Slashdot Mirror

netbuzz writes "'Anonymous,' best known for its jousts with Scientology, has apparently hacked Sarah Palin's private Yahoo email account. Contents, including sample emails, an index, and family photos, have been posted by Wikileaks, which calls them evidence that the GOP vice presidential candidate has improperly used private email to shield government business from public scrutiny." Note that there is no easy way to tell if the material on Wikileaks is genuine or a hoax. Update by J : Genuine.

mathoda writes "Investigative reporter Bob Woodward states that America has developed secret capabilities 'to locate, target and kill key individuals in groups such as al-Qaeda in Iraq, the Sunni insurgency and renegade Shia militias, or so-called special groups. The operations incorporated some of the most highly classified techniques and information in the US government.' The LA Times now reports, 'As part of an escalating offensive against extremist targets in Pakistan, the United States is deploying Predator aircraft equipped with sophisticated new surveillance systems that were instrumental in crippling the insurgency in Iraq, according to US military and intelligence officials.' Part of the capabilities appear to be that the unmanned flying drones can track targets even inside of buildings." Update by J : Bruce Schneier's readers have some thoughts.

jamie writes "The politicization of Bush's Justice Department, which this week was officially determined to be illegal, has a funny side too. Sometime in 2005-2006, White House Liaison Jan Williams attended a seminar on LexisNexis searches, and wrote one herself. When she left, she passed it on to her successor Monica Goodling in an email. Justin Mason, author of SpamAssassin, is skeptical about its accuracy:

[First name of a candidate]! and pre/2 [last name of a candidate] w/7 bush or gore or republican! or democrat! or charg! or accus! or criticiz! or blam! or defend! or iran contra or clinton or spotted owl or florida recount or sex! or controvers! or racis! or fraud! or investigat! or bankrupt! or layoff! or downsiz! or PNTR or NAFTA or outsourc! or indict! or enron or kerry or iraq or wmd! or arrest! or intox! or fired or sex! or racis! or intox! or slur! or arrest! or fired or controvers! or abortion! or gay! or homosexual! or gun! or firearm!

Needless to say, when asked about it, Williams first said she didn't remember ever seeing it, then said she'd used an edited version just once. LexisNexis records show she used it, as shown, 25 times." Note that 'sex!' appears twice in the query. Must be VERY important.

enemi writes "Just a few days after Safari released version 3.1, Opera employee David Storey writes on his blog that they've overtaken Apple's browser in the Acid3 test. In the race to be the first to reach the reference rendering, Opera's software leads now with 98%, closely following by Safari with 96% and Firefox 3 beta 4 with 71%. He also noted the implemented features will not make a public appearance in the following weeks, because they are getting close to releasing Opera 9.5. That version has been under public testing since September and the new CSS3 color modes and font rendering features might further delay this. They will probably show the score in a preview build soon and wait for a post 9.5 stable build to release the new features to the public." Update: 03/26 21:21 GMT by Z : Opera is now at 100%, apparently, with Safari close behind at 98%. Update: 03/27 by J : Public build r31356 of WebKit (Safari's rendering engine) is at 100%.

whoever57 writes "Ed Felten is showing a scan of the summary from a Sequoia voting machine used in New Jersey. According to the paper record, the vote tallies don't add up — the total number of Republican ballots does not match the number of votes cast in the Republican primary and the total number of Democratic ballots does not match the number of votes cast in the Democratic primary. Felten has a number of discussions about the problems facing evoting, up to and including a semi-threatening email from Sequoia itself." Update: 03/20 23:30 GMT by J : Later today, Felten added an update in which he analyzes Sequoia's explanation. He has questions, comments, and a demand.

A little tip... when you rip off someone's computer, don't use it to show off your tats in their Flickr account. Update: 09/26 by J : Found him. Says he bought it from a friend.

Billosaur writes "With the recent announcement of Google's X-prize for a successful private landing of a robot on the Moon, someone has asked the Explainer at Slate.com if permission is required to land something on the Moon? Turns out that while there is no authority that regulates landing objects on another world, getting there does require the permission of the national government from where the launch takes place. This is in accordance with the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, signed by 91 nations, which regulates the uses of outer space by the nations of Earth. Specifically, Article VI enjoins: 'The activities of non-governmental entities in outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies, shall require authorization and continuing supervision by the appropriate State Party to the Treaty.' Start your paperwork!" J adds: The relevant quote from Destination Moon is "If we ask for permission, they'll find a way to block us. So we go now, as soon as we can!"

AcidPenguin9873 writes "The New York Times reports that the U.S. government's ability to eavesdrop on personal communications helped break up a terrorist plot in Germany. The intercepted phone calls and emails revealed a connection between the plotters and a breakaway cell of the terrorist group Islamic Jihad Union. What does this mean for the future of privacy in personal communications? From the article: '[Director of national intelligence Mike McConnell's] remarks also represent part of intensifying effort by Bush administration officials to make permanent a law that is scheduled to expire in about five months. Without the law, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, Mr. McConnell said the nation would lose "50 percent of our ability to track, understand and know about these terrorists, what they're doing to train, what they're doing to recruit and what they're doing to try to get into this country.'" Update: 09/13 12:59 GMT by J : See followup story.

