NETHED - Slashdot User

Submission + - The Problem With Driver-Loaded Firmware

Submitted by

Kadin2048

on Sunday December 31, 2006 @10:59PM

Kadin2048 writes: "If you've gone to a big-box store and purchased a wireless card recently, you might have had some trouble getting it to work under Linux, or any non-Windows OS for that matter. One reason for this is that more and more manufacturers are producing hardware that are useless without proprietary firmware. While these new designs allow for lower parts counts and thus lower cost, it presents a serious problem for F/OSS software because it can sometimes guarantee no out-of-the-box compatibility. Jem Matzan has produced a detailed article, "The battle for wireless network drivers," on the subject, including interviews with manufacturers' representatives and OS developers, including Theo de Raadt. The bottom line? In general, Asian hardware manufacturers were far more responsive and liberal about firmware than U.S. manufacturers (Intel included). Look for more firmware issues in the future, as not only wireless hardware, but regular wired Ethernet cards, take the driver-loaded firmware approach."

Submission + - Stop Spam Bots with the HTML Encoded Captcha (HEC)

Submitted by

rangeva

on Sunday December 31, 2006 @06:41PM

rangeva writes: "If you own a site where users can participate in a discussion or share their opinions (forums, talkbacks etc) you probably had to deal with spam bots. Even with a standard Captcha many scripts are able to crack it and post a spam message on your site.

In an attempt to prevent this annoyance I created a new kind of Captcha that presents an unsolved challenge to the bot's programmers. What I did was to encode the Captcha image into HTML. By doing so I gave the bots programmers a few new challenges:

The Captcha is no longer an image and therefore not a resource they can download and process.

The owner of the site can change the properties of the Captcha's HTML, making it unique, and by doing so add another layer of complication for the bot to crack.

"

Submission + - Geeks in Asia Use Clever Hacks To Get /.

Submitted by

Daedius

on Sunday December 31, 2006 @06:23PM

Daedius writes: "My comrade Hugh Perkins is living in Asia and he has been without internet for many days! He uses l33t hacks to get his daily dose of /. in desperate times. He also works on the Open Source Metaverse Project with me. He sends me his code updates while lacking access to SVN. " "The Taiwan earthquake has brought telecommunications in the Taiwan/Hong Kong region to a standstill. I am living in Shenzhen and am unable to read slashdot directly for several days gmail and google have privileged bandwidth and local servers. Both gmail and google continue to work perfectly from the region. Could there be some way to use google or gmail to read slashdot? A solution was to upload an executable to my webhosting in America that would receive zipped executables by email, execute them, then email me the results. This works great! Here's some screenshots" " http://manageddreams.com/slashdotviagmail/"

Submission + - Apple charged with iPod-iTunes music monopoly

Submitted by mblase on Sunday December 31, 2006 @05:42PM

mblase writes: An unspecified plaintiff is asking for unspecified damages from Apple in a lawsuit charging them with creating an illegal monopoly with their FairPlay DRM. Apple said that "the suit, filed in July, centers on Apple's use of a copy-protection system that prevents iTunes music and video from playing on rival devices. As well, songs bought elsewhere aren't easy to play on iPods." Apparently someone hasn't heard you can still rip music from CDs for listening on any MP3 player on the market.

Submission + - The world's most powerful diesel engine

Submitted by trex279 on Sunday December 31, 2006 @05:24PM

trex279 writes: The Wartsila-Sulzer RTA96-C turbocharged two-stroke diesel engine is the world's most powerful diesel engine built to date. Each cylinder displaces a whopping 111,143 cubic inches (1820 liters) and produces 7780 horse power!!And its about the size of a small building!

Submission + - IBM says perfect teleportation possible

Submitted by trex279 on Sunday December 31, 2006 @05:16PM

trex279 writes: In the past, the idea of teleportation was not taken very seriously by scientists, because it was thought to violate the uncertainty principle of quantum mechanics, which forbids any measuring or scanning process from extracting all the information in an atom or other object. According to the uncertainty principle, the more accurately an object is scanned, the more it is disturbed by the scanning process, until one reaches a point where the object's original state has been completely disrupted, still without having extracted enough information to make a perfect replica. But the six scientists found a way to make an end run around this logic, using a celebrated and paradoxical feature of quantum mechanics known as the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen effect.

Submission + - Apple Monopoly?

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 31, 2006 @03:44PM

An anonymous reader writes: A lawsuit claims that Apple Computer Inc. has created an illegal monopoly by linking iTunes music and video sales to its iPod players. The lawsuit centers on Apple's use of a copy-protection system that prevents iTunes music and video from playing on rival devices. Is this a good approach to force companies to stop using DRM? Or just a waste of judicial resources?

Submission + - Apple faces suit over "illegal" iTunes Mon

Submitted by

Michael

on Sunday December 31, 2006 @02:12PM

Michael writes: "Things just keep getting better for Apple on the legal front... According to the Associated Press Apple is facing a lawsuit that claims they have built an illegal monopoly due to the copy-protection system that generally prevents iTunes music and video from playing on rival players...Likewise, songs purchased elsewhere aren't easily playable on iPods. The plaintiff is seeking unspecified damages and other relief. On the 20th of December, the court denied Apple's motion to dismiss the complaint. The case was originally filed on July 21. Does this case have merit? Click Here for the full story"

Submission + - Top Ten Google Myths

Submitted by

Reggie

on Sunday December 31, 2006 @01:49PM

Reggie writes: "I came across this in one of the blog today. Google Myths impact everyone — they are becoming urban legends. So Ionut Alex. Chitu, a student from Romania, gave us replies to the top ten myths. The one that is given the most attention is the conspiracy theory of Google and their use of your information (3 of the 10). The most interesting and self-revealing: 8. Google is the best search engine that will ever be built. Google is far from a search engine that "understands exactly what you mean and gives you back exactly what you want". But its goal is to reach that state. The tenth myth was about Google's control of the world, the answer was: Those who control information, control the world. Hopefully Google will be a benevolent dictator. An entertaining read. To see the blog in its entirety, visit: http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2006/12/google-my ths.html"

Submission + - The moleculator gets a keypad lock

Submitted by

Roland Piquepaille

on Sunday December 31, 2006 @01:38PM

Roland Piquepaille writes: "For your information, a moleculator is simply a molecular scale calculator, or a molecular system which can perform logic and arithmetic operations. Now, LiveScience reports in a brief article that chemists at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel have developed a molecule-size keypad lock. This lock is based on a concept similar to the familiar ATM banking machines. But in theory, it could accept lots of different inputs — or passwords. So the researchers think that this molecular keypad lock could be used for many applications, including saving our secret information. Read more for additional references and a diagram showing how the molecular keypad lock works."

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