News for nerds, stuff that matters
Sections
About
Services
Hot Comments
- illegally obtained evidence (5 points, Interesting) by lysergic.acid on Sunday October 05, @11:55AM attached to Gov't Database Errors Leading To Unconstitutional Searches?
- Unreasonable terms (5 points, Insightful) by WK2 on Sunday October 05, @10:35AM attached to Getting Paid To Abandon an Open Source Project?
- Because we all know... (5 points, Informative) by BlatantRipoff on Monday October 06, @08:50AM attached to Senate Votes To Empower Parents As Censors
- Eggs in one basket? (5 points, Interesting) by BrokenHalo on Sunday October 05, @09:14PM attached to Jobs Rumor Debacle Besmirches Citizen Journalism
- let me get this straight... (5 points, Funny) by TheSHAD0W on Sunday October 05, @10:28AM attached to Getting Paid To Abandon an Open Source Project?
Slashdot Poll
Slashdot Login
- Clean up your filesystems with fslint
- Pidgin instant messaging client: a video tour
- Enhance your DNS and DHCP services with dnsmasq
- Adding search to your Web site with Xapian and Omega
- Protect your network with pfSense firewall/router
- Android, Apple, and phone phreedom
- Bubba Two: The little server that could
- FSF high priority list becomes a campaign, seeks donations
- Project management over the Web with Collabtive
- Sbopkg provides seamless package repository integration for Slackware
- OpenGoo delivers the best of CRM and project management
- Simplify system security with the Uncomplicated Firewall
- Push and pull network filesystems with ccgfs
- Video tour: Bluefish editor
- Keep tabs on your finances with HomeBank
Recent reviews from Slashdot readers:
- Terrorist Recognition Handbook: A Practitioner's Manual for Predicting and Identifying Terrorist Activities, Second Edition The definitive text on terrorist recognition, written from a first hand perspective.(Ben Rothke's review.)
- Second Person: Role-Playing and Story in Games and Playable Media If you want to learn how to write better interactive fiction, specifically using the second-person narrative, this book is for you.(Michael Fiegel's review.)
- Building Powerful and Robust Websites With Drupal 6 A comprehensive and upbeat guide, great for learning how to use Drupal 6.(Michael J. Ross's review.)
Submitting a review for consideration is easy; please first read Slashdot's book review guidelines. Updated: 2008510 by samzenpus
Quick Links
Cool Sites:
· XKCD (It's teh funz0rz)
· AnimeFu (Addicted to Anime?)
· Penny Arcade (The First one is always Free)
· Everything (Blow your Mind)
· Themes.freshmeat.net (Make X Perty)
· XKCD (It's teh funz0rz)
· AnimeFu (Addicted to Anime?)
· Penny Arcade (The First one is always Free)
· Everything (Blow your Mind)
· Themes.freshmeat.net (Make X Perty)
Support Slashdot:
· ThinkGeek (Clothe Yourself in Slashdot)
Older Stuff
-
Sunday October 5 -
Saturday October 4- "Iron Man" Release Brings Down Paramount's Servers (257)
- Matt Hazard Returns (30)
- Computer Detection Effective In Spotting Cancer (89)
- Game Devs Using One-Time Bonuses to Fight Used Game Sales (210)
- "Netbooks" Move Up In Notebook Rankings (133)
- Microsoft Bids To Take Over Open Document Format (237)
- Will ParanoidLinux Protect the Truly Paranoid? (230)
- Maine To Skip Vista, Go Directly To Windows 7 (239)
- $700 Billion Bailout Signed Into Law (821)
- Amazon Kindle 2 Leaked, Sony Reader To Get Touch Screen (135)
- Microsoft Treating "Windows-Only" As Open Source (369)
- CERN Launches Huge LHC Computing Grid (46)
Slashdot is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Monday October 06, @10:14AM
from the well-isn't-that-special dept.
from the well-isn't-that-special dept.
Tim Anderson writes "Microsoft's Scott Guthrie, Corporate VP of the .NET developer division, announced that the open source jQuery Javascript library will be integrated into Visual Studio, the main Windows development tool. Further, Microsoft will treat jQuery as a supported product within technical support contracts, and will use jQuery to build new controls for ASP.NET, its web platform."
- Read More...