Jamie writes "In response to earlier reports, Dr. James Hansen, top climate scientist with NASA, has issued a statement on the recent global warming data correction. He points out 'the effect on global temperature was of order one-thousandth of a degree, so the corrected and uncorrected curves are indistinguishable.' In a second email he shows maps of U.S. temperatures relative to the world in 1934 and 1998, explains why the error occurred (it was not, as reported, a 'Y2K bug') and, in response to errors by 'Fox, Washington Times, and their like,' attacks the 'deceit' of those who 'are not stupid [but] seek to create a brouhaha and muddy the waters in the climate change story.'"

fieryprophet writes "An astonishing number of stories related to HD-DVD encryption keys have gone missing in action from digg.com, in many cases along with the account of the diggers who submitted them. Diggers are in open revolt against the moderators and are retaliating in clever and inventive ways. At one point, the entire front page comprised only stories that in one way or another were related to the hex number. Digg users quickly pointed to the HD DVD sponsorship of Diggnation, the Digg podcast show. Search digg for HD-DVD song lyrics, coffee mugs, shirts, and more for a small taste of the rebellion." Search Google for a broader picture; at this writing, about 283,000 pages contain the number with hyphens, and just under 10,000 without hyphens. There's a song. Several domain names including variations of the number have been reserved. Update: 05/02 05:44 GMT by J : New blog post from Kevin Rose of Digg to its users: "We hear you."

An anonymous reader sends in a story from Central Connecticut State University, claiming that a Prius takes more energy to manufacture than a Hummer — 50% more. In addition, the article claims that the Prius costs $3.25 per mile over its expected lifespan of 100,000 miles compared to $1.95 per mile for the Hummer. The article gets its data from a study by CNW Marketing called Dust to Dust, which is an attempt to account for all the costs of vehicles, from manufacture through operation through repair and disposal. The $3.25/mile cost quoted for the Prius is the 2005 number; for 2006 it is $2.87. This improvement pulled the Prius below the straight industry average — all the other hybrids are still above that average. And the Hummer is not listed at all for 2006. Update: 03/21 00:44 GMT by J : You might want to take those figures with a grain of salt; I don't think anyone's seen the supporting data. Read on for details.

J adds:

The Prius's mediocre cost-per-mile is due mainly to CNW Research assigning the car a short expected lifetime: 109,000 miles. Nobody knows where this number comes from because CNW has not published details about its derivation. If a car will not last very long, then of course its energy cost per mile is high.

Back in July 2006, when CNW's study "Dust to Dust" had just been published (and which remains, unchanged, the original source for today's news), I emailed its president, Art Spinella:

Hello,

I'm with the tech news and discussion site Slashdot.org. One of our readers submitted a story about your Dust to Dust study.

According to Wikipedia, the Prius comes with a 150,000 mile warranty in California and a few other states; 100,000 elsewhere.

On p. 21 and p. 40 of your report I see that you estimate the average Prius will be "removed from the streets... and sent for disposal" at 109,000 miles. Can you explain how you arrived at this figure?

Thank you.

I did not receive a reply.

My question was about the cost-per-mile denominator; here's another critique questioning the numerator.

An anonymous reader sends in a story from Central Connecticut State University, claiming that a Prius takes more energy to manufacture than a Hummer — 50% more. In addition, the article claims that the Prius costs $3.25 per mile over its expected lifespan of 100,000 miles compared to $1.95 per mile for the Hummer. The article gets its data from a study by CNW Marketing called Dust to Dust, which is an attempt to account for all the costs of vehicles, from manufacture through operation through repair and disposal. The $3.25/mile cost quoted for the Prius is the 2005 number; for 2006 it is $2.87. This improvement pulled the Prius below the straight industry average — all the other hybrids are still above that average. And the Hummer is not listed at all for 2006. Update: 03/21 00:44 GMT by J : You might want to take those figures with a grain of salt; I don't think anyone's seen the supporting data. Read on for details.

J adds:

The Prius's mediocre cost-per-mile is due mainly to CNW Research assigning the car a short expected lifetime: 109,000 miles. Nobody knows where this number comes from because CNW has not published details about its derivation. If a car will not last very long, then of course its energy cost per mile is high.

Back in July 2006, when CNW's study "Dust to Dust" had just been published (and which remains, unchanged, the original source for today's news), I emailed its president, Art Spinella:

Hello,

I'm with the tech news and discussion site Slashdot.org. One of our readers submitted a story about your Dust to Dust study.

According to Wikipedia, the Prius comes with a 150,000 mile warranty in California and a few other states; 100,000 elsewhere.

On p. 21 and p. 40 of your report I see that you estimate the average Prius will be "removed from the streets... and sent for disposal" at 109,000 miles. Can you explain how you arrived at this figure?

Thank you.

I did not receive a reply.

