Planet Pgc

My son had RSV when he was 4 months old and the doctors warned us that he was at increased risk of asthma and other respiratory problems. Fortunately, he didn’t develop asthma, but he did develop a mom who’s terrified of breathing problems.

Since then, I’ve had trouble figuring out when we should go to the doctor.

See, the day he was diagnosed with RSV, our day care provider told us she thought he was pretty sick and should go to the doctor. Of course it was Friday at 5:00 and we had dinner plans. And the two previous times she’d thought he should see a doctor, he’d been fine. But we took him. And on the way over, I commented to Frank that this was it. Third strike and she was out. If he wasn’t sick, I wasn’t listening to her advice again. I now take her advice very seriously. When we got to urgent care they immediately attached a device to him to test his blood oxygen levels. One look at the readings, some xrays to eliminate pneumonia and they told us to go immediately across the street to the hospital. There would be a room waiting for us. (Instead we had to go and sit in an office and show proof of insurance, but that’s a different story.)

Since that day, I’ve called the doctor’s office numerous times and held the phone up to my son so they could hear what he sounded like. Several times they have sent us in to the doctor or urgent care. One memorable morning his breathing was so loud it actually woke Frank and I up – and we were in a different room. When I called the doctor at home and held the phone up to my son’s mouth, he told me to go the emergency room immediately. We decided that I should go alone so we didn’t have to wake up our older son. While going 75 mph down the interstate, the terrible breathing noise stopped. My heart stopped too as I put on my hazard lights, pulled over to the edge of the freeway and leaned over the backseat to see if he was still breathing. He was. The terrible noise had started again by the time we got to the hospital and the hospital staff was so sure he had swallowed something, they took xrays. Nope, just a throat infection that was closing his throat up.

But I also took him to the doctor for a number of common colds that didn’t really merit a doctor’s visit – except to calm my nerves. So I no longer trust my judgement.

This morning he sounded terrible. And Frank told me he should go to the doctor. (And usually Frank thinks I’m too quick to go to the doctor.) And when I called the doctor’s office and described what he sounded like, they didn’t think I should wait until 2:45 to see his regular doctor. They told me to come right in. So I was scared. And imagined all the worse.

Luckily, he only has croup and the medicine they gave him to reduce swelling in his throat kicked in within a few hours.

But I continue to be regularly terrified because I simply don’t trust myself to know if it’s serious or not. I mean I would have brought him home with RSV and he might have died that night.

At the doctor’s office today, I anxiously waited the reading of the oximeter (it was a nice 98) and decided I should have bought one of those a long time ago. Turns out you can get one for less than $100 on Amazon. (For the record, I spent 4 days in the hospital staring at an oximeter reading, willing it to stay above 80.) So maybe with an oximeter of my own I’ll know when it’s really serious … but probably not. I’ll probably keep calling the doctor’s office.

(For the record, you are supposed to take them into the doctor – urgently – if they have stridor breathing sounds, wheezing, stomach breathing, blue lips or gums, … )

Related posts:

1. When do you need a new doctor?
2. Caleb has RSV
3. Does your doctor take your concerns seriously?

September 03, 2010 12:12 AM

devjj writes "For the past year or so I have been trying (and failing) to figure out a reasonable solution for bringing my large media library to my living room. All of my media lives on an Ubuntu server that sits on my network. It's been very reliable and it's fast enough for streaming purposes. My content is exposed via SMB. It's the living room side where I keep running into problems. I am currently using Windows 7 and XBMC, but the case is too big and noisy, I don't particularly care for Windows, and the whole thing just seems overkill. What I want is a device that can present a decent UI that the non-Slashdot crowd would be able to use, but that is still powerful enough to stream full-fidelity 1080p. I dream of a small box that can transcode video over a network, but that's probably a pipe dream. The new Apple TV would be great if it could connect to network shares. What say you, Slashdot? Is what I'm looking for possible, or should I just give in to the iTunes/Amazon/whatever juggernauts?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

September 02, 2010 11:36 PM

dh003i writes "Canon has developed a 8 x 8 inch CMOS digital sensor. It will be able to capture an image with 1/100th the light intensity required by a DSLR and will be able to record video at 60 fps in lighting half the intensity of moonlight. There are already many excellent quality lenses designed to cover 8 x 10 inches, although Canon may develop some of their own designed specifically for their requirements."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

September 02, 2010 10:42 PM

Hugh Pickens writes "Ryan Lawler writes on GigaOm that although many have touted the availability of Flash on Android devices as a competitive advantage over Apple's mobile devices, while trying to watch videos from ABC.com, Fox.com and Metacafe using Flash 10.1 on a Nexus One over a local Wi-Fi network connected to a 25-Mbps Verizon FiOS broadband connection, mobile expert Kevin Tofel found that videos were slow to load, if they loaded at all, leading to an overall very inconsistent experience while using his Android device for video. "While in theory Flash video might be a competitive advantage for Android users, in practice it's difficult to imagine anyone actually trying to watch non-optimized web video on an Android handset," writes Lawler. "All of which makes one believe that maybe Steve Jobs was right to eschew Flash in lieu of HTML5 on the iPhone and iPad.""

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

September 02, 2010 10:10 PM

donniebaseball23 writes "EA's Medal of Honor reboot doesn't ship until October 12, but it's already seen a fair amount of controversy thanks to the publisher's decision to allow people to play as Taliban in multiplayer. The controversy just got escalated another notch, reports IndustryGamers, as the world's biggest games retailer GameStop has decided it won't sell the title at its stores located on US military bases. The new Medal of Honor won't be advertised at these stores either. GameStop noted that they came to this decision 'out of respect for our past and present men and women in uniform.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

September 02, 2010 09:32 PM

donniebaseball23 writes "EA's Medal of Honor reboot doesn't ship until October 12, but it's already seen a fair amount of controversy thanks to the publisher's decision to allow people to play as Taliban in multiplayer. The controversy just got escalated another notch, reports IndustryGamers, as the world's biggest games retailer GameStop has decided it won't sell the title at its stores located on US military bases. The new Medal of Honor won't be advertised at these stores either. GameStop noted that they came to this decision 'out of respect for our past and present men and women in uniform.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

September 02, 2010 09:17 PM

August has been a record month for the affiliate fees that the GNOME Foundation received!!!! In total approximately $500 has been received from the different stores.

