Slashdot Mirror

judgecorp writes "ICANN is to be congratulated for succeeding in expanding the Internet beyond the Latin alphabet. However, the organization is facing a harder task in extending the Internet's global top-level domains (gTLDs) — its proposal to open up the gTLD space has been plagued by controversy and delays. INCANN faces struggles with trademark owners and competing businesses — but even so it is being criticized for acting slowly (as seen in transcripts from the recent meeting in Seoul). It now seems likely the body will have a pre-registration scheme to gauge demand and placate critics by getting something moving on new gTLDs."

We've been following the ongoing struggles of the print media, watching as some publications have died off and others have held to outdated principles and decried the influence of the internet. A side effect of this has been many journalists put out of work and many others fearful that informed reporting is on its way out as well. Now, an editorial in the Washington Post calls for a solution journalists would likely have scoffed at only a few years ago: federal subsidies. Robert W. McChesney and John Nichols write, "What to do? Bailing out media conglomerates would be morally and politically absurd. These firms have run journalism into the ground. If they cannot make it, let them go. Wait for 'pay-wall' technologies, billionaire philanthropists or unimagined business models to generate enough news to meet the immense demands of a self-governing society? There is no evidence that such a panacea is on the horizon. This leaves one place to look for a solution: the government." They hasten to add, "Did we just call for state-run media? Quite the opposite."

irving47 writes 'With the economy the way it is, it's a little iffy to even think about switching careers completely, but lately, I've gotten more and more fed up with trying to keep up with the technical demands of companies and customers that are financially and even verbally unappreciative. While I might be good at it, and the money is adequate, I'm curious to hear from Slashdotters who have gone cold-turkey from their IT/Networking careers to something once foreign to them. How did you deal with the income difference, if any? Do you find yourself dealing with people more, and if so, how did that work out?'

The trial we discussed this spring has come to a verdict, and reader lugannerd was one of several to note a milestone in the fight against the Church of Scientology. "The French branch of the Church of Scientology was convicted of fraud and fined nearly $900,000 on Tuesday by a Paris court. But the judges did not ban the church entirely, as the prosecution had demanded, saying that a change in the law prevented such an action for fraud. The church said it would appeal. The verdict was among the most important in several years to involve the controversial group, which is registered as a religion in the United States but has no similar legal protection in France. It is considered a sect here, and says it has some 45,000 adherents, out of some 12 million worldwide. It was the first time here that the church itself had been tried and convicted, as opposed to individual members."

coondoggie writes "The US Department of Energy said today it will spend $32 million on a project that will deploy a large cloud computing test bed with thousands of Intel Nehalem CPU cores and explore commercial offerings from Amazon, Microsoft and Google. Ultimately, the project, known as Magellan, will look at cloud computing as a cost-effective and energy-efficient way for scientists to accelerate discoveries in a variety of disciplines, including analysis of scientific data sets in biology, climate change and physics, the DOE stated. Magellan will explore whether cloud computing can help meet the overwhelming demand for scientific computing. Although computation is an increasingly important tool for scientific discovery, and DOE operates some of the world's most powerful supercomputers, not all research applications require such massive computing power. The number of scientists who would benefit from mid-range computing far exceeds the amount of available resources, the DEO stated."

Barence writes "Acer has unveiled an Aspire netbook that dual boots Google Android and Windows 7. 'User demand is not there for [other forms of] Linux [but] we never give up. We adjust,' said Jim Wong, Acer senior corporate vice president. 'We introduce Android with the Windows OS, and why Android? Because it has the best connectivity built into the OS.' Acer has also talked up Google's forthcoming Chrome OS. 'Chrome can be a viable alternative to Microsoft's OSes for web applications on different mobile devices,' he explained."

Ponca City, We love you writes "The EFF has warned Texas Instruments not to pursue legal threats against calculator hobbyists who perform modifications to the company's programmable graphing calculators. TI's calculators perform a 'signature check' that allows only approved operating systems to be loaded, but researchers have reverse-engineered signing keys, allowing tinkerers to install custom operating systems and unlock new functionality in the calculators' hardware. In response, TI has unleashed a torrent of demand letters claiming that the anti-circumvention provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act require the hobbyists to take down commentary about and links to the keys. 'This is not about copyright infringement. This is about running your own software on your own device — a calculator you legally bought,' says EFF Civil Liberties Director Jennifer Granick. 'Yet TI still issued empty legal threats in an attempt to shut down discussion of this legitimate tinkering. Hobbyists are taking their own tools and making them better, in the best tradition of American innovation.'"

xander_zone_xxx writes with news that Ray Beckerman, known around here as NewYorkCountryLawyer, was not a "vexatious" litigant, as the RIAA claimed. In the same ruling the judge dismissed Beckerman's counter-claims against the RIAA. (We discussed the claims and counters a year back.) "An attorney defending against a music-piracy lawsuit didn't cross ethical bounds by filing motions broadly attacking the recording industry and posting them on his blog, a magistrate judge has ruled, rejecting demands from the RIAA for monetary sanctions. Attorney Ray Beckerman was 'less than forthcoming at times' in defending a client against an RIAA lawsuit, but the music industry's concerns were 'largely overstated,' New York Magistrate Judge Robert M. Levy wrote Friday."

