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This is fantastic. Microsoft FINALLY lost a patent case! Starting January 11 2010, MS Word and Office will be barred from sale, permanently.
Of course, MS has said that versions of the software are in development that do not contain the infringing features, so if all goes well, you won’t notice a single thing different about the retail shelves.
Check out the read link above for the details.
Information flowing out of Iran has slowed to a trickle because of the the governments intense control over the Internet. The government has banned usage of social networking sites including Twitter, Facebook, and Youtube, and is monitoring traffic to ensure suppression. But many Iranians are getting around those blocks by browsing over an encrypted network call The Onion Router (Tor). The problem is, Tor relies on bandwidth from it’s users, and since it’s use is not as widespread as regular Internet traffic, users experience very slow transfer speeds when using the Internet. The more Tor relays (bandwidth donators) there are, the faster the Tor network becomes, so you can help Iran’s Internet users browse safely by becoming a Tor Relay, click on the link above the “Featured Topic” section to download a flyer about Tor relays that contains links to all the information you need to help out.
P.S. - please distribute the flyer whenever and where ever you can.
Thanks to user “Cogs” at the WhyWeProtest forums for making the original flyer.
Hello, fellow Doubleshot Expressoans! All but one of you may not have seen me yet because this will be my first post, i am professor89whiskey. E3 is just wrapping up this year and unfortunately i don’t get G4 any more so i couldn’t catch any of it on tv as usual. But i have perused teh interwebz a bit and found some things that make me pretty giddy.
At the very top of my list is Bioware’s Mass Effect 2. The first one has been touted as one the greatest scifi stories of all time, and i would vote for that. Story is paramount when it comes to games for me. I certainly hope all of you have played Mass Effect. ME2 is going to be quite different as you can tell in the video below.
With ME2 on the way, my trigger finger is already getting twitchy, and there will probably be no better game to solve that than Modern Warfare 2 from Infinity Ward. Infinity Ward has branched off from the Call of Duty franchise for the sequel, and i don’t know if Treyarch (who developed CoD3 and CoD5 World at War) will be given the rights to continue it. Now, unlike Mass Effect, Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare (the last CoD Infinity Ward made) draws it’s strength not form the story, which frankly was kind of hard to follow, but from the near perfectly solid gameplay.
Super Mario Galaxy was, besides Super Mario 64, the greatest platformer i have ever played and i am excited about the next:
This one isn’t exactly a highlight for me as i will be unable to play it, but i thought it kicked a lot of ass all the same. A new rpg from Bioware set 300 years after KOTOR 2:
Well, those are my fav’s from E3, i know they’re all sequels but that doesn’t mean they can’t rock!
EDIT: I appologize, i can’t seem to get the links to work, you’ll have to copy/paste the URLs, sorry.
EDIT: the links are working. 
This story has been developing for a while now. First Florida, where the results of breath tests in more than 100 local drunken-driving cases were deemed inadmissable to evidence. the validity of those breathalyzer tests has been challenged for more than three years because of the Intoxilyzer 5000, a machine that uses a breath sample to measure a person’s blood-alcohol content.
Recently, the judges ruling in that case was affirmed by the appeals court, and stands. Meanwhile, in Minnesota, the state Supreme Court ruled that DWI defendants had a right to examine the source code of the Intoxilyzer 5000, as long as they provided suffecient reasoning for why it may be evidence in their defense.
Arizona courts came to a similar conclusion, but Kentucky based CMI is still resisting. They haven’t given the Source code to any state that has asked for it, claiming it is a “trade-secret”, that if they reveal it, a competitor may copy it and compete with them (oh noes!).
So, while the issue of DWI defendants being allowed to examine the source code of the Intoxilyzer 5000 (or any other breathalyzer) has been fairly resolved by many states, there is still the issue of CMI handing the source code over. Because they refuse to hand it over, many DWI defendants get to walk free because of a lack of due process.
