khendron - Slashdot User

Submission + - South Africa plans to go to OpenSource

Submitted by

Canderel

on Thursday February 22, 2007 @10:50AM

Canderel writes: "Fin24 reports that the South African government want to switch over to linux.

Themba Maseko told reporters the cabinet would use the open source Linux operating system in a bid to lower administration costs and enhance local IT skills.

"This is going to be a long process... What this (open source) initiative is basically trying to streamline (is) our use and development of software in the country," Maseko said."

Journal Journal: Light boards with Mooninites in Boston land two in jail.

Journal by Unstablevelocity on Thursday February 01, 2007 @02:22PM

Two men were arrested in Boston for "creating a panic by placing bomblike electronic light boards." The boards had the Mooninites from Cartoon Network's Aqua Teen Hunger Force, but because it had four batteries and wires, bombsquads were called to disarm these harmless light boards. The full story here.

Submission + - Scientists Cure Cancer, nobody cares

Submitted by

Anonymous Coward

on Thursday February 01, 2007 @01:37PM

Anonymous Coward writes: "http://media.www.studentprintz.com/media/storage/p aper974/news/2007/01/23/Opinion/Scientists.Cure.Ca ncer.But.No.One.Takes.Notice-2667600.shtml"

Submission + - Vista Speech-recognition Hole

Submitted by

Placid

on Thursday February 01, 2007 @12:56PM

Placid writes: "In an blog post by 'Adrian', a 'hole' has been identified in Windows Vista's speech recognition capabilities. According to the article, malicious sound bytes could cause files to be 'deleted' or the computer 'shutdown'. From the post:

An issue has been identified publicly where an attacker could use the speech recognition capability of Windows Vista to cause the system to take undesired actions. While it is technically possible, there are some things that should be considered when trying to determine what the threat of exposure is to your Windows Vista system.
In order for the attack to be successful, the targeted system would need to have the speech recognition feature previously activated and configured. Additionally the system would need to have speakers and a microphone installed and turned on. The exploit scenario would involve the speech recognition feature picking up commands through the microphone such as "copy", "delete", "shutdown", etc. and acting on them.
BBC News is also reporting the issue."

Submission + - BBC told Windows DRM is not enough

Submitted by

Richard Fairhurst

on Wednesday January 31, 2007 @11:19AM

Richard Fairhurst writes: "The trustees who govern the British broadcaster have demanded that its new video-on-demand service mustn't be Windows-only. The BBC Trust says the new iPlayer must be "platform-agnostic within a reasonable timeframe", explaining: "This requires the BBC to develop an alternative DRM framework to enable users of other technology, for example, Apple and Linux, to access the on-demand services.""

