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Linux

Submission + - Clock-For-Clock, Nouveau Can Compete With NVIDIA's Driver (phoronix.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Benchmarks were done of the stock Nouveau open-source graphics driver, the official NVIDIA proprietary driver, and the proprietary driver when it was underclocked to match the clock frequencies as used by the reverse-engineered Nouveau driver.

The Nouveau driver can be rather competitive with the NVIDIA binary driver when both Linux GPU drivers are controlling the hardware at the lower boot frequencies for the graphics cards.
Security

Submission + - Google security engineer issues Sophos warning (cso.com.au)

Submitted by
angry tapir
angry tapir writes: "Google security engineer Tavis Ormandy discovered several flaws in Sophos antivirus and says the product should be kept away from high value information systems unless the company can avoid easy mistakes and issue patches faster. Ormandy has released a scathing 30-page analysis (PDF) “Sophail: Applied attacks against Sophos Antivirus”, in which he details several flaws “caused by poor development practices and coding standards”, topped off by the company’s sluggishly response to the warning he had working exploits for those flaws. One of the exploits Ormandy details is for a flaw in Sophos‘ on-access scanner, which could be used to unleash a worm on a network simply by targeting a company receiving an attack email via Outlook. Although the example he provided was on a Mac, the “wormable, pre-authentication, zero-interaction, remote root” affected all platforms running Sophos. (Ormandy released the paper as an independent researcher, not in his role as a Google employee.)"

Submission + - Imagination Technology buys MIPS (barrons.com)

Submitted by HalWasRight
HalWasRight writes: After years of struggle, MIPS Technologies — the original RISC processor company — is being sold to Imagination Technologies, best known for its popular mobile GPUs. Part of the deal included MIPS divesting much of its non-processor related patents to a group that includes ARM. This deal could change the landscape in the battle for mobile sockets.
Medicine

Submission + - HIV Vaccine Safe Enough To Pass Phase 1 Human Trials (communications.uwo.ca)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The first human applied clinical study (SAV CT 01) using a genetically modified killed whole-virus vaccine (SAV001-H) to evaluate its safety and tolerability was initiated in March 2012. This study is a randomized, observer-blinded, placebo-controlled study of killed whole HIV-1 vaccine (SAV001-H) following intramuscular (IM) administration. Infected men and women, 18-50 years of age, have been enrolled in this study and randomized into two treatment groups to administer killed whole HIV-1 vaccine (SAV001-H) or placebo. Sumagen announced today the patient enrollment has progressed smoothly and there have been no adverse effects observed including local reactions, signs/symptoms and laboratory toxicities after SAV001-H injection in all enrolled patients to date. With these interim results, the SAV001-H has proven safety and tolerability in humans and given Sumagen confidence for the next clinical trials to prove its immunogenicity and efficacy evaluation.
The Internet

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: What is the best way to become a rural ISP? 1

Submitted by
hawkeyeMI
hawkeyeMI writes: "I live in a small, rural town nestled in some low hills. Our town has access to only one DSL provider, and it's pretty terrible. However, a regional fiber project is just being completed, and some of the fiber is in fact running directly past my house.

Currently, there are no last-mile providers in my area, and the regional project only considers itself a middle-mile provider, and will only provide service to last-mile providers. Assuming this will not be my day job, that the local populace is rather poor, and that because of the hills, line-of-sight service will be difficult, how could I set myself up as an ISP? I have considered WiFi mesh networking, and even running wires on the power/telephone polls, but the required licensing and other issues are foreign to me. What would you do?"
Advertising

Submission + - A Trail of Clicks, Culminating in Conflict (nytimes.com)

Submitted by NotSanguine
NotSanguine writes: Technology companies are up in arms about the FTC's pending rules change which would require explicit parental permission allowing websites to gather a wide range of data on children 13 and under.

From the NYT Article:


“If adopted, the effect of these new rules would be to slow the deployment of applications that provide tremendous benefits to children, and to slow the economic growth and job creation generated by the app economy,” Catherine A. Novelli, vice president of worldwide government affairs at Apple, wrote in comments to the agency.

