GROKLAW
Finally, we have legally obtained the settlement agreement [PDF] between USL and The Regents of the University of California settling their 1990s lawsuits, thanks to Groklaw’s dburns, who figured out that California has a Public Records Law, under which he made persistent application to obtain this document. Finally, after dotting all the i’s and crossing all the required t’s, he received the document from The Regents of the University of California’s Office of the General Counsel, with a cover letter that reads in pertinent part:

“This is in further response to your request for legal filings, deposition transcripts, court orders and settlements in the California Superior Court case no. 717864-3. We have determined that the confidential 1994 settlement agreement between UNIX System Laboratories, Inc. and The Regents which was not filed with the court, may be disclosed to you under the Public Records Act.”

And so the bullying by secrecy is over.

Wired News: How Long Is Your Digital Trail?
One of my deepest-held beliefs about sex in the information age is that we all must develop a deeper respect for each other’s privacy. An honor system, if you will, where we do not seek vengeance online, we do not succumb to the temptation of the midnight e-mail, and we do not post fierce comments in our exes’ blogs when they start writing about their new lovers.

We intersect with each other now in so many protocols, it’s only fair that we develop an etiquette that helps us all maintain our dignity — no matter which side of the breakup we’re on.

Solaris 10: a collection of great, new, unique features :: The Jem Report :: The Internet’s Best Computer Review Site
Here are some of the “quality of life features” in Solaris 10:

* Dynamic Tracing (DTrace), a program and framework with an Awk-like command syntax that allows a sysadmin to quickly examine the behavior of the software environment from userland applications down to the most basic level
* ZFS (formerly known as the Zettabyte File System; the term “zettabyte” has nothing to do with this file system, so its official yet meaningless name is now simply ZFS), which was written from the ground up to accommodate modern storage devices and redundancy solutions
* Solaris Fault Management (also called Predictive Self-Healing), which is an integrated framework and analysis system that monitors data for abnormalities, then can isolate the malfunctioning device that is causing the corrupted data and route around it if possible. Since hardware failures are rarely instantaneous, Solaris Fault Management can detect failing hardware before the results become apparent to users.
* Upgraded security: Instead of offering a separate distribution of Solaris for the Trusted Solaris product, Sun has added 80% of the integrated security features of Trusted Solaris to Solaris 10. Trusted Solaris 10 will still be available as a group of add-on packages to the standard Solaris operating environment.
* Vendor-neutral support offerings: This means that, on the high end of its service plans, Sun will support Solaris, all software written for Solaris natively, and all LSB-compliant Linux binaries that users might run on Solaris 10 through the Linux Application Environment (formerly known as Project Janus).
* Process Rights Management: This is a revised and updated permissions structure that allows specific users to have specific root permissions, so if several admins are controlling individual services on the same server, they can be given complete control over their processes and programs without having full root access to the system.

Slashdot | Physicists Finally Solve the Falling-Paper Problem
neutron_p writes “The so-called “falling paper” problem has long intrigued scientists. James C. Maxwell pondered the tumbling motions of playing cards in 1853. Why don’t flat things fall straight down? Pieces of paper fall down, then rise into the air, then glide along, then again rise… It occurs in a seemingly chaotic manner. Now researchers at Cornell University have solved the falling paper problem by calculating the motions of a scientific journal page in flight and there were a few surprises.” There’s also a story in the Cornell Sun.