Please create an account to participate in the Slashdot moderation system

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Privacy

"Anonymous" Hacks Palin's Private Email 1733

Posted by kdawson from the should-have-used-hushmail dept.
netbuzz writes "'Anonymous,' best known for its jousts with Scientology, has apparently hacked Sarah Palin's private Yahoo email account. Contents, including sample emails, an index, and family photos, have been posted by Wikileaks, which calls them evidence that the GOP vice presidential candidate has improperly used private email to shield government business from public scrutiny." Note that there is no easy way to tell if the material on Wikileaks is genuine or a hoax. Update by J : Genuine.
Games

Bruce Sterling On Gaming in 2043 27

Posted by Soulskill from the future-history dept.
At this year's Austin Game Developer's Conference, sci-fi author Bruce Sterling gave a keynote speech about the gaming industry — looking back from the year 2043. GameSetWatch has a summary of the speech, and the full transcript is also available. "So do people make games for this platform? Sure. Not the sort that were built for flat glass screens. We don't do those anymore, cumbersome, like a covered wagon. We don't pretend a glass screen is a window into another virtual worlds. The idea sounds silly, it's all the same world. It's always been the same world, it just changes. What we do is hang the towel [his metaphor for cheap, ubiquitous, unremarkable computers in the future] up in midair and gaze through it. And all the light that hits the far side passes through it except that the image is tagged and altered. We don't call it augmented reality, because we think reality is real, but you can still have fun with a game interface is that is everything you see."
The Internet

Saving Geek Lore and Other Wikipedia Castoffs 281

Posted by kdawson from the bone-yard dept.
Ian Lamont notes an Industry Standard feature on Deletionpedia — a collection of 63,559 deleted Wikipedia pages that range from "vanity entries" or obscure points of reference to heavily edited topics that Wikipedia editors eventually deemed fan fiction, inadequately sourced, or otherwise lacking. Looking through the collection of removed articles, it's apparent that entertaining minutiae are often the target of Wikipedia editors: "Geek lore seems to be a particular target for deletion, with the deleted page of the month a comprehensive guide to 'Weapons of the Imperium (Warhammer 40,000)'. Deletionpedia provides links back to the Wikipedia deletion discussions, which are a lesson in magnification of minutiae; the Warhammer page was removed due to philosophical disagreements over what can be considered credible source material, while a page listing every chalkboard gag in The Simpsons opening credits spent 691 days on the site before being deleted as 'fancruft.'" Note that while Deletionpedia uses MediaWiki, it doesn't have wiki functionality — readers can't alter or update archived entries.
Transportation

Human-Powered Vehicle Speed Competition 102

Posted by kdawson from the faster-than-common-sense dept.
nsasch writes "Over at Battle Mountain, NV on SR-305, for the 2008 Battle Mountain World Human Powered Speed Challenge (mirror), some of the best cyclists will be competing in human-powered vehicles to break speed records. The current world record was set in 2002 at the same location with a speed of 129.6 km/h (81 mph) by Sam Whittingham in a custom-made recumbent bike. A lot of advanced aerospace engineering goes into these machines to reach highway speeds on less than one horsepower. Take a look around their site for pictures of the event and this year's records. It ends 20 September, so more pictures and results will be coming."
Image

Mickey Mouse On Hit List Screenshot-sm 14

Posted by samzenpus from the mickey-mouse-death-club dept.
Sheikh Muhammad Munajid claims that Mickey Mouse is "one of Satan's soldiers" and makes everything he touches impure. The sheikh said that under Sharia, both household mice and their cartoon counterparts must be killed. The cleric has held off on condemning other Disney characters until he can figure out, "What the hell is Goofy?"
The Courts

Submission + - Couple who catch cop speeding could face charges.