Ars Technica excellently sums up the cost of proprietary, closed-source software:
It’s gotten so bad in Minnesota that the state has gone to federal court this year, charging CMI with a host of contractual failures and asking for more than $75,000 in compensation. With police departments now losing confidence that an Intoxilyzer reading will lead to a conviction, many have switched to blood and urine testing. Such testing puts a “heightened burden” on the state’s laboratory budget.
Even worse, with confidence in the devices plummeting, the state says that it may need to “replace its entire fleet of breath testing instruments” and retrain every officer who uses them.
Closed-source can be anti-competitive, as indicative of CMI’s attitude toward releasing the source code. Closed-source can negatively effect economies, as idicative of the money that states have to spend to find ways around not having the source code. Closed-source can actually drive you out of business, as indicative of Minnesota’s suggestion to switch vendors.
CMI won’t last long if things keep going the way they have been.
All links related to this story
Manatee judge tosses DUI breath tests
Source code requests force breathalyzer maker to sober up
MN Supreme Court OKs breathalyzer source code requests
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Tags: arizona, CMI, Florida, intoxilyzer, kentucky, minnesota, source code
open-source software development is like cooking. Let me explain.
Let’s imagine for a moment that you want to make an apple pie from scratch. You’ll need a recipe for the pie, that’s certainly easy to find, there are tons of pie recipes in one of the many cook books you own. Just find the apple pie recipe you like the most and set it on the counter.
Next you’ll need the dishes and utensils to manage all the ingredients you’ll have. You probably have a nice size bowl, and rolling pin, a wooden spoon, and a pie pan, but if not, I bet your neighbor has some, or your friend down the road. If not, then you can go to the store and buy the dishes and utensils.
Okay, now your ready to gather all the ingredients, which, if you don’t have yourself, you could borrow from a neighbor or friend, or buy them from the convenience store. Now comes the fun part, mixing all your ingredients together. Your following the recipe when, about halfway through the process, you decide to vary the recipe a bit. You put an extra block of butter in, a little more sugar then it calls for, and you mix some ground cinnamon into the dough. Why not right?
After forming something out of nothing, you stick it in your oven, set the timer, and wait. Images of gooey apple filling, and crisp, buttery, cinnamon crust float around in your head. You can smell the sweet concoction of cinnamon and apple in the air as it bakes into perfection.
When it’s done, you invite some friends over to share the pie, your excited when you tell them how you made it and you give them each a copy of your new recipe, which you derived from some strangers recipe. Your friends enjoy the pie and many of them want to make it for themselves, and some of them even said they would try vanilla instead of cinnamon in the crust.
You made this pie from scratch, you know exactly what its made from, so you know its perfectly safe to eat, and you know it tastes better than those store bought pies, and you like to think you improved upon the recipe you worked from.
developing software is the same way, and when you’re working with open-source tools or deriving your work from another open-source project, you can look at the source so that you know exactly what your working with, and just like making an apple pie, there is nothing stopping you from changing it up a bit (or completely). All the tools you need are there, for free, and when you finish the project, you are free to do with it anything you want.
Let’s say I want to download the source code for Ubuntu Linux. I could either go to archive.ubuntu.com and find what I need, or download the source from Synaptic or the terminal. It’s all there, I can customize it ’till my heart’s content.
This simile is the same when it comes to using open-source software. The cleanest and safest (though not the easiest) way to install an application is to compile it from the source code. Just download all the source (its usually packaged nicely in a .tar archive), and run a few commands from the terminal. Installing it this way, you can specify where to put the installation files, so that you know where all components of the program are, plus you have all the source code in a nice archive. You made this pie from scratch, you know exactly what its made from, so you know its perfectly safe to eat.
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Tags: cooking, development, open-source, pie, simile, software
Apparently, Symantecs Norton Antivirus software contains a single exe called pifts.exe. This program is unsigned, which means firewalls can detect when pifts.exe accesses the internet.
And it does. Pifts.exe attempts to contact a server in Africa, and no one (except perhaps a select few Symantec employees) knows why. When a user on the Symantec Community Forums asked about the mysterious exe, his post was removed, and eventually, all posts regarding pifts were removed and the forums went into ¨maintenance¨ mode.
