i22yb - Slashdot User

Office 2007SP2 ODF Interoperability Very Bad 627

Posted by CmdrTaco on Monday May 04, 2009 @08:55AM from the are-you-really-surprised dept.

David Gerard writes "Microsoft Office 2007 SP2 claims support for ODF 1.1. With hard work and careful thinking, they have successfully achieved technical compliance but zero interoperability! MSO 2007sp2 won't read ODF 1.1 from any other existing application, and its ODF is only readable by the CleverAge plugin. The post goes into detail as to how it manages this so thoroughly."

HEN TIFF Exploit Cracks PSP-3000 Open For Homebrew 77

Posted by Soulskill on Sunday May 03, 2009 @03:30PM from the finding-a-way dept.

indrora writes "The PSP community was rocked this weekend by the Homebrew Enabler (HEN) from developers Davee and Bubbletune. One of their friends on the Team Typhoon development team posted a YouTube video showing proof of the TIFF Exploit running on Firmware 5.03, changing the firmware version and MAC address for a reboot. This comes after a picture of gpSP running on a PSP-3000 via the HEN exploit. From the QJ.net article: 'First [things] first: No, Davee hasn't finished the HEN yet. Which means it isn't out yet. What we do have today is some visual confirmation that the HEN can indeed run emulators, in this case the GBA emulator gpSP.' And from the more recent article showing the exploit demo video: 'Be patient, everyone. Davee's HEN Kernel exploit will eventually arrive, given time. "This is a demo of the 5.03 firmware running the tiff exploit and booting into a HEN environment on a PSP 2003 (3000 Support also) on 5.03 Official Firmware. This proves that the code survives a reboot and the system software and MAC address can be changed. This is something that only can be done with a kernel exploit. A video launching homebrew will be posted later."' Hopefully, we'll soon have PSP-3000s playing homebrew games and running PSP uCLinux."

H1N1 Appears To Be Transmittable From Human To Pig 132

Posted by timothy on Sunday May 03, 2009 @02:32PM from the reciprocity-is-just-good-manners dept.

mpetch writes "In an interesting twist, it appears that H1N1 influenza can be transmitted from humans to swine. Apparently a Canadian pig farmer vacationed in Mexico, returned to Canada and infected about 10% of the swine on an Alberta farm. The swine subsequently developed flu symptoms."

Microsoft Family Safety Filter Blocks Google 332

Posted by timothy on Friday April 17, 2009 @10:37AM from the can-neither-confirm-nor-deny dept.

mike.rimov writes "I saw that part of the brand new Windows Live package is the Family Safety Filter, so I decided to give it a spin. Turned it on, set it to 'basic filtering' (their lowest level), and went to Google ... oops, it blocks Google! So I logged into the settings and added Google as an exception. Google still wouldn't come up. Just in case, I turned off the family filter: voila, Google. As we all know, 'Don't be evil' is not part of Microsoft's motto! Oh yeah — and with the filter on, Microsoft's own search engine, live.com comes up." Anomaly?

Lose Your Amazon Account and Your Kindle Dies 419

Posted by timothy on Thursday April 16, 2009 @03:29PM from the just-give-us-the-money-and-nobody-gets-hurt dept.

Mike writes "If you buy a Kindle and some Kindle ebooks from Amazon, be careful of returning items. Amazon decided that one person had returned too many things, so they suspended his Amazon account, which meant that he could no longer buy any Kindle books, and any Kindle subscriptions he's paid for stop working. After some phone calls, Amazon granted him a one-time exception and reactivated his account again." Take this with as much salt as you'd like.

The End of Tax-Free Internet Shopping? 784

Posted by timothy on Thursday April 16, 2009 @01:54PM from the awaiting-a-60-cent-refund-check dept.

Mordok-DestroyerOfWo writes "If a little-known but influential alliance of state politicians, large retailers, and tax collectors have their way, the days of tax-free Internet shopping may be nearly over. A bill expected to be introduced in the US Congress as early as Monday would rewrite the ground rules for mail order and Internet sales by eliminating what its supporters view as a 'loophole' that, in many cases, allows Americans to shop over the Internet without paying sales taxes."

College Police Think Using Linux Is Suspicious Behavior 1079

Posted by CmdrTaco on Tuesday April 14, 2009 @03:42PM from the so-is-your-mom dept.

FutureDomain writes "The Boston College Campus Police have seized the electronics of a computer science student for allegedly sending an email outing another student. The probable cause? The search warrant application states that he is 'a computer science major' and he uses 'two different operating systems for hiding his illegal activity. One is the regular B.C. operating system and the other is a black screen with white font which he uses prompt commands on.' The EFF is currently representing him."

Linux On Netbooks — a Complicated Story 833

Posted by Soulskill on Friday April 10, 2009 @10:08PM from the comfort-zone dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Keir Thomas has responded to the recent raft of news stories pointing out that Linux's share of the netbook market isn't as rosy as it used to be. Thomas thinks the problem boils down to a combination of unfamiliar software and unfamiliar hardware, which can 'push users over the edge.' This accounts for the allegedly high return rates of Linux netbooks. In contrast, although far from superior, Windows provides a more familiar environment, making the hardware issues (irritatingly small keyboard, screen etc.) seem less insurmountable; users are less likely to walk away. 'Once again Microsoft's monopoly means Windows is swallowing up another market.'"

