wyldeling - Slashdot User

Submission + - Man Kept Off Flight Because of Book

Submitted by

bossesjoe

on Sunday April 22, 2007 @04:12PM

bossesjoe writes: "A man was stopped from boarding his flight from Philadelphia to Phoenix when a random luggage search revealed a copy of Hayduke Lives! by Edward Abbey. The book prominently features a bomber on the cover holding sticks of dynamite and was enough for the security officials to detain him. Later he was also told because he purchased his ticket on September 11th, 2001 (even though it was before the attacks) and because of his expired driver's license (which was not expired) that could not take the flight. After purchasing another ticket for a later date he again detained and searched but was allowed to pass through security forty five minutes after being cleared. Is this what airport security has come to?"

Journal Journal: Screwed Via Small Print 3

Journal by gbulmash on Sunday April 22, 2007 @02:41PM

Seems that EULA's aren't the only places companies try to screw you. A big source of consumer losses are sites that autorenew subscriptions. They get you signed up and then a month or a year later, after you've forgotten about them, the charge shows up on your credit card or PayPal account. This isn't just porn sites, but sites that seem otherwise legitimate. Some understand that the fight over the refund and the angry ex-customer aren't worth the hassle and will process the cancellation of

Submission + - SQL-Ledger Relicensed, Community Gagged

Submitted by

Ashley Gittins

on Saturday April 14, 2007 @10:07AM

Ashley Gittins writes: "Users of the popular accounting package SQL-Ledger are being kept in the dark about a recent license change. Two weeks ago a new version of the software was released but along with it came the silent change of license from GPLv2 to the "SQL-Ledger Open Source License" — presumably in an effort to prevent future forks like LedgerSMB. As it turns out, the author is making deliberate attempts to prevent the community from finding out about the license change. All posts to the SQL-Ledger mailing lists asking about the license change are being censored and direct questions to the author are going unanswered. This behaviour is not a first for this particular project, and is part of the reason for the original LedgerSMB fork. So, does a project maintainer have an ethical obligation to notify his or her community of a license change? What about a legal obligation?"

Submission + - Top 12 Operating Systems Vulnerability Summary

Submitted by

markmcb

on Tuesday March 27, 2007 @10:30PM

markmcb writes: "Have you ever wondered how vulnerable your computer is from the first bit you write to the hard drive all the way until you have a fully patched system? If so, Matthew Vea has posted a concise summary of security strengths and shortcomings for twelve of the major operating systems of 2006/2007. In his summary, Matt tests each OS with widely available tools like nmap and Nessus, and notes responses at install, pre-patch, and post-patch times for each system. After the tedious job is done, he produces results that will make both the Apple and Windows communities cringe with regards to security. From the article, 'As far as "straight-out-of-box" conditions go, both Microsoft's Windows and Apple's OS X are ripe with remotely accessible vulnerabilities. ... The UNIX and Linux variants present a much more robust exterior to the outside. Even when the pre-configured server binaries are enabled, each [Linux] system generally maintained its integrity against remote attacks.'"

Submission + - Spaceport America Takes Off

Submitted by

SeaDour

on Tuesday March 27, 2007 @04:18PM

SeaDour writes: "Spaceport America, being built north of Las Cruces, New Mexico, is finally becoming a reality and is set to become the world's first commercial spaceport. Governor Bill Richardson recently secured 33 million dollars from the state legislature for the final design, and a proposed 0.25% sales tax increase in Dona Ana County, where the facility is to be constructed, is expected to bring an additional 6.5 million dollars per year (if approved by voters next week). Richard Branson, the head of upstart Virgin Galactic, on Monday agreed to lease the facility for 27.5 million dollars over twenty years. If all continues to go as planned, SpaceShipTwo will make its first suborbital joy ride in two to three years."

Submission + - Will cell phones need DST patching?

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 06, 2007 @05:28AM

An anonymous reader writes: With the impending daylight savings time shift on March 11th, are cel phone carriers and manufactureres providing updates for their devices? Palm and RIM have both released updates for their devices, but what about J2ME based phones? Pretty much every phone on the market includes J2ME, as well as limited calendaring functions. Is there anyway to update these? Will carriers "push" out necessary updates? or are consumers stuck scouring the web for this type of information?

