Onlyodin - Slashdot User

Submission + - Germany plans to email trojans (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by speardane on Saturday September 01, 2007 @07:06AM

speardane writes: The BBC is reporting that the German authorities are planning to send emails containing trojan horses to suspected terrorists. This is apparently supported by the German chancellor despite protests.

Apparently "the spyware would be used only in a few cases and for a limited time".

It seems to me that this is even more stupid than Sony.

Perhaps the Greman authorities have never heard of emails being forwarded...

Perhaps criminals and terrorists (no I didn't say hackers) won't re-use the weapons the German government have given them...

Submission + - Sony squeezes HSDPA into TZ notebooks

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 28, 2007 @06:54AM

An anonymous reader writes: As if Sony's TZ range of notebooks weren't cool enough with their 2.4lb weight, LED screens, 8 hour battery life and solid state disks. Now Sony has somehow squeezed HSDPA into these incredibly thin machines, providing mobile data speeds of 3.6mbps. If you want the ultimate notebook, you better start saving for one of these. http://www.trustedreviews.com/notebooks/news/2007/ 08/28/Sony-Adds-HSDPA-To-TZ-and-SZ-Series-Notebook s/p1

Submission + - Microsoft bought Swedens ISO vote on OOXML ?

Submitted by a_n_d_e_r_s on Tuesday August 28, 2007 @05:20AM

a_n_d_e_r_s writes: The vote on OOXML looked fairly secured for a No vote in Sweden. Most in the Working Group In Sweden was against the vote to approve OOXML. Suddenly on the day of the vote more companies showed up at the door, some 20 more companies — each one payed about $2500 to be allowed to vote — and vote they did. Most of the new companies was strangely enough partners from Microsoft who suddenly out of the blue joined the working group, payed membership fees and voted yes for approval.

From being a fairly negative group the working group suddely had a huge majority of yay-sayers who voted for Sweden to approve OOXML as an ISO standard.

For those that want to buy the Swedish vote on an ISO standard — it only cost about $50 000 — its not too much money for anyone that want there own bought and payed for ISO standard.

This has started to brew in Sweden and the newspapers are right now starting to write about the coup against the SIS — Swedens Standards Institute http://www.sis.se/ . The workings groups position can be changed if the power to be at SIS wants to — so its not over yet.

OS2World writes about it:

http://www.os2world.com/content/view/14868/1/

Patrik Fältströms blogg about it:

http://stupid.domain.name/node/382

Submission + - Job breaking Open-Source license

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 28, 2007 @04:33AM

An anonymous reader writes: The well known site www.rentacoder.com contains a job that requires breaking the Open-Source license. Quote from the requirements: "1. Modify the Open Source project, SpamBayes (http://spambayes.sourceforge.net/index.html) to be rebranded for our company. 2. You will modify the names, logos and icon images/titles based on our specification. This will only include changing the existing assets and adding only one button which contains our logo and links to our website." More details here: http://rentacoder.com/RentACoder/misc/BidRequests/ ShowBidRequest.asp?lngBidRequestId=755582

Submission + - Aussie telcos plan fast 'net using powerlines (news.com.au)

Submitted by Onlyodin on Tuesday August 28, 2007 @04:32AM

Onlyodin writes: A consortium led by aussie telecommunications carrier Optus is considering the use of powerlines to deliver broadband to homes, as it prepares to battle the largest telco in Australia, Telstra for rights to build a high-speed broadband network.

Public debate over the new network has been dominated by proposals that rely on using fibre optic cable to boost broadband speeds.

Broadband over powerlines would provide the consortium known as G9 with an alternative to fibre-based broadband technology that relied on Telstra's copper network. Telstra has maintained that it would use all legal means at its disposal to block rivals gaining access to its copper to build the new network.

There are three main proposals to boost broadband speed in Australia and all rely on using Telstra's copper network for last-mile access to homes and premises.

