Slashdot Mirror

asok_g33k writes "The US broadcast regulators were told today by a court of appeal that it 'crossed the line' in trying to dictate how devices functioned. This was after the regulators tried to ban a device which allowed TV shows to be pirated. This comes after studies revealing that massive amounts of TV shows are beign illegaly downloaded from the internet and the regulators want a way to stop these shows being pirated and copied."

altodarknight writes "Ubisoft annouced today that they are developing the new America's Army game: 'America's Army: Rise of a Soldier'. Working with the US Army, it will be released summer 2005 on XBox and PS2. The only question is, will it be free like past AA games?"

Nick Irelan writes "AllofMP3.com, a Russian music site that is famous due to its low prices, has been accused of copyright infringment. Although the site said it bought licenses, some record companies are claiming that the documents it purchased aren't valid. The Moscow Police Computer Crimes Division has investigated AllofMP3 and the Moscow Prosecuter's office must decide what it will do by March 7th."

ET_Fleshy writes "Markus Jakobsson has an interesting article discussing a promising new security protocol called "Delayed Password Disclosure" that can validate a computers authenticity before exchanging passwords/keys. While nothing is ever truly secure, this seems to show promise in protecting users from a wide variety of stealth attacks (pdf) used today, specifically man in the middle (pdf) attacks."

NRP128 writes "Blizzard has released an update for the aging StarCraft real time strategy game. From the official site: 'We have released a mini patch for StarCraft (1.12b) to address a crash that occurred for certain players using the new Korean chat functionality in patch 1.12. Please see the patch notes for further details.' Several new features seem to have been added in addition to the Korean chat functions. The patch notes can be found on the Starcraft site.

Country_hacker writes "News site TBO.com is reporting ChevronTexaco has opened a hydrogen fuel station in Chino, California, and has plans to open five more. Servicing three (or more) Hyundai SUVs, these prototype fueling stations are a part of a five-year cost-sharing program put on by the Department of Energy. Could this be the 'egg' in the alternate fuels 'chicken or egg?' scenario?"

jdray writes "It seems that everyone's favorite search powerhouse, Google, is building a tech center in The Dalles, Oregon. About 45 minutes by interstate highway from Portland, The Dalles is a small, economically depressed city near the world-famous Columbia River Gorge. The $60,000 average annual salary of Google employees is about double the average for Wasco county. With all the outdoor sports (windsurfing, hiking, mountain biking, skiing) in the area, sports-minded geeks should be flocking to apply for a job at the new facility."

Haxx writes "More than two years after losing the space shuttle Columbia and its seven crew, NASA said Friday it has set May 15 as its target date for once again launching shuttles into space." Reader gollum123 writes points out Reuters's version of the story, which says that "May 15 was chosen as the launch date for Discovery and its seven-member crew because of lighting conditions and thermal issues related to the shuttle's launch and docking at the International Space Station."

Eletido writes "SOE's newest massively online role-playing game has now incorporated the ability to buy Pizza Hut pizza from the in-game command prompt. From the site: 'You're in luck - pizza is just a few key strokes away! While playing EverQuest II just type /pizza and a web browser will launch the online ordering section of pizzahut.com.' Never has gaming been made so easy." Commentary available from Grimwell.com.

ignoringReality asks: "I just moved into a new office at work that is considerably smaller than my previous one. The furniture is crappy, the walls are plain, and there aren't any windows. I'm trying to think of a unique way to keep myself entertained but not distracted day in and day out. It's a corporate office, so there are obviously limits. Working in a box must be a pretty standard situation for a lot of Slashdot readers, so how do you guys personalize your offices?"

FreshlyShornBalls writes "WebProNews is reporting that Google's new beta toolbar apparently sports an "AutoLink" feature which appends hyperlinks to existing content. These hyperlinks, of course, point to their services, such as maps for addresses, isdn numbers for books, etc. Sounds an awful lot like Microsoft's "Smart Tags"." Update by J : ... except that Microsoft's proposal was in the monopoly browser while Google's software is a third-party add-on, and Microsoft's was (originally) on by default while Google's is a button to click.

