Wikileaks To Sell Hugo Chavez' Email
Source: Slashdot.orgI Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Wikileaks seems to be a bit hard-up for cash, so they're trying a little experiment. They plan to auction off an archive with three years worth of Hugo Chavez' email. The winner will get a period of embargoed access to break any stories they can find in the files, while Wikileaks will later publish the archive in full. Wikileaks plans to use the profits for their legal defense fund, but they may run into trouble because most reputable news outlets have policies against paying sources."
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Quebec Gov Sued For Ignoring Free Software
Source: Slashdot.orgMathieu Lutfy writes "The CBC is reporting that "Quebec's open-source software association is suing the provincial government, saying it is giving preferential treatment to Microsoft Corp. by buying the company's products rather than using free alternatives. "...Government buyers are using an exception in provincial law that allows them to buy directly from a proprietary vendor when there are no options available, but Facil said that loophole is being abused and goes against other legal requirements to buy locally.". The group also has a press release in English."
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Changing Customers Password Without Consent
Source: Slashdot.orgrisinganger writes "BBC News is reporting that a customer had his password changed without his knowledge. After some less than satisfactory service the customer in question changed his password to 'Llyods is pants'. At some point after that a member of staff changed the password to 'no it's not'. Requests to change it back to 'Llyods is pants', 'Barclays is better' or censorship were met with refusal. Personally I found the original change funny, like the customer did. After all, god forbid a sense of humour rears it's ugly head in business. What isn't acceptable is the refusal to change it per the customers requests after that."
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New Map From Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope
Source: Slashdot.orgI Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "NASA has received interesting results from the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, originally known as GLAST, which has allowed them to create new map of the gamma-ray sky. The secret to its ability to resolve gamma-rays is that they use layers of tungsten interleaved with silicon detectors. When a gamma-ray strikes tungsten, it produces an electron/positron pair due to the photoelectric effect, which cascades as it goes through further layers of tungsten. Meanwhile, they record which silicon detectors had electrons or positrons pass through them to determine the direction of the source and they also record the total energy of the electron/positron pairs to calculate the wavelength of the gamma-ray using Planck's Law. The data gathered in just its first few hours of operation is reportedly comparable to the data from the Energetic Gamma-Ray Experiment Telescope, which gathered data for nine years back in the 1990's and there are hopes that it could detect dark matter in the form of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs)."
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45th Known Mersenne Prime Found?
Source: Slashdot.orgAn anonymous reader writes "The Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS) has apparently discovered a new world-record prime number. A GIMPS client computer reported the number on August 23rd, and verification is currently under way. The verification could take up to two weeks to complete. The last Mersenne prime discovered was over 9.8 million digits long, strongly suggesting that the new value may break the 10 million digit barrier — qualifying for the EFF's $100000 prize!"
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The Power Grid Can't Handle Wind Farms
Source: Slashdot.orgDesScorp writes "The Times reports on the problems of adding wind farms to the power grid. Because of the grid's old design, it can't handle the various spikes that wind farms sometimes have, and there's no efficient way to currently move massive amounts of that power from one section of the country to the other. Further complicating things is the fact that under current laws, power grid regulation is a state matter, and the Federal government has comparatively little authority over it right now. Critics are calling for federal authority over the grid, and massive new construction of "superhighways" to share the wind power wealth nationally. Quoting the article, 'The dirty secret of clean energy is that while generating it is getting easier, moving it to market is not.'"
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Digital Storage To Survive a 25-Year Dirt Nap?
Source: Slashdot.orgAlHunt writes "I've been tasked with finding a way to bury digitally stored photographs in a small underground time capsule to be opened in 25 years. It looks like we'll be using a steel vessel, welded closed. I've thought of CDs, DVDs, a hard drive, or a thumb drive — but they all have drawbacks, not the least of which is outdated technology 25 years from now. Maybe I'll put a CD and a CD-ROM drive in the capsule and hope that the IDE interface is still around in 25 years? Ideas and feedback will be appreciated."
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Andy Hertzfeld Shares His Thoughts on 25 Years of the Mac
Source: Slashdot.orgblackbearnh writes "It may make you feel very, very old, but the Macintosh will be turning 25 in January. As we approach this momentous anniversary, O'Reilly News had a talk with Andy Hertzfeld, one of the original Macintosh designers, about the long and storied history of the Mac. Hertzfeld, who tells the story of the Mac in his book A Revolution in the Valley, shares his thoughts about how the Mac has aged over time, how life might have been different if Steve Jobs had stayed on at Apple, and the differences between working for Apple, and for Google (his current employer.)" Read on below for a bit of what Hertzfeld had to say.
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Full Immersion Cooling Comes To Desktop PCs
Source: Slashdot.orgmr_sifter writes "After three years of research and around £100,000 of R&D costs, UK-based Armari has unveiled its XCP prototype. It's a full immersion liquid cooled PC which supports standard ATX components. Unlike conventional liquid cooled PCs, the components are all easy to swap in and out as they're swimming in liquid, rather than under waterblocks. It also looks amazing, pumping around 70KG of electrically inert cooling fluid (salvaged from an old Cray) around its military grade perspex shell."
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Mozilla Labs' "Ubiquity" Helps Automate Web Interactions
Source: Slashdot.orgMartin writes "Mozilla Labs have released a prototype version of the Firefox add-on Ubiquity. It is basically Launchy (the application launcher) for Firefox with the difference that Ubiquity makes use of web APIs and the Firefox browser. The official website contains examples, a command list, information about creating your own commands and of course the Ubiquity extension that is compatible with Firefox 3.x. Ubiquity can pull and send data to various services like Twitter, display, find and embed Google Maps, perform searches, write emails, add entries to the calendar, digg stories and more."
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