Slashdot Mirror

grabbag writes "Dave Aitel is pitching new technology to create "nematodes," or beneficial network worms for use in large businesses. The idea is to set up a new language and structure to create "strictly controlled" good worms on the fly. A research-type demo was given as the Hack in the Box conference where Aitel talked about a world where "strictly controlled" nematodes are used by ISPs, government organizations and large companies to show significant cost savings."

just_another_sean writes "Torvalds' Baby Comes of Age - BusinessWeek Online is running a story on how Linux has matured over the years. They have some positive things to say about it, and back up their statements with some examples and stats." From the article: "Hardware companies are selling more than $1 billion in servers to run Linux every quarter, while sales of servers running proprietary software continue to fall. And now, slowly but surely, Linux is making inroads on the desktop as well. According to IBM, 10 million desktops ran Linux in 2004 -- a 40% jump from a year ago. That progress has been an important foot in the door for all open-source companies. Marc Fleury, chief executive of open-source middleware company JBoss, describes the Linux operating system pioneered by Torvalds as the older brother who fought the tough battles and was able to get the curfew extended and the keys to the car, so that life was a lot easier for the rest of the open-source world. "

Kurt writes "The hugely popular SpreadFirefox project, a Firefox community marketing site, has recently fallen victim to a security breach in their TWiki software. This breach has forced the site to shutdown until October 19th. During this time, they will be performing a rebuild of the SpreadFirefox system, to hopefully curb more security breaches."

astrab writes "According to this post at Dirson's blog, Google and Sun Microsystems are to announce a new and kick-ass webtool: an Office Suite based on Sun's OpenOffice and accesible with your browser. Today at 10:30h (Pacific Time) two companies are holding a conference with more details, but Jonathan Schwartz (President of Sun Microsystems) claimed on Saturday on this post of his blog that "the world is about to change this week", predicting new ways to access software."

gollum123 writes to tell us the BBC is reporting that the Nobel prize for medicine has been awarded to two Australian scientists for their work with ulcers. Their research has shown that the majority of ulcers are caused by bacteria and can be cured with a short-term course of drugs and antibiotics. From the article: "Dr Marshall proved that H. pylori caused gastic inflammation by deliberately infecting himself with the bacterium. The Nobel citation praises the doctors for their tenacity, and willingness to challenge prevailing dogmas."

wbav asks: "Recently there's been a trend to user published content. A couple of examples of this trend include Wikis, Podcasting, Blogs, and the resulting RSS Feeds. Last night I was asked if any other similar technologies exist. As I did not have a good response, that is my question to the slashdot community. Are there any other similar technologies which deal with user publishing that I have not mentioned?"

Justin Davidow writes "For a new twist on internet appliances, AMD is finally attempting to go mainstream with their mobile Geode processor, with the Personal Internet Communicator (PIC), a stand-alone device that allows users a striped down laptop/inflated PDA (without a screen included!) for internet surfing.
Expected retail price: $299USD." Be cool to play around with - I'd love to test it out.

gaanagaa writes "Neowin reports, that a new web mail service launched today is promising to bring users an email inbox of 30gb." The original intent of 30gigs.com was apparently to create an "'All in one' site for the webmaster and avid computer users. According to the sites 'about us' page, combining personal file storage, GD2 signatures and anonymous email all in one service, which would be free." In their brief review of the service a Neowin user also offers a word of caution with regards to their extremely short terms of service and privacy policy, calling them "shady".

OpenSourceForAll writes "North Lake College in Irving, TX is offering the first Open Source Technology certificate in the U.S. beginning Spring of 2006. The certificate program was made possible through a grant by the Texas Skills Standards Board. As a TSSB-recognized program, open source will finally get the corporate and industrial exposure it deserves. We believe the program is the only one of its kind in the nation at the community college level. Our goal is to promote Open Source as a business philosophy and as a way of life rather than limiting the program to a few token OSS offerings. Among the courses to be offered: The Philosophy of Open Source, a series of LAMP courses, and a capstone course which will focus on OSS development practices. Courses will be offered both on-line and on-campus."