But would that be a bad thing? As reported in the New York Times last week, Matt Richtel of the NYT writes:

There is a widespread belief among teachers that students’ constant use of digital technology is hampering their attention spans and ability to persevere in the face of challenging tasks, according to two surveys of teachers being released on Thursday.

So, will the new FTC rules end up helping children (by enhancing their privacy and, if industry pundits are right, reducing the amount of content available online for children — thus enhancing their attention spans), or will the negative effects on corporations have as deleterious an effect on the economy as to measurably reduce the quality of education?
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft Shutting Down Messenger (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by
Entropy98
Entropy98 writes: "Windows Live Messenger will be shutdown by March 2013 after nearly 13 years so that Microsoft can focus on Skype its recent $8.5bn acquisition. No word on whether users will be able to transfer their WLM accounts to Skype."
Government

Submission + - Voting Machines Should Be as Secure as Slot Machines (networkcomputing.com) 2

Submitted by
CowboyRobot
CowboyRobot writes: "The problems with elections in the U.S. are well-known, yet we seem to need reminding every four years about how bad it's getting.
Howard Marks at NetworkComputing has an essay, pointing out exactly what we need for reliable, accurate voting:
"A valid audit trail, such as a printed ballot the voter can verify; A mechanism for recounting the printed ballots on a machine made by another vendor so the results can be compared; and An audit of the software by an independent third party to insure that the software accurately records and tabulates the voter's true intent."
He then looks at his own experience working with casinos, who would never tolerate the kinds of problems voting machines have. So why not take a lesson from gaming machines and build voting machines the same way?
"The slot machine industry is several times bigger, and significantly more competitive, than the voting machine industry. If IGT, Bally's and Aristocrat can compete for the slot market, then Diebold and Election Systems and Software can stand the same level of scrutiny.""

Submission + - MIT Develops Open Source Game A Slower Speed of Light (muktware.com)

Submitted by sfcrazy
sfcrazy writes: Are you a science buff who is curious how the world would look like if you travel at the speed of light? Will it twist everything around you as the light from different objects reach you at a different interval as per the special theory of relativity? How will everything look like if the speed of light is slowed down? This is what an open source game developed by MIT Game Lab tried to do.
Cloud

Submission + - Cloud Computing Needs to Embrace the Linux Model: Rackspace CTO (slashdot.org)

Submitted by
Nerval's Lobster
Nerval's Lobster writes: "Companies are rushing to lock customer data into their specific walled gardens, Rackspace CTO John Engates argued in an interview after a Cloud Expo keynote in Silicon Valley. That makes it more important than ever to ensure that the cloud undergirding all the various functions of daily life remains open. “These companies have grown up in the era of enterprise software and they’re addicted to enterprise software margins, magnitudes more profitable than what we make as a hosting company,” he said. “Now you have software companies embracing cloud computing and taking the same enterprise-software playbook they’ve had for years and trying to run it in the cloud.”

Ultimately, he added, cloud computing needs to adopt the Linux model. “Linux opened it up and gave you vendor choice, with numerous vendors bringing their own strengths to the table.”"
Google

Submission + - Why Google Went Offline Today and a Bit about How the Internet Works

Submitted by mc10
mc10 writes: Google went temporarily offline for about 27 minutes at around 6:24pm PST / 02:24 UTC (5 Nov. 2012 PST / 6 Nov. 2012 UTC), when CloudFlare realized that Google's services went offline. CloudFlare explains how the Internet is glued together by the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), and how Moratel, an Indonesian ISP, was announcing a network that wasn't actually behind them.
Privacy

Submission + - The Privacy Illusion

Submitted by LoLobey
LoLobey writes: Scott Adams has an entertaining entry on his Dilbert Blog about perceptions of privacy-
“It has come to my attention that many of my readers in the United States believe they have the right to privacy because of something in the Constitution. That is an unsupportable view. A more accurate view is that the government divides the details of your life into two categories:
1. Stuff they don't care about.
2. Stuff they can find out if they have a reason.
”
Written in response to some reader comments on another entry about privacy guardians and how swell life would be if we voluntarily gave up certain personal info.
Do slashdotters need privacy given that they don’t have it now?
Space

