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Kenny Lofton can suck my 7" dick. I hope the fucking giants get their asses creamed in 4 games by the Angels, with a total score for the series of 47-3.
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This is the time when we all should join together to check the pack of wild pencils against the wallet-sized cameras. With the introduction of the latest wave of technological ants, the story of the brave young goat will never be forgotten in the midst of the tragedy of barbecue sauce.
While I am never one to argue the point of philisophical shoes, I will fight to the death for Glad brand trash bags. What if your cat and dog were to find a rabid washing machine? What if your newspaper were to come across a picture of you wearing just a sock? Why? Why God, why? When's gonna be my TIME!?!?!?!?!
Slashback: DRM, Eldred, Aridity Posted by timothy on Thursday October 10, @05:59PM from the nip-in-the-air dept. Slashback's updates and corrections tonight include Declan McCullagh's photos from the Eldred / Lessig Supreme Court appearance, a denial from Microsoft that the company is planning to charge customers extra for security features, a reminder about your chance (well, if you're an American) to tell your elected representatives what you think about mandated DRM technology, and more. Read on.
( Read More... | 3935 bytes in body | 45 comments )
Organizers Plan Online Medical School Posted by michael on Thursday October 10, @04:46PM from the patient-died-you-must-reload-a-saved-game dept. slashdot_commentator writes "Job has you down? Thinking of starting a second career? How about finally getting that medical degree you've been putting off? A group of more than 50 schools in 16 countries are working to create an online medical school, in part to combat the "brain drain" that occurs when medical students go abroad for their education but do not return later.... Organizers said that because degrees would be granted by individual participating schools, all of which are accredited, students should not have to worry about accreditation problems."
( Read More... | 107 comments )
New SecuROM Ties Protection to Physical Structure Posted by CowboyNeal on Thursday October 10, @03:35PM from the warez-arms-race dept. bernardos70 writes "I read a brief article describing how the new version of secuROM, which is already present in newer games, employs a new encryption method which 'tie[s] itself specifically to the physical structure and characteristics of each disk'. Apparently companies are even ordering specially designed media to implement this method. I think that all this will do is frustrate the average joe trying to make legit copies, as the various groups online distributing ISO's are sure to find a way to bypass yet this new technology."
( Read More... | 256 comments )
Ask Slashdot: Portable Scanner Solutions for Research? Posted by Cliff on Thursday October 10, @02:31PM from the I-am-now-officially-a-Mac-head dept. Fished asks: "Lately, I'm finding that I need to do a lot of research in Libraries -- remember those? I'm tired of feeding dimes to the copiers, and would like to buy some kind of portable scanner to go with my Powerbook. Unfortunately, I can't seem to find one that will work. Back in the eighties, this were as common as dirt: they were small, four inch wide scanners that you could run over the page. Also, while I've found three portable scanners for PC's (from Antec and Pentax) even if I could somehow get them to work with Mac OS X, they are sheet-fed, which is useless for scanning pages out of books. Does anyone still make the old-fashioned Hand Scanners, and do they make them for Macs?"
( Read More... | 316 comments | Ask Slashdot )
Reuters: 80% of Chinese Computers Virus Infected Posted by chrisd on Thursday October 10, @01:38PM from the flawed-methodologies-day dept. Alien54 writes "A rueters news report says that 80% of computers in China have been touched by a computer virus. They quote a a six-week survey conducted by the [Chinese] National Computer Virus Emergency Response Center cited in the official China Daily newspaper."
( Read More... | 290 comments )
FCC Approves Digital Radio, Kills Satellite Merger Posted by timothy on Thursday October 10, @12:28PM from the new-media-stream dept. n8willis writes "...Just saw this AP article on Excite news: the FCC has just approved the first upgrade in broadcast radio technology in decades. It allows "CD quality" digital signals to be simulcast by stations along with their traditional analog feed. The tech comes from some company called iBiquity, and unlike Sirius or XM satellite radio, there will be no charge for listening. Some radio buff want to tell us what they know about this concept?" And wiredog writes "The Federal Communications Commission has voted 4-0 to reject a $26 billion merger between satellite TV providers Echostar Communications and Hughes Electronics.
( Read More... | 309 comments )
EBay Letting Fraud Slide? Posted by Hemos on Thursday October 10, @11:31AM from the getting-the-beat-down dept. joebagodonuts writes "MSNBC has an article charging that EBay's tough talk on fraud is just that. Talk." To a certain extent, I can understand the problem of having hundreds of thousands of auctions, and not being able to adequately police them - but ignoring fraud, when you have a policy stating otherwise is a Bad Thing.
( Read More... | 346 comments )
BSD: FreeBSD 4.7-RELEASE Posted by timothy on Thursday October 10, @10:48AM from the now-with-improved-goodness dept. Triumph The Insult C writes "FreeBSD 4.7 is out. Here is the announcement. New items include an option for IPFW2, a number of disk controller updates, security updates, and some changes to userland. Remember, please use a mirror." Among other things, the release announcement says: "FreeBSD 4.7 also incorporates all of the security and bug fixes from 4.6.2 (released in August 2002), including several ATA-related bugfixes, updates for OpenSSL and OpenSSH, and fixes to address several security advisories." And here are the release notes.
