Slashdot Mirror

SierraPete writes "Yahoo! News reports that an improper database entry, most likely caused by an external user, has created an $8 Million USD revenue shortfall for a northwestern Indiana county because a house that was supposed to be valued at $121,000 showed a value in the database at $800,000,000. There's no specific suggestion that this erroneous entry was done maliciously, but it is leading to big problems in the local governments as they try to figure out how to drop that much money out of their respective budgets. As an aside, how would you like to be in the homeowner's shoes when he opens up his mail box and finds an $8M property tax bill? I'm sure there was a trip to the emergency room or the dry cleaners involved."

Dynamoo writes "The BBC is reporting that PCs in the UK are infected with over 20 pieces of spyware on average. A frightening statistic, if it is to be believed. In fact, the figures come from Webroot - an anti-spyware firm with a commercial interest in playing up the spyware threat." From the article: "In Poland, 867 of every 1,000 domestic PCs have been infected by trojans, unsolicited programs that can allow remote users to control the machine. It is this international reach that concerns those in authority trying to combat the spread of spyware. "

cellPhoneSafe: "A client of ours has asked us to develop a mobile friendly version of their website. Their CEO has a Pocket PC and his browsing experience of his site is not great. However, aside from keeping him happy, is there a business case for a mobile friendly version of his site? Is there actually any volume of web surfers using a Pocket PC, Palm, or other web-capable pocket devices? It's one thing to convince a client of the benefit of supporting Mozilla (else they'll loose 10% of potential customers), but how do the figures stack up for mobile users? To be honest, I'd be surprised if mobile users accounted for more than 1 in a 1000 visitors to a site, so I'd be interested in your experiences. Have you developed a website for mobile users? Were you overwhelmed with new customers? Did these mobile users expect a different service offering to traditional PC users?"

onethumb writes "The video game industry may be on the brink of a sea-change just like music has seen and movies are in the middle of now. Valve began it by selling millions of copies of Half-Life 2 online with Steam, and Ritual's about to really turn up the heat by proving that online episodic game development really works. We'll get better games, more frequently, and with new, innovative gameplay. I spent some quality time with SiN Episodes and it looks like everyone wins - Ritual, Valve, and you." From the article: "Everyone wants episodic games. Developers want it because they get to make better games (by listening to their fans suggestions every 6 months and incorporating it directly into the next chapter) and do it more cheaply (6 months of game development vs years. Do the math). Gamers want it because their favorite games will be more frequent, higher quality, and more innovative since developers can now take some risks with different & new gameplay. But figuring out if it's a money-maker is a big risk. Someone's gotta put their hard-earned dough on the line and try it out."

An anonymous reader writes "Claiming to provide both security and privacy, researchers at UCLA say they have developed a system to monitor suspicious online communication that discards communications from law-abiding citizens before they ever reach the intelligence community." From the article: "The truly revolutionary facet of the technology is that it is a new and powerful example of a piece of code that has been mathematically proven to be impossible to reverse-engineer. In other words, it can't be analyzed to figure out its components, construction and inner workings, or reveal what information it's collecting and what information it's discarding -- it won't give up its secrets. It can't be manipulated or turned against the user."

There have been a number of statistic-related announcements in the gaming industry of late. The beginning of the year sees companies trying to start off on the right foot through upbeat marketing. So, with that in mind comes the news that XFire now has 3 Million subscribers, the 1 Millionth DS handheld has sold in Europe, and Microsoft has listed the top 10 Xbox Live Arcade titles. From the Xbox Live article: "Although no exact figures for sales were revealed, the publishing giant has detailed its most popular games on the Arcade service, with Bizarre Creations' Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved leading the pack. The game is an adapted version of the retro styled arcade game that first appeared on the original Xbox, as part of Project Gotham Racing 2. Since the launch of the service in November, Geometry Wars has achieved some 200,000 trial downloads and 45,000 paid downloads, proving exceptionally popular with the online community."

