Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Government

Submission + - China Considering Cuts on Rare-Earth Metal Exports

Submitted by SillySnake
SillySnake writes: A draft report by China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has called for a total ban on foreign shipments of terbium, dysprosium, yttrium, thulium, and lutetium. Other metals such as neodymium, europium, cerium, and lanthanum will be restricted to a combined export quota of 35,000 tonnes a year, far below global needs.

Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/6082464/World-faces-hi-tech-crunch-as-China-eyes-ban-on-rare-metal-exports.html
Censorship

Submission + - AT&T blocks img.4chan.org from customers (reddit.com) 11

Submitted by
bmecoli
bmecoli writes: "AT&T seems to be blocking img.4chan.net which hosts the infamous /b/ (random) board, as well as /r9k/. Those who have contacted AT&T representatives were told that the site is in fact blocked, so this isn't a technical problem, and all the other 4chan subdomains work fine."
Software

Submission + - Why is Firehose so hostile? 15

Submitted by
NewYorkCountryLawyer
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: "Can anyone explain to me why Slashdot's Firehose is made to be so unfriendly? It's a great idea, but in practice it's infuriating. If you see a submitted article, and click on one of the links, you can't go back to the story. You have to start all over again. If you set the filters to what you're interested in, you have to re-set them all over again. Even if you just RTFA you are punished by losing your settings. Why shouldn't Slashdot encourage people to participate in the Firehose. For a busy person, it's almost impossible to be involved. And this bizarre lack of 'stickiness' makes everything take 10 times as much times as it needs to."
Google

Submission + - Google Unveils Hybrid Car that plugs into Grid (foxnews.com)

Submitted by
mytrip
mytrip writes: "Not content with seeking to control the information super-highway, Google wants to influence what kind of car you drive.

The online search company has unveiled a new, hyper-advanced model of hybrid car that can be charged directly from the grid, and, when its battery is not in use, the stored electricity can be sold back to the utility company.

By selling their excess electricity to the grid owners of plug-in hybrids will be able to earn up to $3,000 a year. Such savings are likely to be offset by the higher initial retail price of hybrid cars."
Books

Submission + - OJ Simpson's Book Leaked to BitTorrent (digg.com)

Submitted by
joshzweig
joshzweig writes: "In 2006 O.J Simpson announced he was releasing a book in which he would detail what would have happened, had he really committed the horrific murders of his ex-wife and her boyfriend in 1994. After public outrage, the book was shelved and 400,000 copies of the book were destroyed but now a digital version has been leaked to BitTorrent.

"If I Did It" is the title of an unreleased book by ex-NFL player and actor O.J Simpson where he gave a hypothetical account of what would've happened, had he committed the double knife-murder of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman in 1994. According to reports, Simpson was paid $3.5m for writing the book.

The PDF file is 118 pages, and 8 chapters long. The author's note is only eight words long, reading "If I did it, this is what happened." Unfortunately, the book is not very well written, and is exceptionally dull."
Democrats

Submission + - YouTube bungles CNN debate? (10zenmonkeys.com)

Submitted by
destinyland
destinyland writes: "YouTube promised CNN they'd supply questions for a July debate of the Presidential candidates — by letting users upload video questions. But five days in they've only received 50 submissions — and a lot of them were pretty stupid. The Washington Post rounded up the best videos they could find. But if this experiment with interactive democracy is doomed to fail, what's the ultimate lesson? Maybe it's that if you're going to unveil an interactive democracy online, you need to make sure you actually promote it!"
Biotech

Submission + - Vivoleum: Exxon's Answer to Fuel Crisis

Submitted by
robotim
robotim writes: "At one of North America's largest gas and oil conferences, Exxon unveiled a new product called "Vivoleum" as a possible future fuel when we run out of oil. The conference took place in Calgary, Canada (where Canada's largest oil reserves reside,) and the Exxon representatives were not paid officials from the company, but rather volunteers from the Yes Men. Wired has two articles, one with the press release from the event and another is a Q&A with Andy Bichlbaum from the Yes Men. Interestingly, not everyone seems to think burning people for fuel is a bad idea."
Spam

Submission + - Where does a sysadmin go for help?

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: I believe I have stumbled up a new FreeBSD based rootkit/hack/backdoor/whatever you want to call it. I'm pretty sure I know how it was installed on the server, I've got a pretty good idea of how most of it works, but there are parts that are over my head. I am not an idiot, but I am lacking the reverse engineer skills required to see exactly how it works. I am leery about posting my findings to a public forum because the last thing I want to do is give the script kiddies a new toy to play with without having full knowledge of how it works myself. I would prefer to disclose what I've found to a trustworthy third party who can elaborate on my findings and then have the findings posted publicly should this turn out to be something new. Please keep in mind I have googled, yahooed, searched forums, searched usenet for any mention of what I have found and have come up empty handed. It's entirely possible this is nothing new, and I am a n00b, but in either case my question is: where does a sysadmin go when he doesn't have and can't find an answer? PS: I am already aware that in Soviet Russia, answer finds you. Unfortunately I don't live in Soviet Russia. :(
Wireless Networking

Submission + - Electromagnetic Sensitivity?

Submitted by
bibliophage
bibliophage writes: "Here's an article from the UK's Daily Mail about a woman who has symptoms, including "hair loss, sickness, high blood-pressure, digestive and memory problems, severe headaches and dizziness," she believes are caused by sensitivity to electromagnetic radiation from household appliances, wireless devices, and other common technologies. After wallpapering her house in a special foil-backed paper, she claims her symptoms abated."
Privacy

Submission + - Woman Denied Teaching Degree Over MySpace Photo

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A woman was denied a teaching degree by Pennsylvania based Millersville University at the last minute, due to a "Drunken Pirate" photo of her on her own MySpace page. According to the story, even though Ms. Snyder received "competent" or "superior" ratings in her final student-teacher evaluation, she was ultimately denied the teaching degree. Conestoga Valley High School threatened to no longer accept student-teachers from Millersville University if Ms. Snyder went unpunished for her "Drunken Pirate" photo.
Microsoft

Submission + - OLPC to run Windows, come to the US

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: 'Yesterday Nicholas Negroponte, former director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab now head of the nonprofit One Laptop Per Child project, gave analysts and journalists an update on the OLPC project. Two big changes were announced — the $100 OLPC is now the $175 OLPC, and it will be able to run Windows. Even in a free and open market where there are free and legal alternatives to using Windows and Office, there's a huge demand for Microsoft software. The OLPC was seen as a way for open source Linux distributions to achieve massive exposure in developing countries, but now Negroponte says that the OLPC machine will be able to run Windows as well as Linux. Details are sketchy but Negroponte did confirm that the XO's developers have been working with Microsoft to get the OLPC up to spec for Windows.' We also find out that the OLPC gets a price hike and will officially come to the US. Could this be tied into Microsoft's new $3 Windows XP Starter and Office 2007 bundle? Now that the OLPC and Intel's Classmate PC can both run Windows, is Linux in the developing world in trouble?

Slashdot Top Deals

To do nothing is to be nothing.

Close