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      The Slashdot Firehose is a collaborative system designed to allow users to assist our editors in the story selection process. The hose contains submissions, RSS Feeds, journals and Slashdot stories, each color-coded along the color spectrum to indicate popularity. Red is hot, violet is not. Try tagging and voting on the entries below, and by using the 'feedback' menus. Please send comments to hose at cmdrtaco dot net but be forgiving of beta code!

        Growth Potential Versus Salary[->] 2008-05-11 18:32 Dave Saunders

      Submitted by Dave Saunders on Sunday May 11, @06:32PM
      Dave Saunders writes "Managing your career requires new tools like VisualCV.com in order to stand out and manage your career and your results will be even better if you put your needs into perspective and work strategically towards your goals."
      http://davesaunders.newsvine.com/_news/2008/05/11/1481865-managing-your-career-growth-potential-versus-salary
      + -
       [+] submission, news, editorial
      Submitted by aacc1313 on Sunday May 11, @06:20PM
      aacc1313 writes "An article that details how Open Source is being hijacked by Microsoft and the sort via 'Shared Source' licenses and how Open Source licenses have become so much more confusing. From the article, "The confusion stems from the fact that Microsoft's 'shared source' program includes three proprietary licenses as well, whose names are similar in some ways to the open-source licenses. Thus, while the Microsoft Reciprocal License has been approved by OSI, the Microsoft Limited Reciprocal License (Ms-LRL) is not, because it allows users to modify and redistribute the software only on the Windows platform" and "The 'shared source' program was and is Microsoft's way of fighting the open source world, allowing customers to inspect Microsoft source code without giving those customers the right to modify or redistribute the code. In other words, "shared source" is not open source, and shouldn't be confused with it.""
      http://ostatic.com/161583-blog/read-the-fine-print-on-open-source-software
      + -
       [+] submission, linux, microsoft

        Steps to Starting a Small Business -article[->] 2008-05-11 23:08 D Sterlin

      Submitted by D Sterlin on 11-05-08 23:08
      + -
       [+] submission, business , feedback

        XP SP3 crashes AMD machines 2008-05-11 18:03 Stony Stevenson

      Submitted by Stony Stevenson on Sunday May 11, @06:03PM
      Stony Stevenson writes "The long-awaited and much-delayed update to Windows XP, Service Pack 3, is giving owners of machines with AMD hardware headaches aplenty it seems. The problems, which first arose just one day after the push, have been causing lots of noise on Microsoft support sites and angry user blogs. Angry have reported that, after the installation, it is not even possible to boot in safe mode, usually the last resort before setting up a repeated forehead/screen interface. It appears to affect only AMD-equipped PCs sold by Hewlett-Packard. "The problem is that HP, apparently along with other OEMs, deploys the same image to Intel-based computers that they do to AMD-based computers," said Jesper Johansson, a former program manager for security policy at Microsoft."
      + -
       [+] submission, microsoft
      Submitted by ajsbsd.net on 11-05-08 23:01
      + -
       [+] submission, bsd, os , feedback
      Submitted by Bob Loblaw on 11-05-08 23:01
      + -
       [+] submission, tech, wireless , feedback

        Technology: Changes In Store For PHP V6 2008-05-11 17:47

      Posted by kdawson on Sunday May 11, @05:47PM
      from the ready-or-not dept.
      An anonymous reader sends in an IBM DeveloperWorks article detailing the changes coming in PHP V6 — from namespaces, to Web 2.0 built-ins, to a few features that are being removed.
      + -
       [+] story, tech, php, upgrades, phpsucks

        Technology: VIA Releases 16K-Line FOSS Framebuffer Driver 2008-05-11 16:41

      Posted by kdawson on Sunday May 11, @04:41PM
      from the can-only-get-better-from-here dept.
      billybob2 writes "VIA has released 16,434 Lines Of Free & Open Source code that enables Linux natively to use the framebuffer on VIA's graphics chipsets. This comes a month after VIA announced that it will provide Open-Source drivers and documentation on its Web site so that its hardware will work out of the box with Linux distributions. This gives VIA-powered systems that come pre-installed with Linux — such as the gPC, 15.4" gBook, CloudBook, and Zonbu — the ability to output graphics through digital connections such as HDMI, and probably makes them the best-supported framebuffers Linux has ever had. Look forward to documentation and X.org drivers from VIA as well in the near future."
      + -
       [+] story, tech, graphics, linux, omg

        Developers: What Is the Oldest Code Written Still Running? 2008-05-11 15:30

      Posted by kdawson on Sunday May 11, @03:30PM
      from the when-dinosaurs-ruled-the-datacenter dept.
      Consul writes "What is the oldest piece of code that is still in use today, that has not actually been retyped or reimplemented in some way? By 'piece of code,' I'm of course referring to a complete algorithm, and not just a single line." The question would have a different answer if emulation, in multiple layers, is allowed.
      + -
       [+] story, developers, programming, askslashdot