( Read More... | 279 comments | BSD )
More on the KDE League Posted by michael on Thursday October 10, @09:59AM from the pushing-the-needle-too-far dept. An anonymous reader writes "Timothy Butler published a nice clean-up on the misinformations that were published by dep on Linux and Main. Most of what that has been alleged by Linux and Main turns out to be wrong. Especially, the KDE League has no obligation to disclose financial information. On dot.kde.org, Mathias Kalle Dallheimer, KDE e.V. president, explains that the KDE e.V would authorize the KDE League to disclose its books to the KDE e.V members. However, the KDE e.V is not the only member of the KDE League. Other members would have to approve this."
( Read More... | 102 comments )
Generation Wrecked Posted by michael on Thursday October 10, @09:06AM from the born-with-a-plastic-spoon-in-our-mouths dept. Ryosen writes "Fortune magazine has an interesting article discussing how members of Generation X (those born between 1966 and 1975) have been damaged by the fall of the economy and the life-long ramifications of the dot.com boom-bust, stating 'No generation since the Depression has been set up for failure like this.' Particularly disturbing is the statement 'Worse yet, for some Gen Xers, their peak earning years are behind them. Buried in college and credit card debt, a lot of them won't be able to catch up as they approach their prime spending years.' Are the best years of our lives truly behind us?"
( Read More... | 1365 comments )
Book Reviews: Math Toolkit for Real-Time Programming Posted by timothy on Thursday October 10, @08:15AM from the doing-the-numbers dept. oxgoad writes "Need a closed-form algorithm to derive square roots? Stymied by strange and scary results from your favorite compiler's math library? Math Toolkit for Real-Time Programming by Jack W. Crenshaw attempts to shed some numerical light. Read on for the goods." Oxgoad's review continues below.
( Read More... | 4999 bytes in body | 132 comments | Book Reviews )
Wartrapping? Posted by michael on Thursday October 10, @07:32AM from the arms-race-just-getting-silly-now dept. netphilter writes "This article on ZDNet writes: "A "honeypot" trap consisting of a Wi-Fi-equipped laptop is the latest weapon against drive-by hackers." Although I'm sure that I've heard of this somewhere before, it appears that the latest twist is that this company is looking to sell them to corporations. Hmm...I wonder what the warchalking symbol for a honeypot really would look like?"
( Read More... | 249 comments )
Batteries Powered by Leftover Food Posted by michael on Thursday October 10, @06:46AM from the my-refrigerator-suddenly-becomes-very-valuable dept. Lazyhound writes "Technologists at the University of the West of England in Bristol have come up with a cheap, organic battery that can run on household leftovers, and be manufactured for just £10." There's also a New Scientist article. The New Scientist would like to point out that they broke the story, and the BBC followed up.
( Read More... | 242 comments )
More on Microsoft vs. Lik Sang Posted by michael on Thursday October 10, @06:01AM from the crackdown dept. Levendis47 writes "CNET's News.com is running an article on Microsoft's legal manuevers which have successfully shut down the Lik Sang ecomm store where they've been selling various game system mod chips including the OpenXBox Mod Chip. This leads me to two questions (and I'll admit my ignorance, faux or not, in order to get discussion on this topic): 1) When a customer purchases an XBox (or any game system for that matter) are you intrinsically "signing" an end-user agreement in the purchase that makes modding the device illegal? 2) Could a non-profit org setup an effort to have mod chips produced and "distributed" at the cost of production w/o legal repurcussions? (i.e. would not making a profit on XBox's hardware mods protect you from their wrath?) 3) I understand the whole DRM aspect of mod'ing for playing copied games, BUT, what about legit gray-hacks like the Mandrake Linux XBox project and such? It would seem to me that in the long haul, Microsoft would support such efforts because they could sell more devices (and potentially more software if they licensed an opensource validation library)... "
( Read More... | 520 comments )
OS X Conference DRM Panel Video Available Online Posted by chrisd on Wednesday October 09, @11:18PM from the dorm-panel dept. gnat writes "Tucked away on the O'Reilly Mac OS X Conference presentations page are links to Quicktime video and mp3 audio recordings of the Digital Rights Management panel featuring Dan Gillmor of the San Jose Mercury News, Cory Doctorow of the EFF, and others. (My apologies for the sometimes shaky video--three Cokes for breakfast is the anti-steadicam)"
Interview with Taylor & Pennington from Red Hat (274) GameToo Much...... And Die! (855) Geoprofiling Moves Into The Limelight (282) MS Backs Down On Encrypted Digital TV Recording (196) Small-Scale Warrior Robot Truck (114) Slate Predicts The End Of TiVo (678) Eldred v. Ashcroft Oral Arguments (517) What Would You Do With a New Form of Encryption? (855) Digital ID World Conference (91) Vint Cerf Talks About Internet Changes (183) Radio-Controlled Microcar Review (190) Come on Up (to the ISS) You're the Next Contestant (119) The Python Cookbook (239) Still More on News Corp. Hacking Charges (75) Fighting Telemarketers with Technology (556)
Older Articles Yesterday's Edition
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BSD FreeBSD 4.7-RELEASE OpenBSD 3.2 Pre-Release Early Registration for European BSD Conference 2002 End Of OpenBSD 3.0-STABLE Branch - Upgrade To 3.2 DVD Playback In FreeBSD Overview of the BSDs Native Version Of Opera browser for FreeBSD OpenSSL Gets Cryptography Gift From Sun How To Get The Most Out Of Dummynet Official FreeBSD nVidia Drivers
Your Rights Online: California Sues Spammer for $2 Million Posted by timothy on Monday September 30, @03:20PM from the hit-hit-hit dept. KilroyTheVeg writes "The Mercury News reports that the California Attorney General, Bill Lockyer, filed suit against Internet marketer PW Marketing LLC, accusing the company of illegally spamming millions of Californians. The Story is here and the Sidney Morning Herald also has the story here. The suit named PW Marketing LLC (note:subpoena in link is third one down the page) and its owners Paul Willis and Claudia Griffins defendants in the suit which seeks "at least" $US2 million from them for allegedly flouting several state consumer protection laws banning spam mail. All I can say is Make 'em pay, it's the only way to hurt 'em where it counts."