Pickens writes "Farhad Manjoo has a provocative story at Slate asserting that while the iPhone has prompted millions of people to join AT&T, it has also hurt the company's image because all of those customers use their phones too much, and AT&T's network is getting crushed by the demand. The typical smartphone customer consumes about 40 to 80 megabytes of wireless capacity a month, while the typical iPhone customer uses 400 MB a month. As more people sign up, local cell towers get more congested, and your own phone performs worse. He says the problem is that a customer who uses 1 MB a month pays the same amount as someone who uses 1,000 MB, and the solution is tiered pricing. 'Of course, users would cry bloody murder at first,' writes Manjoo. 'I'd call on AT&T to create automatic tiers — everyone would start out on the $10/100 MB plan each month, and your price would go up automatically as your usage passes each 100 MB tier.' He says the key to implementing the policy is transparency, and that the iPhone should have an indicator like the battery bar that changes color as you pass each monthly tier. 'Some iPhone fans will argue that metered pricing would kill the magic of Apple's phone — that sense of liberation one feels at being able to access the Internet from anywhere, at any time. The trouble is, for many of us, AT&T's overcrowded network has already killed that sense, and now our usual dealings with Apple's phone are tinged with annoyance.'"

An anonymous reader writes "Rock, Paper, Shotgun points out a new game called Star Guard, a Flash-based platformer for Mac and PC that's a throwback to the early days of computer gaming, yet still entertaining. They describe it thus: 'Its greatest strength, to my mind, is throwing out the old-school traditions of difficulty. It does certainly get tricky, requiring the platformer standbys of carefully timed jumps and learning enemy patterns — there's something of a Metroid vibe to it. But you don't get punished for failing to meet one of its challenges — you're just plunged a few feet back to most recent checkpoint, and carry on. Lives are not finite, but the small mound of green pixels that mark your corpses are a maudlin testament to your ineptitude. However, death is useful — I ritually found myself sending in a suicide spaceman, taking out an enemy or a mine so that the path was clear for my next go. ... However, it doesn't leave people who pride themselves on their gaming skill, and demand their games to be hard, out in the cold. At the end of each level, your score alters dramatically depending on how many times you died.'"

An anonymous reader writes "A lengthy interview on Groklaw discusses the EU's case against Microsoft. The case is supported by Opera, Google, Mozilla, ECIS, and the Free Software Foundation Europe. The EU has demanded that users be offered a 'ballot screen' to make it easier for users to select other browsers. Microsoft has responded by implementing the ballot screen as a web page inside IE. While this may nominally satisfy EU's demand, it is unlikely to satisfy users who prefer other browsers. In order to select another browser, users must be running IE. Also, users will be shown security warnings when choosing from the ballot. Microsoft's ability to charge patent fees in Europe is also discussed: why are they allowed to charge patent fees where software patents are not recognized?"

ChiefMonkeyGrinder writes "This summer, the London Stock Exchange decided to move away from its Microsoft .Net-based trading platform, TradElect. Instead, they'll be using the GNU/Linux-based MillenniumIT system. The switch is a pretty savage indictment of the costs of a complex .Net system. The GNU/Linux-based software is also faster, and offers several other major benefits. The details provide some fascinating insights into the world of very high performance — and very expensive — enterprise systems. ... [R]ather than being just any old deal that Microsoft happened to lose, this really is something of a total rout, and in an extremely demanding and high-profile sector. Enterprise wins for GNU/Linux don't come much better than this."