ayb11 writes "According to this article, the Panera Bread chain of Bakery/Cafes (think Starbucks that bakes their own bread) is the largest provider of free WiFi in the US. Their web site says, " There are currently 573 Wi-Fi enabled Panera Bread bakery-cafes, from California to Virginia. More are added every day." (Even my retired dad takes his barely-used laptop over there so he can get free refills on coffee.) Their full list of hotspots is here."

srashdotu writes "The Register reports on a recent Nominet UK domain dispute, which ruled against the current owner of the "game.co.uk" domain in favour of the retail chain GAME Group plc. According to the article, 'The battle for Game.co.uk is unusual and highly significant for two reasons. Firstly, it concerns a generic and common word in the English dictionary -- "game." And secondly, Mr Sumpter [the registrant] was using the domain to run a video-game-selling business.' What makes this dispute different is the generic nature of the domain. 'both Nominet's DRS system and the ICANN UDRP approach have tended to recognise that no one has greater rights over generic names, names with a common meaning, than anyone else, so the owner is entitled to keep the domain. Equally, few cases have seen company pitched against company since they tend to see the sense in steering clear of each others' trademarks,' reads the article. Nevertheless, Nominet found against Mr Sumpter's right to the use the name 'game' (based in-part on Google search results!) and stepped firmly in to trademark territory to make the decision. Mr Sumpter has lodged an appeal, but if the ruling is upheld it could set a precedent that could see many legitimate owners of generic domains facing the threat of losing their livelihoods at the hands of corporate bullies."

rickbassham asks: "With VoIP really catching on these days, I decided to look into it for keeping deployed soldiers in touch with family and friends. I am currently a soldier in Iraq, and have the ability to get satellite-based internet, thanks to a few of the locals. While individually it is prohibitively expensive, a group of soldiers can come together to purchase a decent-to-high-speed internet connection. One of my plans is to link other soldiers to Vonage or another VoIP provider, so they will be able to keep in touch. Understanding the latency issues with VoIP via satellite (not to mention the other disadvantages), what upload speed does Slashdot recommend as a minimum for a QoS enabled connection for about 15-20 soldiers? The same for a non-QoS connection? What recommendations do you have for a good VoIP provider?"

NavySpy writes "Today is Delphi's Tenth Birthday! The launch of Delphi 1.0 occurred on February 14th, 1995 at the Software Development '95 conference at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. Numerous links are commemorating the event, including a recorded interview with Zach Urlocker and Gary Whizin, members of the original management team. Zack's original Product Definintion document is here. An attendee at the original event reminisces about the launch."

Doug Nelson writes "Michael Buffington chose to build a weblog using highly automated content aggregation tools around a single keyword, asbestos, because of the high click through rate associated with the ad. 'The subject matter, while weighty and all that, is of little importance to me. It's not that I don't have opinions on asbestos and asbestos reform, because I do. The whole point of the site is to experiment with an idea. I built a tool that helps me aggregate topical news with the help of Google's Alert system. So far it works wonderfully. But there's a second motive as well. Right now asbestos reform and asbestos related litigation is on fire. Lawyers are paying anywhere from $15-100 per click through on Google ads. The second part of this big experiment is to see if I can capture some of that click through revenue while still providing a somewhat valid service to people who might arrive by search results.'"

ertz writes "The X.Org Foundation today announced the fourth release of the X Window System since the formation of the Foundation in January of 2004. The new X.Org release, called X Window System Version 11, Release 6.8.2 (X11R6.8.2) builds on the work of X.org X11R6.8.0 and X11R6.8.1 released in 2004. X11R6.8.2 combines the latest developments from many people and companies working with the X Window System and an open X.Org Foundation Release Team. All Official X.Org Releases are available for download from the ftp site and at mirror-sites world-wide."

erikharrison writes "Newsforge had an article recently which proposed an interesting way to make an integrated OSS graphics "suite" - namely, get existing apps to standardize their look and feel. Now, in a short and insightful article, Bryce Harrington (of Inkscape fame) responds with specifics on the advantages and problems with this approach, and where development should go next in the pursuit of a complete OSS stack for graphic artists."

EvilCowzGoMoo writes "One of the main reasons for the Firefox browser's successful seizure of market share from Microsoft's Internet Explorer is the desire to escape the inundation of PC-slowing spyware. However, spyware experts indicate that with its increased popularity, Firefox itself will become a target for spyware creators." From the article: "Basically, if you use Firefox today, you're not susceptible to any spyware, other than what you download when you're on Kazaa...The spyware writers target mostly Explorer users because that's the most fertile feeding ground for piranha-like (spyware) attacks. They'll watch as Firefox becomes mainstream, they'll see opportunity there and start targeting them."