( Read More... | 44 comments | Your Rights Online )
The Future of Game Dev (Except in St. Louis) Posted by jamie on Monday September 30, @02:21PM from the stanley-is-steamed dept. ksquire writes "Ben Sawyer, of Digitalmill, has published an interesting article at Avault.com about the past, present, and future of game development. Sawyer argues that the game industry is going more and more toward 3rd party development tools and '4th party' publishing -- meaning that game developers are essentially tool developers for game enthusiasts to create mods (also using tools like Alienbrain or Discreet's GMAX). I'm really curious as to whether the Slashdot community thinks we'll see a future era of standardized game tools and developers courting modders, or if we'll continue to see more specialized game engines. Maybe a greater PC / Console split?" Meanwhile, over in St. Louis, the Free Expression Policy Project has filed an amici curiae brief by 33 media scholars saying that "Most studies and experiments on video games containing violent content have not found adverse effects." They're trying to stop the county from banning violent games -- Wired has the story.
( Read More... | 1009 bytes in body | 102 comments )
MIT OpenCourseWare Now Online Posted by timothy on Monday September 30, @01:29PM from the home-schooling dept. peter303 writes "A sampling of MIT's OpenCourseWare selections appered online today. The courses cover a full range of departments, but only a couple apiece. The material ranges ranges from just syllabi and calendars to extensive on-line course notes and interative demos. To succeed, OpenCourseWare must also be an advantage to MIT faculty and students, as well as the outside world. I think this may be possible, because it gives a uniform appearance and access point for online material, plus tools to build these."
( Read More... | 111 comments )
Boston's Big Dig Delayed Because of Programmers? Posted by chrisd on Monday September 30, @12:38PM from the twelve-billion-beautiful-dollars dept. dalewj writes "This article in the Boston Globe explains that Boston's Big Dig will be ready to open on time, if the software developers and cable layers can get their act together." Turns out honeywell's software isn't quite ready.
( Read More... | 185 comments )
New Trailer For The Two Towers Posted by timothy on Monday September 30, @11:49AM from the admirable dept. Drakkar writes "As most of you know, the new trailer for the Two Towers was online last night for AOL users, but the link was given on the official site, LordofTheRings.net. It's in real player format. A new trailer with higher quality will be up tonight, midnight ET. This new piece of film is awesome. (the song at the end of the trailer isn't from the TTT soundtrack, it's from the movie Requiem for a Dream)" xTK-421x points to more links: "Now available is the new 3 minute trailer for Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. Available here in MOV and here in RM. Reported first at Aint It Cool News."
( Read More... | 258 comments )
Public-Domain Bookmobile Hits the Road Posted by jamie on Monday September 30, @11:00AM from the draft-behind-it-for-extra-bandwidth dept. At Belle Haven Elementary School in Palo Alto, right about... *now*, the Internet Archive Bookmobile is starting its ten-day, cross-country trip to the Supreme Court. They're putting the hammer down (itinerary) (blog) to make it to Ohio for the Bookmobile Conference. Then they'll drive into Washington, D.C. on Oct. 8, the day before the nine Justices hear the copyright-extension case Eldred v. Ashcroft. The contraption is a Ford Aerostar with decals, satellite dish, wireless LAN, laptops... and a printer and binder to do on-demand printing of any of the thousands of public domain books on the internet. (The webpage says 20,000 but the decals claim 1,000,000... maybe they have 50 fonts:)
( Read More... | 154 comments )
Interviews: Ask Dr. Vinton Cerf About the Internet Posted by Roblimo on Monday September 30, @10:00AM from the more-honorary-degrees-than-some-people-have-socks dept. If anyone can claim to have "invented the Internet," (or at least to have co-invented it) it's Vint Cerf, who never makes this claim himself. But he's certainly had a hand in shaping most of what we call "the Internet" today, and is now working on taking the Internet or something like it to Mars and other planets. A Google Search for "Vint Cerf" brings up thousands of responses, so you should have no trouble coming up with a unique, interesting question for him. (As is usual with Slashdot interviews, we'll send 10 of the top-moderated questions to Dr. Cerf about 24 hours after this post, and publish his answers shortly after he gets them back to us.)
( Read More... | 239 comments | Interviews )
Developers: GNU/Hurd Gets POSIX Threads Posted by Hemos on Monday September 30, @09:28AM from the hurding-instincts dept. An anonymous reader writes "Neal Walfield announced the first release of RMGPT, which is (or rather, aspires to one day be) a complete, portable implementation of IEEE Std 1003.1-2001 threads also known as POSIX threads. With this new pthreads library, it will soon be possible to run complex software packages on the Hurd, including the GNOME and KDE desktops, the OpenOffice suite, and the Mozilla web browser. Find more information here, including the humorous meaning behind RMGPT, and insight into a future Hurd release..."
