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"Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" new title

Author JK Rowling has revealed the title of the seventh and final Harry Potter book. It will be called Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
Clicks: 2267

OScar - Open Source Car

What do you get if you apply the open source model to the car industry?
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madbean » JarWars

For the Java fans out there, here comes a nicely produced JarWars, as found by Kirk.
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Cisco owns iPhone, not Apple

Cisco is relaunching its Linksys VOIP range as iPhone, to capitalise on the trademarked name it owns, despite the rumors that Apple would be creating their own iPhone.
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Disco Dancing Santa Claus

My 6year son is now giving me links for compiledby! He found this great disco dancing santa that is very funny.
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Skype users to get lie detectors

You better watch out; Skype will be offering lie detecting software to its users to measure stress levels. Hope it will filter out the stress of dropped connections and poor quality.
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What Can't Open Source Achieve in the Next 10 Years? | Linux Journal

Gly Moody writes a blog on what he sees could be the next 10 years after reviewing just how far it has come in the last.
Clicks: 1865

Festive return for singing sheep

Its the season of novelty records, and there is nothing more novel than a singing christmas sheep!
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Bush's daughter's phone on 'eBay'

We noted last week how the President's daughters phone was snatched. Well it has popped up on an auction site!
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From the desk Santa

A very funny letter found by Joe illustrating just how the whole present giving system works.
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Five reasons to forget about C

Well, Joe found this article on why C should go the way of the dodo
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Open source Java presents world of opportunities

Now that Java is open source what can we do with it?
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Is IBM Happy Over Sun's Open Source Java?

An interesting piece on IBM's feelings about Sun's recent open sourcing of Java
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Golden Gate Bridge considers corporate sponsors

Come on Cisco, time to step up and offer some money to the very symbol that has inspired your corporate logo for years
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'Hairy Fairy' treats shoppers

A modern day fairy, albeit a middle aged man in a pink dress, is handing out free lunches and good deeds in Cornwall England
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Million Dollar Challenge

Need to earn $1M? Then simply prove the existence of the paranormal and you'll be laughing all the way to the bank. Come forth all soothsayers.
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Rocky Balboa Trailer

Rocky is back! Trailer looks promising
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Beyonce and Eva Longoria as lesbians next film

My wife found this news nugget - Sophia Coppola will be thanked by men worldwide if her next film gets the go-ahead. :)
Clicks: 2209

The Conference Community

Andy found this conference site where you can review and discover all about past and future conferences. Pretty neat idea.
Clicks: 1749

Digging Deep into the Sun/GPL Announcement

James Turner writes a beautiful piece on the reality of the announcement that Java is now GPL. Well worth the read.
Clicks: 1633

SpikeNews - Community roundup 25th August

« H E email
posted Thu 25 Aug 05
ServerWatch has an editorial on the comparison of 'Total Cost of Ownership' between commercial and open source software. The problem with this debate is that there is never going to be a clear winner no matter how one spins it. The author does a relatively good job of highlighting this and not actually advocating one method over another.

ActiveMQ has made a new release, taking this JMS provider up to 3.1. What's interesting to note here, is its support for the new upstart on the block, Ruby. It is also planning to branch into supporting Python and C which makes the JMS bus a whole lot more integrated to any enterprise installation.

TechWorld are reporting that Microsoft's next release (or update as they are calling it) of Virtual Server will support Solaris and Linux. Microsoft's Virtual Server allows you to run multiple operating systems on the same hardware, albeit on top of Windows, and directly competes with VMWare. This signals that Microsoft are acknowledging the Linux world and willing to at least play in the pond instead of instantly dismissing it "as a bunch of geeks".

Slashdot has an interesting thread going on regarding a recent report from the NewYork times on the decline of movie revenues, not once citing the file-sharing networks. Is this a sign of a maturing industry, one that is actually prepared to look at the quality of the product and seeing if there is something there that can be done? We'll see.

One of our SpikeSource engineers Andy Wu, fell upon a good Captcha site today that illustrates how easy some of the popular captcha's are broken, including many from the big players. It is funny to note that Yahoo's is there as one that isn't breakable yet, that said, it doesn't mean its a good Captcha. One would argue since humans can't even read it, it's not a Captcha but just a random collection of pixels!

ActiveMQ 3.1 Released

Click here to read the full piece
ActiveMQ released, includes support for Ruby and Perl (with C and Python coming soon) thanks to the Stomp project together with heaps of new features such as better persistence, journalling and integration with JNDI, JCA, Servlets, Spring, WebLogic and JBoss.

Total cost of ownership: Commercial vs Open source software

Click here to read the full piece
Defenders of commercial software argue that the upfront cost savings attributed to open source are illusory because of the support and labor costs that follow. That argument is strongest when applied to open source projects that haven't yet attained internal synergy. It is weaker when applied to those that have.

Microsoft to support Linux with next Virtual Server

Click here to read the full piece
Microsoft will support both Linux and Solaris in its next version of Virtual Server. But virtually, on top of Windows.

Piracy Not To Blame In Decline of Moviegoers

Click here to read the full piece
In a somewhat surprisingly earnest assessment, the NYTimes has an article about the massive decline in movie-going that does not once try to blame piracy and file-sharing programs. It sounds like studios are beginning to understand that they have only themselves to blame.

If you're designing a Captcha system...

Click here to read the full piece
Boiling it down, it looks like the essentials of a good captcha are; don't use the same font throughout, don't align your glyphs, do throw in some character rotation, do use a textured background that varies and do vary colours.

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BlackBadger

blackbadger 0.9.2 released (Mon, 16 Oct 2006 15:58:58 GMT)

Released at Mon, 16 Oct 2006 15:58:58 GMT by alanwilliamsonIncludes files: blackbadger_0_9_2.zip (13900469 bytes, 53 downloads to date)[Download] [Release Notes]