Submission + - A Disputed New Business:Virtual Property Exchange

Submitted by

Steven Golden

on Wednesday January 31, 2007 @10:50AM

Steven Golden writes: "In many ways, the in-game economy is similar to a real world economy — goods and services are traded to mutual advantage and are mediated in currencies(gold,platinum,credit,etc.). An online broker, who goes by the screen name Rolala, was not a fan of online games until his 15-year-old son became interested in Final Fantasy XI(FFXI).He then noticed that a large number of gils(currencies used in FFXI) were for sale on eBay. "I started hearing about players leaving the game who were selling their assets at cheap prices," he said, "so I figured, buy low, sell high." But Rolala found his moneymaking options in FFXI "very limited". He switched to World of Warcraft,the world's largest MMORPG. There, he has leveraged his real-life experience into an online business. He converts his game profits into real money on sites likeebay, cheap wow gold ,world of warcraft gold,etc.Earnings can be considerable. He said he was on track to earn about $120,000 in real money in his first year in this business. Rolala's business is just one example of how increasingly popular online role-playing games have created a shadow economy in which the lines between the real world and the virtual world are getting blurred. Edward Castronova, an economics professor at Indiana University who has written a book on the subject, calculated that if you took the real dollars spent within "EverQuest "as an index, its game world, called Norrath, would be the 77th richest nation on the planet, while annual player earnings surpass those of citizens of Bulgaria, India or China. Go to GameUSD, an exchange-rate calculator for the virtual worlds, and do a search for the latest rates of virtual currencies against the U.S. dollar, and let your jaw drop open. The rates of some virtual world currencies are even better than that of the Iraqi Dinar! For instance, here is the exchange rate of several popular virtual currencies: FFXI Gil ( Final Fantasy XI Gil ) ($23.89/1M), Lineage 2 adena ($2.80/1M), Everquest Platinum ($0.24/1K), Everquest 2 Gold ($0.017/gold), WOW Gold ( World of Warcraft Gold ) ($0.178/gold), Star Wars Galaxies Credit ($0.50/1M), Guild Wars Gold ($0.07/1K), Second Life Linden ($3.14/1K), etc. Right now, this business is one of the most hotly debated issues on the internet. Many game companies such as Blizzard who run World of Warcraft discourage profit from in-game properties, though none have found a way to stop it. Sony Online Entertainment, on the other hand, encourages the practice (albeit within the confines of their own "Station Exchange", their own forum for the sale of in-game properties). It recently announced the first month's figures from "Station Exchange". According to SOE, over 45,000 characters from "EverQuest 2" have been active on the exchange and have spent over $180,000 USD in one month, half of which have been spent on in-game gold and platinum. In terms of the law's concern, another issue is, who owns the virtual money? Many virtual world designers maintain that anything created in the world belong to the company. They refuse to recognise the rights of their players in the virtual property for fear of attracting liability for its maintenance or security. But will this work in the long term? Players spend considerable time and/or money acquiring such assets. In many cases they are the creation of the player and even the intellectual property ownership is questionable. "As we spend more time in these worlds, it's not enough for companies to say that 'we own everything and we can turn it off at any time,'" said a gamer. "The question may soon be should we have recourse against a game company for obliterating virtual assets?" With the rapid growth of virtual currency exchange market, should people accord virtual property the same protection as property in the real world?"

Submission + - How to Measure Security ROI?

Submitted by UM_Maverick on Wednesday January 31, 2007 @10:14AM

UM_Maverick writes: Does anybody out there have any experience measuring Return on Investment for security-related expenditures? For example, if a PHB says that there's $1 million left in the budget, and you can either implement a new customer tracking system that is projected to save $300k per year, or implement a new security technology or process, how do you measure the return on the security spend, and convince the PHB that it's at least worth considering? Googling for "Measuring Security ROI" seems to just produce a list of articles that say "Measuring security ROI is difficult." Does anybody have some more direct experience or information?

Submission + - When Mac OSX is worse that Windows XP?

Submitted by

Meitham Jamaa

on Wednesday January 17, 2007 @11:20AM

Meitham Jamaa writes: "I love Unix (and Linux) and planning to move away of Windows to Mac, not because I love Mac, but only because Mac OSX is a stable Unix based OS. Lots of people have wrote about how good is mac compared to pc but they all view it from a user point of view. I am a developer (mainly Python and Java) and I am a newbie in the Linux world (having a virtual Ubuntu working on VMware). People only tends to highlight the points where OSX is better than windows in. I want to know what will I lose when I switch to Mac before I make any step forward. Can anyone please tell me when Windows is better than OSX.

Thanks
~Meitham"

Submission + - Carmack: "DX9 is the best API I've worked with

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 10, 2007 @03:26PM

An anonymous reader writes: In an interview for GameInformer, John Carmack of Doom and Quake fame discusses various aspects of game programming for the current generation of graphics hardware. Surprisingly, he also asserts that Microsoft's DirectX9 is the best graphics API he's ever worked with; this goes contrary to his famous comments about the superiority of OpenGL from a couple of years ago. Is Linux gaming about to lose one of its most prominent supporters?

Submission + - Dispose of your spam properly!

Submitted by

Anonymous Coward

on Tuesday January 09, 2007 @08:58PM

Anonymous Coward writes: "My domain name is periodically being stolen by spammers; they forge outgoing mail using my poor innocent domain name. First, I'd like to plead with mail server administrators out there: please REJECT spam and undeliverable mail. If you reject instead of bouncing then legitimate mail senders will still know there is a problem. Second, do you have any tips for dealing with a flood of spam bounces? Exim is pitching the bounces pretty quickly, but my server is still getting overwhelmed."

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