linumax writes "According to 'The Google Legacy,' history is about to repeat itself. From the article: 'Microsoft today is where IBM was years ago. And Google is in a position to do to Bill Gates what he did to IBM. The result could be a new industry kingpin. Arnold, author of The Google Legacy, said in an interview this week that it appears that Microsoft doesn't understand Google in much the same way that IBM didn't understand Microsoft 20 years ago. "It will be the Googleplex from 2004 to 2020 - a network paradigm," said Arnold. "It will be enabled by Google's approach to innovation."'"

farrellj writes "There is currently a major conflict between the US and the rest of the world about the control of the Internet. They are fighting over who will control the root DNS servers and assign IP addresses. The US is against an independent international body to do this. This could fracture the Internet into multiple country and regional mini-internets, with conflicts over IP and Domain Name assignments, with no interconnects between them." From the article: "... the Bush administration said in July that the United States would 'maintain its historic role in authorizing changes or modifications to the authoritative root zone file.' In so doing, the government 'intends to preserve the security and stability' of the technical underpinnings of the Internet. Without consensus, some experts say that countries might move ahead with setting up their own domain name system, or DNS, as a way of bypassing Icann." Update: 09/30 20:45 GMT by Z : I believe this to be another view of the discussion we had a while back.

MaceyHW writes "PhysOrg.com reports a big step forward in the development of magnetic microchips. Since their initial creation of a magnetic logic gate in 2002, an international team of researchers from Durham University, Imperial College, London and the University of Sheffield 'team has created a number of further "logic gates" and created interconnecting structures using magnetic "nanowires," which can now reproduce the logic functions of a conventional computer.'"

Elite 4CE writes "If you're like me, you are always transporting data from home to work, and back. I was surprized at how many options there were to facilitate this. Hardcoreware.net have posted their Portable Storage Guide for 2005, covering everything from flash based devices that fit into your pocket, to huge FireWire drives with a capacity of 400GB."

linumax wrote to mention an Information Week story about an apparent slowing of Firefox's usage growth. From the article: "San Diego-based WebSideStory released market share numbers for Firefox, IE, and other browsers that noted Firefox has crept up from April's 6.75 percent to September's 7.86 percent, a single percentage point gain in five months. During the first few months after its November, 2004, release, Firefox was adding another point each month. 'It looks like Firefox has hit the push-back point,' said Geoff Johnston, an analyst with WebSideStory. 'We always knew there was a finite number of early adopters out there and a finite number of Microsoft haters who would switch to something new, but we didn't know what that number was. It looks like we're approaching it.'"

TimCrider asks: "TeamXBOX is running an editorial about how console game developers can get the gaming communities more involved in the games themselves. Does anyone have any suggestions on how console developers can help build a gaming community?"

karvind writes "BBC reports that a student, Rosanna Kilfedder, from Brunel University has designed solar-powered handbag to make finding keys and other items at the bottom of a bag easier. The handbag, dubbed Sun Trap, uses a solar cell attached to the outside of the bag to trap energy from sunlight. The energy is stored in an internal battery which lights up the lining. The lining is made from an electroluminescent material and is lit up by the bag's zip which acts as a switch. The bag goes dark when the zip is closed or after 15 seconds if it is accidentally left open. A secondary use of the portable battery is as an emergency charger for mobile phones and other wireless devices."

karvind writes "BBC is running an interesting scoop on first transistor radio which has fair resemblance to iPod mini. The Regency TR-1 transistor radio, made in 1954, had a decent claim to be a genuine piece of innovation, however. It was, by popular agreement, the world's first commercially sold transistor pocket radio. Incidently technology watcher John Ousby realised the modern day parallels and matched photos of the transistor with photos of the iPod mini. The similarity between the two has 'created quite a stir' particularly in the Mac community."

