Please create an account to participate in the Slashdot moderation system

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×

Submission + - Canadian ISP on Disclosing Subscriber Info: Come Back with a Warrant (michaelgeist.ca)

An anonymous reader writes: Canadian ISP Rogers has updated its privacy policy to reflect last month's Supreme Court of Canada Spencer decision. That decision ruled that there was a reasonable expectation of privacy in subscriber information. Canada's largest cable ISP will now require a warrant for law enforcement access to basic subscriber information, a policy that effectively kills the Canadian government's efforts to expand the disclosures through voluntary means.

Submission + - Apple Aagrees To $450 Million Ebook Antitrust Settlement (reuters.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Last year, a U.S. District Judge ruled that Apple conspired with publishers to control ebook prices in violation of antitrust laws. Apple launched an appeal which has yet to conclude, but they've now agreed to a settlement. If the appeal verdict goes against Apple, they will be on the hook for $450 million, most of which will go to consumers. If they win the appeal, they'll still have to pay $70 million. $450 million is much more than the other publishers had to pay, but much less than the expected penalty from a damages trial set for August (and still only about one percent of Apple's annual profit).

Submission + - Two big dark matter experiments gain U.S. support

Graculus writes: The Department of Energy (DOE) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) announced on Friday that they will try to fund two major experiments to detect particles of the mysterious dark matter whose gravity binds the galaxies instead of just one. The decision allays fears that the funding agencies could afford only one experiment to continue the search for so-called weakly interacting massive particles, or WIMPs.

Submission + - The Improbable Story of the 184 MPH Jet Train (youtube.com)

MatthewVD writes: Almost half a century ago, New York Central Railroad engineer Don Wetzel and his team bolted two J47-19 jet engines, throttled up the engines and tore down a length of track from Butler, Indiana to Stryker, Ohio at almost 184 mph. Today, the M-497 still holds the record for America's fastest train. This is the story of how it happened.

Submission + - LibreSSL PRNG Vulnerability Patched (threatpost.com)

msm1267 writes: The OpenBSD project late last night rushed out a patch for a vulnerability in the LibreSSL pseudo random number generator (PRNG).

The flaw was disclosed two days ago by the founder of secure backup company Opsmate, Andrew Ayer, who said the vulnerability was a “catastrophic failure of the PRNG.”

OpenBSD founder Theo de Raadt and developer Bob Beck, however, countered saying that the issue is “overblown” because Ayer’s test program is unrealistic. Ayer’s test program, when linked to LibreSSL and made two different calls to the PRNG, returned the exact same data both times.

“It is actually only a problem with the author’s contrived test program,” Beck said. “While it’s a real issue, it’s actually a fairly minor one, because real applications don’t work the way the author describes, both because the PID (process identification number) issue would be very difficult to have become a real issue in real software, and nobody writes real software with OpenSSL the way the author has set this test up in the article.”

Submission + - US Marines Demonstrate Ultra Heavy-lift Amphibious Connector Prototype (gizmag.com)

Zothecula writes: In a recent demonstration carried out during RIMPAC 2014, the US Marines displayed and tested a fully-functional, half-scale prototype of its new amphibious transport vehicle. In its proposed full-size version the Ultra Heavy-Lift Amphibious Connecter (UHAC) concept is designed to power across the water with a payload of nearly 200 tons (180 tonnes) at up to 20 knots (23 mph/37 km/h) and be capable of driving up on to the shore and over the top of obstructions up to 10 ft (3 m) high.

Submission + - US House Passes Pemanent Ban On Internet Taxes

jfruh writes: In 1998, the US Congress passed a law that temporarily banned all taxes imposed by federal, state, and local governments on Internet access and Internet-only services, a ban that has been faithfully renewed every year since. Now the US House has passed a permanent version of the ban, which also applies to several states that had passed Internet taxes before 1998 and were grandfathered in under the temporary law. The Senate must pass the bill as well by November 1 or the temporary ban will lapse.

Comment Re:n/t (Score 1) 278

Pretty much my sentiments too. There's plenty of debate (albeit sometimes less than lucid) on both the political and scientific sides of the fence, the issue is that the press is mostly focussed on the political side of things and that then skews people's opinions of what is going on. On the non-biased scientific side, it's pretty much a done deal; real, on-going and that we are partly to blame - with much of the remaining debate surrounding just how big a part we play, since that is what we can possibly do something about and the amount is still far from certain. It's the politicians, lobbyists and paid-for "scientists" that are spouting all the denials and confusing statements making it seem like it's still in doubt at this point, and until more of the mainstream media starts providing balanced coverage of the debate that's the general impression that the masses are going to believe.