Gamasutra reports that World of Warcraft has hit another milestone in subscribers, with One Million European players and 5.5 Million players worldwide. From the article: "The figure of 1 million customers is more than four times the previously estimated size of the entire European MMORPG market. According to data from Media Control and GFK panels, plus internal studies and account data from Blizzard itself, the company is also claiming that World of WarCraft was the best selling full price PC game in Europe last year." All those players will have a new world event to look forward to at the end of the month, as RPG Vault gives a preview on the Lunar Festival due to be released on January 27th.

The_Spider asks: "I periodically browse the net and check web-mail at work, when I have the opportunity. I was wondering if anyone had a nice walkthrough on how to set-up an SSH tunnel. I'm not 100% newbish to Linux but I don't know where to start. (I have a Fedora Core box at home for NAT & DHCP) I'm hoping to combine this for use with portable Firefox. I'm not to worried about security, but I love the notion of taking a portable and encrypted browser with me from place to place. Can Slashdot help?" While this might be a bit FAQ, I figure Slashdot anecdotes on the use of SSH tunnels might be a bit more user-friendly than say, the several task-specific HOWTOs one can find via a Google search. ALso, I'm sure that there are a few of you out there who have discovered interesting ways of using SSH tunnels, not covered by said HOWTOs. So, how are you using SSH tunnels, and can you explain them to those who have not yet discovered the value of their use?

sebFlyte writes "ZDNet is reporting that, according to the most recent set of statistics from Web monitoring firm XiTi, Mozilla's most popular brower is now the browser of choice for one in five of Europe's surfers, at least at home. The fact that all the measurements were taken on a Sunday means that the figure isn't accurate for the whole market, though, since business PCs tend to have lower Firefox usage rates." From the article: "Other Web metrics companies produce more conservative estimates of Firefox' market share. In November, OneStat.com reported that Firefox had achieved a global market share of 11.5 percent, although it found that only 4.9 percent of people were using it in the UK."

Firmafest writes "The Register is running a story about Sun and Apple almost merging on three separate occasions. The information was revealed at a Computer History Museum event, where Sun's four co-founders spoke about the history of the Sun company. Bill Joy said that the two comp anies almost teamed on three different projects, including sharing a user interface and the SPARC architecture." From the article: "'As far as I know we also almost bought Apple once,' Joy said. 'We almost merged with Apple two other times.' Many Silicon Valley observers have long seen links between Sun and Apple. Both companies make slick, pricey hardware and are counter-punchers in their respective markets. They also have charismatic CEO figures and strong anti-Microsoft streaks"

Terra Nova has an interesting discussion going, talking about what really matters when we talk about a virtual world's population. Total registered accounts? Accounts logged in since last month? Concurrent users? Interesting stuff. From the article: "In a similar vein we discussed Second Life's 100K+ members, a figure which I and others have questioned here on TN. Cory Ondrejka said that SL's 'concurrency numbers are rapidly approaching 4500, about 17,000 residents were in SL in the last 24 hours, and 50,000 in the last 30 days... If you go back even 90 days you get about 90% of the accounts having logged in.'"

lee1 writes "Astronomers have proven the existence of the event horizon, the 'point of no return' that surrounds black holes. An MIT and Harvard team said they showed its existence by looking for X-ray bursts from neutron stars and more compact objects thought to be black holes." Relatedly beuges writes "IOL is reporting that by tracking the death spiral of cosmic gas at the center of a galaxy called NGC1097, scientists figured that material moving at 177 000km an hour would still take eons to cross into a black hole. 'It would take 200 000 years for gas to travel the last leg of its one-way journey,' Kambiz Fathi of Rochester Institute of Technology told reporters at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society."

corbettw writes "Researchers at CalTech have discovered how bees fly, putting one more nail in the coffin of Intelligent Design. From the article: 'People in the ID community have said that we don't even know how bees fly ... We were finally able to put this one to rest. We do have the tools to understand bee flight and we can use science to understand the world around us.'"

jkdove writes "GamerGod rolls out their list of "The 10 Most Interesting People in Gaming for 2005". From the article: "Our list draws from a wide slice of the gaming community. A respected game designer is on the list, but so is a political figure, a game player, a man with an agenda, and even a modder. Each person was selected for their ability to grab and hold the headlines with their design, deeds, or words; and for their contribution to twelve months of gaming headlines, news, scandals, sensations, and entertainment.""