atrebuse wrote to mention a preview of the Ubuntu 5.10 Preview release, on Mad Penguin. From the article: " Every community has its heroes. From the beginning of time, we've all needed that special something to grasp onto and worship in one way or another. The Linux community is no different. Sure, there are a handful of people known as leaders or visionaries that people look up to, but what other altars do they worship at? The Altar of the Distro. That's the one I'm referring to. According to the DistroWatch page hit ranking sidebar, Ubuntu Linux has held the title of '"most worshiped distro' for quite some time now. So why is that? Is it because Ubuntu is just that good? Is it because the Ubuntu followers are just sitting there hitting their browsers refresh button on the DistroWatch Ubuntu page? What is it about Mary? "

JhohannaVH writes "MSNBC.com is running a story about yesterday's successful test of the Space Elevator!! Maybe it will become a reality after all." From the article: "This week's testing involved a 12-foot (4-meter) diameter balloon. Safety lines held by team members kept the balloon from floating away. The ribbon dangling from the balloon was made of composite fiberglass, with the robot lifter running up and down the tether ... During the day, the highest altitude reached by the balloon/ribbon/robot combination was 1,000 feet (305 meters). 'It gives us complete confidence that the mile goal is well within reach,' Laine said. Laine said that the Federal Aviation Administration has been very supportive and helpful in orchestrating their test flights. "

azoblue writes "TiVo recently changed their customer agreement, allowing them to institute service contracts with early cancellation fees." From the article: "According to the new service agreement, any TiVo activated after September 6 will require a 12-month commitment. Those who cancel before the end of their contract, or have their contracts terminated by TiVo, will be forced to pay a $150 early termination fee ... Although not specified in the new agreement, some customers have reported that adding a new TiVo to their service makes contracts activated before that date also applicable to the new policy."

Doomstalk writes "PSP news site PSP Updates is reporting that a buffer overflow flaw has been found in PSP firmware v2.0's photo viewer. So far it's only been used to corrupt the menu display, but it holds great promise for running homebrew code on upgraded PSPs." From the article: "Thanks to the unknown author(s) for this great starting point to have homebrew on 2.0, all that is needed are coders to extend this knowledge for full homebrew usage on the v2.0 firmware. We cannot say when someone will step up to the plate and write the code for users to run homebrew on a 2.0 using this exploit, but we will definitely have our ears (and email boxes) open and be sure to let you know as soon as we do."

carre4 writes "A French company named Violet, the smart object company, has come out with Nabaztag, a 23 cm tall WiFi-enabled bunny that tells you about the weather, traffic jams, new emails through flashing lights and moving its ears. They have a Flash demo with Nabaztag's different messages. The company also makes 'La lampe Dal', a lamp that changes colors based on the weather and 'Le Pad Osmooze', a USB device that releases an aroma when you receive an email from a loved one."

mollyhackit writes "Aaron and Ezra built an automatic sentry gun using an airsoft gun, some hobby servos and a webcam.The camera automatically identifies and tracks targets. They tested it on each other to make sure it worked; video included!"

Pichu0102 writes "Reported by the Washington Post, Sony says it will cut about 7% of its jobs as well as sell about $1 billion of it's assets. It also will declare a loss for this year." From the article: "To help boost efficiency, Sony said it has abolished the company system that Stringer said was preventing different business units from communicating freely, causing overlap in development and missed opportunities in the market. The electronics group will be reorganized to place centralized decision-making over key business areas under Ryoji Chubachi, who became Sony's new president and electronics CEO in a major overhaul of management in June." Another reorg on the heels of Microsoft's decision from earlier this week.

fieldtest asks: "Most Slashdot readers have read about "clickers", remote control style devices that students use to wirelessly answer a teacher's questions. Unfortunately, as a college student, I have had less than stellar experiences with these clickers. I hear complaints from my professors and fellow students often as well. So, I want to build an open source clicker system for all universities to use. I believe that this is a prime opportunity to show how powerful free software can be. So, what do the talented people of Slashdot recommend?" "The problem is this: a clicker system requires...clickers. What I need are remote controls that have a minimum of 6 buttons (for users to select options with). The sticking point comes when a button is pressed -- the remote must send the option choice, as well as a unique ID specific to the remote, so the clicker software can distinguish between different students.