Submission + - How to get a Linux laptop being more responsive? 1

Submitted by

VincenzoRomano

on Tuesday August 28, 2007 @04:22AM

VincenzoRomano writes: "I'm an almost happy Linux user. I presume mine is a common profile: I run both "productivity" and development software on my Centrino Duo laptop.
Everything I need is (almost always) there.
What puzzles me is that while my laptop is a 100 times more powerful that any PC I used to have 10 years ago and has as 20 times more memory and disk space, it has the same responsivenes of a 15 years old PC (i486 DX2-50).
When rebuilding big DB indexes, burning optical media, copying large files from a directory to another one, the Linux system is almost unusable. I cannot even edit text files with the "vi" editor.
One more thing: I'm running KUbuntu Feisty.
By using "a different commercial OS" shipped with the laptop I've encountered much less troubles ... in responsiveness I mean.
I've tried a number of suggestions and hints like those linked by Ubuntu Performance Guides with only small enhacements and also fear that also desktops are affected by such a behaviour.
So the question is: how can I take advantage of my laptop without running other commercial OSes?"

Submission + - Developing Databases in Developing Countries (fromthehorizon.com)

Submitted by

Michael

on Tuesday August 28, 2007 @04:15AM

Michael writes: "Developing Databases for Disasters in Developing Countries is a paper presented at the ISCRAM China Workshop based on my experiences developing and implementing databases for International Non Government Organizations (INGOs) in Indonesia after the 2004 Tsunami, Pakistan after the 2005 Earthquake and in Uganda. It discusses a number of observations and issues regarding wider information systems, data entry models, stakeholder participation and Head Office involvement."

Submission + - Sony again blasted for helping hide malware on PCs (zdnet.com.au)

Submitted by on Tuesday August 28, 2007 @03:28AM

An anonymous reader writes: ZDNet is reporting that Sony's MicroVault USB, which is a biometric USB storage device, cloaks driver software in a Windows directory that could be used by malware to avoid detection from security applications.

Submission + - Revolutionary Operating System Released (losethos.com)

Submitted by

losethos

on Tuesday August 28, 2007 @03:19AM

losethos writes: "LoseThos V3.05, a 64-bit operating system for programmers has been released. It's command line syntax is based on C/C++. Documentation pulls-up source code where commands are self-explanitory. Programming has been dramatically stream-lined with graphics in source code, for example. Best of all, it's free and open source with all code included."

Submission + - Chinese sold Unlocked Apple iPhone on Beijing's St (ifastnet.com)

Submitted by

a_skripko

on Friday August 17, 2007 @05:56PM

a_skripko writes: "Chineses are again ahead of all. Pirate market in China will live forever, only 9 days ago was released first abnnouncement about Apple iPhone successfull unlocking, but today streets of Beijing are full with freely distributed advertisings of iPhone unlocking."

Submission + - Americans may need passports to board flights? (cnn.com)

Submitted by

xanadu113

on Friday August 17, 2007 @05:38PM

xanadu113 writes: "Americans may need passports to board domestic flights or to picnic in a national park next year if they live in one of the states defying the federal Real ID Act.

The act, signed in 2005 as part of an emergency military spending and tsunami relief bill, aims to weave driver's licenses and state ID cards into a sort of national identification system by May 2008. The law sets baseline criteria for how driver's licenses will be issued and what information they must contain."

Submission + - The effects of human semen on speech (blogspot.com)

Submitted by

upchuk

on Friday August 17, 2007 @06:54AM

upchuk writes: "Research. Volunteers needed"

Submission + - Something suspicious over at vmwaRE

Submitted by Wheely on Friday August 17, 2007 @05:50AM

Wheely writes: A few days after a very successful IPO with all the free advertising that entails Vmware's download site is down and it is currently not possible to buy their software. We are being asked to not submit orders over the web though e-mail orders will be dealt with "as soon as possible". The reason given is for "user improvements and site upgrades". This seems a particularly careless time to be maintaining their site. Suspicious, unlucky or just plain dumb?

Submission + - Forget biofuels - burn oil and plant trees instead (newscientist.com)

Submitted by

CatherineBrahic

on Friday August 17, 2007 @05:50AM

CatherineBrahic writes: "Think biofuels are greener than oil? Think again. Burning oil and planting trees to compensate is better for the environment by a long shot, say scientists."

Submission + - Skype goes down

Submitted by

siliconeyes

on Friday August 17, 2007 @05:45AM

siliconeyes writes: "Skype has suffered a massive failure that is preventing people all over the globe from signing on to the popular IM/voice application. The Skype heartbeat website has been displaying the message Problems with Skype login for over 24 hours now. The Skype forums are full of people complaining about the lack of service. Even though SkypeIn and SkypeOut are shown as working normally on the heartbeat site, one has to wonder how they are supposed to use these services without being able to log in!"

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