The change compared to last month ($231 in total) is for large part due to the fact that Banshee now has the option to buy MP3 files from Amazon. Through MP3 purchases of Banshee users $175 of affiliate fees were generated. Since the Amazon store is only present in a development version of Banshee I expect we’ll see much higher revenues when 1.8.0 gets released and gets packaged for the major distributions. Hopefully the distributions will not change the affiliate tag to their own.

Hopefully somebody will also add the Amazon MP3 store this into Rhythmbox.

Detailed overview of the August affiliate fees:

Amazon.com	$272.00
Amazon.ca	$0.00
Amazon.de	€133.38
Amazon.fr	€12.18
Amazon.co.uk	£20.96
Amazon.jp	¥732

Keep on spreading the plugins to friends and family

Below and in the GNOME Amazon Store you find the links to install the GNOME Amazon Search Plugin of your favorite Amazon store. NOTE the links below might not work if you read this post in an RSS reader, because it needs a javascript command to install the search plugin. Just install the search plugin by going to this post directly.

Firefox

• Install GNOME Amazon.com Plugin
• Install GNOME Amazon.co.uk Plugin
• Install GNOME Amazon.ca Plugin
• Install GNOME Amazon.de Plugin
• Install GNOME Amazon.fr Plugin
• Install GNOME Amazon.co.jp Search Plugin

Epiphany

For epiphany use the following smart bookmarks.

• Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/s?mode=blended&search-alias=aps&tag=gnomesearchplugin-20&field-keywords=%s
• Amazon.ca: http://www.amazon.ca/s?mode=blended&search-alias=aps&tag=gnomesearchplugin-ca-20&field-keywords=%s
• Amazon.co.uk: http://www.amazon.co.uk/s?mode=blended&search-alias=aps&tag=gnomesearchplugin-uk-21&field-keywords=%s
• Amazon.de: http://www.amazon.de/s?mode=blended&search-alias=aps&tag=gnomesearchplugin-de-21&field-keywords=%s
• Amazon.fr: http://www.amazon.fr/s?mode=blended&search-alias=aps&tag=gnomesearchplugin-fr-21&field-keywords=%s
• Amazon.co.jp: http://www.amazon.co.jp/s?mode=blended&search-alias=aps&tag=gnomesearchplugin-jp-22&field-keywords=%s

September 02, 2010 09:12 PM

Time: 19:38 | 09/02/2010 | Download MP3

Summary
Three members of the 37signals programming team — Jeffrey Hardy, Jamis Buck, and Jeremy Kemper — answer questions from readers of Signal vs. Noise. Topics include Rails, Git, Mocha, Vim, nginx, Passenger, and more.

More episodes
Subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or RSS. Related links and previous episodes available at 37signals.com/podcast.

September 02, 2010 08:53 PM

eldavojohn writes "A new paper up for prepublication from the controversial solid-state physicist Godfrey Louis claims that the cells Louis collected from a Keralan red rain incident divide and produce daughter cells at 121 degrees Celsius. While unusual, this is not unheard of as the paper recalls cells cultivated from hydrothermal vents are known to reproduce at 121 C as well. Of course, caution is exercised when dealing with the possible explanation surrounding the theory of panspermia but the MIT Technology Review says researchers 'examined the way these fluoresce when bombarded with light and say it is remarkably similar to various unexplained emission spectra seen in various parts of the galaxy. One such place is the Red Rectangle, a cloud of dust and gas around a young star in the Monocerous constellation.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

September 02, 2010 08:22 PM

Hugh Pickens writes "The Guardian reports that in his new book, The Grand Design, Professor Stephen Hawking argues that the Big Bang, rather than occurring following the intervention of a divine being, was inevitable due to the law of gravity. 'Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist,' Hawking writes. 'It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going.' Hawking had previously appeared to accept the role of God in the creation of the universe. Writing in his bestseller A Brief History Of Time in 1988, Hawking wrote: 'If we discover a complete theory, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason – for then we should know the mind of God.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

September 02, 2010 07:42 PM

crimeandpunishment writes "The top man in telecommunications at the United Nations is weighing in on the Blackberry battle ... and he says share the data. The UN's telecom chief says governments have legitimate security concerns, and Research in Motion should give them access to its customer data. In an interview with the Associated Press, Hamadoun Toure said 'There is a need for cooperation between governments and the private sector on security issues.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

September 02, 2010 07:34 PM

rsmiller510 writes "Could Apple's announcement about Ping, a music-based social network be Apple's social networking trojan horse? Facebook might want to be concerned." Of course it is. Update: 09/02 19:26 GMT by T : Jamie points out this post on Daring Fireball, according to which Steve Jobs blames the non-integration on "onerous terms" suggested by Facebook.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

September 02, 2010 07:34 PM

Google Summer of Code ended a while back. Me (and most on #gsoc) agreed on one thing - WHERE DID THOSE 3 MONTHS GO? Amazing time it was - thanks to _ke (Who is frolicking somewhere in Thailand right now), fargiolas and the rest of the GNOME guys (#clutter, #gstreamer and #gtk+ yay!) for making it awesome. #hackers-india was a great venting place too :)

Cheese's master needs quite a bit of work before it can be included in GNOME 3.0 - and I plan on doing most of that. It's fun - demoing it at college is a huge hit. Looks like eventually, my original goal for Cheese might be met ;)

Right now, I'm decompressing, and basically not doing anything at all - except getting a bike, and sorting out some personal issues. Should be back coding (and blogging) soon. Have a huge post on GSoC experience coming up.

