AdamWill writes "After the controversy over Fedora 12's controversial package installation authentication policy, including our discussion this week, the package maintainers have agreed that the controversial policy will be tightened to require root authentication for trusted package installation. Please see the official announcement and the development mailing list post for more details."

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Hugh Pickens writes "The Christian Science Monitor reports that a federal judge has ruled that the Army Corps of Engineers — and thus the US government — is liable for a big chunk of the damage caused when hurricane Katrina pushed ashore on August 29, 2005 by failing to stop the natural widening of the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet canal (aka Mr. Go) causing it to eventually bump up against the shore of Lake Borgne, on the city's east side. 'It is the court's opinion that the negligence of the corps, in this instance by failing to maintain the MR-GO properly, was not policy, but insouciance, myopia, and shortsightedness,' wrote US District Court Judge Stanwood Duval. Judge Duval said he believed it was the failure to shore up the outlet that 'doomed the channel to grow to two to three times its design width' allowing waves on Lake Borgne to enter the Mr. Go and travel into the east side of the city, battering the levees to a degree to which they were not designed. 'One of the greatest catastrophes in the history of the US' was both predictable and preventable, testified veteran Louisiana geologist Sherwood Gagliano, a former Corps consultant."

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Ask anyone in the open source science movement what it's all about, and you're likely to come back to the word that's right there in its name: "open." Open source science is all about open access. To research methods. To data. To scholarly publications. And supporters feel that it's vital to the continued growth and evolution of science itself. "Open source science is a collaborative and transparent approach to science," said Walter Jessen, a bioinformatician and cancer biologist at Cincinnati Children's Hospital.

HP is partnering with a Linux vendor for the operating system used on ProCurve ONE, though Hilton declined to specifically disclose the name of the vendor. The fact that Linux is being used on ProCurve ONE doesn't mean it's just another Linux server on a network. "Don't think of ProCurve ONE as a server that is open where users can put any application they want on it," Hilton said. "It is a server, but its primary function is to be able to port pre-certified application onto it. So the operating system is of less importance. The fact that we're using Linux is something that helps our partners but it's not necessary a benefit to the end-user, they just see an application running."

linux-next: next-20091120 2009-11-20 [Patch] [View Patch] [Gitweb]

Christmas Shopping writes with this excerpt from Kaspersky Labs' threatpost: "Back in September, when Google launched the Google Chome Frame plug-in for Internet Explorer users, Microsoft immediately warned that the move would increase the attack surface and make IE users less secure. Now comes word that a security researcher in the Microsoft Vulnerability Research (MSVR) has discovered a 'high risk' security vulnerability that could allow an attacker to bypass cross-origin protections." "Google has hurried out a patch," he adds.

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The Ubuntu project released Karmic Koala alpha 5 (Ubuntu 9.10), which adds Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud support, a new Ubuntu Cloud file-sharing service, and default switches to GCC 4.4, Ext4, and GRUB 2. Meanwhile, Canonical launched a Red Hat-esque Premium Service Engineer support program for large enterprises.

It's often difficult to notice when you're in the midst of making history. Some fine people in San Francisco went about their unremarkable lives in 1967, only to discover years later that they were at ground zero of the "Summer of Love." In the summer and fall of 1999, I spent some time working next door to four noisy, Mountain Dew-swilling misfits working on a renegade project within VA Linux Systems. Little did I know that their efforts would become known as the world's largest open source development site.

Italian firm NSEC is offering IBMs Open Office variant as a VMware ThinApp on a credit card sized USB device.

Red Hat released Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization for Servers on November 3rd. A couple of weeks before the release, I emailed Red Hat media relations contact Kerrin Catallozzi and asked for an interview with some Red Hat employees regarding Red Hat Enteprise Virtualization. It took a several weeks to get the answers back mainly because the official product release happened... and after I had the chance to download, print and read the documentation, most of my questions had been answered... and I ended up coming up with all new questions. Kerrin found Andy Cathrow (Product Marketing Manager) and Jim Brennan (Senior Product Marketing Manager) of Red Hat to provide the answers.

thief21 writes "After claims that console versions Modern Warfare 2 had been recalled in Russia due to complaints from politicians and the gaming public over the infamous airport slaughter scene, it turns out the stories were completely untrue. Activision never released a console version of the game in Russia." Instead, they simply edited the notorious scene out of the PC version. They did this of their own volition, since Russia doesn't have a formal ratings committee.

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Verizon Wireless sold 250,000 units of its Droid by Motorola phone, according to eWEEK, which has also given the Droid a rave review. Meanwhile, the rumor of a Google-branded Android phone refuses to die, Palm's CEO trash-talks the Droid, and tomorrow Google will unveil its Linux-based Chrome OS, say various reports.

eldavojohn writes "Both the EU and US are using a strategy to merge what used to be two separate searches: the search for exoplanets that may harbor life and the search for dark energy. In an effort to develop 'robust, low-risk missions that maximize the scientific return,' the article analyzes how, without any changes, a space-based dark energy telescope could also check for microlensing events indicating an exoplanet."

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Microsoft has been ordered to stop selling Windows XP in China after a court ruled that certain fonts in the operating system infringe on a Chinese firm's intellectual property. On Monday, Beijing's 1st Intermediate People's Court decided that Microsoft had overstepped a deal with Zhongyi Electronics to include the company's Chinese fonts in Windows 95 by also slipping them into eight other versions of Windows without permission. The alleged font-pas includes Windows 95, 98, 2000, and XP — but not more recent releases: Vista and Windows 7. The court has ordered Microsoft and its China-based ops to immediately stop producing and selling the infringing operating systems, according to the English-language version of state television broadcaster,

lbalbalba writes "Electronic Arts is shutting down its Westwood-based game developer Pandemic Studios just two years after acquiring it, putting nearly 200 people out of work. 'The struggling video game publisher informed employees Tuesday morning that it was closing the studio as part of a recently announced plan to eliminate 1,500 jobs, or 16% of its global workforce. Pandemic has about 220 employees, but an EA spokesman said that a core team, estimated by two people close to the studio to be about 25, will be integrated into the publisher's other Los Angeles studio, in Playa Vista.' An ex-developer for Pandemic attributed the studio's struggles to poor decisions from the management."

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jenkin sear writes "Data visualization guru Edward Tufte developed Sparklines, a great way to display condensed data as an inline graphic. Excel's new version has incorporated the design element — and Microsoft has applied for a patent on them — without so much as a by-your-leave from Tufte."

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angry tapir writes "The Chinese Authors Society has demanded that Google present a resolution plan by the end of the year and quickly handle compensation for Chinese authors whose books the US company has scanned without permission as part of its Book Search program. A local copyright protection group, co-founded by the authors group, has said it found at least 17,000 Chinese works included in Google's scanning plan."

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Cavium announced a new line of Nitrox network security adapters that ship with a Linux SDK. The Nitrox XL CN16XX-NFBE family offers a FIPS 140-2-certified hardware security nodule (HSM) with PCI Express Gen2 connectivity and integrated Network Interface Card (NIC) functionality, says Cavium....

As part of the CrossOver Games 8.1 release, and its support for Left4Dead 2, CodeWeavers felt it was important to put superior firepower into the hands of their users! Any customer purchasing CrossOver Games or CrossOver Professional until November 25th will be automatically registered to win this loaded CodeWeavers Gaming PC.

Nuxified: "As you may or may not know Haiku OS Alpha 1 was recently released. It is a full featured and improved clone of the old BeOS. OSNews has a nice review starting with a bit of history."