- 1 comment
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Monday October 06, @09:32AM
from the to-strange-for-a-topic-icon dept.
from the to-strange-for-a-topic-icon dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "For more than a century, ranchers in the West have kept cattle in place with fences of barbed wire, split wood and, more recently, electrified wires. Now animal science researchers with the Department of Agriculture, is working on a system that will allow cowboys to herd their cattle remotely via radio by singing commands and whispering into their ears and tracking movements by satellite and computer. A video of Dean Anderson, a researcher at the USDA's Jornada Experimental Range at Las Cruces, NM., shows how he has built radios that attach to an animal's head that allow a person at the other end to issue a range of commands — gentle singing, sharp commands, or a buzz like a bee or snake — to get the cattle to move where one wants them to. Anderson says it would cost $900 today to put a radio device on one head of cattle, but he says costs will fall and the entire herd wouldn't have to be outfitted, just the "leaders." Much of the research has focused on how cattlemen can identify which cattle in their herds are the ones that the others follow."
- Read More...
- 38 comments
- science.slashdot.org
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Monday October 06, @08:57AM
from the it's-time-to-buzz-the-planet dept.
from the it's-time-to-buzz-the-planet dept.
Riding with Robots writes "The robotic spacecraft MESSENGER is making its second fly-by of the first planet today, skimming just 200 kilometers above the surface. The fly-by will reveal portions of the planet that have never been seen before, but the main purpose of the maneuver is to prepare for an orbital insertion in 2011. The mission site offers extensive information, along with the first pictures that are already arriving on Earth, with many more expected in the coming hours and days."
- Read More...
- 26 comments
- science.slashdot.org
Posted by
kdawson
on Monday October 06, @08:05AM
from the you-are-what-you-block dept.
from the you-are-what-you-block dept.
unlametheweak recommends an Ars Technica report that the US Senate has unanimously passed a bill requiring the FCC to explore what "advanced blocking technologies" are available to parents to help filter out "indecent or objectionable programming." "...the law does focus on empowering parents to take control of new media technologies to deal with undesired content, rather than handing the job over to the government. It asks the FCC to focus the inquiry on blocking systems for a 'wide variety of distribution platforms,' including wireless and Internet, and an array of devices, including DVD players, set top boxes, and wireless applications."
- Read More...
- 117 comments
- yro.slashdot.org
Posted by
kdawson
on Monday October 06, @04:11AM
from the fiull-'er-up dept.
from the fiull-'er-up dept.
Wired is running a story about the small but vocal, and growing, number of people who aren't waiting for automakers to deliver plug-in hybrids. They're shelling out big money to have already thrifty cars converted into full-on plug-in hybrids capable of triple-digit fuel economy. "The conversions aren't cheap, and top-of-the-line kits with lithium-ion batteries can set you back as much as $35,000. Even a kit with lead-acid batteries — the type under the hood of the car you drive now — starts at five grand. That explains why most converted plug-ins are in the motor pools of places like Southern California Edison... No more than 150 or so belong to people like [extreme skiing champion Alison] Gannett, who had her $30,000 Ford Escape converted in December. Yes, that's right. The conversion cost more than the truck."
- Read More...
- 175 comments
- tech.slashdot.org
News: Voters In Many States Must Register By October 6 75 of 113 comments
Posted by
kdawson
on Monday October 06, @12:17AM
from the also-no-hair dept.
from the also-no-hair dept.
Science News reports on a paper to be published in Physical Review Letters in which an international team of researchers describes their computer simulation of the most violent collision imaginable: two black holes colliding head-on at nearly light-speed. Even in this extreme scenario, Roger Penrose's weak cosmic censorship hypothesis seems to hold — the resulting black hole (after the gravitational waves have died down) retains its event horizon. "Mathematically, 'naked' singularities, or those without event horizons, can exist, but physicists wouldn't know what to make of them. All known mechanisms for the formation of singularities also create an event horizon, and Penrose conjectured that there must be some physical principle — a 'cosmic censor' — that forbids singularity nakedness..."
- Read More...
- 176 comments
- science.slashdot.org
Games: First Deus Ex 3 Details Emerge 55 of 70 comments
Posted by
kdawson
on Sunday October 05, @09:54PM
from the hippo-birdies dept.
from the hippo-birdies dept.
Meshach writes "Over at the Linux Journal, Doc Searles is noting that today marks 17 years since Linus posted to Usenet, starting Linux (post). As a Linux user at work and at home I say, thanks Linus!" The anniversary is also featured on the top page of the Encyclopedia Britannica.
- Read More...