Advanced Open Source Engine Based On Quake 3 137

Posted by Soulskill on Friday April 10, 2009 @06:12AM from the something-on-rails dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Phoronix is running a news story about the XreaL project, which its lead developer claims is the most advanced open-source game engine. XreaL is based upon the vintage Quake 3 engine, but it has been rewritten over the course of many months such that it no longer resembles the original id Software engine. The XreaL engine has its renderer written entirely in GLSL with compliance toward the OpenGL ES 2.0 specification in mind, but it supports the new OpenGL 3.0/3.1 specification and is able to take advantage of its new features. XreaL has also added an HDR pipeline to its engine and on modern hardware is actually GPU — not CPU — bottlenecked. XreaL can also load game content from Unreal Tournament 3. This engine, which is described to be as powerful as what can be found in Doom 3 or Call of Duty 4, is written entirely with free software. The XreaL project has created plug-ins for Maya to broaden their game development capabilities."

Nvidia Mulls Cheap, Integrated x86 Chip 211

Posted by timothy on Thursday March 05, 2009 @07:38PM from the putting-integration-together dept.

CWmike writes "Nvidia is considering developing an integrated chip based on the x86 architecture for use in devices such as netbooks and mobile Internet devices, said Michael Hara, vice president of investor relations at Nvidia during a speech that was webcast from the Morgan Stanley Technology Conference this week. Nvidia has already developed an integrated chip called Tegra, which combines an Arm processor, a GeForce graphics core and other components on a single chip. The chips are aimed at small devices such as smartphones and MIDs, and will start shipping in the second half of this year. 'Tegra, by any definition, is a complete computer-on-chip, and the requirements of that market are such that you have to be very low power and very small but highly efficient,' Hara said. 'Someday, it's going to make sense to take the same approach in the x86 market as well.'"

Doctors Silencing Online Patient Reviews Via Contract 324

Posted by timothy on Thursday March 05, 2009 @06:03PM from the that's-one-view-of-the-1st-amendment dept.

Condiment writes "Next time you're sick, take five and actually read the pile of contracts your doctor dumps on your lap, because it's becoming more and more likely that your doctors are banning patients from posting reviews on the Web. You heard that right: as a prerequisite to receiving medical care, patients are in many cases required to sign away their First Amendment rights!"

The Greatest Scientific Hoaxes? 496

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday October 27, 2008 @04:34PM from the april-fools-one-of-the-best-holidays dept.

Ponca City, We love you writes "The New Scientist has an amusing story about the seven greatest scientific hoaxes of all time. Of course, there have been serious cases of scientific fraud, such as the stem cell researchers recently found guilty of falsifying data, and the South Korean cloning fraud, but the hoaxes selected point more to human gullibility than malevolence and include the Piltdown Man (constructed from a medieval human cranium); a ten-foot "petrified man" dug up on a small farm in Cardiff; fossils 'found' in Wurzburg, Germany depicting comets, moons and suns, Alan Sokal's paper loaded with nonsensical jargon that was accepted by the journal Social Text; the claim of the Upas tree on the island of Java so poisonous that it killed everything within a 15-mile radius; and Johann Heinrich Cohausen's claim of an elixir produced by collecting the breath of young women in bottles that produced immortality. Our favorite: BBC's broadcast in 1957 about the spaghetti tree in Switzerland that showed a family harvesting pasta that hung from the branches of the tree. After watching the program, hundreds of people phoned in asking how they could grow their own tree but, alas, the program turned out to be an April Fools' Day joke." What massive scientific hoaxes/jokes have other people witnessed?

Should You Break TOS Because Work Asks You? 680

Posted by CmdrTaco on Monday October 27, 2008 @09:13AM from the just-don't-crawl-this-domain-please dept.

An anonymous reader writes "My boss recently assigned me a project that was all his idea, with two basic flaws that would require me to break multiple web sites' Terms of Service (TOS). Part requires scraping most of the site, parsing the data and presenting it as our own without human intervention. While we're safe on copyright issues, clearly scraping like this is normally not allowed. At times it might also put a load on those sites. The other is, for lack of better words, a 'load balancing' part that requires using multiple free accounts instead of purchasing space and CPU time for less than $2,000 USD per month. The boss sees it as 'distributed' computing when in reality it's 'parasitic.' My question is: am I wrong about the ethics? If I do need to walk, how best can I handle it without damaging my reputation and future employment opportunities?"

Is Ubuntu Getting Slower? 544

Posted by CmdrTaco on Monday October 27, 2008 @08:31AM from the slow-like-a-fox dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Phoronix has a new article where they provide Ubuntu 7.04, 7.10, 8.04, and 8.10 benchmarks and had ran many tests. In that article, when using an Intel notebook they witness major slowdowns in different areas and ask the question, Is Ubuntu getting slower? From the article: 'A number of significant kernel changes had went on between these Ubuntu Linux releases including the Completely Fair Scheduler, the SLUB allocator, tickless kernel support, etc. We had also repeated many of these tests to confirm we were not experiencing a performance fluke or other issue (even though the Phoronix Test Suite carries out each test in a completely automated and repeatable fashion) but nothing had changed. Ubuntu 7.04 was certainly the Feisty Fawn for performance, but based upon these results perhaps it would be better to call Ubuntu 7.10 the Gooey Gibbon, 8.04 the Hungover Heron, and 8.10 the Idling Ibex.'"

3D Printing On Demand 106

Posted by timothy on Sunday October 12, 2008 @05:00AM from the safer-than-a-cnc-machine dept.

Iddo Genuth writes "The Netherlands based company Shapeways is beta testing a new service allowing people to print three-dimensional models. Customers can upload designs or use a creation tool hosted at the Shapeways website, then order a printed model of their designs for less than $3 per square centimeter. The printed items are shipped to the customer in ten days or less, bringing 3D printing to consumers and not just companies large enough to afford their own printers."

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