A few Google bits in the bin this morning starting with Philipp Lenssen writes "Google Local has now moved to the Google homepage. The service, while still in beta, has been around for quite a while as one of many Google tools in the Google labs." Mr. Anonymous noted that "In the past, when you clicked the [definition] link after a Google search, you'd be taken to the Dictionary.com page for the word. Now, Google has jumped aboard GuruNet's Answers.com, which not only provides definitions, but encyclopedia articles, etymology, medical defnitions, legal definitions, and word translations all on one page." And lastly, several folks noted that Google has moved into the Domain Registrar Biz which we mentioned monday.

Nick Irelan writes "Although it most certainly won't be easy, Eben Moglen is attempting to upgrade the GPL. He sees an opportunity to create a version of the GPL that will be able to adequately suit the needs of modern programmers. If they are implemented, his ideas will be the first major change the GPL has experienced since Richard Stallman wrote the original version. Eweek has an amazing article about Moglen's work. Linus Torvalds discussed what he believes should happen to the GPL with Eweek as well."

mOoZik writes "BBC News is reporting that Sun Microsystems has launched a pay-as-you-go service which will allow customers requiring huge computing power to rent it by the hour. "Why build your own grid when you can use ours for a buck an hour?" asks Sun's COO Jonathan Schwartz."

kempokaraterulz writes "Linux Journal is reporting that "The Trusted Computing Platform Alliance has published open specifications for a security chip and related software interfaces.". In the latest Gentoo Newsletter they talk about a possible 'Trusted Gentoo', and possible uses for hardware level security."

PLMIV writes "Microsoft said the company's home and entertainment division, which includes games and the Xbox video game console system, posted its first profitable quarter on sales of its hit game Halo 2. But the company said the division probably would be back in the red for the rest of the fiscal year and would not achieve sustained profitability until sometime in fiscal 2007."

AllNines asks: "With all the hype of MacWorld and the compelling keynote given by Steve Jobs about the upcoming Tiger and Spotlight, I am thinking about 'switching' (Linux user since '97) but I am not sure the time is right. It seems like the PowerBooks are getting very long in the tooth and the iPods are due for a major rev. When is the right time to jump on the Apple ship? Am I going to get burned by a sluggish overpriced laptop that is updated next month?"

Kinnu provides a pointer to this story about India's increasing use of Linux. They mention a battlefield PDA running Linux, making Linux the standard OS for students, and some more about the Simputer.

hoovernj writes "It seems that O'Reilly is ready to release two books about Firefox in March. The first is Firefox Hacks, which will be targeted at Firefox power users. And the second is Don't Click on the Blue E!, which will be targeted at less-savvy users transitioning from Internet Explorer. Could this be the end of lazy IE-only scripted webpages? (thanks to mozillaZine for the original pointer)." And reader ledmirage writes "Wired Magazine's February issue on Firefox: 'It's fast, secure, open source - and super popular. The hot new browser called Firefox is rocking the software world. (Watch your back, Bill Gates.)'."

Country_hacker writes "SCNews is reporting certain models of Lexus have been found with corrupted operating systems in their on-board computers. Evidently the virus got transferred through the Bluetooth interface. It's still unclear whether or not the computers run Symbian."

BadUspto writes "BetaNews reports that 'The United States Patent and Trademark Office has granted software maker McAfee a patent for tracking network events on a computer using a firewall. The patent filing involves tracing the location of an incoming connection and displaying a map showing where the remote system geographically resides.' Doomsday for VisualRoute and others?"

Anonymous Coward writes "Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), Purdue University, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), and the Russian Academy of Science (RAS) stating that they have replicated and extended previous experimental results that indicated the occurrence of nuclear fusion using a novel approach for plasma confinement. Interesting stuff, read about it here."

Nuskrad writes "A demo of the long awaited Darwinia by indie game developers Introversion has been released. At the moment there is only a Win32 demo avaliable, but Mac OSX and Linux demos should be coming soon. You can grab the demo from the torrent."

