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Intel

Cliff Click's Crash Course In Modern Hardware 249

Posted by timothy from the first-there-were-the-dinosaurs dept.
Lord Straxus writes "In this presentation (video) from the JVM Languages Summit 2009, Cliff Click talks about why it's almost impossible to tell what an x86 chip is really doing to your code due to all of the crazy kung-fu and ninjitsu it does to your code while it's running. This talk is an excellent drill-down into the internals of the x86 chip, and it's a great way to get an understanding of what really goes on down at the hardware and why certain types of applications run so much faster than other types of applications. Dr. Cliff really knows his stuff!"
Security

Massive Power Outages In Brazil Caused By Hackers 462

Posted by timothy from the mongering-engine-warming-up dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "CBS reports on 60 minutes that a massive two-day power outage in Brazil's Espirito Santo State affecting more than three million people in 2007, and another, smaller event in three cities north of Rio de Janeiro in January 2005, were perpetrated by hackers manipulating control systems. Former Chief of US National Intelligence Retired Adm. Mike McConnell says that the 'United States is not prepared for such an attack' and believes it could happen in America. 'If I were an attacker and wanted to do strategic damage to the United States, I would either take the cold of winter or the heat of summer,' says McConnell, 'I would probably sack electric power on the US East Coast, maybe the West Coast and attempt to cause a cascading effect.' Congressman Jim Langevin says that US power companies need to be forced to deal with the issue after they told Congress they would take steps to defend their operations but did not follow up. 'They admit that they misled Congress. The private sector has different priorities than we do in providing security. Their bottom line is about profits,' says Langevin. 'We need to change their motivation so that when see vulnerability like this, we can require them to fix it.' McConnell adds that a similar attack to the one in Brazil is poised to take place on US soil and that it may take some horrific event to get the country focused on shoring up cyber security. 'If the power grid was taken off line in the middle of winter and it caused people to suffer and die, that would galvanize the nation. I hope we don't get there.'"

Updated Slashdot Story Submission Bookmark 48

Posted by CmdrTaco from the throw-us-a-bone-here dept.
We recently redesigned the Submission Form to make it (hopefully) a little easier for you to shovel news our way. The new system also will allow you to tag your submissions. A reminder that you can participate in rating stories and filtering spam from the recent submissions page. And by bookmarking this convenient bookmarklet you can submit stories from the comfort of whatever web page you are browsing.
Medicine

Italian Scientists Put Robot Spiders In Your Colon 203

Posted by CmdrTaco from the wait-'til-it-lays-eggs dept.
Sockatume writes "Scientists in Italy have developed a robot which will move around the lower digestive tract using legs. The 'Spider-Pill' is fitted with a camera and will stow its legs until it reaches the lower intestine. Once there it can crawl around and take pictures under direction from surgeons. Its USP is that it's more appealing than an endoscopy." The BBC also has video.

Comment Re:I'm not looking forward to going to the US (Score 1) 1040

by pyrrhonist (#29630535) Attached to: Did Chicago Lose Olympic Bid Due To US Passport Control?

I'm a peaceful Norwegian with two (many years ago) convictions for possession of small amounts (1-2 joints) of marihuana. My grandmother wants to take me to visit our family in Boston next year, and I'm not looking forward to it at all because of one thing only: US border control and visa stupidity.

The ironic part is that possession of that small an amount of marijuana isn't a criminal offense in Boston due to a law passed last year.

Comment Re:This article is misleading at best (Score 1) 504

by pyrrhonist (#29588413) Attached to: Porn Surfing Rampant at US Science Foundation

thanks to the Freedom of Information Act that was passed by Democrats over the objections of Cheney, Rumsfeld and Scalia.

What you are referring to are the amendments to the FOIA in 1974. The FOIA itself was passed in 1966 and signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson.

President Ford vetoed the amendments to FOIA, but was overridden by congress. The House voted 371-31 to override the veto, and the Senate voted 65-27.

If you want to read the full story, I suggest looking here, as there are links to scans of the actual documents involved.

Weirdly enough, Johnson was against FOIA, and Rumsfeld was originally for it.
The Almighty Buck

Why Games Cost $60 536

Posted by Soulskill from the get-your-fingers-out-of-my-wallet dept.
eldavojohn writes "Crispy Gamer is running a very interesting article on why games cost $60. Many games start out at this retail price — but why? Did the makers of The Beatles Rock Band game just happen upon $59.99, as did the makers of Batman Arkham Asylum? After all, those two titles surely took different amounts of man hours to develop, and result in different averages of entertainment time enjoyed by the consumer. They interview a director at Electronic Entertainment Design and Research, who breaks down the pie as $12 to retailer, $5 to discounts/returns/retail marketing, $10 toward manufacturing costs and shipping. That leaves $30 to $35 in the hands of the publishers. Though lengthy, the article looks at three forces of economics on why game publishers continuously end up in lockstep for pricing: sensible greed, consumer stupidity or evil conspiracy. When asked about the next step up to $70 or $80, Hal Halpin (president and founder of the Entertainment Consumers Association) says, 'I'm not sure that we'll see a standard $70 price point at all. To my mind, emerging technologies, subscriptions and episodic and downloadable content should all enable price drops — increasing accessibility to a much wider audience.'"

Comment Re:Very important (Score 1) 437

by pyrrhonist (#29541841) Attached to: New Phoenix BIOS Starts Windows 7 Boot in 1 Second

This is most useful when you are on a laptop and the battery might die in sleep.

Laptops don't need to use hybrid sleep mode, because they've had the ability for a while to hibernate when the battery starts to get low, thus saving the running state.

Oddly enough, in Windows, It IS on by default for desktops.

That's because hybrid sleep is meant for desktops, not laptops. Since desktops don't usually have a battery backup, a power outage will cause you to lose your running applications. Hybrid sleep was meant to fix this problem for desktops.

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