Comment Why Bother? (Score 1) 541
Why bother with this when the Blizzard and Xbox chat rooms are working just fine.. .
Erlang's Creator Speaks About Its History and Prospects 48
Seal writes "Erlang, originally created at Ericsson in 1986, is a functional programming language which was released as open source around 10 years ago and flourished ever since. In this Q&A, Erlang creator Joe Armstrong talks about its beginnings as a control program for a telephone exchange, its flexibility and its modern day usage in open source programs. 'In the Erlang world we have over twenty years of experience with designing and implementing parallel algorithms. What we lose in sequential processing speed we win back in parallel performance and fault-tolerance,' Armstrong said. He also mentions how multi-core processors pushed the development of Erlang and the advantages of hot swapping."
Submission + - 'Users For Dummies': An Essential Guide For IT (infoworld.com)
snydeq writes: "InfoWorld has put together an eight-part plan for dealing with users, the perennial bugbears of IT. One strategy of note: Designate a departmental scapegoat — one or two IT folks who are dispatched to handle panicky users face to face. 'This way, the people in your department who shouldn't be exposed to users can be kept safely away from them.'"
Submission + - Sniffing Browser History Without Javascript (making-the-web.com)
Ergasiophobia writes: "I'm just going to quote the page itself here, as it gives a pretty good description.
It actually works pretty simply — it is simpler than the Javascript implementation. All it does is load a page (in a hidden Iframe) which contains lots of links. If a link is visited, a background (which isn't really a background) is loaded as defined in the CSS. The "background" image will log the information, and then store it (and, in this case, it is displayed to you).
http://www.making-the-web.com/misc/sites-you-visit/nojs/ Is a demonstration of a method to find out the browsing history of a visitor to a website, no javascript required. It seems the only drawbacks to this method are the increased load on your browser, and that it requires a list of websites to check against."
Submission + - NSA Ill-Suited for Domestic Cybersecurity Role?
Hugh Pickens writes: "Former CIA counterterrorism analyst Stephen Lee has an interesting article in the Examiner asserting that the National Security Agency is "a secretive, hidebound culture incapable of keeping up with innovation" with a history of disregard for privacy and civil liberties. Lee says that for most of its sixty-year history the NSA has been geared to cracking telecom and crypto gear produced by Soviet and Chinese design bureaus, but at the end of the cold war became "stymied by new-generation Western-engineered telephone networks and mobile technologies that were then spreading like wildfire in the developing world and former Soviet satellite countries." When the NSA finally recognized that it needed to get better at innovation, it launched several mega-projects, tagged like 'Trailblazer' and 'Groundbreaker' that have been spectacular failures, costing US taxpayers billions. More recently, the NY Times reported that NSA has been breaking rules set by the Obama administration to peer even more aggressively into American citizens' phone traffic and email inboxes and whistleblower reports portray NSA domestic eavesdropping programs as unprofessional and poorly supervised, with intercept technicians ridiculing and mishandling recordings of citizens' private "pillow talk" conversations. Lee concludes that "if the Federal government must play a role, then Congress and President Obama should turn to another agency without a record of creating mistrust --perhaps even a new entity. Meanwhile, NSA should focus on listening in on America's enemies, instead of being an enemy of Americans and their enterprises.""
Submission + - 30 years of the spreadsheet (itpro.co.uk)
nk497 writes: "It's been 30 years since the spreadsheet was first developed, in the form of VisiCalc. It was first announced in an ad in Byte Magazine with the tag line: "How did you ever do without it?" In June 1979, it was shown off at a trade show to an audience of two. VisiCalc became popular because it was a business-friendly program that didn't require programming skills. Despite VisiCalc selling hundreds of thousands of copies, and the idea eventually spawning the Excel we all know and love to hate, the developers didn't make a fortune off their idea, as they never did patent it."
Submission + - Disney strikes against net neutrality 1
1 a bee writes: Ars Technica is running a story by Matthew Lasar about how Disney's ESPN360.com is charging ISPs for "bulk" access to their content. According to the article, if you visit ESPN using a "non-subscribing" ISP, you're greeted with a message explaining why access is restricted for you. This raises a number of issues:
..it's one thing to charge users an access fee, another to charge the ISP, potentially passing the cost on to all the ISPs subscribers whether they're interested in the content or not.
Ironically, the issue came to fore in a complaint from the The American Cable Association (ACA) to the FCC. A quoted ACA press release warns
"Media giants are in the early stages of becoming Internet gatekeepers by requiring broadband providers to pay for their Web-based content and services and include them as part of basic Internet access for all subscribers. These content providers are also preventing subscribers who are interested in the content from independently accessing it on broadband networks of providers that have refused to pay."
So is this a real threat to net neutrality (and the end-to-end principle) or just another bad business model that doesn't stand a chance?
Submission + - Phrack #66 is out!
NynexNinja writes: Phrack Issue #66 is out.. Articles include: "Phrack Prophile on The PaX Team", "Phrack World News", "Abusing the Objective C runtime", "Backdooring Juniper Firewalls", "Exploiting DLmalloc frees in 2009", "Persistent BIOS infection", "Exploiting UMA : FreeBSD kernel heap exploits", "Exploiting TCP Persist Timer Infiniteness", "Malloc Des-Maleficarum", "A Real SMM Rootkit", "Alphanumeric RISC ARM Shellcode", "Power cell buffer overflow", "Binary Mangling with Radare", "Linux Kernel Heap Tampering Detection", "Developing MacOs X Rootkits" and "How close are they of hacking your brain".
