji writes "Ex military hacker Mathew Bevan AKA Kuji has released his comments and thoughts about the goings on of the McKinnon hacker extradition trial."

New Zealand revises their view of OSS. sam_vilain writes "As previously noted here on Slashdot, the New Zealand State Services Commission has some problems with open source software. The new version of their legal guidelines document for OSS in NZ government, however, is a breath of fresh air."

Korean cloners facing possible jail time. reporter writes "In a stunning conclusion to the saga of the Korean cloning scientist who fabricated his results, the Korean government wants to throw him in prison. The BBC reports, "The South Korean cloning scientist who faked his stem cell research has been charged with fraud and embezzlement. [...] Prosecutors claim he [, using grant funds,] bought a car and paid contributions to politicians and company officials who helped to arrange his grants. [...] The misuse of state funds carries a jail term of up to 10 years, while a violation of bio-ethics laws can mean up to three years in prison.'"

The fight for .xxx to continue? Robert writes "ICANN has played down the role that the conservative US government had in its decision to reject a plan to launch a porn-only internet domain, while the company backing the .xxx proposal said it was considering an appeal. From the article: 'Stuart Lawley, president of ICM, after spending at least two years and over $2m on campaigning for .xxx to be approved, told us he thought the deal was shot down for political reasons, and said he was weighing a response. [...] The reason people suspect that US concerns were key, and the reason that the media keeps harping on about it, is because ICANN's powers are granted under a contract with the US Department of Commerce. That contract ends in four months, and so far nobody seems to know what happens after it expires.'"

More details on the Diebold problem. An anonymous reader writes "SecurityFocus' Rob Lemos has published an article with many more details on the critical Diebold problems, implications for upcoming state elections next week, and quotes from key scientists who have detailed knowledge of how easily the flaws can be exploited." Relatedly eldavojohn writes "USA Today is reporting that Diebold CEO Walden O'Dell has resigned. From the article: "The board of directors and Wally mutually agreed that his decision to resign at this time for personal reasons was in the best interest of all parties," said John Lauer, Diebold's non-executive chairman of the board."

Supreme Court sides with eBay in patent suit. theodp writes "In a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court sided with eBay in a fight over the use of its 'Buy It Now' feature, which will make it easier for companies to avoid court injunctions barring the continued use of technology after a patent infringement finding, such as the one used by Amazon against Barnes & Noble in the midst of the Christmas holiday season over its soon-to-be-reexamined 1-Click patent."

AT&T denied a closed hearing. guygee writes "According to the San Francisco Chronicle, AT&T has lost its '11th hour bid' to force closed hearings on unsealing critical documents in EFF's class-action lawsuit alleging AT&T's illegal transfer of its customer's telephone and Internet records and communications to the National Security Agency. According to the report, 'An AT&T lawyer sent a letter by fax to Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker on Tuesday asking that the courtroom be closed during any discussion of its trade secrets or confidential information.' EFF is also reporting the breaking news on the case." Relatedly DarkAudit writes "A commissioner for the FCC wants an investigation into whether or not phone companies broke the law by handing over their records to the NSA."

Sony's Blu-Ray demo on the level. eaglebtc writes "Gearlog.com has retracted a previous accusation against Sony regarding their alleged use of a DVD+R instead of a Blu-Ray disc in a demonstration. In the original announcement, Gearlog.com claimed that Sony was using a DVD+R to demonstrate Blu-Ray technology, in an attempt to show that Sony was not ready to market the product."

eldavojohn wonders: " Do W3C standards hold any importance to anyone and if so, why? When you finish a website, do you run it to the validator to laugh and take bets, or do you e-mail the results to the office intern and tell him/her to get to work? Since Opera 9 is the only browser to pass the ACID2 test, is strict compliance really necessary?" We all know that standards are important, but there has always been a distance between what is put forth by the W3C and what we get from our browsers. Microsoft has yet to release a browser that comes close to supporting standards (and it remains to be seen if IE7 will change this). Mozilla, although supportive, is still a ways from ACID2 compliance. Web developers are therefore faced with a difficult decision: do they develop their content to the standards, or to the browsers that will render it? As web developers (or the manager of web developers), what decisions did you made on your projects? Update: 05/20 by C : rgmisra provides a minor correction to the information provided. It is stated above that Opera9 is the only browser to pass the ACID2 test, however "This is not true - Safari was the first released publicly released browser to pass the ACID2 tests." -- Sorry about the mistake.

eldavojohn writes "I wrote a journal entry musing on the idea of passing on accounts and digitally stored information from generation to generation. Has anyone done this or inherited anything? Does anyone else plan to do this? Is there a slip of paper in your deposit box at the bank with websites, account names and passwords?"

eldavojohn writes "Symantec has announced that they will be creating a massive security package called Genesis. Semantec has set their goal to 'Security 2.0' which is proposed to be 'a new age of trust on the Internet.' From the article: 'Symantec plans a one-stop software service tying together anti-virus, anti-spam, firewall and a host of other PC optimization technologies...' This is certainly something the common computer user could buy instead of having to fork over cash for every component. I don't think I'll be purchasing it though."