|
Slashdot
|
News for nerds, stuff that matters
|
|
-
TWiki.net Kicks Out All TWiki Contributors
David Gerard noted an interesting story going down with a relatively minor project that has interesting implications to any Open Source project. He writes "Ten years ago, Peter Thoeny started the TWiki wiki engine. It attracted many contributors at twiki.org. About a year ago, Thoeny founded the startup twiki.net. On 27th October, twiki.net locked all the other contributors out of twiki.org in an event Thoeny called "the twiki.org relaunch. Here's the IRC meeting log. All the other core developers have now moved to a new project, NextWiki. Is it a sensible move for a venture capital firm that depends on a healthy Open Source community to lock it out?"
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
-
Microsoft Joins the OpenID Foundation
wertigon writes "Windows Live ID just became yet another OpenID-provider. While the cynical me wonders how long it'll be before Microsoft transforms OpenID to something proprietary, they have undoubtedly put even more weight behind the OpenID initiative. So, how long before I can use my OpenID to post on Slashdot?" Patches are always welcome wertigon ;)
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
-
Discuss the US Presidential Election & the Economy
A number of folks have been submitting topics that indicate that they want to have a serious discussion on the issues surrounding this election. Since we're under a week now, I've decided to run a series of discussion stories to give you guys a place to discuss the issue. So here's the first one: The Economy. It's the biggest topic these days, eclipsing even war as the most important issue to most Americans. But how will that affect your choice next week? And why?
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
-
Tech Giants In Human Rights Deal
Ostracus writes "Microsoft, Google and Yahoo have signed a global a code of conduct promising to offer better protection for online free speech and against official intrusion." Anyone want to know what this means for China & Australia? I bet it means even less to all of us in America where every major data center has a secret room where the government sniffs our packets.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
-
MTV Launches Music Video Site
An anonymous reader writes "MTV Music has just launched a website where they offer over 16,000 music videos — like YouTube, but with fewer notices and DMCA takedowns. They've also set up development tools for third parties to incorporate the content into their own creations. Users creating accounts at the site face other challenges, however, such as the six separate agreements and privacy statements that must be accepted via a single checkbox. Thankfully, at the time of writing the MTV Music website was making this process easier on its Firefox 3 visitors by automatically checking the accept box whenever any agreement is viewed."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
-
Mars Lander Faces Slow Death
Riding with Robots writes "It's the beginning of the end for the Phoenix Mars Lander. As winter approaches in the Martian arctic, NASA says it's in a 'race against time and the elements' in its efforts to prolong the robotic spacecraft's life. Starting today, mission managers will begin to gradually shut the lander's systems down, hoping to conserve dwindling solar power and thereby extend the remaining systems' useful life. 'Originally scheduled to last 90 days, Phoenix has completed a fifth month of exploration in the Martian arctic. As expected, with the Martian northern hemisphere shifting from summer to fall, the lander is generating less power due to shorter days and fewer hours of sunlight reaching its solar panels. At the same time, the spacecraft requires more power to run several survival heaters that allow it to operate even as temperatures decline.'"
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
-
Finnish E-Voting System Loses 2% of Votes
kaip writes "Finland piloted a fully electronic voting system in municipal elections last weekend. Due to a usability glitch, 232 votes, or about 2% of all electronic votes were lost. The results of the election may have been affected, because the seats in municipal assemblies are often decided by margins of a few votes. Unfortunately, nobody knows for sure, because the Ministry of Justice didn't see any need to implement a voter-verified paper record. The ministry was, of course, duly warned about a fully electronic voting system, but the critique was debunked as 'science fiction.' There is now discussion about re-arranging the affected elections. Thanks go to the voting system providers, Scytl and TietoEnator, for the experience."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
-
NSA and Army On Quest For Quantum Physics Jackpot
coondoggie sends this excerpt from NetworkWorld: "The US Army Research Office and the National Security Agency (NSA) are together looking for some answers to their quantum physics questions. ... The Army said quantum algorithms that are developed should focus on constructive solutions [PDF] for specific tasks, and on general methodologies for expressing and analyzing algorithms tailored to specific problems — though they didn't say what those specific tasks were ... 'Investigators should presuppose the existence of a fully functional quantum computer and consider what algorithmic tasks are particularly well suited to such a machine. A necessary component of this research will be to compare the efficiency of the quantum algorithm to the best existing classical algorithm for the same problem.'"
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
-
The First E-President
Szentigrade writes "Popular Science is running a letter by Daniel Engber of the online Slate Magazine in which he offers the US Presidential nominees advice on using the full potential of the Internet upon their election into office. Some examples discussed in the letter include: a project already being developed that speeds up the patent approval process, a UK site that aims to improve government-citizen interactions, and perhaps most importantly, a call for government information to be 'presented in a standardized and widely used data format, like XML, so that anyone — in or out of government — could use and reconfigure it however they pleased.' Will 2009 be the first year of the E-President?"
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
-
Multiple Asteroid Belts Found Orbiting Nearby Star
Kligat writes "Scientists have found two asteroid belts around the star Epsilon Eridani, the ninth closest star to our solar system. Epsilon Eridani also possesses an icy outer ring similar in composition to our Kuiper Belt, but with 100 times more material, and a Jovian mass planet near the edge of the innermost belt. Researchers believe that two other planets must orbit the 850 million year old star near the other two belts. Terrestrial planets are possible, but not yet indicated."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
|
|
.jpg)
.jpg)