Submission + - Getting out

Submitted by on Monday March 05, 2007 @05:42PM

An anonymous reader writes: The United States of America as well as several other countries claimed to be the "most free" of countries have recently been imposing draconian legislation- some would say Fascist or Orwellian. If the trend continues, some people will be looking to get out of the country to keep their privacy and freedom. That leaves a question- where should they go?

Submission + - Whatever happened to superconductors?

Submitted by

AltGrendel

on Monday March 05, 2007 @04:25PM

AltGrendel writes: "Jonathan Fildes of the BBC wrote that 'In 1987, Ronald Reagan declared that the US was about to enter an incredible new era of technology. Levitating high-speed trains, super-efficient power generators and ultra-powerful supercomputers would become commonplace thanks to a new breed of materials known as high temperature superconductors (HTSC). "The breakthroughs in superconductivity bring us to the threshold of a new age," said the president. "It's our task to herald in that new age with a rush."

But 20 years on, the new world does not seem to have arrived. So what happened?'

He shares what he found in this article."

Submission + - Plasma To Produce Clean Energy From Waste

Submitted by

kbox

on Sunday February 25, 2007 @06:23PM

kbox writes: "Mention trash incineration to most people and the image that usually springs to mind is a dirty, smelly practice that is about as far from 'green' as you can get. However, this isn't the case with a technology called Plasma Gasification, which is not only very eco-friendly, it's also powered by the very garbage that it processes. It also produces clean energy and commercially useful byproducts.

While the technology of processing materials with plasma has been around for some time now, Joseph Longo, CEO and founder of Startech Environmental Corporation has developed a device that can handle pretty much any type of waste put into it and turn it into a clean source of energy."

Submission + - What's happening with Transmeta

Submitted by

prostoalex

on Monday February 19, 2007 @07:00PM

prostoalex writes: "At launch Tranmeta Corp. received tons of publicity — boasting Linux Torvalds among its employees, the energy-efficient microprocessor company was supposedly revolutionizing the world of microprocessors as we know it. Electronic Engineering Times provides an update on what's happening with Transmeta right now: "Transmeta last week laid off 75 employees, decreasing its worldwide work force by about 39 percent. Most of the cuts were in the engineering-services business, which is being discontinued. Sales and support offices in Taiwan and Japan are also being closed. Over the next two quarters, the company expects to further reduce head count by about 25 to 55 people.""

Submission + - Gamers perform better on surgical skill test

Submitted by Blindside on Monday February 19, 2007 @06:33PM

Blindside writes: Are surgeons who are also gamers at an advantage in the operating room? A new study showed that gamers had a distinct advantage in a surgical skills test. 'Neither years of training nor number of surgeries performed would predict performance on the laparoscopy skills test. Past gaming and current skills, in contrast, would. Those who had never gamed took significantly longer to complete the skills test, and had an error rate of roughly 1.5 times that of regular gamers. Similar correlations also held when gaming skills were tested: those scoring in the top third made nearly 50 percent fewer errors, and and performed the drill nearly 40 percent faster. For those keeping score at home, Super Monkey Ball 2 had the best correlation with surgical skills, Star Wars Racer Revenge the worst.'

Submission + - Pastor with 666 tatoo claims to be God

Submitted by

acgrissom

on Monday February 19, 2007 @06:17PM

acgrissom writes: "This is strange. Jose Luis de Jesus Miranda, a pastor with 666 tattooed on his arm, claims to be the new Christ. His followers, of which there are thousands, in dozens of countries, also get these tattoos. He says, "Antichrist is the best person in the world."

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/02/16/miami.preacher/in dex.html"

Submission + - Password Malpractice: Are You Guilty?

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 19, 2007 @03:16PM

An anonymous reader writes: The explosion of passwords in today's enterprise has created a sea of holes in the security infrastructure. Some CIOs have responded to the challenge by bringing in the lifeboats, figuratively speaking, but in many cases the password-related security risk remains largely unchecked and even ignored.

Submission + - Study Indicates Autism is Mostly Genetic

Submitted by Old Man Kensey on Monday February 19, 2007 @02:28PM

Old Man Kensey writes: A study funded by the National Institutes of Health and the nonprofit foundation Autism Speaks has found multiple verifiable genetic links to the development of autism, including a gene involved in glutamate metabolism, a process implicated in other childhood neurological disorders like epilepsy. One researcher went so far as to say the findings indicate that autism may be as much as 90% genetic.

Submission + - Google developing AI

Submitted by

chonny69

on Monday February 19, 2007 @01:16PM

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."

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