        Personal data of 6 million chileans released 2008-05-11 15:06 nbarriga

      Submitted by nbarriga on Sunday May 11, @03:06PM
      nbarriga writes "Last friday night, personal data on six million chileans was released to the public(in spanish) by an unidentified local superhero. The data includes: RUT (social security number), full name, address, phone number, email address, current university/high school, date of birth. Also a "secret" number that allows anyone to track where the person has been in the public transport system of Santiago, Chile. The chilean government spokesman has said "al señor hacker hay que pillarlo:("we have to find this mister Hacker").

      Most of this data was already available to whoever was willing to pay US$30.000 to the government. In words of our superhero:

      The idea of this database is:
      a) To show how badly protected data is in Chile
      b) As nobody is willing to protect this information, it will be public for everyone

      Ending his post with Orwell's quote "Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious.""
      + -
       [+] submission, yro, security

        Hardware: DDR3 RAM Explained 2008-05-11 14:23

      Posted by kdawson on Sunday May 11, @02:23PM
      from the faster-and-then-some dept.
      Das Capitolin sends us to Benchmark Reviews for an in-depth feature on DDR3 memory that begins: "These are uncertain financial times we live in today, and the rise and fall of our economy has had [a] direct [effect] on consumer spending. It has already been one full year now that DDR3 has been patiently waiting for the enthusiast community to give it proper consideration, yet [its] success is still undermined by misconceptions and high price. Benchmark Reviews has been testing DDR3 more actively than anyone... Sadly, it might take an article like this to open the eyes of my fellow hardware enthusiast[s] and overclocker[s], because it seems like DDR3 is the technology nobody wants [badly] enough to learn about. Pity, because overclocking is what it's all about."
      + -
       [+] story, hardware, hardhack, storage, !dancedancerevolution, toomanysquarebrackets

        BBC says piracy is piracy[->] 2008-05-11 14:02 identity0

      Submitted by identity0 on Sunday May 11, @02:02PM
      identity0 writes "Most people who call copyright infringement 'piracy' defend it on the basis of historical use in that context, but BBC reporter Nick Rankin goes one step further: he draws a direct parallel between Somali pirates who kidnapped and held ransom a fishing crew, and a publisher of a pirated version of his own book. While this is probably not the official stance of the BBC, you might want to drop them a note about this outrageous simile. Or just post pirate jokes in this discussion."
      http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/7392623.stm
      + -
       [+] submission, news, media

        Technology: Developing New Materials With Space Science 2008-05-11 13:12

      Posted by Soulskill on Sunday May 11, @01:12PM
      from the think-outside-the-gravity-well dept.
      Scientists at the European Space Agency are using techniques inspired by their experience with outer space to make new and better products here on Earth. Certain compounds and alloys which are not normally viable can be made in different ways once forces such as gravity are removed from the equation. From BBC News: "The near absence of gravity (microgravity) has a profound influence on the way molten metals come together to form intermetallics and 'standard' alloys. With no 'up' and 'down' in the space environment, a melt doesn't rise and sink as it would at the planet's surface and that means solidification can turn out very differently. 'Gravity induces a lot of segregation of the elements,' explains IMPRESS scientist Dr Guillaume Reinhart. 'For instance, tantalum and niobium are heavy atoms and in doing the solidification process on the ground, they will segregate in different places and produce a very heterogeneous material. If you do this in microgravity, you obtain a very homogenous material because you prevent separation; and you have a much more efficient material, mechanically.'"
      + -
       [+] story, tech, space, science, technology

        A sailing robot to cross the Atlantic 2008-05-11 12:46 Roland Piquepaille

      Submitted by Roland Piquepaille on Sunday May 11, @12:46PM
      Roland Piquepaille writes "The Times of London reports that seven robotic craft will compete in a race across the Atlantic Ocean in October 2008. One of them, 'Pinta the robot sailing boat,' has been designed at Aberystwyth University, Wales, UK. Pinta is expected to sail for three months at a maximum speed of four knots (about 4.6 mph or 7.4 kilometers per hour). Its designers hope the Pinta will become the first robot to cross an ocean using only wind power. This 150-kilogram sailing robot costs only £2,500 (US $4,900 or 3,200). The transatlantic race will start between September 29 and October 5, 2008 from Viana do Castelo, Portugal. The winner will be the first boat to reach a finishing line between the Northern tip of St. Lucia and the Southern tip of Martinique in the Caribbean. But read more for additional details and a picture of a robot sailing boat."
      + -
       [+] submission, robot