September 02, 2010 06:57 PM

pickens writes "David Pogue writes in the NY Times that when you buy a new Windows PC, it comes festooned with stickers on the palm rests: one for Windows, one for Skype, one for Intel, one for the laptop company, maybe an Energy Star sticker and so on. 'It's like buying a new, luxury car — and discovering that it comes with non-removable bumper stickers that promote the motor oil, the floor mat maker, the windshield-fluid company and the pine tree air freshener you have no intention of ever using,' writes Pogue. But the worst thing is that when you peel them off, they shred, leaving adhesive crud behind. 'When you've just spent big bucks on a laptop, should you really be obligated to spend the first 20 minutes trying to dissolve away the sticker goop with WD40?' But AMD has a solution. Starting next year, AMD will switch to new stickers that peel off easily, leaving no residue; after that, it's considering eliminating the sticker program altogether."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

September 02, 2010 06:47 PM

wiedzmin writes "Public broadcaster ARD's show 'Plusminus' teamed up with the known hacker organization 'Chaos Computer Club' (CCC) to find out how secure the controversial new radio-frequency (RFID) chips were. The report shows how they used the basic new home scanners that will go along with the cards (for use with home computers to process the personal data for official government business) to demonstrate that scammers would have few problems extracting personal information. This includes two fingerprint scans and a new six-digit PIN meant to be used as a digital signature for official government business and beyond." That was quick. Earlier this year, CCC hackers demonstrated vulnerabilities in German airport IDs, too.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

September 02, 2010 06:32 PM

The Stack Overflow Blog: “The Unix world loves to take sides. I don’t have to blog about this; Freud already did, in 1930. He called it ‘the narcissism of minor differences’”

Need to hire a really great programmer? Want a job that doesn't drive you crazy? Visit the Joel on Software Job Board: Great software jobs, great people.

September 02, 2010 06:30 PM

Microsoft has just created a new commercial for its Windows Live Photo Gallery software that plays on the "Double Rainbow!" stoner guy. I have to give them props for trying to be hip and cool, but I'm too busy laughing my butt off right now. You've got to see this:

What I want to know is what kind of camera is that guy using? Never seen anything like it. A friend suggested it was this antique digital camera, but I'm not convinced. If you have any idea what that camera is, let me know in the comments - it is gonna bug me for days until I know what that was!

September 02, 2010 06:12 PM

Hi,

version 0.4.4.1 of the lightspark player has been just released. It’s mainly a bug fix release, the most relevant news are:

• Fixed a crash when using flashblock
• Restore support for YouTube

Moreover, from this release large downloads are cached to disk to reduce memory pressure.

As you may have noticed lightspark is now on Flattr and the last few posts about lightspark included the “Flattr this” button. Moreover, the Flattr-foss project (that suggest free software to be supported using flattr) has recommended Lightspark for september. Thanks a lot to the Flattr-foss team for their interest and support! Many people flattered lightspark the last month and that is really appreciated. I’m not of course talking about the (little) money, what is awesome is the large support received from the community and even the smallest donation is greatly motivating. Thanks to everyone

September 02, 2010 05:54 PM

eldavojohn writes "A Michigan judge removed a juror after a Facebook comment and also fined her $250 and required her to write a five-page paper about the constitutional right to a fair trial. The juror was 'very sorry' and the judge chastised her, saying, 'You violated your oath. You had decided she was already guilty without hearing the other side.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

September 02, 2010 05:36 PM

rexjoec writes "Cisco is making a bid for Skype. The deal, if successful, would derail a planned initial public offering from Skype and redraw the battle lines in the lucrative market of video communications." The rumored price is $5B.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

September 02, 2010 05:04 PM

Yesterday was the OAuthalypse--the day when Twitter stopped accepting HTTP Basic authorizations on theis API. I had a few apps break--like almost everything I've done with Twitter. To get them back working I'll have to spend some time on each moving them over to OAuth. For some that won't be hard--they're already using a library that supports OAuth. For others it will be more work. All of them are single user apps (like the UtahPolitics retweeter and so will use the OAuth single token pattern.

The reason for moving to OAuth is so that apps won't need to ask users for their Twitter password or store it anymore. Twitter had a bad experience with this and that led to the decision to go nuclear on usernames and passwords on their API. This is a clear win for delegated authorization protocols like OAuth and the more capable ones that are surely to follow. What's more it trains users to use a delegated authorization scheme. I love it.

But what's curious about the move is that in everycase (except the retweeter) my apps are not updating information. These are read-only apps that simply read a friend timeline for a partcular user. I can't figure out why any authorization is needed at all. Since who I follow is public information, it would be simple enough to reconstruct my friend timeline from available information. My theory is that Twitter uses authentication on read-only data as a substitute for a poorly designed API. That is, they use the authentication as a substitute for merely allowing me to specify whose timeline I want to see.

This is classic REST stuff and it seems that Twitter got it wrong. Thousands of apps are failing today because Twitter requires them to authorize when they don't really need to. Am I wrong?

Tags: twitter oauth identity rest

September 02, 2010 04:31 PM

A few readers have noted that another gulf oil rig has exploded. This one is off the coast of Lousiana. So far all the workers are accounted for, but they are in immersion suits waiting for rescue.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

September 02, 2010 04:25 PM

tlhIngan writes "Despite all the lawsuits and injunctions by Sony to keep the PS3 Jailbreak out of modder's hands, it appears that a third party has made a clone. The best part is, it only requires a cheap (approximately $40) development board by Atmel, and the requisite software is open-source. Get the Atmel code from GitHub and apply a small patch which will enable backup play (the code by itself only lets you run unsigned code, the patch allows for BD backups). The code is GPLv3. It would be highly ironic if someone ported this to Linux USB Gadgets, then you could use a Linux device to jailbreak your PS3, to which Sony removed Linux functionality. An Android phone would be suitable."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

September 02, 2010 04:16 PM

Sometimes the problem has to mature before the solution can mature.

—Kent Beck

September 02, 2010 03:50 PM

eldavojohn writes "A Michigan judge removed a juror after a Facebook comment and also fined her $250 and required her to write a five page paper about the constitutional right to a fair trial. The juror was 'very sorry' and the judge chastised her saying, 'You violated your oath. You had decided she was already guilty without hearing the other side.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

September 02, 2010 03:35 PM

We recently discussed a man who sued NCsoft for making Lineage II "too addictive" after he spent 20,000 hours over five years playing it. Now, several readers have pointed out that the lawsuit has progressed past its first major hurdle: the EULA. Quoting: "NC Interactive has responded the way most software companies and online services have for more than a decade: it argued that the claims are barred by its end-user license agreement, which in this case capped the company's liability to the amount Smallwood paid in fees over six months prior to his filing his complaint (or thereabouts). One portion of the EULA specifically stated that lawsuits could only be brought in Texas state court in Travis County, where NC Interactive is located. ... But the judge in this case, US District Judge Alan C. Kay, noted that both Texas and Hawaii law bar contract provisions that waive in advance the ability to make gross-negligence claims. He also declined to dismiss Smallwood's claims for negligence, defamation, and negligent infliction of emotional distress."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

September 02, 2010 03:10 PM

1) Interesting use of unicode characters for the UI on Flickr:

That triangle up top is actually two triangle characters side-by-side. Sucks that we still have to resort to such hacks for such a common UI shape — but this is a smart solution.