( Read More... | 333 comments | Developers )
Resume Tips For Jobs Posted by Hemos on Monday September 30, @08:35AM from the get-yer-job-on dept. JerseyTom writes "SAGEWire reports that with the economy speeding up, more and more people are freshening up their resumés. They've printed an article by Tom Limoncelli, co-author of TPoSaNA, that offers specific advice for geeks writing resumes." 'Course, I'm not sure how much I believe the economy speeding up - but still good information.,
( Read More... | 459 comments )
Developers: Undelete In Linux Posted by Hemos on Monday September 30, @07:33AM from the using-the-tools dept. Manuel Arriaga writes "[To the editors: I am not a professional programmer, nor will I ever be one. My income does not depend on my computing/programming skills, and hopefully it never will. So promoting free software I wrote does not help me in any financial way, no matter how indirect. libtrash is free software (GPL2), and I distribute it for free from my website. I have nothing to gain from the increased exposure, except for knowing that I am helping others. And I know slashdot isn't freshmeat... With that out of the way:] I have seen this topic discussed in the LKML multiple times by now, and many more people asking in the newsgroups why "I can't recover my deleted file on GNU/Linux". Here is my answer to that question. libtrash gives Linux a real "trash can". And it has been doing so (with varying degrees of stability) for more than one year now. If you consider it appropriate, make this information public on slashdot."
( Read More... | 582 comments | Developers )
AOL: Lindows Is Misleading People Posted by Hemos on Monday September 30, @06:41AM from the don't-believe-the-hype dept. jgeelan writes "According to this breaking news item, AOL has apparently said over the weekend that it is going to ask Lindows to change its promotional material after concluding that Lindows is misleading people into thinking that it has a strategic relationship with AOL."
( Read More... | 147 comments )
Red Hat 8.0 Reviewed Posted by Hemos on Monday September 30, @06:01AM from the reviews-in-the-news dept. Jon writes "Eugenia from OSNews is giving Red Hat 8.0 a run for its money. She posted a very detailed and balanced review for the new version of Red Hat, which aims to be a "business desktop". Very interesting article and discussion over at OSNews." Several people also sent in the stories from InternetNews as well as LinuxPlanet.
( Read More... | 337 comments )
Patent Office Proposes Reform Posted by Hemos on Monday September 30, @05:26AM from the reform-themselves dept. leabre writes "The NY Times (subscription required) is running a story about how the Patent and trademark office is trying to reform itself. Among some of the reforms sought, is higher fees for the initial processing fee, higher fees for more than 20 claims, higher fees for the more work the examiners have to due (lower fees for less work and fewer claims), 2000 more examiners, and required continued relevance of the examiner in their field (certification and re-certification). My favorite quote "...Mr. Rogan says excessive claims not only slow patent processing but contribute to poor-quality patents." They are trying to crack down on abundant claims and too-technical jargon which they claim overworks the examiners, reduces the quality of the patent, and other things. Worth a read."
( Read More... | 144 comments )
MX700 Cordless Optical Mouse w/Charger Posted by michael on Monday September 30, @04:44AM from the still-pumped-from-using-the-mouse dept. dkgamez writes ""To make a long story short, here I am, with my dream - a cordless-optical-rechargeable mouse. You can't imagine how good I feel right now.""
( Read More... | 178 comments )
The First Automotive Easter Egg? Posted by Hemos on Monday September 30, @01:32AM from the burn-out-the-engine dept. automandc writes "The October dead-tree issue of Popular Science is reporting that the new BMW M3 contains what they are calling the "first automotive easter egg" in its transmission control software. Apparently, the proper combination of commands to the electronically controlled manual transmission will cause the car to rev up to 4000rpm and drop the clutch (premitting burnout, which is normally impossible). According to the article, use of the feature more than 15 times voids the warranty in Eurpoe. Other limitations of the "acceleration-assist" feature are discussed in this Car and Driver article. According to popsci, U.S. laws won't allow the warranty limitation, so the U.S. version of the software only revs to 1500rpm, but dealers will install the european software if you ask. The only other mention I could find on the web is here."
( Read More... | 332 comments )
UCSB Bans Windows NT/2000 in the Dorms Posted by chrisd on Monday September 30, @12:28AM from the you've-got-to-be-kidding-me dept. nick58b writes "The people in charge of the networks for all of the on-campus dorms at UCSB banned the use of Windows NT and 2000 on their networks citing security and network problems associated with them. While there are problems with NT/2000, Windows 98 and ME computers are still permitted. Students using these are "recommended" to upgrade to XP Home Edition. In other news, sales of Windows XP are way up at the campus bookstore."
( Read More... | 463 comments )
Secret Service Goes War Driving Posted by michael on Sunday September 29, @10:35PM from the dirty-job-but-someone-has-to-do-it dept. JSC writes "Looks like the Secret Service is taking a page from the WarDriving handbook. Your tax dollars at work includes springing for the Pringles can for the antenna."
Slashdot Mirror
free hat plz k thx.
free hat plz k thx.
Yesh! Thank you! This was a very informative, on-topic post. Please keep up the good work.
I Agree With This Pr0st! Yay!
Fr1st Pr0st! Yay
Fuck you.
While I really appreciate the content of your pr0st, you are still not the first pr0st. Therefore, you suck. Bite my ass.
u r teh sux.
I Agree With This Pr0st!
Slow Down Cowboy!
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Good job. Now please continue with your taco snotting. Yay! Yay! Yay! Yay!
I Agree With This Post!
P.S. Put my balls in your mouth.
Kenny Lofton can suck my 7" dick. I hope the fucking giants get their asses creamed in 4 games by the Angels, with a total score for the series of 47-3.