- 229 comments
- linux.slashdot.org
Posted by
kdawson
on Sunday October 05, @07:35PM
from the unverified-is-not-the-same-as-unfiltered dept.
from the unverified-is-not-the-same-as-unfiltered dept.
On Friday someone posted a false rumor that Steve Jobs had suffered a heart attack on CNN's unverified citizen journalism site, iReport. Apple's stock price went vertical, losing 9% before Apple stepped in and denied the rumor; the stock then recovered most of its loss. The SEC is investigating. PCWorld looks at the hit taken by citizen journalism as a result of this incident. "[The] increasingly blurred line between journalism and rumor is a serious concern for Al Tompkins, the broadcast/online group leader at The Poynter Institute — a specialized school for journalists of all media forms. 'How could you possibly allow just anybody to post just anything under your [CNN] label unless you have blazing billboards that say, "None of this has been verified, we've not looked at any of this, we have no idea if this is true?"' he asks."
- Read More...
- 250 comments
- news.slashdot.org
Posted by
kdawson
on Sunday October 05, @06:23PM
from the positively-shocking dept.
from the positively-shocking dept.
An anonymous reader writes "A team of US researchers has asked the following question in the new field of systems biology: 'Do we understand how a cell produces electricity well enough to design one, and to optimize that design?' They believe it should be possible to build artificial cells replicating the electrical behavior of electric eel cells. In fact, such artificial cells could deliver better performance — as much as 40% more energy than real eel cells, a computer model suggests. They could be used to power medical implants and other small devices."
- Read More...
- 62 comments
- hardware.slashdot.org
Posted by
kdawson
on Sunday October 05, @05:14PM
from the controlling-the-public-discourse dept.
from the controlling-the-public-discourse dept.
PatrickByrne writes "This is The Register's world-class investigative piece concerning one aspect of the meltdown on Wall Street ('naked short selling') and how the criminals engaged a journalist to distort Wikipedia to confuse the discourse. The article explicitly and formally accuses a well-known US financial journalist, Gary Weiss, of lying about his efforts to distort a Wikipedia page under assumed names, and accuses the Powers That Be in Wikipedia (right up to and including Jimbo Wales) of complicity in protecting Weiss. This is not another story about a 15-year-old farm kid in Iowa pretending to be a professor. This is like the worst Chomskian view of Elites manipulating mass opinion. But it is all documented." We discussed the alleged Wikipedia manipulation when The Register first wrote about it last December. The submitter is the CEO of Overstock.com and a major player in this drama from the beginning.
- Read More...
- 336 comments
- news.slashdot.org
Posted by
kdawson
on Sunday October 05, @04:04PM
from the bye-bye-deniability dept.
from the bye-bye-deniability dept.
rifles only writes "A German techie has found a remarkably simple way to discern some of the content of encrypted volumes containing images. The encrypted images don't reveal themselves totally, but in many cases do let an attacker see the outline of a high-contrast image. The attack works regardless of the encryption algorithm used (the widely-used AES for instance), and affects all utilities that use single symmetric keys. More significant to police around the world struggling with criminal and terrorist use of encryption, the attack also breaks the ability of users to 'hide' separate encrypted volumes inside already encrypted volumes, whose existence can now for the first time be revealed." The discoverer of this attack works for a company making full-disk encryption software; their product, TurboCrypt, has already been enhanced to defeat the attack. Other on-the-fly encryption products will probably be similarly enhanced, as the discoverer asserts: "To our knowledge is the described method free of patents and the author can confirm that he hasn't applied for protection."
- Read More...
- 131 comments
- it.slashdot.org
Posted by
kdawson
on Sunday October 05, @02:53PM
from the interesting-times-interesting-places dept.
from the interesting-times-interesting-places dept.
Khemisty writes "Formation of an ocean is a rare event, one no scientist has ever witnessed. Yet this geophysical nativity is unfolding today in one of the hottest and most inhospitable corners of the globe. Africa is splitting apart at the seams. From the southern tip of the Red Sea southward through Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, and Mozambique, the continent is coming unstitched along a zone called the East African Rift." This stretching of the earth's crust has been going on for 20 million years, and within another 10 million the Red Sea will have broken through to create a new sea.
- Read More...
- 213 comments
- news.slashdot.org
Games: NASA Holding Space Vs. Earth Chess Game 25 of 32 comments
Posted by
Soulskill
on Sunday October 05, @01:43PM
from the exploring-our-polar-system dept.
from the exploring-our-polar-system dept.