2) Also interesting is this inline tour of the new photo pages. Rollover a number and bubbles pop up to show you what’s fresh for that section.

More...

September 02, 2010 03:03 PM

beschra writes "BBC writes of 'terra-forming' Ascension Island, one of the islands Charles Darwin visited. He and a friend encouraged the Royal Navy to import boat loads of trees and plants in an attempt to capture the little bit of water that fell on the island. They were quite successful. The island even has a cloud forest now. From the article: '[British ecologist] Wilkinson thinks that the principles that emerge from that experiment could be used to transform future colonies on Mars. In other words, rather than trying to improve an environment by force, the best approach might be to work with life to help it "find its own way."'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

September 02, 2010 03:02 PM

Here we have gbrainy 1.51, a minor bug fixing release. gbrainy is a game that challenges your logic, verbal, calculation and memory abilities.

What is new in version 1.51 from the NEWS file:

* 5 bug fixes
* Updated and new translations

The new translations include Vietnamese, Korean and Traditional Chinese translation (Hong Kong and Taiwan).

gbrainy 1.51 is available for download in source code from:

* http://gent.softcatala.org/jmas/gbrainy/gbrainy-1.51.tar.gz
    (md5sum 09762be168973e6157263ebbc0256a26)

Additionally, gbrainy is available for all major Linux distributions.

Updated Windows version

I have also updated gbrainy for Windows installer to 1.51. I did not this for more than 10 months, I think that I had to do it since the Windows version is downloaded by an average of 100 people per day. I have used Monodevelop 2.4 to build the Windows version and it worked very well making really easy now to build gbrainy cross platform.

September 02, 2010 02:49 PM

cgriffin21 writes "Samsung is making no bones about it: Google Android is its future. And with the revealing of the Samsung Galaxy Tab, the company is showing that it's all in when it comes to Android. At the IFA consumer electronics show in Berlin, Samsung finally pulled the curtain of the long rumored and teased Galaxy Tab, the electronics maker's touch-screen tablet and answer to the Apple iPad."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

September 02, 2010 01:56 PM

An anonymous reader writes "It appears that Cincinnati Bengals cheerleader Sarah Jones and her lawyer were so upset by a comment on the site TheDirty.com that they missed the 'y' at the end of the name. Instead, they sued the owner of TheDirt.com, whose owner didn't respond to the lawsuit. The end result was a judge awarding $11 million, in part because of the failure to respond. Now, both the owners of TheDirty.com and TheDirt.com are complaining that they're being wrongfully written about in the press — one for not having had any content about Sarah Jones but being told it needs to pay $11 million, and the other for having the content and having the press say it lost a lawsuit, even though no lawsuit was ever actually filed against it."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

September 02, 2010 01:48 PM

Jos Poortvliet did an interview with me for dot KDE in this summer's aKademy and it has been online for a while now. In it we discuss things like Midgard as a storage engine for desktop applications, and Maemo's open QA process for Downloads applications. Some excepts:

At maemo.org we have an appstore for FOSS applications on the Maemo platform. This appstore is enabled by default on all Nokia N900s so we wanted to have some quality control. We had to create our own appstore approval process, compatible with the FOSS philosophy. Now any developer can submit an app, and anyone can test and vote. The whole process is completely transparent, auditable and visible. And it also provides a feedback channel from testers and users to the developers!

...

Midgard is a data storage service. Whether you write desktop or web applications, instead of coming up with your own file format, you just use Midgard. You can work more easily and object-based. Users have many different devices these days, so Midgard has strong replication features to synchronize between different systems. Midgard is built on top of GObject; we provide bindings to a bunch of different languages so developers can choose the tools they like - PHP, Python, Javascript. Currently (as in now, while we're talking) Qt bindings are being developed here at Akademy.

Read the whole interview.

September 02, 2010 01:11 PM

Further examination of Apple's new social network reveals more problems.

To review from last night's post:

1. It's awkward, at least, that it runs in iTunes and not a web browser. There's no Back button, no way to copy the address of a page and share it outside of iTunes. Also if it were just a website we'd be able to access it from an iPad now, not some time in the future.

2. There's no way to Like the song you're listening to. In other words there doesn't seem to be any integration with the music-listening app, even though the social network is embedded in it.

3. It's a ghost town. Obviously they're recommending all the musicians they have, because they have nothing to do with my musical interests. Same with users.

Now, onto this morning's revelation.

Chuck Shotton writes: "It seems that the only way for mere mortals to post something to the timeline is to buy a song, review an album, or commit some other act of commerce on the iTunes Store, which I certainly have never done.

"It's unfortunate, because the capability is there to do much more. I followed Cold Play as an experiment and they can post pics, songs, status updates, and all the stuff you'd expect to do with a Facebook-like social media tool.

"I'm baffled why Apple has this locked down for normal users. Someone there has to have seen the potential for this to totally upset the social media balance. But if they cripple it at the outset, that critical mass of users will never happen, IMO."

So Ping is not a social network, by any realistic definition of the term.

Update #1: My guess as to why we can't post to the timeline is that Apple is afraid we might say something harsh about them or Ping.

Update #2: Doc Searls nailed it on Steve Jobs's art, in 1997.