        Linux: How the NSA Took Linux To the Next Level 2008-05-11 12:08

      Posted by Soulskill on Sunday May 11, @12:08PM
      from the not-by-beating-the-end-boss-of-the-previous-level dept.
      An anonymous reader brings us IBM Developerworks' recent analysis of how the NSA built SELinux to withstand attacks. The article shows us some of the relevant kernel architecture and compares SELinux to a few other approaches. We've discussed SELinux in the past. Quoting: "If you have a program that responds to socket requests but doesn't need to access the file system, then that program should be able to listen on a given socket but not have access to the file system. That way, if the program is exploited in some way, its access is explicitly minimized. This type of control is called mandatory access control (MAC). Another approach to controlling access is role-based access control (RBAC). In RBAC, permissions are provided based on roles that are granted by the security system. The concept of a role differs from that of a traditional group in that a group represents one or more users. A role can represent multiple users, but it also represents the permissions that a set of users can perform. SELinux adds both MAC and RBAC to the GNU/Linux operating system."
      + -
       [+] story, linux, security, government, os, selinux

        IT: The 25-Year-Old BSD Bug 2008-05-11 11:05

      Posted by Soulskill on Sunday May 11, @11:05AM
      from the better-late-than-never dept.
      sproketboy writes with news that a developer named Marc Balmer has recently fixed a bug in a bit of BSD code which is roughly 25 years old. In addition to the OSnews summary, you can read Balmer's comments and a technical description of the bug. "This code will not work as expected when seeking to the second entry of a block where the first has been deleted: seekdir() calls readdir() which happily skips the first entry (it has inode set to zero), and advance to the second entry. When the user now calls readdir() to read the directory entry to which he just seekdir()ed, he does not get the second entry but the third. Much to my surprise I not only found this problem in all other BSDs or BSD derived systems like Mac OS X, but also in very old BSD versions. I first checked 4.4BSD Lite 2, and Otto confirmed it is also in 4.2BSD. The bug has been around for roughly 25 years or more."
      + -
       [+] story, it, bug, bsd, balmer, openbsd, !ballmer

        Science: Creating Designer Isotopes 2008-05-11 10:04

      Posted by Soulskill on Sunday May 11, @10:04AM
      from the better-than-the-walmart-isotopes dept.
      Roland Piquepaille writes "According to a Michigan State University (MSU) news release, 'Made-to-order isotopes hold promise on science's frontier,' nuclear physicists can now start a new career as isotope designers. These scientists can build specific rare isotopes to solve scientific problems and open doors to new technologies. The lead researcher says this approach has already given us the Positron Emission Tomography (PET) scan technology. He's now going further, saying that he wants to build objects 100,000 times smaller than the atomic nucleus. He calls this 'femtotechnology.' Also available are additional details and pictures of the tools used for this kind of research, picked from a 415-page design paper." Update: 05/11 14:30 GMT by SS: Readers have noted that the summary inaccurately portrays the scale of the 'femtotechnology.' The MSU researcher refers to "the capacity to construct objects on an even more minute scale, that of the atomic nucleus 100,000 times smaller."
      + -
       [+] story, science, news, technology, isotopes, gotopes
      Submitted by vuo on Sunday May 11, @09:09AM
      vuo writes "For the first time in the European Union, an Åland court has ordered an Internet connection to be cut because of P2P use. Åland Islands is a small, Swedish-speaking, autonomously governed island province, with about 27.000 inhabitants, under the sovereignity of Finland. An employee of the local provincial government had used a P2P program using the government's Internet connection. The copyright interest group TTVK approached the court, and without consulting the operator, the court ordered the connection to be cut. The connection was quickly brought on line after the matter had been settled with the local administration. The decision has been criticized by Electronic Frontier Finland, because it resembles a denial-of-service attack and is a potential information security threat. Effi's president, Tapani Tarvainen, notes: "What if it was a hospital or other institution, where cutting connections would have caused real grave danger?" He also says that the courts simply lack the know-how, and the law allowing such orders (Lex Karpela, a Finnish national law not required by EU directive) needs to be repealed. TTVK's and Åland administration's take on the issue is that P2P use in an intranet is necessarily a risk to information security, citing examples from Pfizer and Citigroup. (Note: Google has recently introduced Finnish to Language Tools.)"
      http://www.yle.fi/uutiset/24h/id90377.html
      + -
       [+] submission, yro, court