My question was about the cost-per-mile denominator; here's another critique questioning the numerator.

volts writes "MySQL quietly deprecated support for most Linux distributions on October 16, when its 'MySQL Network' support plan was replaced by 'MySQL Enterprise.' MySQL now supports only two Linux distributions — Red Hat Enterprise Linux and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server. We learned of this when MySQL declined to sell us support for some new Debian-based servers. Our sales rep 'found out from engineering that the current Enterprise offering is no longer supported on Debian OS.' We were told that 'Generic Linux' in MySQL's list of supported platforms means 'generic versions of the implementations listed above'; not support for Linux in general." Update: 12/13 20:52 GMT by J : MySQL AB's Director of Architecture (and former Slash programmer) Brian Aker corrects an apparent miscommunication in a blog post: "we are just starting to roll out [Enterprise] binaries... We don't build binaries for Debian in part because the Debian community does a good job themselves... If you call MySQL and you have support we support you if you are running Debian (the same with Suse, RHEL, Fedora, Ubuntu and others)... someone in Sales was left with the wrong information"

Last night we crossed over 16,777,216 comments in the database. The wise amongst you might note that this number is 2^24, or in MySQLese an unsigned mediumint. Unfortunately, like 5 years ago we changed our primary keys in the comment table to unsigned int (32 bits, or 4.1 billion) but neglected to change the index that handles parents. We're awesome! Fixing is a simple ALTER TABLE statement... but on a table that is 16 million rows long, our system will take 3+ hours to do it, during which time there can be no posting. So today, we're disabling threading and will enable it again later tonight. Sorry for the inconvenience. We shall flog ourselves appropriately. Update: 11/10 12:52 GMT by J : It's fixed.

ScentCone writes "North Korea says that it has conducted its first nuclear weapons test and 'brought happiness to its people.' Japan and China earlier issued an unusual joint statement saying that such a test would be 'unacceptable.' As of 11:10PM EST, the USGS says that it has not detected any unusual seismic activity on the Korean peninsula in the last 48 hours." From the article: "The North said last week it would conduct a test, sparking regional concern and frantic diplomatic efforts aimed at dissuading Pyongyang from such a move. North Korea has long claimed to have nuclear weapons, but had never before performed a known test to prove its arsenal. The nuclear test was conducted at 10:36 a.m. (0136 GMT) in Hwaderi near Kilju city, Yonhap reported, citing defense officials." Update: 10/09 05:50 GMT by J : The U.S. Geological Survey reports a 4.2 magnitude quake; South Korean news is reporting a 3.58 magnitude event; the White House apparently confirms a nuclear test.

mudimba writes "A major security hole has been found in Ruby on Rails. Upgrading to version 1.1.5 is extremely urgent, and all previous versions except those "on a very recent edge" are affected. Details on the exact nature of the flaw will be coming soon, but the rails team has decided to wait a short time before disclosure so that people can have a chance to upgrade their servers before would-be-assailants are armed." Update: 08/10 13:56 GMT by J : Now they're saying only the last six months of releases are affected: 1.1.0 through 1.1.4.

Today Apple announced a few expanded open source efforts. First, beginning with Mac OS X 10.4.7, the Darwin/Mac OS X kernel, known as "xnu", is again available as buildable source for the Intel platform, including EFI utilities. Second, iCal Server, Bonjour, and launchd are moving to Apache 2.0 licensing. And finally, Mac OS Forge has been launched, as the successor to OpenDarwin as a conduit for hosting projects such as WebKit that were formerly hosted by the OpenDarwin project's servers, such as WebKit. Mac OS Forge is sponsored by Apple. DarwinPorts has already moved to its own servers. Update: 08/08 01:43 GMT by J : The official Apple announcement is now out. Other fun news: Leopard will ship with Ruby on Rails.

Magnifico writes "USAToday is reporting on the National Security Agency's goal to create a database of every call ever made inside the USA. Aided by the cooperation of US telecom corporations, AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth, the NSA has been secretly collecting phone call records of tens of millions of Americans; the vast majority of whom aren't suspected of any crime. Only Qwest refused to give the NSA information because they were uneasy about giving information to the government without the proper warrants. The usefulness of the NSA's domestic phone call database as a counterterrorism tool is unclear."

Jamie adds: Traditionally, the devices which record dialed phone numbers are called pen registers, and trap-and-trace devices. The ECPA provided some legal privacy protection. It was controversial when Section 214 of the Patriot Act amended 50 USC 1842 to allow the FBI to record this information with minimal oversight. The Department of Justice has been required for some time to report to Congress the number of pen registers and trap-and-traces, though in recent years [PDF, see question 10] it declared that information classified.

If anyone has information about how the NSA, as opposed to the FBI, has been involved in domestic phone number collection, please post links in the discussion.