September 02, 2010 12:15 PM

adeelarshad82 writes "IBM revealed details of its 5.2-GHz chip, the fastest microprocessor ever announced. Costing hundreds of thousands of dollars, IBM described the z196, which will power its Z-series of mainframes. The z196 contains 1.4 billion transistors on a chip measuring 512 square millimeters fabricated on 45-nm PD SOI technology. It contains a 64KB L1 instruction cache, a 128KB L1 data cache, a 1.5MB private L2 cache per core, plus a pair of co-processors used for cryptographic operations. IBM is set to ship the chip in September."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

September 02, 2010 12:01 PM

Hi all,

For all those who kept bugging me on IRC about “what’s your status” and “when will you release it”, etc.. I’d like to give you a quick status update on my project :

First, this is NOT and I repeat, it’s NOT a port of PSGroove for the N900.. I started my project long before PSGroove was released, and my code has absolutely nothing to do with theirs and we don’t share any code in common. It is NOT a port, it’s a different implementation of the same exploit!
Secondly, it’s going pretty well so far, I finished writing it, all the code is there, and I’m testing it but I’m still getting some issues, for some reason the PS3 isn’t accepting the JIG, I hope I can get this fixed soon, so please, everyone just be patient, I will release it when it’s ready! But the good news is that it’s doable apparently!

For those who read my previous post, here’s an update :

- The kernel OOPS I was getting on linux was because my ‘hub’ was a high speed one, and when a device gets connected, the reply to GetPortStatus ommitted the ‘high speed’ flag in the response.. apparently, a high speed hub can only have high speed devices plugged into it, you can’t plug full speed or low speed devices in a hub, otherwise, your linux kernel crashes! It’s a use case the kernel developers didn’t think of (or didn’t find a way to test it). I will also soon release the code to reproduce that oops so people can look into it.

- I was able to get and set the address on the controller, but I had to add two new functions to the usb-gadget API. This means that you will eventually need to flash your device’s kernel to get advantage of the new functions.

- I figured out how to send a NAK in response to a IN interrupt.. you simply don’t queue anything, the controller apparently takes care of that automatically for you! and I had to read almost all of the controller’s code to figure that one out!

By writing this exploit as a standard linux driver, this means that my module can be used on any other linux-enabled devices.. this means not only the N900, but also the 770, N800, N810, Android phones and future Meego devices. It might need a little porting for some devices though, but it should still work…

That’s it, I’ll keep you informed on how it goes. Hopefully, we’ll soon be able to run homebrew on our PS3 simply by plugging our N900 to it, what a wonderful device it is

KaKaRoTo

September 02, 2010 11:27 AM

With Meego for Notebooks 1.0 users of Google and MSN can now monitor and open their online e-mails account with a single mouse click in the MyZone panel. Thanks to Intel for hiring Collabora to implement this feature. The GUI shows the number of unread messages for each of your accounts in real-time. Clicking the button will open the online mailbox in your favourite browser. Have a look at the bottom left of the following screen:

The feature is as been made possible by Telepathy draft API for mail notification. Meego provides the premiere integration of this API in a user interface. It fills a long standing gap in the Telepathy framework.

September 02, 2010 11:23 AM

GLib 2.26, coming on September 10th, will finally gain proxy support. This contribution to GLib was made possible by Collabora Ltd. and reviewing efforts by Dan Winship. After three months of head scratching and rewriting, we finally came-up with a solution that blends into the GIO architecture and requires no code change for users of the GIO library.

Notable features are:

• GLib friendly API for proxy configuration (GProxyResolver)
• Configuration powered by LibProxy (requires installation of glib-networking)
• Transparent support for SOCKS version 5, 4a and 4
• Support for application side proxy such as HTTP (using g_socket_client_add_application_proxy(…))
• Proxy information available inside the GSocket’s remote address
• Plug-in based configuration and protocol support

September 02, 2010 11:23 AM

Buffalo55 writes "For the most part, classic games manage to reappear on different systems. Just look at Nintendo. The publisher has done an excellent job bringing NES, SNES, Genesis and even old school Neo Geo titles to the Wii's Virtual Console, while Microsoft's Game Room brings the best of Atari's 2600 into the living room. Of course, not every console was a success. The '90s, in particular, saw quite a few flops from companies like Panasonic, Sega and Atari. Just because a system is a failure, though, doesn't mean all of its games suck. On the contrary, most of these machines have a few gems that fell between the cracks once the console croaked." What overlooked game on a failed platform would you like to see revived?

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

September 02, 2010 10:48 AM

aarondubrow writes "Three years ago, researchers from Caltech and The University of Texas at Austin came together to create a computational tool that could model the Earth and answer the most pressing questions in geophysics: What controls the speed of plates? How do microplates interact? How much energy do the plates generate and how does it dissipate? Using a new geodynamics software package they developed, the researchers have modeled plate motion with greater accuracy than ever before. The project is also a finalist for the Gordon Bell Prize — high performance computing's Oscar — at this year's SC10 conference."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

September 02, 2010 09:07 AM

Today I wanted to locate an HSBC branch in London, close to either the office or my home. Thanks to HSBC I got upset before 8.

That starts fine, they have an "interactive map" or allow you to enter your postcode. Unfortunately they use only the beginning of the postcode (SW in my case) and then list you many towns in this area. Using the map stops at the same level. Then you click one of them (I should do all of them as I don't know some which may be close) and get No branch exists in ...

Is it so hard to list the closest ones from the given postcode or place them on a map? And what about just removing from the list the places without a branch?

September 02, 2010 07:35 AM

Julie188 writes "Target will begin selling Facebook's virtual currency as gift cards on September 5, becoming the first brick-and-mortar retailer to do so. Facebook Credit gift cards will be available in $15, $25 and $50 denominations at the retailer's 1,750 stores. That's right, you can now spend real dollars to get fake ones so you can buy imaginary items for games like FarmVille, Bejeweled and 150 other FB games or apps. If that interests you, please contact me. I have some swamp land in Florida I'd like to show you."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

September 02, 2010 06:56 AM

angry tapir writes "Late last week an Australian court issued an injunction against a handful of retailers selling or importing hardware — commonly known as 'mod chips' — that allows unauthorized software to run on Sony's PlayStation 3. The court also required that the four parties that were the subject of the injunction actually hand over to Sony any PlayStation modchips they have. Sony's PlayStation 3 mod chip lawsuit could be just the first of many such cases in Australia, according to a lawyer who defended a client against Nintendo in a similar case earlier this year."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