Kenny Lofton can suck my dick. I hope the Angels beat them in four games, for a total of 40-2 for the series.
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This is the time when we all should join together to check the pack of wild pencils against the wallet-sized cameras. With the introduction of the latest wave of technological ants, the story of the brave young goat will never be forgotten in the midst of the tragedy of barbecue sauce.
While I am never one to argue the point of philisophical shoes, I will fight to the death for Glad brand trash bags. What if your cat and dog were to find a rabid washing machine? What if your newspaper were to come across a picture of you wearing just a sock? Why? Why God, why? When's gonna be my TIME!?!?!?!?!
Thank you for your attention.
Love Always,
News For Turds
Slashback: DRM, Eldred, Aridity
... Organizers said that because degrees would be granted by individual participating schools, all of which are accredited, students should not have to worry about accreditation problems."
Posted by timothy on Thursday October 10, @05:59PM
from the nip-in-the-air dept.
Slashback's updates and corrections tonight include Declan McCullagh's photos from the Eldred / Lessig Supreme Court appearance, a denial from Microsoft that the company is planning to charge customers extra for security features, a reminder about your chance (well, if you're an American) to tell your elected representatives what you think about mandated DRM technology, and more. Read on.
( Read More... | 3935 bytes in body | 45 comments )
Organizers Plan Online Medical School
Posted by michael on Thursday October 10, @04:46PM
from the patient-died-you-must-reload-a-saved-game dept.
slashdot_commentator writes "Job has you down? Thinking of starting a second career? How about finally getting that medical degree you've been putting off? A group of more than 50 schools in 16 countries are working to create an online medical school, in part to combat the "brain drain" that occurs when medical students go abroad for their education but do not return later.
( Read More... | 107 comments )
New SecuROM Ties Protection to Physical Structure
Posted by CowboyNeal on Thursday October 10, @03:35PM
from the warez-arms-race dept.
bernardos70 writes "I read a brief article describing how the new version of secuROM, which is already present in newer games, employs a new encryption method which 'tie[s] itself specifically to the physical structure and characteristics of each disk'. Apparently companies are even ordering specially designed media to implement this method. I think that all this will do is frustrate the average joe trying to make legit copies, as the various groups online distributing ISO's are sure to find a way to bypass yet this new technology."
( Read More... | 256 comments )
Ask Slashdot: Portable Scanner Solutions for Research?
Posted by Cliff on Thursday October 10, @02:31PM
from the I-am-now-officially-a-Mac-head dept.
Fished asks: "Lately, I'm finding that I need to do a lot of research in Libraries -- remember those? I'm tired of feeding dimes to the copiers, and would like to buy some kind of portable scanner to go with my Powerbook. Unfortunately, I can't seem to find one that will work. Back in the eighties, this were as common as dirt: they were small, four inch wide scanners that you could run over the page. Also, while I've found three portable scanners for PC's (from Antec and Pentax) even if I could somehow get them to work with Mac OS X, they are sheet-fed, which is useless for scanning pages out of books. Does anyone still make the old-fashioned Hand Scanners, and do they make them for Macs?"
( Read More... | 316 comments | Ask Slashdot )
Reuters: 80% of Chinese Computers Virus Infected
Posted by chrisd on Thursday October 10, @01:38PM
from the flawed-methodologies-day dept.
Alien54 writes "A rueters news report says that 80% of computers in China have been touched by a computer virus. They quote a a six-week survey conducted by the [Chinese] National Computer Virus Emergency Response Center cited in the official China Daily newspaper."
( Read More... | 290 comments )
FCC Approves Digital Radio, Kills Satellite Merger
Posted by timothy on Thursday October 10, @12:28PM
from the new-media-stream dept.
n8willis writes "...Just saw this AP article on Excite news: the FCC has just approved the first upgrade in broadcast radio technology in decades. It allows "CD quality" digital signals to be simulcast by stations along with their traditional analog feed. The tech comes from some company called iBiquity, and unlike Sirius or XM satellite radio, there will be no charge for listening. Some radio buff want to tell us what they know about this concept?" And wiredog writes "The Federal Communications Commission has voted 4-0 to reject a $26 billion merger between satellite TV providers Echostar Communications and Hughes Electronics.
( Read More... | 309 comments )
EBay Letting Fraud Slide?
Posted by Hemos on Thursday October 10, @11:31AM
from the getting-the-beat-down dept.
joebagodonuts writes "MSNBC has an article charging that EBay's tough talk on fraud is just that. Talk." To a certain extent, I can understand the problem of having hundreds of thousands of auctions, and not being able to adequately police them - but ignoring fraud, when you have a policy stating otherwise is a Bad Thing.
( Read More... | 346 comments )
BSD: FreeBSD 4.7-RELEASE
Posted by timothy on Thursday October 10, @10:48AM
from the now-with-improved-goodness dept.
Triumph The Insult C writes "FreeBSD 4.7 is out. Here is the announcement. New items include an option for IPFW2, a number of disk controller updates, security updates, and some changes to userland. Remember, please use a mirror." Among other things, the release announcement says: "FreeBSD 4.7 also incorporates all of the security and bug fixes from 4.6.2 (released in August 2002), including several ATA-related bugfixes, updates for OpenSSL and OpenSSH, and fixes to address several security advisories." And here are the release notes.