In related news, the National Security Agency has closed down an inquiry into the so-called "Terrorist Surveillance Program," a separate program from this one, by refusing to grant security clearance to the lawyers in the Department of Justice. The NSA and the DoJ are both established under the executive.

daria42 writes "Despite Novell's internal migration to Suse and OpenOffice.org, the company admitted today that up to 3000 of its 5000 workers still had dual-boot installations with Microsoft Windows. These users are likely to be migrated to pure Linux boot systems in the next year or so." From the article: "Hovsepian's remarks indicate Novell will have at most a few months' experience as a complete Linux and open source desktop shop behind it when, according to the vendor's predictions, the software starts taking off in the mainstream." Update: 04/11 13:25 GMT by J : At the closing OSCON session, August 5, 2005, Miguel de Icaza talked about Novell's progress. My notes read: "novell's moving 5500 employees from windows to linux. first stage, office->openoffice, is complete. second stage, windows->linux, is 50% complete, proj. 80% by Nov."

Gavin86 and others have submitted links to This Wonkette article (profanity warning) about the Marines Corps blocking access to some Web sites for their people in Iraq. This article was a follow-up to an earlier Wonkette post. Before I posted these links, I looked for verification of this problem but found nothing but links to Wonkette, so I cannot say for sure whether this is true. Hopefully, alert Slashdot readers (like you) will post confirmations if, indeed, there are any to be found. Meanwhile, if this is true, it's eerily reminiscent of an experience I had when I visited Saudi Arabia in January, 2004. The Wonkette post contains this list of sites blocked and not blocked, allegedly sent by a Marine serving in Iraq:

• Wonkette - "Forbidden, this page (http://www.wonkette.com/) is categorized as: Forum/Bulletin Boards, Politics/Opinion."
• Bill O'Reilly (www.billoreilly.com) - OK
• Air America (www.airamericaradio.com) - "Forbidden, this page (http://www.airamericaradio.com/) is categorized as: Internet Radio/TV, Politics/Opinion."
• Rush Limbaugh (www.rushlimbaugh.com) - OK
• ABC News "The Note" - OK
• Website of the Al Franken Show (www.alfrankenshow.com) - "Forbidden, this page (http://www.airamericaradio.com/) is categorized as: Internet Radio/TV, Politics/Opinion."
• G. Gordon Liddy Show (www.liddyshow.us) - OK
• Don & Mike Show (www.donandmikewebsite.com) - "Forbidden, this page (http://www.donandmikewebsite.com/) is categorized as: Profanity, Entertainment/Recreation/Hobbies."

The political bias is obvious. And this is what reminded me of Saudi Arabia's Internet blockage, because there, too, it wasn't just obvious porn or "anti-Islamic" material that was being blocked, but plenty of political information.

I spent several hours in my Riyadh hotel room one evening checking sites suggested to me by Slashdot coworker Jamie McCarthy via IRC (which was not blocked by the Saudi filters). Among them were sites decrying Holocaust denial, which were blocked, although many sites espousing the old Protocols of the Elders of Zion antisemitic lies were not.

A number of sites that talked about human rights -- especially women's rights -- were also blocked. Sites that glorified Islam were, of course, fine. Interestingly, Jamie and I found that some (but not all) sites that were blocked when the 2002 Harvard Law School article, Documentation of Internet Filtering in Saudi Arabia, was released had been unblocked by the time of my visit.

And when I met with Eyas S. Al-Hejery, the man in charge of Saudi Arabia's Internet Serice Unit and told him about some of the blocked sites Jamie and I had found, including several innocuous Israeli government ones, he agreeably unblocked them.

I have no way of knowing whether Eyas reblocked those sites as soon as I left his country, but he told me more than once that he did not, himself, decide which sites should be blocked but only reacted to complaints from Saudi Arabia's infamous religious police and submissions from concerned citizens, which he said numbered up to 200 per day, total, while he only received a "trickle" of requests to unblock sites.

Now comes a big question: If the charges of Marine Internet blockage are true, will the Marines unblock incorrectly-blocked Web sites as quickly as Eyas did in Saudi Arabia?

But first, another big questions must be answered: Is the Wonkette story true? It's been up and spreading around the Internet since March 1st, and no official Marine spokesperson has bothered to either debunk it or admit that yes, the Marine Corps is blocking Web sites for political reasons.

It's going to be interesting to see if, here in a country where we supposedly hold freedom of speech dear, we expect our overseas troops to submit to the same sort of censorship that is an everyday thing in Saudi Arabia, a famous breeding ground for the Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism our Marines are supposed to be fighting against.

Ravi writes "Any system or network administrator will know the importance of applying patches to the various softwares running on their servers be it the numerous bug fixes or vulnerability checks. Now when you are maintaining just a single machine, this is really a simple affair of downloading the patches and applying them on your machine. But what happens when you are managing multiple servers and hundreds of client machines? How do you keep all these machines under your control up to date with the latest bug fixes? Obviously, it is a waste of time and bandwidth to individually download all the patches and security fixes for each machine. This is where this book named "Linux Patch Management - Keeping Linux systems up to date" authored by Michael Jang gains significance. This book released under the Bruce Perens' open source series aims to address the topic of patch management in detail." Read the rest of Ravi's review Linux Patch Management - Keeping Linux Systems Up To Date author Michael Jang pages 270 publisher Prentice Hall rating 8 reviewer Ravi ISBN 0-13-236675-4 summary This book offers Linux professionals start-to-finish solutions, and examples for every environment, from single computers to enterprise-class networks.