stoolpigeon writes "Rich Internet Applications (RIA) have often been associated with some type of sandbox or virtual machine environment to make desktop features available via the web. Many applications though, have left behind the restrictions and demands of those technologies, implementing RIAs as pure web interfaces. One key technology in this area is JavaScript. It's been well documented that working with JavaScript can be problematic across various browsers. In response a number of JavaScript libraries have been created to alleviate the issues in dealing with different browsers, allowing developers to focus on application logic rather than platform concerns. One such library, focused on providing tools for building RIAs is Ext JS. For the aspiring developer looking to use Ext JS, Packt provides a guide to the library in the form of Learning Ext JS." Read on for the rest of JR's review. Learning Ext JS author Shea Frederick, Colin Ramsay, Steve 'Cutter' Blades pages 309 publisher Packt Publishing rating 8/10 reviewer JR Peck ISBN 978-1-847195-14-2 summary Build dynamic, desktop-style user interfaces for your data-driven web applications. The book is written for people with experience in doing web development. The authors state that a working knowledge of HTML and CSS are important, but experience with JavaScript is not essential. I think that a reader that has not used JavaScript may want to supplement this guide with something that covers the basics of JS. Experienced developers that haven't worked specifically with web programming should have no trouble keeping up. Anyone completely new to the idea of programming, scripting, markup, etc. really will need to take some time to get familiar with those concepts before they dive into this book. The authors do not spend time teaching programming, they are focused purely on realistic applications of Ext JS.

The authors begin by stating that, "Ext is not just another JavaScript library..." and it is understandable that they would feel this way. I am unsure why one wouldn't think so other than a personal preference for the product. That said Ext JS can be used alongside other JS libraries and does provide a lot of features 'out of the box' that make it an attractive choice. The emphasis on RIA widgets and building strong applications is nice as Ext JS is not working to be all things to all developers.

The book is heavy on code and examples but not so much so that it falls into the cook-book style of writing. Learning Ext JS is more of an extended tutorial with ample explanation to help the reader not only understand the code but why certain choices are made. Frederick, Ramsay and Blades have done a good job of working through the examples in a concise manner. While the book is the result of group work, it does not have the feeling of being written by a community. I did not run into an abundance of repetition and topics flowed well. Learning Ext JS also covers installation and integration of the library as well as a very quick survey of tools for development. While short these sections would be extremely important to anyone coming into web development with little experience.

It's a quick read, and doesn't delve extremely deeply into more advanced topics. Rather, a reader new to Ext JS will get a launch that should make the library usable in a practical way and also give them the framework to push deeper. The book was written and published just as Ext JS moved between versions. The new version is backwards compatible with the material in this book and a number of the changes in version three would not have fallen within the scope of this book, so it is still a good place to get started with Ext JS. Those who want to dig deeper will need to look elsewhere.

The brevity of the book wont work for those folks who want to really dig down deep into Ext JS. I on the other hand, wasn't looking for a massive tome to lug around and grind through. I was happy to have a very accessible tool that would get me started quickly and that is what I got. On the other hand I do like to be able to find what I need quickly and nothing is more important to me when learning than a solid index. Unfortunately the only really large ding I have for the book is that the index is weak. It would be a lot worse if the book were larger, so the brevity helps here a bit, but it's still unfortunate. This does make the ebook version a little more attractive. Packt will bundle them at a cost that makes the addition of the electronic copy very attractive. That said, the easy flow does it make it easy to read this book front to back while working the examples. Learning Ext JS just wont be my first choice when I need to quickly check a reference.

I've discussed the shallow coverage, but this does not mean that the book is not useful. The Ext JS library bundles enough functionality into the stock widgets, that decent applications could be written with nothing more. Creating custom widgets is covered and extending existing code as well, but this is later in the book. The material prior to that covers not only the use of the provided widgets but how to tie them together, theme an app and then handling data. This means the reader pretty much has everything in hand to build a stock application. The focus is on dealing with these issues on the client side. The examples do include a small amount of back end code when necessary for the execution of examples. All the examples are available to download from the Packt site and come packaged with all necessary scripts, images, etc.

I've always worked primarily with desktop applications. I've done some work with web applications, but it seems to me that increasingly the tools that I use the most are web based. With technology like Google Gears making those applications available whether I'm connected or not they have become much more attractive. Tools like Ext JS make it much easier for me to transition over to this new way of developing applications. I've found that Learning Ext JS has been a valuable resource in taking what is a great resource and allowing me to get the most out of it more rapidly than I would have otherwise.

You can purchase Learning Ext JS from amazon.com . Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

SpuriousLogic spotted this story on the BBC, from which he excerpts: "The High Court has given permission for an injunction to be served via social-networking site Twitter. The order is to be served against an unknown Twitter user who anonymously posts to the site using the same name as a right-wing political blogger. The order demands the anonymous Twitter user reveal their identity and stop posing as Donal Blaney, who blogs at a site called Blaney's Blarney. The order says the Twitter user is breaching the copyright of Mr. Blaney. He told BBC News that the content being posted to Twitter in his name was 'mildly objectionable.' Mr. Blaney turned to Twitter to serve the injunction rather than go through the potentially lengthy process of contacting Twitter headquarters in California and asking it to deal with the matter. UK law states that an injunction does not have to be served in person and can be delivered by several different means including fax or e-mail."