The forums are back up now, and users inquiring about pifts are directed here.
Norton insists that the exe is harmless, and claim that it was the incredible amount of spam on the forums that caused them to go down after hundreds of posts were deleted.
Conspiracy theories have emerged, some credible, most not. A popular theory is that pifts.exe is a program that allows the FBI to record user statistics.
Independent security ‘experts’ are fairly confident that the exe is not malicious in nature nor is it a government-sponsered spy tool, but rather, the exe is probably just a stat collection program used for Norton Live Update.
Either way, Symantecs secrecy on the matter makes no sense. (this wouldn’t happen if it were free software)
for more:
Internet conspiracy theories abound over Symantec Pifts.exe file
“What is PIFTS.exe?” or How Symantec Turned A Simple Mistake Into A Corporate Disaster
Although Wikapedia is very mainstream, and is a commonly used some may still not know where the functionality, and ease of use comes from. The software for Wikapedia is actually available for free download and has a GNU license. Recently I had the chance to work on a project for work that allowed me to install, test, and observe the flexibility and ease of use of this software.
Starting with the good. The installation process only took 10-15 minutes. The majority of the time was spend setting up a folder with write privileges, and the MYSQL database, and users. Once installed it only required that the localsettings.php file be moved to the main directory.
Once up and running it is incredibly easy to just start throwing information and documents into the WIKI. I however recommend that you take a moment to first decide what additions to the main layout you may need in terms of user management, and extra functionality as it is much easier to add this prior to filling up your wiki with everything in your hearts desire. There is one other bonus to setting up all your preferences ahead of time, the oops I broke it rule is pretty much a given on the first time install of any new software.
In addition to ease of install, and use the wiki also allows for one of the best search features I have ever seen. The only issue found with searching was from sub name spaces (sub sections of the wiki) not searching for less that 4 characters.
For the bad the user management features are limited without adding additional extensions. This would not be a real issue if you have access to PHP files, and know how to edit them. With the theme of ease of use it is surprising that user management still required knowledge of PHP.
Overall the software is a great addition to any site that needs to store mass amounts of information provided by its users, or for any company looking to centralize their training documents, and other company information. Please feel free to visit the link below, and download a copy for yourself.
GNUMP3d is magic, or at least it felt that way after I installed it. From the site: GNUMP3d is a streaming server for MP3s, OGG vorbis files, movies and other media formats.
I’m going to take the liberty of walking you through the set up:
Step 1 - open up a terminal and type:
sudo apt-get install gnump3d
it will install in /var/music, so navigate there from the terminal with this:
cd /var/music
GNUMP3d uses this folder to share content, so you’ll want to link your music libraries and movie libraries to this folder. To do that, use this command while still in the /var/music directory:
sudo ln -s path/to/my/music/folder/music music
obviously, replace “path/to/my/music/folder/music” with your own path. Mine would be /home/glenn/MyFiles/music, and the reason you type music on the end is to make a folder within /var/music that will ‘contain’ all your music. Do the same for your movies or whatever else you want to stream:
sudo ln -s path/to/my/movies/folder/movies movies
Forge.mil, based on Sourceforge code is designed simply to memic the functionality of Sourceforge, with some security enhancments to better suite the needs of the Department of Defense. The Defense department have been leaning toward open-source software for a while now, and this latest project is yet another indication that they are serious when they suggest that open-source is a business model that “works for everyone”.
Forge.mil currently hosts 3 projects, one called Bastille, which is designed to automate server configuration, another handles requests for proposals development, and another project is designed to automate the “secure configuration of Solaris systems” (Solaris is an open-source operating system by Sun Microsystems).
Perhaps Mark Shuttleworth is right when he so gleefully welcomes the release of Windows 7. Ever since Vista was released on January 31st, 2007, Linux has been gaining a lot of steam, thanks to Vista’s many pitfalls.
Ubuntu is without a doubt leading the charge when it comes to proliferation of the Linux kernel, and thanks to the popularity of netbooks, Linux is fastly becoming the operating system of choice for many netbook users.
Microsoft isn’t comfortable with this trend.