The book is divided into seven detailed chapters, each covering a specific topic related to patch management. In the first chapter, the author starts the narration by giving an introduction to the basic patch concepts, the various distribution specific tools available for the user including Red Hat up2date agent, SUSE YaST online update, Debian apt-get and also community based sources like those in Fedora. What I found interesting was instead of just listing the various avenues that the user has regarding patching his system, the author goes the extra mile to stress the need for maintaining a local patch management server and also the need to support multiple repositories on it.

The second chapter deals exclusively with patch management on Red Hat and Fedora based Linux machines. Here the author walks the readers through creating a local Fedora repository. Maintaining a repository locally is not about just downloading all the packages to a directory on your local machine and hosting that directory on the network. You have to deal with a lot of issues here, like the hardware requirements, the kind of partition arrangement to make, what space to allocate to each partition, whether you need a proxy server and more. In this chapter, the author throws light on all these aspects in the process of creating the repositories. I really liked the section where the author describes in detail the steps needed to configure a Red Hat network proxy server.

The third chapter of this book namely SUSE's Update Systems and rsync mirrors describes in detail how one can manage patches with YaST. What is up2date for Red Hat is YaST for SuSE. And around 34 pages have been exclusively allocated for explaining each and every aspect of updating SuSE Linux using various methods like YaST Online Update and using rsync to configure a YaST patch management mirror for your LAN. But the highlight of this chapter is the explanation of Novell's unique way of managing the life cycle of Linux systems which goes by the name ZENworks Linux Management (ZLM). Even though the author does not go into the details of ZLM, he gives a fair idea about this new topic including accomplishing such basic tasks as installing the ZLM server, configuring the web interface, adding clients ... so on and so forth.

Ask any Debian user what he feels is the most important and useful feature of this OS, then in 90 percent of the cases, you will get the answer that it is Debian's contribution to a superior package management. The fourth chapter takes an in depth look into the working of apt. Usually a Debian user is exposed to just a few of the apt tools. In this chapter though, the author explains all the tools bundled with apt which makes this chapter a ready reference for any person managing Debian based system(s).

If the fourth chapter concentrated on apt for Debian systems, the next chapter explores how the same apt package management utility could be used to maintain Red Hat based Linux distributions.

One of the biggest complaints of users of Red Hat based Linux distributions a few years back was a lack of a robust package management tool in the same league as apt. To address this need, a group of developers created an alternative called YUM. The last two chapters of this book explores how one can use YUM to keep the system upto date as well as hosting ones own YUM repository on the LAN.

Each chapter of the book explores a particular tool to achieve patch management in Linux and the author gives in depth explanation of the usage of the tool. All Linux users irrespective of which Linux distribution they use will find this book very useful to host their own local repositories because the author covers all distribution specific tools in this book. The book is peppered with lots of examples and walk throughs which makes this book an all in one reference on the subject of Linux patch management."

Michael Jang has specialized in networks and operating systems. He has written books on four Linux certifications and one of them on RHCE is very popular among students attempting to get Red Hat certified. He also holds a number of certifications such as RHCE, SAIR Linux Certified Professional, CompTIA Linux+ Professional and MCP.

You can purchase Linux Patch Management - Keeping Linux Systems Up To Date from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Update: 02/07 14:52 GMT by J : Book rating changed from an intended 4 (of 5) stars to Slashdot-normalized 8 (of 10), by Ravi's request.

SierraPete writes "CNet reports that Thomas Millot, a former systems analyst for a major pharmaceutical company, has lost his appeal on a computer intrusion charge. Mr. Millot was convicted of unlawfully entering the system that he used to work on and deleting a colleague's account after his job was outsourced. Mr. Millot's attorneys argued that his actions did not amount to $5K in damage--the threshold for the crime he was convicted of. The court disagreed, saying that IBM had done over $20K in work to undo his handiwork." Update: 01/14 19:55 GMT by J : Typo corrected; turns out the word "not" is important...

evil agent writes "CNN is reporting that U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III has ruled that Intelligent Design cannot be discussed in Dover, Pennsylvania biology classes. Dover Area School Board members had previously mandated that Intelligent Design be included in the biology curriculum. According to the judge, 'our conclusion today is that it is unconstitutional to teach ID as an alternative to evolution in a public school science classroom.'" Update: 12/20 23:40 GMT by J : eSkeptic has a look back at the trial and what led to it. And the Discovery Institute has issued a press release.

amazon10x writes "Mars will come unusually close to the Earth on Saturday; the second time in 60,000 years. The last occurrence was in 2003. 'This is the best we're going to see Mars, so we should strike the iron while it is hot,' said Kelly Beatty, executive editor of Sky & Telescope magazine. The Red Planet will be 43.1 million miles from Earth at 11:25pm [Eastern time]." Update by J : Starting a few hours after sunset, look fairly high in the eastern sky.

auckland map writes "Microsoft has developed a cheap, disposable pre-recorded DVD disc that consumers can play only once." From the article: " Buying an ordinary DVD of a new film costs between £15 (E22, $26.40) and £20. Microsoft's new disc will enable the studios to release a "play-once, then throw away" copy for as little as £3, much the same as renting a video or DVD. But unlike a rented DVD, the new disc allows consumers to decide when they watch films and there is no need to return it. The new generation of DVD disc will spearhead a fresh assault by Microsoft on the home-entertainment market." Update: 10/06 03:38 GMT by J : Kinda important to read the followup story.