Bart Braem writes "The Ruby community is abuzz about Rails, a web application framework that makes database-backed apps dead simple. What's the fuss? Is it worth the hype? Curt Hibbs shows off Rails at ONLamp, building a simple application that even non-Rubyists can follow."

gollum123 writes "AP writes on an article in the journal Science where an ancient version of global warming may have been to blame for the greatest mass extinction in Earth's history. 'In an event known as the "Great Dying," some 250 million years ago, 90 percent of all marine life and nearly three-quarters of land-based plants and animals went extinct. Researchers think the answer is Massive volcanic flows in what is now Siberia, and believe the extinctions were caused by global warming and oxygen deprivation over long periods of time."

ScottyB writes "Here's a good start for reading into the economics and history of the much-discussed 'crisis' in Social Security. It's from the NY Times magazine, so you know the drill...'A Question of Numbers.'"

spectre_be writes "Davyd Madeley wrote a Sneak Peek at Gnome 2.10, scheduled for release on the March 9, 2005. Looks like the new release-policy is starting to pay of, as several existing utilities get enhancements and a couple of new ones are added. Also (finally) a mozilla-stylee type-ahead find has been implemented in Gnome's Open/Save dialog. Together with OpenOffice.org 2.0's scheduled release and Novell's Mono coming up to speed, will 2005 prove to be the year of Gnome?" Update: 01/18 01:40 GMT by T : Oops - the "2-point" got chopped off in the headline; still a while until GNOME 10.

eclecticgeek asks: "I've recently finished a CS/SD degree at uni and the interviews are starting to come thick and fast. I've yet to have a skills test for any of them, and it's only a matter of time before I do. I'm hoping to do one this week and I will get the choice of language. The position is quite broad and they're more after competent programmers in general, rather than any one specific language. So I'm wondering, have you done a developer skills test? What type of things did you get asked?"

glengineer writes "Gotta love edisoncarter for his cheesy, brute force, and effective hack of the PS2 controller to discover cheats for Grand Theft Auto - San Andreas. He used the parallel port of his PC connected to relays on the PS2 controller to step thru the combinations of button pushing needed to obtain cheats that were not released by Rockstar."

rdnk writes "Here's something for the DIY people, a home made mp3 player built into a mint case. Total (minimum) cost for parts: ~50$. At least it's something different."

jasondubya writes "PC Magazine released their review of Microsoft's Anti-Spyware Beta 1. While they agree with most that it has great potential, it has yet to take over their top spot. In an informal test, it removed about two-thirds of the spyware detected and blocked about fifty percent of the threats they attempted to install. After removal, they ran Webroot's Spy Sweeper 3.0. It was able to detect '900 traces of 48 distinct threats still present, including two keyloggers and three Trojans.' With that, it looks like Microsoft still has work to do before they are on top of the market." Several other readers sent in link to Mossberg's review in the WSJ.

Anonymous Coward writes "A research group at University of Maryland has published a blog describing the latest approach for finding and indexing Semantic Web Documents. They have published it in reaction to Peter Norvig's (director of search quality at Google) view on the Semantic Web (Semantic Web Ontologies: What Works and What Doesn't): 'A friend of mine [from UMBC] just asked can I send him all the URLs on the web that have dot-RDF, dot-OWL, and a couple other extensions on them; he couldn't find them all. I looked, and it turns out there's only around 200,000 of them. That's about 0.005% of the web. We've got a ways to go.'"

wyldeone asks: "I'm responsible for creating a site for my high schools newspaper, and I'm at a loss for what technology to use. It is small, and there will be about one issue a month. I have looked into some weblogging software like MovableType, and WordPress and they seems too simple, but larger CMS offerings (Campsite and PROPS, for example) seem too complex and powerful for this project. Are there any suggestions from Slashdot readers who run high school or college newspapers?"