Joe Barr writes "Joe Brockmeier and I have teamed up in a story on NewsForge to point out how the mainstream and trade press misrepresent the annual summary of vulnerabilities from US-CERT. They're doing it again this year to make it appear as if it is more secure than UNIX/Linux. Pamela Jones did a similar report at Groklaw over the weekend." From the article: "One figure represents the vulnerabilities found in Windows operating systems: XP, NT, 98, and so on. The other represents a total figure not just for Solaris, AIX, HP-UX, the BSDs, and Linux, but for a hundred different versions of Linux. The sum of all the unique vulnerabilities from all the Linux distros does not equate to the sum of vulnerabilities in any single Linux distro, and one could say the same about the various versions of Windows. That's why it is a completely meaningless exercise to discuss those totals as if they present an accurate picture of the relative security of Windows and Linux. " We've reported on the US-CERT list already this year. NewsForge is a sister site to Slashdot.org, both of whom are owned by OSTG.

Ant writes to tell us of an interesting editorial by John Horgan that is being run by the New York Times asking "will there ever be another Einstein?". The author looks at why Einstein holds such a hallowed position in public opinion and why it will be so hard for any one physicist to attain the same level of fame today. From the article: "The paradoxical answer, Gleick suggested, is that there are so many brilliant physicists alive today that it has become harder for any individual to stand apart from the pack. In other words, our perception of Einstein as a towering figure is, well, relative."

Wired is running an article looking at the little ways in which Austrian technology users are striking back against surveillance. From the article: "Members of the organization worked out a way to intercept the camera images with an inexpensive, 1-GHz satellite receiver. The signal could then be descrambled using hardware designed to enhance copy-protected video as it's transferred from DVD to VHS tape. The Quintessenz activists then began figuring out how to blind the cameras with balloons, lasers and infrared devices. And, just for fun, the group created an anonymous surveillance system that uses face-recognition software to place a black stripe over the eyes of people whose images are recorded."

paritosh writes "While the rest of the world is trying to figure out how to stop the assault of anti-consumer intellectual property laws, Australia is breaking free from them." From the article: "See, it is currently illegal in Australia to record shows off the telly, or to transferbangle (Australian for copy) music from CDs to portable music players. The end result is that a large portion of of the Australian citizenry are technically breaking the law, and while that may not sit poorly with a nation born of criminality, it makes the legal system look a tad bit ridiculous. Could you imagine shipping all of those offenders to Madagascar?"

pgsqlDao writes "CRN is reporting that Oracle is joining IBM's AIX Collaboration Center. 'IBM announced the center Dec. 16 as a $200 million investment where it will centralize AIX development, customer relations and advanced features for independent software vendors. While the figure represents existing salaries and equipment drawn together under one roof, it also represents some shift in emphasis by IBM from Linux back to its mature Unix operating system.' In November Oracle announced that it has chosen Solaris 10 as it's preferred development and deployment platform for X64 computing."

MSNBC has a look back at the year, with 12 Days of Gaming, some of the finest moments of the year. From the article: "Six figure winnings - Pro gamer Jonathan Wendel, aka Fatal1ty, racked up over $231,000 fragging the heck out of fellow gamers in the 10-stop, nine country 2005 Cyberathlete Professional League World Tour. The gaming world hyped the tour as proof that pro gaming is on its way to being recognized as a pro sport. I'll believe it when I stop seeing so many pudgy male groupies. "