VK writes "When Steve Ballmer yelled at a departing Microsoft employee that he would "kill Google" we had no idea just how direct a method he had in mind. Buying all or part of AOL may be the first part of the master plan, as Google relies heavily on the advertising pages that come from AOL, since it now syndicates its search to Google." Update: 09/23 19:20 GMT by J : As our readers pointed out, the original and Reg reprint both typoed "Yahoo" for AOL. Fixed.

Lam1969 writes "From Robert Mitchell's blog on Computerworld: '... Wallace, IT director at AAA Reading-Berks in Wyomissing, Penn. has been bringing a card reader with him on business trips to see what's on the magnetic strips of his hotel room access cards. To his dismay, a surprising number have contained his name and credit card information - and in unencrypted form.' " Update: 09/20 19:10 GMT by J : Snopes, as of two months ago, says this is false.

shelflife writes "Nature.com is reporting that there may be evidence of 6 dimensions. Galaxies seem to behave as there were more matter in them than is actually visible. 'One explanation, they say, is that three extra dimensions, in addition to the three spatial ones to which we are accustomed, are altering the effects of gravity over very short distances of about a nanometre.'" Update by J : Like most of string theory, this is acknowledged by its authors to be "extremely speculative."

Daedalus_ wrote to mention a Reuters article reporting from Wikimania. "Wikipedia, the Web encyclopaedia written and edited by Internet users from all over the world, plans to impose stricter editorial rules to prevent vandalism of its content, founder Jimmy Wales was quoted as saying Friday." (Update: 08/06 23:45 GMT by J : But see his response here!) Meanwhile, kyelewis writes "WikiMania, the First International WikiMedia Conference is open in Germany, but if you couldn't gather the money or the courage to fly over, you can listen online in Ogg Vorbis format, or if you miss the talks, you can download them later. The WikiMania Broadcast page has more information, and the WikiMania Programme is also available, so jump in and learn more about the mysterious technology that is the wiki."

Trizero writes "THOMAS, one of the best sources for Congressional action on the Internet has shown that no amendments occured to the CJS Appropriations Bill. Monday, Slashdot covered the EFF announcing a rumor that a senator was attempting to sneak an amendment to bring the Broadcast Flag into law. From THOMAS (scroll down to the bottom): "6/21/2005: Committee on Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies. Approved for full committee consideration without amendment favorably." Translation: No one attempted to sneak the Broadcast flag into law." Update: 06/22 18:55 GMT by J : The EFF's new Activism Coordinator, Danny O'Brien, sees this as a victory for swift citizen action. Impressive numbers. Nice work by EFF and Public Knowledge, and everyone who raised their voice.

jamie writes "Though TiVo's website still claims it's 'working hard to make the TiVoToGo feature' work on Macs, its CFO just admitted otherwise. Bringing your recordings to your Mac to watch, he said, seems unlikely 'unless we find a way to record it under the current platform, and I don't think that will happen in the next few years.' Translation: no DRM, no content. Fortunately for Mac users, there are alternatives..."

oneill40 writes "The New Scientist has an interesting article up listing the Top 10 most amazing things to have evolved, including sex, death, the eye, language and parasites!" From the article:"Sponges are a key example of multicellular life, an innovation that transformed living things from solitary cells into fantastically complex bodies. It was such a great move, it evolved at least 16 different times. Animals, land plants, fungi and algae all joined in." J adds: Number four, Language, got a careful look from Carl Zimmer a while back. It's Pinker vs. Chomsky, winner take all, pass the popcorn!

An anonymous reader writes "The MSN Encarta program manager announced that readers of Microsoft's encyclopedia articles can now edit articles in a Wikipedia-like fashion. Once submitted, edits are reviewed by Encarta staff members for accuracy, readability, and proofreading before being incorporated into the article." From the post: "To support this program, we've hired some new research editors. Their job will be to help you out with things like fact-checking, syntax, and editorial style. Every writer can use a good editor, and we see no reason that community contributors deserve any less." J adds: This won't be a big surprise, but "Your submissions to Encarta must be your own work" and "you grant Microsoft permission to use, copy, distribute, transmit, publicly display, publicly perform, reproduce, edit, modify, translate and reformat your Submission."