N!NJA sends in a proposal that is sure to cause some discussion, especially among students and teachers. Obama and his education secretary say that American kids spend too little time in school, putting them at a disadvantage in comparison to other students around the globe. "'Now, I know longer school days and school years are not wildly popular ideas,' the president said earlier this year. 'Not with Malia and Sasha, not in my family, and probably not in yours. But the challenges of a new century demand more time in the classroom.' 'Our school calendar is based upon the agrarian economy and not too many of our kids are working the fields today,' Education Secretary Arne Duncan said in a recent interview with The Associated Press. ... 'Young people in other countries are going to school 25, 30 percent longer than our students here,' Duncan told the AP. 'I want to just level the playing field.' ... Kids in the US spend more hours in school (1,146 instructional hours per year) than do kids in the Asian countries that persistently outscore the US on math and science tests — Singapore (903), Taiwan (1,050), Japan (1,005) and Hong Kong (1,013). That is despite the fact that Taiwan, Japan and Hong Kong have longer school years (190 to 201 days) than does the U.S. (180 days)."

alphadogg writes "Mobile users face a fast-growing gap between their smartphones' increasing power needs and battery capacity. That gap could force users to make tradeoffs in how, and for what, they use their phones, even as vendors at all levels work even harder to reduce power demand in mobile devices, according to Chris Schreck, a research analyst with IMS Research. Schreck estimates that a 1500 mAh battery, the industry's current 'high water mark,' yields for many smartphone users a battery life of about 6 hours — highly dependent on what applications and on-device technologies, including Wi-Fi, users are running. The latest and greatest tech advances, including faster CPUs, higher data throughput, and improved displays all crank up the demand for power. The combination of user behavior and technology is boosting power demand faster than battery capacity can keep up. Schreck estimates power requirements can grow 15% a year."

An anonymous reader writes "Generating entangled photons in a reliable way is impossible right now, stalling the development of the optical quantum computers that would use entangled photons as quantum bits (qubits). Because entangled photons can only be produced at random — which takes time — the most powerful optical quantum computing device use only 6 qubits. UK and Israeli quantum physicists have designed a blueprint for a 'quantum machine gun' that fires out barrages of entangled photons on demand. They think within a few years this device will be built, and could lead to quantum computing using 20 to 30 qubits. Every additional qubit doubles the computing power, so these quantum computers could outperform any existing classical computer, the researchers say. The quantum machine gun is described as 'one of the most exciting theoretical proposals I've read in five years' by a leading quantum physicist." The research was published in Physical Review Letters earlier this month.

lbalbalba writes "Heirs to comic book legend Jack Kirby sent 45 notices of copyright termination to Marvel Entertainment, prospective Marvel buyer Disney, Sony Pictures, Universal Pictures, 20th Century Fox, Paramount Pictures, and others studios that that hold licensed media rights to Marvel characters. Some rights could revert to the heirs as soon as 2014, for characters that are among the hottest in Hollywood: The Incredible Hulk, The Mighty Thor, Iron Man, Spider-Man, The Avengers, and others. Among other things the heirs' demand could cause problems for Disney's as yet unconsummated purchase of Marvel."

Death Metal writes "In a working paper titled, 'Is Tom Cruise Threatened? Using Netflix Prize Data to Examine the Long Tail of Electronic Commerce,' Wharton Operations and Information Management professor Serguei Netessine and doctoral student Tom F. Tan pull information from the movie rental company Netflix to explore consumer demand for smash hits and lesser-known films. Netflix made its data available as part of a $1 million prize competition to encourage the development of new ways that will improve its ability to introduce customers to lesser-known titles they might find appealing." In short, the researchers say that the Long Tail effect described by Chris Anderson is much less important in the real world than popularly held. Says the article: "The key difference between the opinion of [Anderson's] book and the study by Wharton researchers is how they define 'hits' and 'niches.' In the book, Anderson focuses on the definition of hits in absolute terms such as the top 10 or top 1,000 products, while Netessine and Tan argue that, to take growing product variety into account, one has to define popularity in relative terms, such as the top 1% or top 10% of products, to properly assess the presence or absence of the Long Tail."

carluva writes "Google is teaming up with On Demand Books to offer paperback versions of its collection of over 2 million public domain books. The books will be able to be printed using ODB's Espresso Book Machine, which is already in use at several book stores and libraries and can print and bind a complete, paperback copy of a 300-page book in less than 5 minutes. Google and ODB each get $1 in royalties per book sold (Google has pledged to donate its proceeds to charities and nonprofit organizations). See also ODB's PDF press release."