Daniel Rutter - Slashdot User

Submission + - John Knoll on CGI, Tron and 25 years of change

Submitted by StonyandCher on Tuesday July 10, 2007 @08:42PM

StonyandCher writes: Monday marked the 25th anniversary of of the relase of Tron, whose computer graphics were seen as revolutionary at the time. With that anniversary in mind, Computerworld spoke with John Knoll, a visual effects supervisor at Industrial Light and Magic (ILM). Knoll, who served as visual effects supervisor for such films as Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith; Pirates of the Caribbean; Star Trek: First Contact, and Mission: Impossible, weighed in on the limitations of CG back then and how far it's come in the last quarter century. (Knoll may also be known in the IT world for his role in the creation of Photoshop, which he developed with his brother Thomas.)

Submission + - Ancient robot (60AD) was programmed with rope

Submitted by Pingu93 on Saturday July 07, 2007 @10:14AM

Pingu93 writes: New Scientist has a feature about the 'worlds first' programmable robot, dating from 60AD. It was designed by a Greek inventor who was, appropriately enough, called Hero. He designed his rolling machine so that it could be programmed using rope and pegs in different configurations. Some of the writers at New Scientist went so far as to build there own version of the robot and the technology blog has some video of it in action.

Submission + - Why HD movie downloads are a big lie (com.com)

Submitted by jpfingst on Monday June 04, 2007 @09:47AM

jpfingst writes: "There's a lot of buzz lately about the delivery of HD TV and Movie content over the Internet with shows like Lost being delivered by ABC.com and other video download services with XBox360 or iTunes....But there's one dirty little secret that people are forgetting or that they don't understand, IT'S NOT HD they're getting over the Internet. Heck it's not even NTSC 480i (720?480 60 fields interlaced) DVD quality when you really look at the amount of video data you're getting!"

Submission + - Pay to Play: Uncovering Online Payola (dailytech.com)

Submitted by

Marcus Yam

on Monday June 04, 2007 @06:53AM

Marcus Yam writes: "Payola is a term normally associated with the radio industry, where record companies paid stations to play and promote new records. Federal legislation has made such activity in most media industries strictly illegal, but no law currently exists for online outlets. DailyTech goes undercover to investigate whether or not hardware review websites can be swayed by the almighty buck."

Submission + - Kazakh leader asked how to patch KDE under FreeBSD (e.gov.kz)

Submitted by borat4president on Monday June 04, 2007 @03:56AM

borat4president writes: Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev is receiving questions for his first ever internet conference. According to the conference website http://e.gov.kz/online?lang=en the second most popular question is "How does one patch KDE under FreeBSD?"

Submission + - Xbox 360 boots Ubuntu Linux

Submitted by curry684 on Sunday March 25, 2007 @06:21PM

curry684 writes: After a security hole was uncovered last month, it was only a matter of time before someone would succeed in booting a Linux distro on the system:

That's Ubuntu, running our favorite Mozilla Firefox web browser in the Gnome desktop environment, and a console window dumping the system's processor info, showing a sweet total of 3 Xenon CPUs running at an approximated 3192Mhz.
Video and screenshots are supplied for your leisure.

Submission + - Digg.com Accounts Compromised

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 25, 2007 @02:29PM

An anonymous reader writes: There is a cross-site scripting vulnerbility on the registration page of popular social networking site Digg.com. The hole allows cookies and sessions of logged-in users to be hijacked, compromising the account. The exploit can be triggered simply by a user clicking a maliciously-crafted link. A full explanation and sample exploit code is available here

Submission + - Online Gamers Can Now Pay With Their Blood

Submitted by

Weather Storm

on Sunday March 25, 2007 @12:56PM

Weather Storm writes: "According to weirdasiannews.com, a game company called Moliyo, which runs multiple online games in China, has given roughly 120,000 hackers banned from one of its games, Cabal Online, the chance to play once again. The price? A pint of blood. Any banned player that shows up to a blood drive in Nanjing and donates a pint of blood will have their accounts unlock. In a response to a shortage of donors, Chinese hospitals and Moliyo developed an ingenious method of enticing gamers to give the gift that truly keeps on giving. About a hundred of the guilty have stepped forward."

Submission + - Some WHOIS servers has been hacked

Submitted by

yohanes

on Friday March 09, 2007 @01:58AM

yohanes writes: "It seems a WHOIS server (crsnic.net) belonging to Verisign has been hacked (may be not just one, I can't confirm the others). Try doing whois google.com or whois microsoft.com on your console, and see what happens. If you miss it, you can see my archive at http://tinyhack.com. Please verify this story, as I have tested on three machines on different parts of the world."

Submission + - The simple pleasure of breaking things.

Submitted by rlandmann on Saturday March 03, 2007 @10:05AM

rlandmann writes: When my mobile phone "failed me for the last time", I smashed it to pieces and have offered the remains on eBay as my way of making a public mockery of the hapless device.

The phone was still under warranty, but to tell the truth, I really couldn't be bothered arguing about it with my phone company, and preferred the visceral satisfaction of the violent destruction of the offending hardware.

The comments and questions other eBayers have been leaving suggest to me that I may have touched on something here. What's the most satisfying way that you've destroyed a technological menace?

Submission + - Released Wordpress source code included hack

Submitted by

Slinky Sausage

on Saturday March 03, 2007 @09:15AM

Slinky Sausage writes: "Thousands of servers running the Wordpress blogging software are at tremendous risk after it was revealed that a cracker had hacked into the Wordpress download servers and modified the software's source code. The hack was done shortly after the new version 2.1.1 was released, and the hack was undetected for several days, meaning that thousands of people who have upgraded to the latest 'security release' version of Wordpress have unintentionally installed what amounts to a trojan horse on their web server."

Submission + - Wikipedia: did one of its admins lie?

Submitted by

gadgetopia

on Friday March 02, 2007 @12:41AM

gadgetopia writes: "Looks like one of Wikipedia's admins has allegedly told some porkies about his qualifications, but instead of outrage it's all been swept under the rug. Does it matter? http://www.itwire.com.au/content/view/10092/53/"

Anger Over EU Medical Data-Sharing 85

Posted by Zonk on Saturday January 27, 2007 @03:42AM from the keep-it-secret-keep-it-safe dept.

ukhackster writes "A row is brewing in Europe over plans to make medical records available across the EU. The scheme calls for interoperability between health systems in 22 different countries. Experts are predicting that security problems could expose confidential patient records, with one calling the affair 'a colossal waste of money and energy.' This 'e-Health' initiative reflects similar projects in the United States, and raises many of the same issues discussed here. The article makes it clear that many important issues, such as security, privacy, and the rights of patients, are still up in the air as the project moves forward. Could this be another huge IT project disaster on the horizon?"

Submission + - XNA SharpNES: Homebrew NES Emulator for Xbox 360

Submitted by MoonStar on Saturday January 27, 2007 @02:14AM

MoonStar writes: Lone Coder released the first 'indie' emulator for the Xbox360. 'XNA SharpNES' is made with 'XNA Game Studio Express', the Microsoft dev tool released last month aimed at helping students and hobbyists build games for Windows and the Xbox 360. There's no sound or 2nd controller support yet, but it shows more than just games can be developed with XNA Game Studio Express. To run it on an Xbox360 you need a 'Creators Club' subscription ($99/year).

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