        Technology: NSA Takes On West Point In Security Exercise 2008-05-11 09:00

      Posted by Soulskill on Sunday May 11, @09:00AM
      from the with-friends-like-these dept.
      Wired is running a story about a recent security exercise in which the NSA attacked networks set up by various US military academies. The Army's network scored the highest, put together using Linux and FreeBSD by cadets at West Point. Quoting: "Even with a solid network design and passable software choices, there was an element of intuitiveness required to defend against the NSA, especially once it became clear the agency was using minor, and perhaps somewhat obvious, attacks to screen for sneakier, more serious ones. 'One of the challenges was when they see a scan, deciding if this is it, or if it's a cover,' says [instructor Eric] Dean. Spotting 'cover' attacks meant thinking like the NSA -- something Dean says the cadets did quite well. 'I was surprised at their creativity.' Legal limitations were a surprising obstacle to a realistic exercise. Ideally, the teams would be allowed to attack other schools' networks while also defending their own. But only the NSA, with its arsenal of waivers, loopholes, special authorizations (and heaven knows what else) is allowed to take down a U.S. network."
      + -
       [+] story, tech, military, networking, nsa, security, echomirage

        IT: Spam Filtering For Small/Medium Business? 2008-05-11 07:58

      Posted by kdawson on Sunday May 11, @07:58AM
      from the dumpster-diving dept.
      or_is_it writes "The company I work for has been growing dramatically and I've been charged with the task of being the gatekeeper for our GFI Spam filters. This involves manually inspecting the subject line/to/from for all caught messages in each filter rule folder. For a company of about 50 people, in one day the number of spam messages can exceed 2,000. Neglect it for a day and you end up with quite a task on your hands. I've made the rules lax enough so important messages can go through, along with a few stray spams, for which I get bitched at. Tighten the rules up and then maybe an important time-sensitive email never gets to its intended recipient, and I get bitched at. Manually reading through all those subject lines is supposed to prevent that, but I'm only human and genuine messages can easily get overlooked. How do larger organizations deal with the spam issue? I can't imagine having one centralized person manually inspecting everyone's junk-mail header is the optimal solution. Purchasing a different commercial mail filter product is a possibility, but I'd like to hear some anecdotal evidence before jumping ship."
      + -
       [+] story, it, spam,

        Technology: Zeppelins Over California 2008-05-11 04:45

      Posted by kdawson on Sunday May 11, @04:45AM
      from the oh-the-humanity dept.
      It seems that Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow may not have been completely off the mark. According to Venture Beat, Airship Ventures has raised capital sufficient to build their first Zeppelin NT (Microsoft Windows reference purely coincidental). The airship will offer rides for up to 12 passengers out of the old Navy Blimp hangars at Moffett Field in Silicon Valley. Airship Ventures notes that airships are already flying safely in Japan and Germany, so now the US will have its chance. Rides will cost from $250 to $500 per person. Esther Dyson is one of the investors.

        New Internet search engine A-Mixed-World[->] 2008-05-11 03:13 AMixedWorld

      Submitted by AMixedWorld on Sunday May 11, @03:13AM
      AMixedWorld writes "A-Mixed-World.Com or AMW is a new internet search engine. AMW also provides Free source code(perl, visual basic, c/c++, assembly..), Games, Music, and Magic tricks. Send your source code in so everyone can learn from it. Free E-mail and Web Hosting soon."
      http://www.a-mixed-world.com/
      + -
       [+] submission, internet

        Science: Space History Footage In HD 2008-05-11 02:16

      Posted by kdawson on Sunday May 11, @02:16AM
      from the godspeed-john-glenn dept.
      The Discovery Channel has done a deal with NASA to enhance old film footage from the space program up to the standards of HD. Discovery will air, in HD, a 6-part special called "When We Left Earth," beginning June 8. Judging by the trailer it should be pretty spectacular, a good introduction to the wonders of space exploration for a new generation. After the show airs, NASA gets the improved footage for their archives.
      + -
       [+] story, science, tv, nasa, space,

        Turok and PI "brilliant" says Hawking 2008-05-11 01:32 ModernPhysics

      Submitted by ModernPhysics on Sunday May 11, @01:32AM
      ModernPhysics writes "It's been called a scientific coup for Canada. Neil Turok is becoming the new head of Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics — a research center where international physicists gather to contemplate and calculate new ideas about space, time, matter and information. Stephen Hawking says "He has been a colleague of mine for a number of years and I have been very impressed by his insight and originality. The combination of Neil and PI is brilliant and holds great promise for the future." The appointment of Dr. Turok was webcast and can be seen at www.perimeterinstitute.ca"
      + -
       [+] submission, space

        Entertainment: "Back To My Mac" Catches a Thief 2008-05-10 23:45

      Posted by kdawson on Saturday May 10, @11:45PM
      from the don't-mess-with-an-apple-grrrl dept.
      robipilot writes "Mac stolen, Mac comes online, owner connects using 'Back to My Mac,' owner takes picture of culprit, and voila, criminal caught. OK, it wasn't quite that simple, but here's an interesting story of using some built-in technology on the Mac to recover a stolen laptop."
      + -
       [+] story, entertainment, humor, apple, purloining, cello, registrationrequired

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