I've experimented and Googled around. I've tried standard TV remote controls combined with an USB-UIRT receiver, but the range was too low. Googling shows some interesting programmable remotes, but they're far too expensive ($100+) to have each user purchase one.

How should I go about building the perfect clicker and receiver system? Any suggestion is welcome, from IR to radio, from Bluetooth to ZigBee based communications. Recommend a commercial product, or a do it yourself solution. Please also recommend a receiver device, and a way to connect it to a computer. Also, if you recommend that I just build a custom circuit board for the remote control, please give some references and examples of how it should be implemented."

RandomPrecision writes to tell us Wired is reporting that computer programmer Igor Kholodov has created a game designed to make learning the basics of programming fun. From the article 'The board game turns players into skiers who must race down a mountain in the quickest way possible. With each roll of the die, players must follow instructions that are similar to computer program codes. Using basic math, players have to figure out which paths are open to them and then decide the fastest way to the finish line.'"

stuntshell asks: "We're a group of IT Professionals and we're starting our own consulting firm. We're most systems administrators, and not business admin, nor lawyers, and we're all have worked on big companies and most of the time the job to be performed was just passed on to us. The scope of the work we're about to perform will be security related, so how do you approach a customer in this kind of business? Do you wait for them to come and ask you to test their firewall? Or do you go scanning and discovering holes on other's network for you to offer them your solution? Do write a letter/email or do you propose a meeting? What works?"

kumulan wonders: "I've got the responsibility to set up directory services as well as a messaging/groupware system for my organization of app. 100 employees spread out over three locations. We are a startup that is merging three existing smaller companies and, given the state of existing IS infrastructure at each of these locations, the decision has already been made that we are better off starting from scratch. It would be great to hear from Slashdot readers concerning which option is 'better' and why." "For me, the choices are stark and clear:

1. MS Exchange/Active Directory
2. A cobbled-together solution based as much as possible on OSS (as no direct equivalent exists).

For (2) we have evaluated, and are strongly considering, the following:

• Samba/OpenLDAP/Kerberos
• Bynari Insight Server for messaging/groupware.
• Nitrobit Group Policy for, you guessed it, group policy management.

Of course, Samba 4 will address some of this 'cobbling', but we can't wait for that."

Azraael asks: "I need to make a website for a small business. The website must be available in several different languages and allow for easy switching between the different versions (with little flags in each page that has multiple versions, or some scheme of the sort). User logins are not required. I was thinking of using a CMS to accomplish this in an efficient and easily extensible (more languages, more pages, etc) way. What would be the best option? I've tried Wordpress but it seems to lack multilingual support of the type I described, while having too much of a weblog feel. Mambo with Mambel seems spotty at best. Has anyone on Slashdot done this before?"

Shakrai asks: "I find myself in the process of building a new computer system and at a crossroads for what OS to put on it. I have used Linux for years as a server for my home network and as a workstation dual booting with Windows. I have find myself unable to get away from Windows entirely because of the large amount of older games that I retain and still like to play. Nevertheless I am less then eager to pony up $80-$200 for a Windows license for my new box and I figure that I can learn to live without most of the Windows games that I enjoy. There still seems to be one stumbling block before I could totally abandon Windows though: Financial Services Software. For the last six years I have been quite the avid user of Quicken. Every single investment and transaction that I have ever made resides in Quicken. Is there a package for Linux out there that even remotely provides the same functionality?" "I don't really use Quicken's online services (why pay for something my credit union gives me for free) but I pretty much use every other function of the product (tax estimation, investment tracking, reports, etc). Is this going to keep me stuck in Windows land? Short of writing my own replacement for Quicken (not very likely) what are my options?"

chengee writes "Music giants Universal, EMI, Warner, Sony BMG and their local subsidiaries are suing Chinese search engine Baidu for allegedly infringing the copyright of hundreds of songs, a press report said Friday. Looks like the party is going to be over for Chinese downloaders. But more importantly how will this lawsuit turn out in a place known for its lax copyright laws?"