ThinkGeek writes "ThinkGeek ThinkGeek ThinkgEEk ThinkGeek! ThinkGeek ThinkGeek THINK geek think GeEk thinkgEek. ThinkGeek. (TG is owned by OSTG, the parent company of Slashdot, so activate all conspiracy theories now). You can also look into the new iPod accessory iCopulate which allows intimacy between mp3 players never before fantasized. And for the suit that has everything, Executve Pong. "

LE UI Guy writes "Reuters is currently running a story regarding LexisNexis being tapped into by identity thieves who accessed up to 32,000 customer profiles. Information hit included names, addresses, Social Security and driver's license numbers. This comes on the heels of rival ChoicePoint being breached for 145,000 profiles last month in a similar case. Better check yourself." Update: 03/10 02:40 GMT by J : ChoicePoint's name corrected (and, it may be more than 145,000, they don't know).

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.

Croaking Toad writes "According to The Register, US-based scientists using stem cells has hit a brick wall. The stem cells apparently have been contaminated for quite a while with animal proteins rendering them useless in the treatment of human illnesses. New stem cell harvesting was outlawed in the USA by a 2001 Executive Order from President Bush." To be precise, stem cell harvesting wasn't outlawed; the usage of federal funding was outlawed. Several states and research institutions have been using their own money to undertake research. The AP coverage is up as well. Update: 01/24 19:40 GMT by J : Carl Zimmer has a fascinating description of the sugars we humans lack that contaminated the stem cell lines. What a curious genetic heritage we have...

spankfish writes "The following page features numerous great pictures of bizarre and creepy deep-sea creatures which have been dredged up by the recent tsunami and presented by normal divers. Fascinating stuff! The page is in Russian, but it's all about the pictures." Update: 01/15 18:02 GMT by J : As those of you who read the comments have already realized, this is an urban legend.

WillDraven writes "CNN, NASA and the ESA are reporting that the Huygens space probe has entered the atmosphere of Saturn's moon Titan after traveling 2.2 billion miles. Pictures from the moon's surface should be available sometime this afternoon" according to the NASA TV schedule. What we know so far is that Huygens landed successfully and sent at least the carrier signal from the surface to Cassini for 90+ minutes, more than expected, and that Cassini has successfully repointed at the Earth and begun relaying the data it received, beginning with test packets. Huygens now sits on Titan, silent forever, while we wait to see whether or how much valuable data Cassini obtained and can send back. Update: 01/14 17:20 GMT by M : So far: they report zero lost packets in the transmission, but one of the two independent data-collection systems is apparently giving some problems. Update: 01/14 21:40 GMT by J : The news is pretty much all good: a very successful mission. Expect to see many photos within hours, but for now apparently only three have been released. Ice blocks or rolling stones -- let the debates begin!

comforteagle writes "One of the greatest hurdles for people wishing to 'switch' to FOSS and Linux is finding a good replacement tool for what they are accustomed to using. In Open Source Alternatives to Dreamweaver Templating Mark Stosberg investigates what open source solutions are available to replace Dreamweaver's powerful templating capabilities." Update: 01/09 by J : Hey, just for the record, Template Toolkit, which provides the solution Mr. Stosberg settles on, also powers much of Slashdot.

Aaron B. Russell writes "Om Malik reports that Six Apart are looking to buy blogging community LiveJournal.com. Rumour? I hope so. I seriously hope so. Neither Six Apart nor Danga Interactive (the company behind LiveJournal) have commented on the situation yet. What impact will this have for the users and volunteers over at LiveJournal? Chris Schmidt, a volunteer at LiveJournal, hypothesizes here(1) and here(2) ." Sources close to LiveJournal creator Brad Fitzpatrick say this is just a rumor, and that LJ is not being sold. Update: 01/06 by J : Our sources were way wrong.

blamanj writes "ReignCom, has just released the iRiver H10, a 5GB MP3 player with 1.5" color screen and FM tuner. Currently available in Korea, the company plans a US release in January. The price is higher than Apple's iPod mini, but it does have extra features. iRiver has generally gotten good reviews for quality, as well." Update by J : We typoed that as "5MB" earlier, sorry.

Cristiano writes "As you type into the search box, Google Suggest guesses what you're typing and offers suggestions in real time. This is similar to Google's 'Did you mean?' feature that offers alternative spellings for your query after you search, except that it works in real time." It crashes Konqueror, but works nicely on Mozilla. Update: 12/11 by J : The engineer who thought of it, then built it in his "20% time," blogs about the process.

An anonymous reader writes "Berkeley physics professor Richard A. Muller writes that a key study showing a sudden 'hockey stick shape' increase in global temperature may be flawed from bad mathematics. Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick say that Michael Mann's computer program handled data normalization incorrectly and exaggerated data with a hockey stick shape." Update: 10/18 18:26 GMT by J : Alas for the environment, it looks like McKitrick and McIntyre have been refuted. "In previous rounds of the debate, Lambert has shown that McKitrick messed up an analysis of the number of weather stations, showed he knew almost nothing about climate, flunked basic thermodynamics, couldn't handle missing values correctly and invented his own temperature scale. But Tim's latest discovery really takes the cake."