Renegade334 writes "The Inquirer has a story about MS Longhorn and its need for better than entry level graphics cards. This is due to the WGF (Windows Graphics Foundation) which will merge 2D and 3D graphics operations in one, and 3D menus and interfaces that require atleast Shader 2.0 compliant cards. Supposedly it will really affect the performance of the new Microsoft OS." This has been noted before in the system requirements for Longhorn, but it would seem the full impact is slowly being realized.

datadriven writes "Bluefish 1.0 was released this week. I've been using it for about a year and a half and find it to be about the closest thing I've found to Homesite, which I used before switching to Linux. According to the website the new version features 'A new, very extended manual, better gnome and kde integration, much improved bookmarks, many performance improvements.'"

dapyx writes "As part of the shift away from the fossil fuels, Iceland began its switch to hydrogen-powered buses, which are now used on the streets of the capital, Reykjavik. About 70 percent of Iceland's energy is already met by green power. Iceland plans to become the first oil-free country by 2050."

Administration of headless machines can be a pain, and working on multiple machines can also be a bit of a bother. KVM boxes solve some of the problem, but sometimes finding a keyboard and a monitor to lug around to these machines is most of the problem. Is there a portable solution that might solve both of these problems? Wouldn't it be nice to carry around a specialized laptop that could act as both a portable display and input device? Does something like this currently exist? KJH1138 asks: "I am looking for a hardware/software combination that would allow me to use my laptop as the KVM for a headless server before, during, and after OS configuration. What I have in mind would be a server KVM/USB to laptop serial/USB connection, with software on the laptop to provide KVM control of the headless device, with or without an OS. A PC Anywhere or Linux equivalent wouldn't work since they would require the headless system to already have an installed OS. I would prefer a Linux-based solution on the laptop, but would settle for a Windows option. I simply don't want the clutter of a keyboard and monitor."

PGillingwater has a similar desire: "Like many regular readers, sometimes I need to visit a customer site to diagnose equipment, like firewalls or routers. More systems these days use VGA output and keyboard input, which means having to scrounge a display and keyboard, then looking for a spare power socket in the machine room, which is not always easy! I am wondering if anyone has seen a laptop which also allows VGA input and keyboard output. This would be a cool idea. Use it as a normal laptop most of the time, then hijack the video and keyboard to connect to other systems when you need it."

Michael Wally writes "GMail messages are vulnerable to interception. An attacker has only to transmit malformed test messages to himself, and information left over in memory, from previous messages destined for other people, will appear with the test messages, in the attacker's inbox. Sometimes, this information may include usernames and passwords... Do you use GMail? Are your communications private? Should they be? Well, here's what we figured out about the issue, that may or may not help you - or perhaps GMail, if anyone can get ahold of their developers, to tell them about it." Update: 01/12 22:21 GMT by T : Good news for Gmail users; those malformed messages are no longer being accepted; read below for a message from Chris DiBona.

chrisd writes "Just so you know, at 10:15am PST mails with the problematic formatting as described in your previous story stopped being accepted into Gmail. Previous emails that had this problem will also no longer will be accessible. If you don't mind, I'd like to take the time to remind Slashdot readers that they can send bugs that may have a security aspect into security@google.com. If they like, they should feel free to cc me at cdibona@google.com. We appreciate your patience and we're sorry about the bug."

johnny.shz asks: "Even the politicians were claiming: millions of people are making a living off eBay. eBay does have millions of people selling at any given time, but how many are actually making a living? I've sold many things on eBay, mostly junk. My feeling is that I'm making eBay richer (all fees plus PayPal account about 10%), but certainly not myself. Despite all the hoopla of the new promised land, I don't see the promise on eBay. How many of you are making a living off eBay? How many of you actually know someone who does?"

jasondubya asks: "With all the recent publicity of Microsoft's new Anti-Spyware product, I wonder if there will be any room in the market for other companies? After recent comparisons between with current market leaders showed large failings in their products, do they stand a chance against the behemoth that is Microsoft?"

Cuyamaca writes " NASA scientists, using data from the Indonesian earthquake calculated it affected Earth's rotation, decreased the length of day, slightly changed the planet's shape, and shifted the North Pole by centimeters. The earthquake that created the huge tsunami also changed the Earth's rotation." You now have 2.68 fewer microseconds each day to do whatever it is you do.

Writes writes writes writes "A group of graduate students from the University of Washington have posted a a new independent report about the extent of centralization in regards to BitTorrent communities. The report indicates that irrespective of the recent damage dealt to global torrent sites, the communities are still very active, even despite their large degree of centralization (and perhaps exposure/liability). Furthermore, the report attempts to determine if the torrent communities follow the 80/20 rule, by measuring the Long Tail of torrent distribution."