( Read More... | 279 comments | BSD )
More on the KDE League
Posted by michael on Thursday October 10, @09:59AM
from the pushing-the-needle-too-far dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Timothy Butler published a nice clean-up on the misinformations that were published by dep on Linux and Main. Most of what that has been alleged by Linux and Main turns out to be wrong. Especially, the KDE League has no obligation to disclose financial information. On dot.kde.org, Mathias Kalle Dallheimer, KDE e.V. president, explains that the KDE e.V would authorize the KDE League to disclose its books to the KDE e.V members. However, the KDE e.V is not the only member of the KDE League. Other members would have to approve this."
( Read More... | 102 comments )
Generation Wrecked
Posted by michael on Thursday October 10, @09:06AM
from the born-with-a-plastic-spoon-in-our-mouths dept.
Ryosen writes "Fortune magazine has an interesting article discussing how members of Generation X (those born between 1966 and 1975) have been damaged by the fall of the economy and the life-long ramifications of the dot.com boom-bust, stating 'No generation since the Depression has been set up for failure like this.' Particularly disturbing is the statement 'Worse yet, for some Gen Xers, their peak earning years are behind them. Buried in college and credit card debt, a lot of them won't be able to catch up as they approach their prime spending years.' Are the best years of our lives truly behind us?"
( Read More... | 1365 comments )
Book Reviews: Math Toolkit for Real-Time Programming
Posted by timothy on Thursday October 10, @08:15AM
from the doing-the-numbers dept.
oxgoad writes "Need a closed-form algorithm to derive square roots? Stymied by strange and scary results from your favorite compiler's math library? Math Toolkit for Real-Time Programming by Jack W. Crenshaw attempts to shed some numerical light. Read on for the goods." Oxgoad's review continues below.
( Read More... | 4999 bytes in body | 132 comments | Book Reviews )
Wartrapping?
Posted by michael on Thursday October 10, @07:32AM
from the arms-race-just-getting-silly-now dept.
netphilter writes "This article on ZDNet writes: "A "honeypot" trap consisting of a Wi-Fi-equipped laptop is the latest weapon against drive-by hackers." Although I'm sure that I've heard of this somewhere before, it appears that the latest twist is that this company is looking to sell them to corporations. Hmm...I wonder what the warchalking symbol for a honeypot really would look like?"
( Read More... | 249 comments )
Batteries Powered by Leftover Food
Posted by michael on Thursday October 10, @06:46AM
from the my-refrigerator-suddenly-becomes-very-valuable dept.
Lazyhound writes "Technologists at the University of the West of England in Bristol have come up with a cheap, organic battery that can run on household leftovers, and be manufactured for just £10." There's also a New Scientist article. The New Scientist would like to point out that they broke the story, and the BBC followed up.
( Read More... | 242 comments )
More on Microsoft vs. Lik Sang
Posted by michael on Thursday October 10, @06:01AM
from the crackdown dept.
Levendis47 writes "CNET's News.com is running an article on Microsoft's legal manuevers which have successfully shut down the Lik Sang ecomm store where they've been selling various game system mod chips including the OpenXBox Mod Chip. This leads me to two questions (and I'll admit my ignorance, faux or not, in order to get discussion on this topic): 1) When a customer purchases an XBox (or any game system for that matter) are you intrinsically "signing" an end-user agreement in the purchase that makes modding the device illegal? 2) Could a non-profit org setup an effort to have mod chips produced and "distributed" at the cost of production w/o legal repurcussions? (i.e. would not making a profit on XBox's hardware mods protect you from their wrath?) 3) I understand the whole DRM aspect of mod'ing for playing copied games, BUT, what about legit gray-hacks like the Mandrake Linux XBox project and such? It would seem to me that in the long haul, Microsoft would support such efforts because they could sell more devices (and potentially more software if they licensed an opensource validation library)... "
( Read More... | 520 comments )
OS X Conference DRM Panel Video Available Online
Posted by chrisd on Wednesday October 09, @11:18PM
from the dorm-panel dept.
gnat writes "Tucked away on the O'Reilly Mac OS X Conference presentations page are links to Quicktime video and mp3 audio recordings of the Digital Rights Management panel featuring Dan Gillmor of the San Jose Mercury News, Cory Doctorow of the EFF, and others. (My apologies for the sometimes shaky video--three Cokes for breakfast is the anti-steadicam)"
( Read More... | 148 comments )
Older Stuff
Wednesday October 9
Interview with Taylor & Pennington from Red Hat (274)
GameToo Much...... And Die! (855)
Geoprofiling Moves Into The Limelight (282)
MS Backs Down On Encrypted Digital TV Recording (196)
Small-Scale Warrior Robot Truck (114)
Slate Predicts The End Of TiVo (678)
Eldred v. Ashcroft Oral Arguments (517)
What Would You Do With a New Form of Encryption? (855)
Digital ID World Conference (91)
Vint Cerf Talks About Internet Changes (183)
Radio-Controlled Microcar Review (190)
Come on Up (to the ISS) You're the Next Contestant (119)
The Python Cookbook (239)
Still More on News Corp. Hacking Charges (75)
Fighting Telemarketers with Technology (556)
Older Articles
Yesterday's Edition
Slashdot Poll
Is Maisy a Sim?
What the heck is maisy?
No, but Charley Is
Well, duh, of course.
What the heck is a Sim?