September 02, 2010 05:58 AM

beschra writes "BBC writes of 'terra-forming' Ascension Island, one of the islands Charles Darwin visited. He and a friend encouraged the Royal Navy to import boat loads of trees and plants in an attempt to capture the little bit of water that fell on the island. They were quite successful. The island even has a cloud forest now. From the article: '[British ecologist] Wilkinson thinks that the principles that emerge from that experiment could be used to transform future colonies on Mars. In other words, rather than trying to improve an environment by force, the best approach might be to work with life to help it "find its own way."'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

September 02, 2010 04:53 AM

Caroline’s Identity Crisis

Remember Caroline Casual-User? After speaking with some of you after the last blog post, I think I may have misrepresented her in terms of Fedora’s target user. (The LUNIX joke was really bad, serving only to confound.) Hopefully folks from the Fedora Board who were involved in the creation of the target user base definition could also clarify what their original intention was in case I’m not understanding the intent or not communicating it as effectively as I could again. In either case, I would like to explore who Caroline is, and who she isn’t, in the hopes of at least bringing a bit more awareness that we’re probably not all talking about the same woman, if not to go so far as make it fairly clear who she actually is .

Caroline’s Origins

First, let’s look at the target user of the the default Fedora desktop:

This type of consumer is someone we think can immediately benefit from the usefulness and elegance of free software. This type of consumer is also someone who can be persuaded to participate or contribute to Fedora. Consumers who don’t fit this minimum profile, though, might very well be pleased with what we provide. We tend to favor consumers who are interested in taking a step toward collaboration. [...]

• Voluntary Linux consumer
• Computer-friendly
• Likely collaborator
• General productivity user

A slightly-different version of this statement from a mailing list announcement has also been widely-quoted, so let’s take a look at that too:

We found four defining characteristics that we believe best describe the Fedora distribution’s target audience: Someone who

1. is voluntarily switching to Linux,
2. is familiar with computers, but is not necessarily a hacker or developer,
3. is likely to collaborate in some fashion when something’s wrong with Fedora, and
4. wants to use Fedora for general productivity, either using desktop applications or a Web browser.

Okay. So we’ve reviewed the source material and it’s fresh in our heads. Now let’s walk through what I believe are some misconceptions about Caroline based on comments to my last blog post, and read them while referencing this source material.

Myths about Caroline

Caroline doesn’t care about technology

Caroline is supposed to be a “computer-friendly” person who is “voluntarily switching to Linux.” It may well be a flawed assumption, but I’m not sure folks who aren’t interested in technology even really understand what Linux is, nevermind would voluntarily switch to using it or describe themselves as computer-friendly.

Caroline isn’t willing to give back.

The Board’s definition and communications about it were pretty careful to point out this isn’t the case. Actually, one of the four key attributes of the target user is “likely collaborator.” The the user base definition says, “We tend to favor consumers who are interested in taking a step toward collaboration.”

“We found four defining characteristics that we believe best describe the Fedora distribution’s target audience,” states the the mailing list announcement, “Someone who [..] is likely to collaborate in some fashion when something’s wrong with Fedora.”

As Deb pointed out, “Today’s Carolines could become tomorrow’s Connies.”

Caroline only asks for mp3 and Flash support.

Well. I think do Caroline probably cares a lot more about her music collection and being able to be Rick-rolled and watch the latest Autotune the News rather than mp3 and flash technology specifically. (Although from my own guesses about Caroline, she may well be the type to write her own songs and share them or post video tutorials and video blogs – she doesn’t strike me as a straight-out consumer.) The Board-written, detailed description of her computer usage does include “locating and viewing/playing media.”

That being said, yes, Caroline has an issue if she can’t listen to her 50 gigs of music albums or see the new Snoop Dogg cameo in Katy Perry’s latest music video. The problem isn’t insurmountable, and Caroline is comfortable with computers and interested in technology, so I think she will probably find a (admittedly PITA) work-around to do these things before technologies like webm make this silliness unnecessary.

So just who is Caroline? Let’s play a game!

I think it might be helpful if we think through specific examples of places we may or may not be likely to find Caroline. So, are you ready to play……

---

Is Caroline someone you could easily meet……

• While attending LinuxCon?
• In between sessions in the hallway at GUADEC or Akademy?
• While eating lunch at FOSDEM?
• Waiting in line to pick up your badge at USENIX LISA conference?
• Sitting next to you at your local LUG meeting?

GUADEC 2006, my own photo

I think that the folks above are most likely to be in Pamela’s camp, and in some cases Connie or Nancy’s camp. Linux is a big enough part of these folks’ lives that they’ve taken the trouble to pay or find funding for a flight and lodging, they’ve taken time away from their family and perhaps even vacation time from work in order to spend at least a day if not a whole week at a conference revolving around it. (Or in the case of LUG attendees, an evening away from home missing dinner with the family once a month or weekly.) I just don’t think it is possible for these folks to be Carolines.

---

Is Caroline someone you could easily meet……

• Standing in line behind you at your local farmers’ market?
• At the Otakon anime conference?
• At the community center studio art class you take on the weekends?
• Shopping at the Sunday church flea market?
• At a Blue Hills Hiking Group meetup?
• At your local pub?
• Sitting next in the row behind you at the movie theater waiting for the latest movie blockbuster to start?

“Farmer’s Market” by Emily Prachthauser. Used under a CC-BY 2.0 license.

Isn’t it kind of a crap shoot? I know folks I would consider to be Carolines who each individually might go to one or two of these types of events, but I think I would be very lucky to have the chance to meet a Caroline just by going to any of these events. Unfortunately, I think maybe a lot of you came away from my last blog post thinking I meant to say that a Caroline could easily be picked out at any of these types of events.

---

Is Caroline someone you could easily meet……

• At the SXSW conference?
• Hanging around at PAX?
• Sitting next to you at a TED technology talk?
• Attending an ACM CHI conference?
• Building cool things at a MakerFaire?
• Chilling out at a hackfest at RailsConf?
• Through her awesome Vimeo channel, where she posts weekly Gimp tutorials?
• Browing the aisles of your local electronics store?
• Working as a technology coordinator at a local school?

“pre-panel get together” by Ed Schipul, taken at SXSW’08. Used under a CC-BY-SA 2.0 license.