fanboyslayer writes "Switchfoot's new album Nothing Is Sound shipped from Sony with copy protection software on the CD, much to the dismay of thousands of iPod-wielding fans. The band posted a response on their official forum apologizing for the protection and detailing ways to circumvent the protection and rip their songs to PC. Switchfoot linked to open-source program CDex's download page with instructions on disabling the autorunning protection and ripping the files to MP3. Many of Switchfoot's fans have been upset by the copy protection measures, and it's nice to know the artists seem to care about the issue."

linumax tells us eWeek is reporting that Microsoft, for the first time, has included open source code in the release of one of their products. The Complete Cluster Edition of Windows Server 2003 will be including the Message Passing Interface (MPI) library. From the article: "MPI is key middleware that was designed by a consortia of all the supercomputing vendors in the 1990s to allow the easy portability of code. It abstracts away things like low-latency interconnect, and our focus is making it super easy for ISVs to move their code."

wengkius writes "According to BBC, Malaysians will be voting for their candidate of choice in the nationwide search for an astronaut to be sent to the ISS on board the Russian Soyuz spacecraft. Once its 11,000 would-be astronauts have been whittled down to a handful, their details and updates on their progress will be posted on the internet. If the contest proves popular and the government charges for the votes, it may even be able to cover the cost of its space program."

Anonymous Coward writes to tell us that Microsoft has apparently blocked the Mono 'Birds-of-a-Feather' meeting from being held at their Professional Developers Conference for the second year in a row. Miguel de Icaza discusses the circumstances in his blog. From the blog: 'It is their conference, and they have every right to control what they will allow to be shown there, but they actively have misrepresented things.' Not terribly surprising but infuriating nonetheless.

CheshireCatCO writes "After more than a year in orbit around Saturn, the Cassini spacecraft has finally spotted 'spokes' in the rings. Spokes, large radial structures in the rings, where seen by the Voyager spacecraft and have remained difficult to fully explain. The reappearce of the spokes comes about two years earlier than many models predicted."

excelblue writes "Slackware Linux 10.2 has finally been released. This release comes with Linux 2.4.31, with 2.6.13 available in the testing packages and glibc 2.3.5. This time, they've decided to get up with times and switch to Firefox, Thunderbird, and subversion instead of using the Mozilla suite and cvs from the previous distros. Here are Torrents of ISO images."

burtdub asks: "With the amount of raw text data available, there seems to be no shortage of ambitious language projects on the horizon, from Universal Language Translators to Junk Email Filtering. However, the mess that is the English language still seems to elude commercial attempts while being relatively ignored by the open source community. What would it take to make a useful, functional grammar checker?"

neoform writes "The Seattle PI is running an interesting interview with Bill Gates." In the article Gates comments on Vista, Google, and a few other pertinent topics. In an amusing bit of related news, an anonymous reader let us know that CNET is also running an interview with Gates. In the CNET interview Gates gives a very interesting response to one of the interview questions. "CNET: So that would be the philosophical difference between Microsoft and what Google is up to at this point? Gates: Well, we don't know everything they are up to, but we do know their slogan and we disagree with that."

Baddox writes "Professional gaming, which has for some time now been a popular venture in Asia, is finally starting to get some attention from big US companies. Teams for competitive shooters like Counter Strike are getting sponsored by large corporations like Johnson and Johnson. The article poses the question, "Is 'frags per round' going to be the batting average of the 21st century?" "

cluedweasel writes "According to a BBC story many people are still putting up their old PC's and storage devices for sale without taking basic precautions to ensure that confidential data is erased. The suggestion at the end of the story is to get a professional forensics firm to wipe your data or just destroy the item in question. With the low price of storage devices, the latter is probably preferable."

Charli125 asks: "I have been a Windows administrator ever since I got into the tech industry. I have no working experience with any other OS except for those from Apple. I am currently working with a small company that has 1 server and around 15 workstations. I would like to faze out all of the Windows software, in order to avoid having to deal with viruses, save money, and learn how the other half lives. Since I have never so much as installed Linux, I am looking for resources or advice on how to get started, and how to plan the change over. Can anyone help me?" "My current setup is like this:
Server-Windows Small Business Server 2003, Symantec Antivirus Corporate Edition(and for Exchange)

Workstations-Windows XP Pro, Office 2003 or XP, Symantec Antivirus, IE for most of the browsers (Firefox for mine and a few others). The main apps used are like every other office, Word and Excel.