Submission + - Superman's Home Star System Discovered (newscientist.com)

Submitted by kmoser
kmoser writes: Everybody's favorite astronomer Neil deGrasse Tyson makes an appearance in upcoming Superman #14, in which Superman visits the Hayden Planetarium to view his original planet. Meanwhile, back in reality, DC Comics explains that NdGT has used his "astronomical" powers to select the red dwarf LHS 2520 as the most likely real-life red star to fit with Superman's back story.
AI

Submission + - Neuromorphic Algorithms Allow MAVs to Avoid Obstacles with Single Camera (ieee.org)

Submitted by aurtherdent2000
aurtherdent2000 writes: IEEE Spectrum magazine says that Cornell University has developed neuromorphic algorithms that enable MAVs to avoid obstacles using just a single camera. This is especially relevant for small and cheap robots, because all you need is a single camera, minimal processing power, and even more minimal battery power. Now, will we see more of the drones and aerial vehicles flying all around us?

Link from Voice of America: http://www.voanews.com/content/robot_smart_bird/1538352.html

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: Extreme cable management, any ideas? 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: I am not a fan of wireless except for wifi to a notebook, but have gotten so frustrated by the vast amounts of tangled cables around my computers: I have two machines, four monitors, multiple external hard drives, cable modem, network switch, router, usb hubs — everything requires power AND connection to the other devices. The tangles and tangles make it almost impossible to move anything without spending twenty or thirty minutes under the desk. I'd rather untie balled up fishing line than try to snake a monitor cable out from some thirty or so other wires. Anyone have good ways to prevent this?
Cloud

Submission + - Gate One 1.1 Released: Run vim In Your Browser (liftoffsoftware.com)

Submitted by
Riskable
Riskable writes: "Version 1.1 of Gate One (HTML5 terminal emulator/SSH client) was just released (download). New features include security enhancements, major performance improvements, mobile browser support, improved terminal emulation, automatic syntax highlighting of syslog messages, PDFs can now be captured/displayed just like images, Python 3 support, Internet Explorer (10) support, and quite a lot more (full release notes). There's also a new demo where you can try out vim in your browser, play terminal games (nethack, vitetris, adventure, zangband, battlestar, greed, robotfindskitten, and hangman), surf the web in lynx, and a use full suite of IPv6-enabled network tools (ping, traceroute, nmap, dig, and a domain name checker)."
Science

Submission + - Nanowires Improve Graphene Conductance (acs.org)

Submitted by
MTorrice
MTorrice writes: "Researchers may have found a way to turn one-atom-thick sheets of graphene into a promising material for making transparent electrodes needed in solar cells and displays. Transparent electrodes in today’s devices are made of indium tin oxide films. These films are typically 90% transparent and have a resistance of less than 100 ohms. But they are expensive and brittle. Graphene could be a stronger, lower-cost, and more bendable alternative. However, the resistance of a typical graphene sheet is usually more than 500 ohms. By integrating metal nanowires into conventionally grown graphene films, researchers lowered the films’ resistance. The resulting material is 94% transparent and has a resistance of 64 ohms."
Linux

Submission + - Nvidia Doubles Linux Driver Performance, Slips Steam Release date (theregister.co.uk)

Submitted by leppi
leppi writes: Nvidia has announced the steam beta for linux should be out today. They also annouced an increase in performance thanks to Valve and other partner contributions to the driver.

Nvidia said “Steam gaming platform that officially opened to gamers today” while announcing new Linux-optimised version of the R310 drivers for its GeForce graphics chips, including the new GTX 600 series. According to the chip maker, the drivers “double the performance and dramatically reduce game loading times” of Linux games — at least if a test comparing the new code with version 304.51 while running Valve’s Left 4 Dead 2 beta is anything to go by.

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