Outcome likely, yes, IMHO. These are folks who are comfortable with computers, clearly love technology, but whose lives do not center around Fedora and/or Linux. (Instead, their lives and/or passions center around MakerBots or RepRaps, Adobe products (or Gimp!), Playstations or Nintendos, technology-related research, user interface design, blogging, building awesome web applications, maintaining computers for their students, etc. etc. ….) These are not folks who would identify themselves as Linux contributors, but whom are probably a far cry from needing instruction in how to use a computer mouse or what an MP3 is, and whom are very likely to value the freedoms using free software affords them. (They may already use free software!)

If you’ll humor me the effort, keep these folks in mind and then re-read Caroline’s yellow speech bubble at the top of this blog post. Maybe it makes more sense what I was trying to do… if you replace the “coffeeshops and parties” with Makerbots, Playstations, or building kick-ass web applications.

---

Who is getting left out?

So, at least in this blog post, we’re probably not talking about your grandparents’ friend Etna who stands behind you in line at your local supermarket, has three cats, and always confuses you with your younger sibling. We’re likely not talking about elementary school age children in a third-world country who struggle just to find clean water to drink. We’re probably not talking about the person who drives the subway car or bus that helps get you to work in the morning, or the woman who owns and operates your favorite neighborhood restaurant.

These folks are probably not Carolines. They’ll need a different persona. Whether or not we’re meant to or should consider targeting them, I’ll leave as an exercise for the reader.

What do you think?

Filed under: Fedora

September 02, 2010 04:40 AM

thecarchik writes "It is not an easy task to compare the environmental effects of battery powered cars to those caused by conventionally fueled automobiles. The degree to which manufacture, usage and disposal of the batteries used to store the necessary electrical energy are detrimental to the environment is not exactly known. Now, for the first time, a team of Empa scientists have made a detailed life cycle assessment (LCA) or ecobalance of lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries, in particular the chemically improved (i.e. more environmentally friendly) version of the ones most frequently used in electric vehicles. Researchers decided to find out for sure. They calculated the ecological footprints of electric cars fitted with Li-ion batteries, taking into account all possible relevant factors, from those associated with the production of individual parts all the way through to the scrapping of the vehicle and the disposal of the remains, including the operation of the vehicle during its lifetime."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

September 02, 2010 03:17 AM

I've got iTunes 10 installed, and have signed up on Ping.

My handle is "scriptingnews." You're welcome to follow me.

To be clear, they didn't give me a choice of name. That's the name I chose when I got my first iPod or whatever got me logged into their store the first time. (I don't remember.) I never would have chosen to be scriptingnews on a social network. Not at all obvious how to change it, if I can.

Here are their first recommendations. They bear absolutely no resemblance to any music I listen to or people I know. Obviously this is very very early days for Ping.

One thing I don't like about Ping is that it isn't in my web browser. I keep looking for the Back button. I keep wanting to find a URL so I can publish a link somewhere else. I think this is a big lose. It's the only social network I've ever tried that isn't in the web. Right now I think that's a deal-stopper.

So I played one of my current favorites thinking there would be an easy gesture in the iTunes interface to tell my Ping followers that I like it. After all why bother integrating it with iTunes if there is no integration? Well, there's nothing in the right-click menu for pinging the song. No menus, nothing anywhere in the user interface. What the heck were they thinking?? Hello, anyone home at Apple??

Conclusion: There's nothing, at this time, to do in Ping.

September 02, 2010 02:32 AM

Geoffrey.landis writes "According to the Wall Street Journal, there's a new species of patent troll out there. These new trolls sue companies that sell products with an expired patent number on them. That's right, it's against the law to sell a product that's marked with an expired patent number. The potential fine? $500. Per violation - and some of the companies have patent numbers on old plastic molds that have made literally billions of copies. Using whistle-blower laws, 'anyone can file a claim on behalf of the government, and plaintiffs must split any fine award evenly with it.' You've been warned."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

September 02, 2010 02:24 AM

itwbennett writes "Starting this month, mobile carriers in China are requiring people who set up new mobile phone accounts to register with their real names as part of a new government measure to reduce anonymity among the country's 800 million mobile users. And within 3 years, the carriers must also register the real identities of all existing users, said China Telecom spokesman Xu Fei. The new policy comes as China has been pushing users to register with their real names online. In August, online gamers had to begin real-name registration under regulations that are meant to protect minors from Internet addiction and 'unhealthy' content."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

September 02, 2010 12:05 AM

This is really puzzling.

The OAuthcalypse came and went, and the apps that it should have killed, the ones that use basic authentication, are still running.

Two examples: dwcodeupdates and friendsofdave.

The only explanation I've been able to come up with is that they made exceptions for these two accounts for some reason.

I felt I had to document this.

So, it is documented. Any theories welcome. (That aren't paranoid or paranormal.)

September 01, 2010 10:42 PM

wiredmikey writes "Think you can bust out some silly fresh rhymes on the subjects of hacking, identity theft and computer viruses? In a somewhat untraditional partnership, Snoop Dogg and Symantec's Norton want you to show off your their lyrical skills on the subject of cybercrime and enter the 'Hack is Wack' cybercrime rap contest. If you have the skills and bust out the phattest rap, you'll receive round trip airfare for two to Los Angeles along with two days and two nights' hotel stay to meet with Snoop's management, learn more about his business. You'll also get two tickets to a Snoop Dogg concert and a new laptop pimped out with Norton Internet Security 2011."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

September 01, 2010 10:37 PM

An anonymous reader writes "The manifesto of the man holding the Discovery Channel hostage with a bomb has been released. He has fired shots and taken hostages. His main complaints are about overpopulation, religion and civilization. He wants them to avoid encouraging people to produce more 'disgusting human babies,' to get people to accept 'Malthus-Darwin science,' reject civilization and its 'disgusting religious-cultural roots,' and to stop 'ALL immigration pollution.'" The man has now been shot by police, and the hostages have been freed.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

September 01, 2010 09:41 PM

When my friends and I started in our careers as software programmers, we noticed a trend. All the women who were good in their programming jobs got promoted to management, either project management or program management. We wondered why women never seemed to become architects and CTOs or even stay programmers for very long.