colonist writes "Tit for Tat, the reigning champion of the Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma Competition, has been defeated by a group of cooperating programs from the University of Southampton. The Prisoner's Dilemma is a game with two players and two possible moves: cooperate or defect. If the two players cooperate, they both have small wins. If one player cooperates and the other defects, the cooperator has a big loss and the defector has a big win. If both players defect, they both have small losses. Tit for Tat cooperates in the first round and imitates its opponent's previous move for the rest of the game. Tit for Tat is similar to the Mutual Assured Destruction strategy used by the two nuclear superpowers during the Cold War. Southampton's programs executed a known series of 5 to 10 moves which allowed them to recognize each other. After recognition, the two Southampton programs became 'master and slave': one program would keep defecting and the other would keep cooperating. If a Southampton program determined that another program was non-Southampton, it would defect." Update: 10/14 15:08 GMT by J : If anyone wants to try writing their own PD strategy and see how it fares in a Darwinian contest, I'll host a tournament of Slashdot readers. Here are the docs, sample code, notes on previous runs, and my email address.

colonist writes "Tit for Tat, the reigning champion of the Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma Competition, has been defeated by a group of cooperating programs from the University of Southampton. The Prisoner's Dilemma is a game with two players and two possible moves: cooperate or defect. If the two players cooperate, they both have small wins. If one player cooperates and the other defects, the cooperator has a big loss and the defector has a big win. If both players defect, they both have small losses. Tit for Tat cooperates in the first round and imitates its opponent's previous move for the rest of the game. Tit for Tat is similar to the Mutual Assured Destruction strategy used by the two nuclear superpowers during the Cold War. Southampton's programs executed a known series of 5 to 10 moves which allowed them to recognize each other. After recognition, the two Southampton programs became 'master and slave': one program would keep defecting and the other would keep cooperating. If a Southampton program determined that another program was non-Southampton, it would defect." Update: 10/14 15:08 GMT by J : If anyone wants to try writing their own PD strategy and see how it fares in a Darwinian contest, I'll host a tournament of Slashdot readers. Here are the docs, sample code, notes on previous runs, and my email address.

colonist writes "Tit for Tat, the reigning champion of the Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma Competition, has been defeated by a group of cooperating programs from the University of Southampton. The Prisoner's Dilemma is a game with two players and two possible moves: cooperate or defect. If the two players cooperate, they both have small wins. If one player cooperates and the other defects, the cooperator has a big loss and the defector has a big win. If both players defect, they both have small losses. Tit for Tat cooperates in the first round and imitates its opponent's previous move for the rest of the game. Tit for Tat is similar to the Mutual Assured Destruction strategy used by the two nuclear superpowers during the Cold War. Southampton's programs executed a known series of 5 to 10 moves which allowed them to recognize each other. After recognition, the two Southampton programs became 'master and slave': one program would keep defecting and the other would keep cooperating. If a Southampton program determined that another program was non-Southampton, it would defect." Update: 10/14 15:08 GMT by J : If anyone wants to try writing their own PD strategy and see how it fares in a Darwinian contest, I'll host a tournament of Slashdot readers. Here are the docs, sample code, notes on previous runs, and my email address.

colonist writes "Tit for Tat, the reigning champion of the Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma Competition, has been defeated by a group of cooperating programs from the University of Southampton. The Prisoner's Dilemma is a game with two players and two possible moves: cooperate or defect. If the two players cooperate, they both have small wins. If one player cooperates and the other defects, the cooperator has a big loss and the defector has a big win. If both players defect, they both have small losses. Tit for Tat cooperates in the first round and imitates its opponent's previous move for the rest of the game. Tit for Tat is similar to the Mutual Assured Destruction strategy used by the two nuclear superpowers during the Cold War. Southampton's programs executed a known series of 5 to 10 moves which allowed them to recognize each other. After recognition, the two Southampton programs became 'master and slave': one program would keep defecting and the other would keep cooperating. If a Southampton program determined that another program was non-Southampton, it would defect." Update: 10/14 15:08 GMT by J : If anyone wants to try writing their own PD strategy and see how it fares in a Darwinian contest, I'll host a tournament of Slashdot readers. Here are the docs, sample code, notes on previous runs, and my email address.

cyberman11 writes "Get out your tinfoil hats! Salon.com is running an article about Internet speculation that Bush uses an earpiece prompter and ignores his teleprompter while making speeches. Bush exhibited peculiar pauses between sentences while speaking during the debate and a large solid object appears between his shoulder blades as he leans over the lectern. He also interrupts himself in the middle of one of his responses by interjecting "Let me finish!" while he still had time remaining to answer and no one else had spoken." If Bush was wired, the receiver would be the size of a deck of cards or smaller, not some giant thing strapped to his back. Update: 10/09 16:10 GMT by J : The NYT contacted the Bush campaign and got a few answers that rule out the innocuous explanation that I had assumed.

arturs writes "A company called eProvisia started an unusal business: they filter out spam not by using complicated algorithms, but human beings... It costs around $20/year - is the war against spam over?" It's an interesting idea - the privacy concerns are big of course, but how would this stack up to, say SpamAssassin or a suite like Barracuda's Spam firewall. We tested the Barracuda device - great integration of OSS software, with a nice interface. Update: 09/20 15:12 GMT by J : Corrected price of Spam Eradicator.