Submitted by
a_nonamiss
a_nonamiss writes: "A Georgia couple, apparently tired of people speeding past their house, installed a camera and radar gun on their property. After it was installed, they caught a police office going 17MPH over the posted limit. They brought this to the attention of the local police department, and are now being forced to appear in front of a judge to answer to charges of stalking.

from the article:

The Sipples allegedly caught Kennesaw police officer Richard Perrone speeding up to 17 mph over the speed limit. Perrone alerted Bartow authorities, who in turn visited the Sipples' home to tell them Perrone intended to press charges against them for stalking.
I have the utmost respect for most law enforcement. They have a difficult, dangerous and mostly thankless job to do, but shouldn't they be held accountable for casually breaking the very same laws they are supposed to be enforcing? Additionally, shouldn't we, as citizens, have the right to be able to bring this to someone's attention without having to face laughably bogus charges for our efforts?"
Security

Submission + - Citicard security or lack of

Submitted by BikerMikey
BikerMikey writes: I just had a few interesting conversations with the brain trust over at Citi Cards. I had not downloaded my statements since they had redesigned their site until last week. I should say that I tried to login. The login page was unsecured, I tried adding that little "s" to make it secure and got bounced out to an unsecured page again. I could find no links to a secured login page. I decided to give them a call and got Denise in support. She kept telling me that it was ok because there was a lock on the part of the page with the account login and I was on thier site. We went around and around and finally I asked to talk to her boss, she refused to pass me to her boss telling me that he would not take calls, gotta love that customer support. I tried to call again, this time pointing out that my "Identity Theft Protection Packet" that I got from them, for pure enjoyment, told me to "NEVER enter my account info onto an unsecured page". I kept pointing out info from thier packet on how to tell if a connection is secure, her response was that it is ok here on their site. Duh? I wonder how much they paid for the consultant that sold them this load of BS. Are there any responsible Credit Card Companies out that with things like Virtual Account Numbers and Direct Download of transactions?
Microsoft

Submission + - Broken Daylight Savings Patch?

Submitted by
lys1123
lys1123 writes: "Windows Update on our work computers automatically installed an update over the weekend and now the NUnit testing on our current project has gone from all green to all red. The reason? Our test data includes data that was inserted on 11/01/2005 and this is now being treated as Daylight Savings Time instead of Standard time. Has anyone else run into this problem? Have you found any fixes that actually work?"
Google

Submission + - Google developing AI

Submitted by
chonny69
chonny69 writes: "Developers at search engine giant Google "are really trying to build artificial intelligence and to do it on a large scale," Google co-founder Larry Page said at the annual American Association for the Advancement of Science conference Saturday. "It's not as far off as people think," he said. Page also said that in the programming language of humans the brain's algorithms weren't all that complicated and could be approximated, eventually, with a lot of computational power."
Graphics

Submission + - Blender 2.43 Released

Submitted by tbcpp
tbcpp writes: Since the open sourcing of the code several years ago Blender's development has grown by leaps and bounds but no single release can compare with the plethora of features that version 2.43 contains. This release could be nicked the "Multi" version; with multi-resolution Meshes, multi-level UV, multi-layer images, and multi-pass rendering, to name some highlights. Much appreciated are the new Mesh Sculpt and Retopo painting tools. Other features include, fluid particles, render baking, composite defocus blur, to name a few. Artists using cvs versions have already created amazing models. Seven months of development time have resulted in a giant list of features & improvement & fixes.

As always, this release is available for Windows, Mac, Linux, FreeBSD and Solaris.
User Journal

Journal Journal: Hating the holidays

Journal by d.valued

It's the most nerve-wracking time of the year.

Hands down, the pressure put on you by society is highest this time of year, what with such nuggets as "X days 'til Christmas!" and "'Tis better to give than receive."

Thanks, Charles Dickens. He wrote more Christmas books than anyone else. Of course, there's the classic "A Christmas Carol" which has been bastardized into more works than anything else I can think of, and only concerns the material side.
User Journal

Journal Journal: Twenty-four hours: An eternity

Journal by d.valued

I'm waiting for a phone call that will successfully conclude a month plus of waiting.

Due to certain contractual obligations, I can't talk about what until either a) I'm rejected, in which case I'll gladly relate the info, or b) I'm accepted, in which case there will be more waiting whilst I giddily salute.
User Journal

Journal Journal: Man.. it's been a f***ing year?

Journal by d.valued

Unbe-fucking-lievable.

I didn't even realise I was this lazy until I looked at the Fatwa post.

There she is: 19 Nov 04, and it's 18 Nov 05 now.

364 days.

Wow.

What's changed in that year?

My age, and that's it.

Slashdot Top Deals

God help those who do not help themselves. -- Wilson Mizner

Close