When I was offered a promotion into management, I took it. However, one of my friends did not. She said their were no women role models on the technical track. If we all got promoted out, then how were young women supposed to know that women could succeed as programmers and architects? She stayed a programmer.

So I’ve been really excited this year to see several women I know personally, prominent women in the free and open source software world, get high level, very technical jobs.

Congratulations to Danese Cooper who is now CTO of the Wikimedia Foundation and Allison Randal who is now the Technical Architect of Ubuntu.

I’m sure they will be great role models and mentors for both genders, but I hope young girls in particular will be influenced by seeing women in successful technical leadership roles.

(And I do see my role as technical. I don’t think someone without a programming or technical background would do as well. But I haven’t written any code or made any technical decisions other than for my own home network in a very long time, so I don’t feel like I’m showing young women that women can succeed in technical jobs, rather that they can succeed in leadership roles in technology related organizations.)

Related posts:

1. 5+ ways to make women feel welcome at technical events
2. Where Have All The Women Gone?
3. How does Malaysia encourage so many women in software?

September 01, 2010 08:58 PM

coondoggie writes "The US military is inundated with video from airborne unmanned aircraft, remote monitoring systems and security outposts. In an effort to speed up the processing and analyzing of all this video, researchers at Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) this week awarded an almost $11 million contract to open source software vendor Kitware to help develop what DARPA calls its Video and Image Retrieval and Analysis Tool (VIRAT) program."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

September 01, 2010 08:52 PM

RichardSanders writes "This recent publication provides an accessible introduction to using Mahara within business and academic settings. It is great to see that the authors work for TDM, who provide Mahara & Moodle based solutions for a broad range of clients. This professional experience has contributed to a coherent and easy to follow text that provides essential information for new users. This comes as no surprise, as many individuals within the academic sector regularly benefit from Derrin's advice within mailing lists concerned with educational technologies." Keep reading for the rest of Richard's review.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

September 01, 2010 08:12 PM

Steve Jobs gave his iPod keynote this morning. He started with iOS 4.1 and Game Center which will be coming out next week. iOS 4.2 will add printing to the iPad and will be out in November. The new iPod Shuffle has buttons again, and costs $49. The new iPod Nano has a tiny multi-touch screen, and an FM radio, and starts at $149. The new (thinner) Touch has the iPhone 4 screen, an A4 chip, and FaceTime over WiFi, starting at $229 for 8GB. They all ship next week. iTunes 10 looks the same, but adds a social network called "Ping," which basically looks like Last.fm integrated, and should be out today. AppleTV is updating: 1/4th the size, no purchases — only rentals. 99 cents for TV rentals (ABC & Fox), Netflix on Demand built in, and for $99.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

September 01, 2010 08:04 PM

An anonymous reader writes "The US press has been pushing for a (much needed) federal shield law, that would allow reporters to protect their sources. It's been something of a political struggle for a few years now, and things were getting close when Wikileaks suddenly got a bunch of attention for leaking all those Afghan war documents. Suddenly, the politicians involved started working on an amendment that would specifically carve out an exception for Wikileaks so that it would not be covered by such a shield law. And, now, The First Amendment Center is condemning the newspaper industry for throwing Wikileaks under the bus, as many in the industry are supporting this new amendment, and saying that Wikileaks doesn't deserve source protection because 'it's not journalism.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

September 01, 2010 07:56 PM

Hugh Pickens writes "CIOL reports that Wikipedia has revealed the secret of Agatha Christie's famous murder mystery 'The Mousetrap' by identifying the killer in the world's longest running play, now at over 24,000 performances ever since its maiden performance in 1952, despite protests from the author's family and petitions from fans who think the revelation is a spoiler. Angry at the revelation, Matthew Prichard, Christie's grandson, who describes the decision of Wikipedia as 'unfortunate,' says he will raise the matter with the play's producer, Sir Stephen Waley-Cohen. 'My grandmother always got upset if the plots of her books or plays were revealed in reviews — and I don't think this is any different. It's a pity if a publication, if I can call it that, potentially spoils enjoyment for people who go to see the play.' Unrepentant, Wikipedia justifies the decision to reveal the ending of the play. 'Our purpose is to collect and report notable knowledge. It's exceedingly easy to avoid knowing the identity of the murderer: just don't read it.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

September 01, 2010 07:24 PM

sanermind writes "Sensing Senators don't have the stomach to try and pass a stand-alone bill in broad daylight that would give the President the power to shut down the Internet in a national emergency, the Senate is considering attaching the Internet Kill Switch bill as a rider to other legislation that would have bi-partisan support."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

September 01, 2010 07:15 PM

Last Thursday we announced the release of Grilo (and its plugins set) 0.1.6.

Almost 4 months went on, and as expected, lot of things were done in Grilo. In the announcement email, you can see a summary of the changes done. Of course, a more detailed list can be obtained from Git (here and here).

What would I stress here?

• Lot of fixes and improvements
• A new metadata-key system
• A command line tool to inspect plugins
• A new XML-based system to define plugins
• Synchronous functions for the asynchronous partners
• Improved GObject introspection support

We would like to thanks all people that were contributing to bring this release. And stay tuned for new releases!

September 01, 2010 06:35 PM

Ping is Apple's big announcement today. The one that they'll be adding new stuff onto for years and years. The other announcements are just continuations of threads they started long ago. This is a new thread.

They call it a social network "for music."

But it won't be "for music" for very long, if it even is just that at startup.

It'll be Apple's social network for PR.

It'll be Apple's social network for TV.

It'll be Apple's social network for developers.

It'll be Apple's social network for Steve Jobs.

All of Apple's stores will be on the network, so there will be a location angle. How long before Steve announces a new feature for the stores called (what else) "check in."

He said it's like Facebook or Twitter but for music, but that's just the opening-day positioning. It won't last.

Now the big question for the Scripting News community -- is there an API? Will developers get a hook into Ping? Will I be able to ping everyone when I advance a level in Angry Birds? (for example)

One more thing, great name, but they'll never register it as a trademark. Ping is a big word in this space. Long long before any of Apple's competitors were in the space.

September 01, 2010 06:29 PM