Cyril is my CowboyNeal
[ Results | Polls ]
Comments:299 | Votes:18006
BSD
FreeBSD 4.7-RELEASE
OpenBSD 3.2 Pre-Release
Early Registration for European BSD Conference 2002
End Of OpenBSD 3.0-STABLE Branch - Upgrade To 3.2
DVD Playback In FreeBSD
Overview of the BSDs
Native Version Of Opera browser for FreeBSD
OpenSSL Gets Cryptography Gift From Sun
How To Get The Most Out Of Dummynet
Official FreeBSD nVidia Drivers
Your boss is a few sandwiches short of a picnic.
is latex, you dumbass
homo
Your Rights Online: California Sues Spammer for $2 Million
:)
Posted by timothy on Monday September 30, @03:20PM
from the hit-hit-hit dept.
KilroyTheVeg writes "The Mercury News reports that the California Attorney General, Bill Lockyer, filed suit against Internet marketer PW Marketing LLC, accusing the company of illegally spamming millions of Californians. The Story is here and the Sidney Morning Herald also has the story here. The suit named PW Marketing LLC (note:subpoena in link is third one down the page) and its owners Paul Willis and Claudia Griffins defendants in the suit which seeks "at least" $US2 million from them for allegedly flouting several state consumer protection laws banning spam mail. All I can say is Make 'em pay, it's the only way to hurt 'em where it counts."
( Read More... | 44 comments | Your Rights Online )
The Future of Game Dev (Except in St. Louis)
Posted by jamie on Monday September 30, @02:21PM
from the stanley-is-steamed dept.
ksquire writes "Ben Sawyer, of Digitalmill, has published an interesting article at Avault.com about the past, present, and future of game development. Sawyer argues that the game industry is going more and more toward 3rd party development tools and '4th party' publishing -- meaning that game developers are essentially tool developers for game enthusiasts to create mods (also using tools like Alienbrain or Discreet's GMAX). I'm really curious as to whether the Slashdot community thinks we'll see a future era of standardized game tools and developers courting modders, or if we'll continue to see more specialized game engines. Maybe a greater PC / Console split?" Meanwhile, over in St. Louis, the Free Expression Policy Project has filed an amici curiae brief by 33 media scholars saying that "Most studies and experiments on video games containing violent content have not found adverse effects." They're trying to stop the county from banning violent games -- Wired has the story.
( Read More... | 1009 bytes in body | 102 comments )
MIT OpenCourseWare Now Online
Posted by timothy on Monday September 30, @01:29PM
from the home-schooling dept.
peter303 writes "A sampling of MIT's OpenCourseWare selections appered online today. The courses cover a full range of departments, but only a couple apiece. The material ranges ranges from just syllabi and calendars to extensive on-line course notes and interative demos. To succeed, OpenCourseWare must also be an advantage to MIT faculty and students, as well as the outside world. I think this may be possible, because it gives a uniform appearance and access point for online material, plus tools to build these."
( Read More... | 111 comments )
Boston's Big Dig Delayed Because of Programmers?
Posted by chrisd on Monday September 30, @12:38PM
from the twelve-billion-beautiful-dollars dept.
dalewj writes "This article in the Boston Globe explains that Boston's Big Dig will be ready to open on time, if the software developers and cable layers can get their act together." Turns out honeywell's software isn't quite ready.
( Read More... | 185 comments )
New Trailer For The Two Towers
Posted by timothy on Monday September 30, @11:49AM
from the admirable dept.
Drakkar writes "As most of you know, the new trailer for the Two Towers was online last night for AOL users, but the link was given on the official site, LordofTheRings.net. It's in real player format. A new trailer with higher quality will be up tonight, midnight ET. This new piece of film is awesome. (the song at the end of the trailer isn't from the TTT soundtrack, it's from the movie Requiem for a Dream)" xTK-421x points to more links: "Now available is the new 3 minute trailer for Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. Available here in MOV and here in RM. Reported first at Aint It Cool News."
( Read More... | 258 comments )
Public-Domain Bookmobile Hits the Road
Posted by jamie on Monday September 30, @11:00AM
from the draft-behind-it-for-extra-bandwidth dept.
At Belle Haven Elementary School in Palo Alto, right about... *now*, the Internet Archive Bookmobile is starting its ten-day, cross-country trip to the Supreme Court. They're putting the hammer down (itinerary) (blog) to make it to Ohio for the Bookmobile Conference. Then they'll drive into Washington, D.C. on Oct. 8, the day before the nine Justices hear the copyright-extension case Eldred v. Ashcroft. The contraption is a Ford Aerostar with decals, satellite dish, wireless LAN, laptops... and a printer and binder to do on-demand printing of any of the thousands of public domain books on the internet. (The webpage says 20,000 but the decals claim 1,000,000... maybe they have 50 fonts
( Read More... | 154 comments )
Interviews: Ask Dr. Vinton Cerf About the Internet
Posted by Roblimo on Monday September 30, @10:00AM
from the more-honorary-degrees-than-some-people-have-socks dept.
If anyone can claim to have "invented the Internet," (or at least to have co-invented it) it's Vint Cerf, who never makes this claim himself. But he's certainly had a hand in shaping most of what we call "the Internet" today, and is now working on taking the Internet or something like it to Mars and other planets. A Google Search for "Vint Cerf" brings up thousands of responses, so you should have no trouble coming up with a unique, interesting question for him. (As is usual with Slashdot interviews, we'll send 10 of the top-moderated questions to Dr. Cerf about 24 hours after this post, and publish his answers shortly after he gets them back to us.)