Submission + - SPAM: New DOS attacks threaten wireless data networks
alphadogg writes: Forget spam, viruses, worms, malware and phishing. These threats are apparently old school when compared to a new class of denial-of-service (DOS) attacks that threaten wireless data networks. The latest wireless network threats were outlined in a talk in NYC Thursday by Krishan Sabnani, vice president of networking research at Bell Labs, at the Cyber Infrastructure Protection Conference at City College of New York. Sabnani said the latest wireless data network threats are the result of inherent weaknesses in Mobile IP, a protocol that uses tunneling and complex network triangulation to allow mobile devices to move freely from one network to another. "We need to especially monitor the mobile networks — with limited bandwidth and terminal battery--for DOS attacks," Sabnani said. Sabnani said the newest DOS attacks on wireless networks involve repeatedly establishing and releasing connections. These attacks are easy to launch and hard to detect, he added.
Link to Original Source
Link to Original Source
Submission + - GPS Map Data Error Prompts Garmin Recall (computerworld.com)
CWmike writes: "Blindly following GPS map indications can turn out to be dangerous: For safety reasons, device maker Garmin has recalled maps that gave incorrect information to some of its users. The 2009 version of Garmin's BlueChart g2 and g2 Vision data cards provides inaccurate indications of the depth of the water off the coast of Sweden and Denmark, according to reports first received by Garmin during the last week of May. The same issues may affect maps of other regions, so the company has decided to do a worldwide recall of the products, it said. It has also stopped selling CD-ROMs containing the same data, according to its Web site. The problem was caused by a change in the algorithm that decides how to display depth information, according to Anthony Chmarny, spokesman at Garmin in Europe."
Submission + - Cell Phone Test Environment on the Cheap? 1
ShipIt writes: I'm interested in developing cell phone applications for a wide variety of platforms including the iPhone, Android, and perhaps Windows CE/Mobile. Preferably, my test setup would consist of several of the most popular phones for each platform, however, I don't want to pay service plans for each phone, and in any case, coverage in my area is extremely limited. Ideally, I'd like to have a sort of mini cell base station and antenna in my home that could communicate with the test phones, gateway the voice to a local Asterisk box, and push the data out over my broadband connection.
I've read some about femtocell technology, which seems to be what I want in terms of hardware, but the current offerings all seem to be tied to specific service providers along with monthly fees.
As someone just getting started in cell phone app development, I'd love to hear how others have solved this problem.
As someone just getting started in cell phone app development, I'd love to hear how others have solved this problem.
Submission + - What to do with 50+ 1GB DDR2 SoDIMMs? 1
Tim Rutter writes: I have 50+ 1GB ddr2 so-dimm sticks, left overs after system upgrades.
It seems a shame that they are sitting here in a box, doing nothing.
Have any my fellow slashdotters come across anything such as the Acard ANS-9010B, Or a PCI Express card like the Intel BFCMEM that would use sodimms'?
Whether its a memory expansion board like the Intel device or A pseudo storage like the Acard device.
Submission + - SPAM: UK startup solves last mile problem?
An anonymous reader writes: UK startup Sharedband who claim to "solve the last mile problem" through bonded broadband solutions have recently extended their managed service from locations across the US to the UK — offering bonding of 2, 3 or 4 lines.
It appears that previously their (UK) service was only available through selected resellers — including KeConnect, Talk Internet and BT.
The solution seems to use a combination of custom router firmware a server software, which is presumably hosted in the ISP's data-centre.
While clearly targeting at SOHO businesses, is it possible those living miles from their exchange finally have a hope? Do any Slashdotters have experience of this service?
Link to Original Source
It appears that previously their (UK) service was only available through selected resellers — including KeConnect, Talk Internet and BT.
The solution seems to use a combination of custom router firmware a server software, which is presumably hosted in the ISP's data-centre.
While clearly targeting at SOHO businesses, is it possible those living miles from their exchange finally have a hope? Do any Slashdotters have experience of this service?
Link to Original Source
Comment Re:Analog TV was better than Digital (Score 1) 262
Number of stations I received via analog: 25 (across three markets - Baltimore, Harrisburg, Philly)
Number of stations with digital: 12
I'm gonna pin your location around Edenton PA. here is the TV fool chart.
Looking at that chart I'd recommend a Channel Master 4228HD, or if wind load on the antenna is an issue, a fringe style Yagi. Use a rotor. Receive 22 digital channels.. .
Submission + - Helsinki is Klingon Base on Earth
bantu1 writes: Apparently, Helsinki has been reported as the Klingon-speaking capital of the world, with 1 in 1953 Helsinks able to speak the Trek-lovers' language. Read how this strange conclusion came about on Graham Cluley's blog at sophos.com
This all comes off the back of the recent "slip" by Sophos in releasing their free Klingon Anti-Virus early. You can download the tool here: www.sophos.com/klingon-anti-virus.
This all comes off the back of the recent "slip" by Sophos in releasing their free Klingon Anti-Virus early. You can download the tool here: www.sophos.com/klingon-anti-virus.