UniverseToday has an interesting look at geomagnetic reversal, the process in which the Earth's magnetic poles trade places. The article cites known trends and recent studies to debunk doomsday myths and unsubstantiated claims about the process. One such study is attempting to model the earth's core with a 26-ton ball of molten metal. Another recently found evidence that the Earth has a second, weaker magnetic field. "We do know that this magnetic pole flip-flop has occurred many times in the last few million years; the last occurred 780,000 years ago according to ferromagnetic sediment. A few scaremongering articles have said geomagnetic reversal occurs with 'clockwork regularity' — this is simply not true."
- Read More...
- 136 comments
- science.slashdot.org
Posted by
Soulskill
on Sunday October 05, @12:37PM
from the i-can't-read-my-handwriting-either dept.
from the i-can't-read-my-handwriting-either dept.
Ian Lamont recently asked Google if they planned to extend their transcription of books and other printed media to include public records, many of which were handwritten before word processors became ubiquitous. Google wouldn't talk about any potential plans, but Lamont found out a bit more about the limits of optical character recognition in the process:
"Even though some CAPTCHA schemes have been cracked in the past year, a far more difficult challenge lies in using software to recognize handwritten text. Optical character recognition has been used for years to convert printed documents into text data, but the enormous variation in handwriting styles has thwarted large-scale OCR imports of handwritten public documents and historical records. Ancestry.com took a surprising approach to digitizing and converting all publicly released US census records from 1790 to 1930: It contracted the job to Chinese firms whose staff manually transcribed the names and other information. The Chinese staff are specially trained to read the cursive and other handwriting styles from digitized paper records and microfilm. The task is ongoing with other handwritten records, at a cost of approximately $10 million per year, the company's CEO says."
- Read More...
- 134 comments
- tech.slashdot.org
Posted by
Soulskill
on Sunday October 05, @11:30AM
from the you-can-trust-us dept.
from the you-can-trust-us dept.
Wired is running a story about a case the Supreme Court will be hearing on Tuesday that relates to searches based on erroneous information in government databases. In the case of Herring vs. US 07-513, the defendant was followed and pulled over based on a records indicating he had a warrant out for his arrest. Upon further review, the local county clerk found the records were in error, and the warrant notification should have been removed months prior. Unfortunately for Herring, he had already been arrested and his car searched. Police found a small amount of drugs and a firearm, for which Herring was subsequently prosecuted. Several friend-of-the-court briefs have been filed to argue this case, some calling for "an accuracy obligation on law enforcement agents [PDF] who rely on criminal justice information systems," and others defending such searches as good-faith exceptions [PDF].
- Read More...
- 229 comments
- yro.slashdot.org
Posted by
Soulskill
on Sunday October 05, @10:24AM
from the money-vs.-warm-fuzzies dept.
from the money-vs.-warm-fuzzies dept.
darkeye writes "I'm facing a difficult dilemma and looking for opinions. I've been contributing heavily to an open source project, making considerable changes to code organization and quality, but the work is unfinished at the moment. Now, a company is approaching me to continue my changes. They want to keep the improvements to themselves, which is possible since the project is published under the BSD license. That's fair, as they have all the rights to the work they pay for in full. However, they also want me to sign a non-competition clause, which would bar me from ever working on and publishing results for the original open source project itself, even if done separately, in my free time. How would you approach such a decision? On one side, they'd provide resources to work on an interesting project. On the other, it would make me an outcast in the project's community. Moreover, they would take ownership of not just what they paid for, but also my changes leading up to this moment, and I wouldn't be able to continue on my original codebase in an open source manner if I sign their contract."
- Read More...
- 568 comments
- ask.slashdot.org
Posted by
Soulskill
on Sunday October 05, @09:17AM
from the old-dogs-new-tricks-etc. dept.
from the old-dogs-new-tricks-etc. dept.
ivoras writes "An interview with MSI's director of US Sales, Andy Tung, contains this interesting snippet: "We have done a lot of studies on the return rates and haven't really talked about it much until now. Our internal research has shown that the return of netbooks is higher than regular notebooks, but the main cause of that is Linux. People would love to pay $299 or $399 but they don't know what they get until they open the box. They start playing around with Linux and start realizing that it's not what they are used to. They don't want to spend time to learn it so they bring it back to the store. The return rate is at least four times higher for Linux netbooks than Windows XP netbooks.'"
- Read More...
- 582 comments
- linux.slashdot.org