I have OpenOffice installed on my home computer, and it works fine. I do see a problem with non-tech types saving in the default format though, which would result in other users not being able to read the documents/spreadsheets.

Yeah, I know, I'm so MSFT, I'm everything you guys hate about the IT world, but I would really appreciate anything that would help me get started.

Thanks"

nevergleam writes "Sony is recalling over 3.5 million power adapters upon reports that they are overheating. According to The Times Online, there has been one incident of minor shock, and four incidences of property damage. There is a web site available to see if the recall applies to your unit." From the article: "The adaptors were made between August and December last year for the slimline PlayStation 2. About 2.3 million of the affected machines were sold in Europe, with the remaining 1.2 million sold in Asia, Australia and North America."

TrentL writes "How will we be able to read 1990's email messages in the year 2090? Will GIF files still be accessible in 2105? The US National Archives - tasked with preserving records "for the life of the republic" - has chosen Lockheed Martin to solve exactly this problem. Lockheed was awarded the $308M Electronic Records Archives contract after a year-long design competition. Full Disclosure: I worked on Lockheed's demo team."

rfunches writes "It's not a rumour anymore. BBC News online reports that eBay will pay 'half the amount in cash and the other half in stocks to create an unparalleled e-commerce and communications engine'." The $2.6 billion purchase would give eBay access to the VoIP market, of which Skype claims it has 2 million users online at any given time. BBC speculates that eBay will use Skype to allow sellers and bidders to communicate via voice; I have also heard that live auctions a la Sothebys might also be a possibility. Also reported at Wall Street Journal (registration), New York Times."

JorgeDeLaCancha writes "The US Skill Games Championship, heading by SkillJam, will be featuring two PopCap games, Bejeweled 2 and Zuma . Paul Jensen, President of SkillJam, claims that both these games while simple in their concept offer a more challenging level of play to the expert gamers. The grand prize in this championship is one million dollars. Will we soon be seeing more similar tournaments with large prizes based on simple puzzle games?"

404Ender writes "In a move similar to the passage of a law designed to restrict the sale of violent video games to children in Illinois, California is now awaiting only the signature of Governor Schwarzenegger before a similar bill becomes a law. Does this action signal the start of a disturbing trend of the restriction of First Amendment rights? How can we as gamers fight back against this type of government action?"

Julio Capote wrote to mention a press release making the rounds stating that Adult Swim will be allowing viewers to watch shows via streaming video. From the article: "Starting Sept. 16, AdultSwim.com will offer full-length episodes of these and other programs in an initiative Cartoon Network is calling Friday Night Fix. Each week between 11 p.m.-6 a.m. ET, a selection of current and fan-requested shows will be available for free viewing. There also will be previews of episodes scheduled to debut the next Sunday" The official Williams Street announcement is also available.

unsurreal writes ""A Tech Strategist within Microsoft, Nigel Page, has gone on record to discuss the hardware requirements for Windows Vista, due out next Christmas." The next year is going to be an interesting one as hardware vendors smile towards the shocking new recommended hardware needed for the next generation Windows operating system." From the article: "Graphics: Vista has changed from using the CPU to display bitmaps on the screen to using the GPU to render vectors. This means the entire display model in Vista has changed. To render the screen in the GPU requires an awful lot of memory to do optimally - 256MB is a happy medium, but you'll actually see benefit from more. Microsoft believes that you're going to see the amount of video memory being shipped on cards hurtle up when Vista ships." Coverage available at Tom's Hardware as well, with a semi-transcript at Tech Ed.

elfguygmail.com writes "Firefox 1.5 beta1 is out! It includes many new features including a new automatic update system, reworked options dialogs, faster browsing, new error pages, memory and stability updates. Get your beta at Mozilla.org."