Cody Taylor

The body in charge of assigning Internet addresses such as .com and .net should be shorn of its US government links from October and made fully independent, the European Union’s information society chief said on Monday.

ruphus13 writes “When Mark Shuttleworth was asked what role WINE will play in Ubuntu’s success, he said that Ubuntu cannot simply be a better platform to run Windows apps. From the post, according to Shuttleworth, ‘[Windows and Linux] both play an important role but fundamentally, the free software ecosystem needs to thrive on its own rules. it is *different* to the proprietary software universe. We need to make a success of our own platform on our own terms. if Linux is just another way to run Windows apps, we can’t win. OS/2 tried that …’ The post goes on to say, ‘Linux simply isn’t Windows (nor is Windows Linux) and to expect fundamentally different approaches (and I’m not just thinking closed versus open) to look, feel, and operate the same way is senseless.'”

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half_cocked_jack writes “What are the classic books of science from throughout history? I’m currently reading On the Origin of Species on my Kindle 2, and it’s sparked an interest in digging up some of the classic books of science. I’m looking for books from the ancient and medieval worlds and books from the golden ages of scientific discovery. Books like: Galileo’s The Starry Messenger; Newton’s Principia; Copernicus’s On The Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres; and Faraday’s The Chemical History of a Candle. I know that I can likely find these books in a format I can use on my Kindle (found a few on Gutenberg already), but what I need is a checklist of these books to guide my reading. Suggestions?”

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wjousts writes “Technology Review has an article comparing various search results from Wolfram Alpha and Google. Results vary. For example, searching ‘Microsoft Apple’ in Alpha returns data comparing both companies stock prices, whereas Google top results are news stories mentioning both companies. However, when searching for ’10 pounds kilograms,’ Alpha rather unhelpfully assumes you want to multiply 10 pounds by 1 kilogram, whereas Google directs you to sites for metric conversions. Change the query to ’10 pounds in kilograms’ and both give you the result you’d expect (i.e. 4.536 kg).”

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jammag writes “It’s long been one of those exceptionally hard-to-quantify numbers: exactly what percentage of the desktop PC market is held by Linux? Doubters suggest it hovers around a negligible one percent, while partisans suggest it’s in excess of 10 percent. Bruce Byfield explores the various sources of estimates, dismissers’ and fan boys’ alike, and guesstimates it might realistically be 5-6%. Still, he admits, ‘the objectivity of numbers is often just a myth.'”

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An anonymous reader writes “The Washington Post’s Security Fix is reporting that hackers broke into servers at the Virginia health department that monitors prescription drug abuse and replaced the homepage with a ransom demand. The attackers claimed they had deleted the backups, and demanded million for the return of prescription data on more than 8 million Virginians. Virginia isn’t saying much about the attacks at the moment, except to acknowledge that they’ve involved the FBI, and that they’ve shut down e-mail and a whole mess of servers for the state department of health professionals. The Post piece credits Wikileaks as the source, which has a copy of the ransom note left behind by the attackers.”

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davidmwilliams sends in his IT Wire review of how Windows 7RC1 performs on an Acer Aspire One netbook. Summing up: it runs, it won’t win any speed competitions, you won’t want to play Crysis on it, and it’s pretty OK for light-duty, everyday tasks. In related news, several readers have noted that Windows 7 RC1 is now available; one anonymous reader notes “This time, Microsoft was smart not to limit the time that it’s available or the number of keys. It will be up for download until July, so there’s lots of time to grab a copy.”

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GamePolitics writes “Seven anti-war protesters were arrested in Philadelphia on Saturday during a protest rally and march which targeted the Army Experience Center, a high-tech recruitment center which uses PC and Xbox games and simulations to attract potential recruits. GamePolitics was on hand to cover the protest, and took video of the arrests. A local news station also reported on the rally, and the Peace Action Network released a statement saying, “In its desperate approach to meet recruiting numbers, the military is teaching the wrong values to teenagers. Sugarcoating combat experience with virtual war is a dishonor to those with real war experience.”

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