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  IT: Fake Tamiflu "Out-Spams Viagra On Web" on Friday July 03, @07:11PM

Posted by Soulskill on Friday July 03, @07:11PM
from the stiff-competition dept.
spam
cin62 writes "The number of Internet scammers offering fake versions of the anti-swine flu drug Tamiflu has surpassed those selling counterfeit Viagra, reports CNN. Since the H1N1 virus, also known as swine flu, was declared a global pandemic last month, there has been an increase in the number of Web sites and junk emails offering Tamiflu for sale. 'Every Web site that used to sell Viagra is now selling Tamiflu. We are pretty sure that the same people are making the Tamiflu as are making the Viagra,' said Director of Policy for the UK's Royal Pharmaceutical Society." This news fits in nicely with a report Wired ran a couple weeks ago about the hysteria behind H1N1.
Read More... 10 comments
news spam medicine ambrosia it spam story
Comments: 10
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  Technology: Source Code of Several Atari 7800 Games Released on Friday July 03, @06:22PM

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Friday July 03, @06:22PM
from the good-way-to-start-an-education dept.
programming
jadoon88 writes to share a series of old Atari 7800 games that have been unofficially open sourced. "Remember Dig Dug or Centipede or Robotron? They used to be favorites when Atari's 7800 series was still around. Since the era of those consoles is over, and a different world of interactive reality gaming has taken over, Atari has unofficially released source code of over 15 games for the coders and enthusiasts to admire the state-of-the-art (because this is what it was back then). During those times, nobody would have imagined in their wildest dreams the games that Atari's developers floated into the gaming thirsty market and instantly swept across continental boundaries. But things changed soon after that and a company once regarded as one of the most successful gaming console manufacturers and developers faded away in the pages of our technology's hall-of-fame."
Read More... 40 comments
software programming atari overfifteen tech tech programming story
Comments: 40
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  Ask Slashdot: How To Get Your Program Professionally Marketed? on Friday July 03, @05:30PM

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Friday July 03, @05:30PM
from the doesn't-twitter-solve-all-problems-everywhere-now? dept.
business
one-man orchestra writes "I'm the sole programmer of a small, multi-platform, commercial audio program (a spectrogram editor). After over 6 months on the market, I realized that the program would never just sell itself, and that I need some real marketing done for it. Being a one-man orchestra is becoming increasingly difficult; I only can devote so much time to marketing, my skills in that department are lacking, and I'd much rather spend more time coding. Despite my lackluster part-time marketing effort, I still manage to make a modest living out of the sales. My logical assumption is that with someone competent taking care of that part, revenue could greatly scale up. But what's the right way to go about doing this? What type of people/company do I need to contact? What to expect? What to look out for?"
Read More... 53 comments
business networking askslashdot business story
Comments: 53
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  Your Rights Online: Professor Gets 4 Years in Prison for Sharing Drone Plans With Students on Friday July 03, @04:38PM

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Friday July 03, @04:38PM
from the read-before-you-sign dept.
court
Hugh Pickens writes "Retired University of Tennessee Professor Dr. John Reece Roth has been sentenced to four years in prison after he allowed a Chinese graduate student to see sensitive information on Unmanned Air Vehicles (UAVs), also known as drones. In 2004, the company Roth helped found, Atmospheric Glow Technologies, won a US Air Force contract to develop a plasma actuator that could help reduce drag on the wings of drones, such as the ones the military uses. Under the contract, for which Roth was reportedly paid $6,000, he was prohibited from sharing sensitive data with foreign nationals. Despite warnings from his university's Export Control Officer, in 2006, Roth took a laptop containing sensitive plans with him on a lecture tour in China and also allowed graduate students Xin Dai of China and Sirous Nourgostar of Iran to work on the project. 'The illegal export of restricted military data represents a serious threat to national security,' says David Kris of the US Department of Justice. 'We know that foreign governments are actively seeking this information for their own military development. Today's sentence should serve as a warning to anyone who knowingly discloses restricted military data in violation of our laws.' During his trial, Roth testified that he was unaware that hiring the graduate students was a violation of his contract. 'This whole thing has not helped me, it has not helped the university,' said Roth. 'And it has probably not helped this country, either.'"
Read More... 156 comments
court education itar noforn idiots yro court story
Comments: 156
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  Science: Fermilab Detects "Doubly Strange" Particle on Friday July 03, @04:02PM

