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

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Earth

Dinosaur Feather Color Discovered 219

Posted by timothy from the horsefeathers-still-a-mystery dept.
anzha writes "Do you remember being a kid and told we'd never know what colors the dinosaurs were? For at least some, that's no longer true. Scientists working in the UK and China have closely examined the fossils of multiple theropods and actually found the colors and patterns that were present in the fossilized proto-feathers. So far, the answer is orange, black and white in banded and other patterns. The work also thoroughly thrashes the idea that fossils might not be feathers, but collagen fibers instead. If this holds up, Birds Are Dinosaurs. Period. And colorful!"
The Courts

Microsoft Dodges Class Action In WGA Lawsuit 256

Posted by kdawson from the hire-your-own-lawyer dept.
An anonymous reader writes "A lawsuit that accused Microsoft of misleading consumers to download and install an update for Windows Genuine Advantage under the guise that it was critical security update will go forward, but not as a class action. A federal judge has refused to certify the lawsuit as a class action, which would have meant that anyone who owned a Windows XP PC in mid-2006 could join the case without having to hire an attorney. As Windows XP was easily the most popular operating system at the time, the ruling means Redmond has managed to avoid hundreds of millions in potential damages."
OS X

Apple Patches Massive Holes In OS X 246

Posted by timothy from the well-it-wouldn't-be-polite-to-patch-windows dept.
Trailrunner7 writes with this snippet from ThreatPost: "Apple's first Mac OS X security update for 2010 is out, providing cover for at least 12 serious vulnerabilities. The update, rated critical, plugs security holes that could lead to code execution vulnerabilities if a Mac user is tricked into opening audio files or surfing to a rigged Web site." Hit the link for a list of the highlights among these fixes.
Google

Submission + - Google Re-enabled Chinese Censorship (google.com) 3

Submitted by hackingbear
hackingbear writes: Google has rather quietly re-enabled search result censoring, as evident in this search query for June 4 incident. The search returns censored results not quite related to the incident and the censorship foot note is displayed. The same query returned uncensored results a few hours after Google made its China announcement. (I tested it.) According to news reports from Hong Kong and oversea Chinese media (here is the Google translation,) Google are negotiating with the Chinese government which so far has not taken any real actions but just made some standard general statements on the matter. Has Google backed down? It could be just Google's negotiation tactic, but it also casts a doubt on their stance and motive.

Slashdot Top Deals

"Take that, you hostile sons-of-bitches!" -- James Coburn, in the finale of _The_President's_Analyst_

Close