( Read More... | 239 comments | Interviews )
Developers: GNU/Hurd Gets POSIX Threads
Posted by Hemos on Monday September 30, @09:28AM
from the hurding-instincts dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Neal Walfield announced the first release of RMGPT, which is (or rather, aspires to one day be) a complete, portable implementation of IEEE Std 1003.1-2001 threads also known as POSIX threads. With this new pthreads library, it will soon be possible to run complex software packages on the Hurd, including the GNOME and KDE desktops, the OpenOffice suite, and the Mozilla web browser. Find more information here, including the humorous meaning behind RMGPT, and insight into a future Hurd release..."
( Read More... | 333 comments | Developers )
Resume Tips For Jobs
Posted by Hemos on Monday September 30, @08:35AM
from the get-yer-job-on dept.
JerseyTom writes "SAGEWire reports that with the economy speeding up, more and more people are freshening up their resumés. They've printed an article by Tom Limoncelli, co-author of TPoSaNA, that offers specific advice for geeks writing resumes." 'Course, I'm not sure how much I believe the economy speeding up - but still good information.,
( Read More... | 459 comments )
Developers: Undelete In Linux
Posted by Hemos on Monday September 30, @07:33AM
from the using-the-tools dept.
Manuel Arriaga writes "[To the editors: I am not a professional programmer, nor will I ever be one. My income does not depend on my computing/programming skills, and hopefully it never will. So promoting free software I wrote does not help me in any financial way, no matter how indirect. libtrash is free software (GPL2), and I distribute it for free from my website. I have nothing to gain from the increased exposure, except for knowing that I am helping others. And I know slashdot isn't freshmeat... With that out of the way:] I have seen this topic discussed in the LKML multiple times by now, and many more people asking in the newsgroups why "I can't recover my deleted file on GNU/Linux". Here is my answer to that question. libtrash gives Linux a real "trash can". And it has been doing so (with varying degrees of stability) for more than one year now. If you consider it appropriate, make this information public on slashdot."
( Read More... | 582 comments | Developers )
AOL: Lindows Is Misleading People
Posted by Hemos on Monday September 30, @06:41AM
from the don't-believe-the-hype dept.
jgeelan writes "According to this breaking news item, AOL has apparently said over the weekend that it is going to ask Lindows to change its promotional material after concluding that Lindows is misleading people into thinking that it has a strategic relationship with AOL."
( Read More... | 147 comments )
Red Hat 8.0 Reviewed
Posted by Hemos on Monday September 30, @06:01AM
from the reviews-in-the-news dept.
Jon writes "Eugenia from OSNews is giving Red Hat 8.0 a run for its money. She posted a very detailed and balanced review for the new version of Red Hat, which aims to be a "business desktop". Very interesting article and discussion over at OSNews." Several people also sent in the stories from InternetNews as well as LinuxPlanet.
( Read More... | 337 comments )
Patent Office Proposes Reform
Posted by Hemos on Monday September 30, @05:26AM
from the reform-themselves dept.
leabre writes "The NY Times (subscription required) is running a story about how the Patent and trademark office is trying to reform itself. Among some of the reforms sought, is higher fees for the initial processing fee, higher fees for more than 20 claims, higher fees for the more work the examiners have to due (lower fees for less work and fewer claims), 2000 more examiners, and required continued relevance of the examiner in their field (certification and re-certification). My favorite quote "...Mr. Rogan says excessive claims not only slow patent processing but contribute to poor-quality patents." They are trying to crack down on abundant claims and too-technical jargon which they claim overworks the examiners, reduces the quality of the patent, and other things. Worth a read."
( Read More... | 144 comments )
MX700 Cordless Optical Mouse w/Charger
Posted by michael on Monday September 30, @04:44AM
from the still-pumped-from-using-the-mouse dept.
dkgamez writes ""To make a long story short, here I am, with my dream - a cordless-optical-rechargeable mouse. You can't imagine how good I feel right now.""
( Read More... | 178 comments )
The First Automotive Easter Egg?
Posted by Hemos on Monday September 30, @01:32AM
from the burn-out-the-engine dept.
automandc writes "The October dead-tree issue of Popular Science is reporting that the new BMW M3 contains what they are calling the "first automotive easter egg" in its transmission control software. Apparently, the proper combination of commands to the electronically controlled manual transmission will cause the car to rev up to 4000rpm and drop the clutch (premitting burnout, which is normally impossible). According to the article, use of the feature more than 15 times voids the warranty in Eurpoe. Other limitations of the "acceleration-assist" feature are discussed in this Car and Driver article. According to popsci, U.S. laws won't allow the warranty limitation, so the U.S. version of the software only revs to 1500rpm, but dealers will install the european software if you ask. The only other mention I could find on the web is here."
( Read More... | 332 comments )
UCSB Bans Windows NT/2000 in the Dorms
Posted by chrisd on Monday September 30, @12:28AM
from the you've-got-to-be-kidding-me dept.
nick58b writes "The people in charge of the networks for all of the on-campus dorms at UCSB banned the use of Windows NT and 2000 on their networks citing security and network problems associated with them. While there are problems with NT/2000, Windows 98 and ME computers are still permitted. Students using these are "recommended" to upgrade to XP Home Edition. In other news, sales of Windows XP are way up at the campus bookstore."
( Read More... | 463 comments )
Secret Service Goes War Driving
Posted by michael on Sunday September 29, @10:35PM
from the dirty-job-but-someone-has-to-do-it dept.
JSC writes "Looks like the Secret Service is taking a page from the WarDriving handbook. Your tax dollars at work includes springing for the Pringles can for the antenna."
( Read More... | 134 comments )