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Friday July 03, @04:02PM
from the they-don't-build-em-like-they-used-to dept.
math
DynaSoar writes "While its cousin/competitor site, the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, remains offline, Fermilab's Digital Hadron Calorimeter continues to produce significant results. Recently Fermilab announced discovery of the Omega-sub-b baryon, a 'doubly-strange' particle. This baryon, containing two strange quarks and one bottom quark, has six times the mass of a proton. 'The Omega-sub-b is the latest entry in the "periodic table of baryons." Baryons are particles formed of three quarks, the most common examples being the proton and neutron. ... The observation of this "doubly strange" particle, predicted by the Standard Model, is significant because it strengthens physicists' confidence in their understanding of how quarks form matter. In addition, it conflicts with a 2008 result announced by CDF's sister experiment, DZero. In August 2008, the DZero experiment announced its own observation of the Omega-sub-b based on a smaller sample of Tevatron data. This result contradicted some predictions of the Standard Model, suggesting a "new physics." The new result leads to the possibility that the prior results are not accurate.'"
Read More... 26 comments
science math omegaparticle doublystrange !caloriemeter science math story
Comments: 26
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  Your Rights Online: Copyright Should Encourage Derivative Works on Friday July 03, @03:47PM

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Friday July 03, @03:47PM
from the greed-is-a-powerful-drug dept.
news
Techdirt has an interesting look at copyright and the idea that an author is the originator of a new work. Instead, the piece suggests that all works are in some way based on the works of others (even our own copyright law), and the system should be much more encouraging of "remixing" work into new, unique experiences. "Friedman also points back to another recent post where he discusses the nature of content creation, based on a blog post by Rene Kita. In it, she points out that remixing and creating through collaboration and building on the works of others has always been the norm. It's what we do naturally. It's only in the last century or so, when we reached a means of recording, manufacturing and selling music — which was limited to just those with the machinery and capital to do it, that copyright was suddenly brought out to 'protect' such things."
Read More... 74 comments
news copyleft menga unamerican double yro news story
Comments: 74
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  Technology: Open Source Facing a Difficult Battle For Cloud Relevance on Friday July 03, @02:55PM

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Friday July 03, @02:55PM
from the someone-get-a-rock-and-a-sling dept.
software
A recent eulogy for open source's relevance to cloud computing by Redmonk analyst Stephen O'Grady caught the attention of Matt Asay, who breaks down the difficulty of this David and Goliath problem. "In a world where horsepower matters more than the software feeding those 'horses,' in terms of the entry cost to compete, and where big vendors like Amazon and Google are already divvying up the market, the odds of a small-fry, open-source start-up challenging 'Goliath' are slim. It's not a new argument: Nick Carr has been suggesting for some time that only a few, big companies can afford relevance in this hardware-intensive business. Given this fact, O'Grady thinks the best we can hope for (and he thinks it's pretty important) is 'a loose coalition or confederation of [open-source] projects and vendors that will together comprise an increasingly viable top to bottom alternative to some of the cloud providers today.' He includes projects like Puppet (Reductive Labs) and Hadoop in this mix, but is careful to point out that he doesn't see a full-fledged, open-source alternative seriously challenging the closed platforms of Google, Amazon, Salesforce, and the other mega-clouds."
Read More... 91 comments
software technology opensource swampcomputing !david tech software story
Comments: 91
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  Science: Phoenix Lander Discovers Nighttime Snowfall On Mars on Friday July 03, @02:02PM