Submission + - Sony Forgets to Pay for Domain, Hilarity Ensues (eq2wire.com)

Dragoness Eclectic writes: Early Tuesday, gamers woke up to find out that they couldn't log in to any Sony Online Entertainment games--no Everquest, no Planetside 2, none of them. Oddly, the forums where company reps might have posted some explanation weren't reachable, either.

A bit of journalistic investigation by EQ2Wire came across the explanation: SOE forgot to renew the domain registration on SonyOnline.net, the hidden domain that holds all their nameservers. Oops! After 7 weeks of non-payment post-expiration, NetworkSolutions reclaimed the domain, sending all access to Sony's games into an internet black hole this morning. Sony has since paid up, but it takes a while for DNS changes to propagate around the world. SOE's president, John Smedley, has admitted that the expiration notices were being sent to an "unread email" address. Good job, guys.

Submission + - Leading the way – CCS fitted coal-fired power stations now a reality

stephendavion writes: Despite being touted as the best way to clean up dirty fossil fuels, commercial deployment of carbon capture storage (CCS) in the power industry has been near non-existent. Now, for the first time ever, a coal-fired power plant is being retrofitted with CCS. The plant, located in Canada, is near completion, while a similar project in the US is also under construction. For continued growth, the coal industry must get clean. Carbon capture storage (CCS) technology is ready and available but is still relatively expensive and has, until recently, never been applied to the power industry before. Two power companies — one in Canada and another in the US — have set out to show how the economics and technology of CCS can be applied to the power industry.

Submission + - People can actually be allergic to Electronic devices (cbslocal.com)

Charliemopps writes: People can actually be allergic to Electronic devices, just not for the reasons you think. The influx of Tablets and SmartPhones with ever ever more attempts to stand out from the crowd, many are being produce with metal parts and cases that sometimes contain the metal Nickel. Nickel can be an allergen. Most people do not regularly have direct contact with Nickel and therefore aren't aware of their allergy. But with the influx Phones and Tablets with metal cases, many are finding out about their allergy for the first time the hard way. If you suspect you may be allergic to your cellphone, you can be tested by your doctor... but it wont involve a Wifi router!

Submission + - Parkinson's Makes You More Creative (scienceblog.com)

An anonymous reader writes: A new Tel Aviv University study says that Parkinson’s patients are more creative than their healthy peers, and that those patients taking higher doses of medication are more artistic than their less-medicated counterparts. “It began with my observation that Parkinson’s patients have a special interest in art and have creative hobbies incompatible with their physical limitations,” said the study's lead researcher. "We conducted the first comprehensive study to measure the creative thinking of Parkinson’s patients. This was not a simple task, because how does one measure, or quantify, creativity? We had to think creatively ourselves.” The study appears in the Annals of Neurology.

Submission + - Creepy New Seats Monitor Your Heart Rate, Can Control The Car

cartechboy writes: Cars already have the technology to determine when you're drowsy, that's nothing new. But having seats with sensors in them monitoring your heart rate to determine if you're falling asleep, that's new, and creepy. A new project from Nottingham Trent University in the UK is working on an electrocardiogram (ECG) built into the driver's seat to detect heart rate and determine when the driver is too fatigued—or worse, falling asleep—in order to improve road safety. The tech uses circuits integrated right into the seats to monitor heart rate, respiration, and more to monitor alertness and health. The idea is the system can take over using active cruise control, lane-keep assist, and other safety technology if the driver were to be drowsy or fall asleep. Of course, the creepy part is the car knows your health and determines whether it would be more fit to drive than you. Maybe in the future you won't get to decide if you're fit to drive, your car will.

Submission + - How a supercomputer beat the scrap heap and lived on to retire in Africa. (utexas.edu)

jorge_salazar writes: Pieces of the decommissioned Ranger supercomputer, 40 racks in all, were shipped to researchers in South Africa, Tanzania, and Botswana to help seed their supercomputing aspirations. They say they'll need supercomputers to solve their growing science problems in astronomy, bioinformatics, climate modeling and more. Ranger's own beginnings were described by the co-founder of Sun Microsystems as a "historic moment in petaflop computing."

Submission + - 'Hidden From Google' Remembers the Sites Google Is Forced to Forget (vice.com)

Daniel_Stuckey writes: Hidden From Google, the brainchild of a web programmer in New Jersey, archives each website that Google is required to take down from European Union search listings thanks to the recent court decision that allows people to request that certain pages be scrubbed from Google's search results if they're outdated or irrelevant. That decision has resulted in takedown requests from convicted sex offenders and huge banking companies, among thousands of others.

Slashdot Top Deals

Real Users never use the Help key.

Working...