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Friday July 03, @02:02PM
from the time-to-build-a-martian-snowman dept.
mars
Many outlets are reporting on the recently released results of the various experiments and observations of NASA's Mars Phoenix Lander. Most notable is the discovery of nighttime snowfall on the planet, lending credibility to the idea of a hypothesized active water cycle based on earlier data collection. "The papers rely on evidence from a variety of the instruments on the lander, and the description of the data provides an impressive catalog of the various ways that Phoenix could prod and query the Martian pole. In the months before Martian winter shut the lander down, it managed to dig a dozen trenches, taking soil samples from each. These samples went into wet and dry chemistry labs, had their conductivity tested, and were even examined using an atomic force microscope. Meanwhile, cameras and a LIDAR system (a laser-based range detector) scanned the surroundings. The overall conclusion is that the northern pole has an active water cycle. This had been suggested by a variety of evidence from orbital sensors, as well early images returned from Phoenix. It's also not a huge shock, given the seasonal growth and retreat of the polar ice cap. Still, Phoenix provided some significant details on the cycling of water in the area where it landed."
Read More... 40 comments
mars space marsboarding getyourasstomars theweatheroutsideisfrightful science mars story
Comments: 40
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  Technology: Seattle Data Center Outage Disrupts E-Commerce on Friday July 03, @01:11PM

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Friday July 03, @01:11PM
from the no-sigmas-for-you dept.
internet
1sockchuck writes "A major power outage at Seattle telecom hub Fisher Plaza has knocked payment processing provider Authorize.net offline for hours, leaving thousands of web sites unable to take credit cards for online sales. The Authorize site is still down, but its Twitter account attributes the outage to a fire, while AdHost calls it a 'significant power event.' Authorize.net is said to be trying to resume processing from a backup data center, but there's no clear ETA on when Fisher Plaza will have power again."
Read More... 90 comments
internet technology extensioncord noredundancy drplanning tech internet story
Comments: 90
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  Ask Slashdot: Is the Kindle DX Worth the Money? on Friday July 03, @12:20PM

Posted by timothy on Friday July 03, @12:20PM
from the wouldn't-turn-it-down-in-a-gift-basket dept.
displays
An anonymous reader writes "Now that some little time has passed, and the hype has died down a bit, I'm wondering if anyone has taken the $500 plunge and gotten a Kindle DX. From the academic-paper-reading-geek perspective, is it worth the money? How well does it work with PDFs, and is it easy to get them on and off? I haven't been able to find any good reviews on the interweb that address its usability as I would like to use it."
Read More... 197 comments
displays media education drm deeecks askslashdot displays story
Comments: 197
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  Technology: XHTML 2 Cancelled on Friday July 03, @11:32AM

Posted by timothy on Friday July 03, @11:32AM
from the that-html-5-he's-so-hot-right-now dept.
internet
Jake Lazaroff writes "According to the W3 News Archive, the charter for the XHTML2 Working Group — set to expire on December 31st, 2009 — will not be renewed. What does this mean? XHTML2 will never be a W3C recommendation, so get on the HTML 5 bandwagon now. According to the XHTML FAQ, however, the W3C does 'plan for the XML serialization of HTML to remain compatible with XML.' Looks like with HTML 5, we'll get the best of both worlds."
Read More... 147 comments
internet technology !html5sucks strictisbest canceled tech internet story
Comments: 147
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  Hardware: Squeezing a Wikipedia Snapshot Onto an 8GB iPhone on Friday July 03, @10:41AM

Posted by timothy on Friday July 03, @10:41AM
from the but-you'll-miss-the-latest-edit-wars dept.
handheld
blackbearnh writes with this excerpt from O'Reilly Radar "Think about Wikipedia, what some consider the most complete general survey of human knowledge we have at the moment. Now imagine squeezing it down to fit comfortably on an 8GB iPhone. Sound daunting? Well, that's just what Patrick Collison's Encyclopedia iPhone application does. App Store purchasers of Collison's open source application can browse and search the full text of Wikipedia when stuck in a plane, or trapped in the middle of nowhere (or, as defined by AT&T coverage...)"
Read More... 139 comments
handheld storage macbook cellphones dontpanic hardware handheld story
Comments: 139
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  Technology: Emulated PC Enables Linux Desktop In Your Browser on Friday July 03, @09:50AM

Posted by timothy on Friday July 03, @09:50AM
from the right-where-you-need-a-pc-is-on-your-computer dept.
software
Ianopolous writes "Classic DOOM and DSL Linux Desktop inside your Java-enabled browser! The latest JPC, the fast 100% Java x86 PC emulator, is now available with online demos and downloads. JPC is open source and is the most secure way of running x86 software ever — 2 layers (applet sandbox, JPC sandbox) of independently validated security make it the world's most secure means of isolating x86 software. Visit the website to try out some classic games and play around with Linux all within your web browser. Refresh = reboot!"
Read More... 130 comments
it linux software java slashdotted tech software story
Comments: 130
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  Technology: London Stock Exchange To Abandon Windows on Friday July 03, @09:24AM

Posted by timothy on Friday July 03, @09:24AM
from the don't-weld-shut-the-doors-then dept.
windows
BBCWatcher writes "Computerworld's Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols reports that the London Stock Exchange is abandoning its Microsoft Windows-based trading platform: 'Anyone who was ever fool enough to believe that Microsoft software was good enough to be used for a mission-critical operation had their face slapped this September when the LSE's Windows-based TradElect system brought the market to a standstill for almost an entire day .... Sources at the LSE tell me to this day that the problem was with TradElect ...'"
Read More... 279 comments
windows business it money haha tech windows story
Comments: 279
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  IT: iPhone Vulnerability Yields Root Access Via SMS on Friday July 03, @09:01AM

Posted by timothy on Friday July 03, @09:01AM
from the tweet-hack dept.
security
snydeq writes "Pwn2Own winner Charlie Miller has revealed an SMS vulnerability that could provide hackers with root access to the iPhone. Malicious code sent by SMS to run on the phone could include commands to monitor location using GPS, turn on the phone's microphone to eavesdrop on conversations, or make the phone join a DDoS attack or botnet, Miller said. Miller did not provide detailed description of the SMS vulnerability, citing an agreement with Apple, which is working to fix the vulnerability in advance of Black Hat, where Miller plans to discuss the attack in greater detail. 'SMS is a great vector to attack the iPhone,' Miller said, as SMS can send binary code that the iPhone processes without user interaction. Sequences can be sent to the phone as multiple messages that are automatically reassembled, thereby surpassing individual SMS message limits of 140 bytes."
Read More... 172 comments
media security cellphones haha ipwn it security story
Comments: 172
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  News: US Couple Gets Prison Time For Internet Obscenity on Friday July 03, @08:15AM

Posted by timothy on Friday July 03, @08:15AM
from the your-honor-it-was-just-some-good-clean-fun dept.
court
angry tapir writes "The husband and wife owners of a California company that distributed pornographic materials over the Internet have been each sentenced to one year and one day in prison. Extreme Associates and owners Robert Zicari, also known as Rob Black, 35, and his wife, Janet Romano, aka Lizzie Borden, 32, pleaded guilty in March to a felony charge of conspiracy to distribute obscene material through the mail and over the Internet."
Read More... 440 comments
court usa censorship thinkofthechildren homeofthebrave news court story
Comments: 440
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  Technology: RC Submarine Lays Fiber Through Sewers In Italy on Friday July 03, @04:57AM

Posted by timothy on Friday July 03, @04:57AM
from the let's-not-see-the-camera-view-please dept.
networking
Francesco Fondi writes "An Italian Company is using RC scale model submarines to lay fiber through Milan's sewage system. The RC submarine used is the Neptune SB-1, produced by Taiwanese company Thunder Tiger. It costs ca $600 in US hobby shops." In Italian, but the pictures speak for themselves.
Read More... 117 comments
it toy robot technology networking tech networking story
Comments: 117
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  Technology: IBM Releases Open Source Machine Learning Compiler on Friday July 03, @01:42AM

Posted by timothy on Friday July 03, @01:42AM
from the what-you-meant-to-say-is dept.
programming
sheepweevil writes "IBM just released Milepost GCC, 'the world's first open source machine learning compiler.' The compiler analyses the software and determines which code optimizations will be most effective during compilation using machine learning techniques. Experiments carried out with the compiler achieved an average 18% performance improvement. The compiler is expected to significantly reduce time-to-market of new software, because lengthy manual optimization can now be carried out by the compiler. A new code tuning website has been launched to coincide with the compiler release. The website features collaborative performance tuning and sharing of interesting optimization cases."
Read More... 134 comments
ibm gnu software programming gcc tech programming story
Comments: 134
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  Ask Slashdot: HTML Tags For Academic Printing? on Thursday July 02, @10:39PM

Posted by timothy on Thursday July 02, @10:39PM
from the gedankenexperiment-draws-cries-of-use-ps-or-pdf dept.
education
meketrefi writes "It's been quite a while since I got interested in the idea of using html (instead of .doc. or .odf) as a standard for saving documents — including the more official ones like academic papers. The problem is using HTML to create pages with a stable size that would deal with bibliographical references, page breaks, different printers, etc. Does anyone think it is possible to develop a decent tag like 'div,' but called 'page,' specially for this? Something that would make no use of CSS? Maybe something with attributes as follows: {page size="A4" borders="2.5cm,2.5cm,2cm,2cm" page_numbering="bottomleft,startfrom0"} — You get the idea... { /page} I guess you would not be able to tell when the page would be full, so the browser would have to be in charge of breaking the content into multiple pages when needed. Bibliographical references would probably need a special tag as well, positioned inside the tag ..." Is this such a crazy idea? What would you advise?
Read More... 299 comments
latex internet education media xml askslashdot education story
Comments: 299
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  Technology: Microsoft Changing Users' Default Search Engine on Thursday July 02, @07:34PM

Posted by timothy on Thursday July 02, @07:34PM
from the now-what-did-we-say-about-playground-behavior? dept.
windows
BabyDuckHat writes "Cnet's Dennis O'Reilly caught 'Windows Search Helper' trying to change his default Firefox search from Google to Bing. This isn't the first time the software company has been caught quietly changing user's preferences to benefit its own products."
Read More... 360 comments
microsoft windows security nedryerson incorrect tech windows story
Comments: 360
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  Technology: DOJ Confirms Google Antitrust Investigation on Thursday July 02, @06:42PM

Posted by timothy on Thursday July 02, @06:42PM
from the those-who-can't-regulate dept.
google
An anonymous reader points to Digital Daily, writing "Looks like the fireworks have begun early in Mountain View. On Thursday afternoon, the Department of Justice officially notified Google that it is investigating its book deal for violations of the Sherman Antitrust Act."
Read More... 155 comments
books court google government monopoly tech google story
Comments: 155
 
Poll Marking U.S. Independence Day with ...
Fireworks, set off by fireworks professionals.
Fireworks, store-bought but amateur-deployed.
Fireworks, home-made.
Effigies and slogans.
A nice quiet evening.
You are a deeply insensitive clod; Canada Day is over!
[ Results | Polls ]
Comments:175 | Votes:7920

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    Blender=Win. <br/> <br/>It has a difficult learning curve, but there are good...
  • GIMP - Great
    For free (beer/speech), you get a powerful graphics editor that can hold it's...
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    Simple and addictive.
  • Inkscape - Great
    I tried Inkscape about two years ago and found it buggy and awful, but I...
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