jaria - Slashdot User

Submission + - The New Crunchpad

Submitted by notarockstar1979 on Friday April 10, 2009 @10:50AM

notarockstar1979 writes: Mike over at TechCrunch has been quietly putting together an inexpensive web tablet (which apparently isn't ready for consumption just yet). From the article:

A little background for those of you who haven't heard of the CrunchPad: This is the post that kicked off the project. I wanted something I couldn't buy, and found people who said it could be built for a lot less than I imagined. The goal — a very thin and light touch screen computer, sans physical keyboard, that has no hard drive and boots directly to a browser to surf the web. The operating system exists solely to handle the hardware drivers and run the browser and associated applications. That's it.

He wasn't ready to let the world know yet, but someone accidentally published some pictures to the web. You can see some pictures and see the full story here.

Submission + - Conficker E Awakens: Uses Mystery Payload, Waledac

Submitted by

nandemoari

on Friday April 10, 2009 @10:38AM

nandemoari writes: "As of April 7th, 2009, wikipedia.org reports that the latest Conficker E variant downloads and installs the Waledac worm. Earlier this week the Conficker worm used infected systems to transmit updates through p2p technology (file sharing) and dropped a "mystery payload." Security experts believe that the payload program may record key strokes, generate spam from an infected machine, or both. Researchers theorize that Conficker, like Waledac, may be all about ripping people off. "I'm pretty certain the same people are behind both of them," remarked Trend Micro researcher Paul Ferguson. "Conficker has got their (Waledac creators') fingerprints all over it.""

Submission + - Linux on netbooks: a complicated story

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 10, 2009 @03:20AM

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 combine to "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. FTA: "Once again Microsoft's monopoly means Windows is swallowing up another market".

Submission + - All Koreans can't upload to youtube. Really! (hani.co.kr)

Submitted by on Friday April 10, 2009 @03:12AM

An anonymous reader writes: Youtube refuses to South Korean government's real name system. So Koreans cannot upload/comment on youtube from yesterday. If he/she changes his nationality to the countries other than Korea, he can upload/comment as usual. Funny things is, Korean President is uploading his weekly messages to youtube every Monday. Since all Koreans are banned to upload, how can he upload his messages to youtube from now on? Changing his nationality? Watch him next Monday. http://www.youtube.com/user/PresidentMBLee

Submission + - How does flash media fail? Graceful, or violent? 3

Submitted by

bhodge

on Friday April 10, 2009 @01:02AM

bhodge writes: "Aside from the obvious "it stops working" answer, how does flash media — such as USB, SD, and CF — fail? Unlike the traditional hard drive, where anyone who's worked with computers for a while should know what a drive failure looks like, I don't know anyone who's experienced such a failure. I've been able to find more than scant evidence of what flash media failures look like, at the OS level. There just don't seem to be many accounts. The one account I have found detailed using a small USB drive /var/log storage: it failed very quickly, and then utterly (0 byte unformated device), after 5 years of service in the role. This seems to run contrary to other anecdotal claims that you should still be able to read the media after you can no longer write to it. So slashdotters: what have you seen, if anything?"

Submission + - Microsoft's Hotmail Blows Up... Try It Yourself

Submitted by

UnHotmail Fanboy

on Friday April 10, 2009 @12:26AM

UnHotmail Fanboy writes: "Silly you... if you had an account with Hotmail, you may want to try and have a peek. Odds are right now it is going to sarcastically tell you "You don't have an inbox...yet." Apparently Microsoft is blowing up the world one inbox at time with useless featurism. Don't worry, rest assured they will have a patch for it... after you validate your copy of Hotmail."

Submission + - Apple switching to quanity over quality? (digitimes.com) 1

Submitted by Trintech on Thursday April 09, 2009 @11:26PM

Trintech writes: Apple has reportedly placed orders for 100 million 8Gb NAND flash chips. (Note: The chips hold 8 Gigabits which equals 1 GigaByte) This is an odd move for Apple because they generally use much higher density chips even in small storage products like the 4GB iPod shuffle which uses a single 32Gb NAND chip. There has been some speculation as to what Apple might do with all these low density chips and, as usual, Apple refuses to comment.

1GB iPod Femto anyone?

Submission + - STEREO Spacecraft to Explore L4 and L5

Submitted by

Hugh Pickens

on Thursday April 09, 2009 @09:15PM

Hugh Pickens writes: "Launched on October 25, 2006, NASA's twin Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) spacecraft are about to enter the L4 and L5 Lagrangian points, special points in our solar system around which spacecraft and other objects can loiter because the gravitational pull of earth and the sun balances the forces from the object's orbital motion. "These places may hold small asteroids, which could be leftovers from a Mars-sized planet that formed billions of years ago," said NASA Project Scientist Michael Kaiser. STEREO will look for asteroids with a wide-field-of-view telescope that's part of the Sun Earth Connection Coronal and Heliospheric Investigation instrument. "If we discover the asteroids have the same composition as the Earth and moon, it will support Belbruno and Gott's version of the giant impact theory. The asteroids themselves could well be left-over from the formation of the solar system." L4 and L5 are also good places to observe space weather. "With both the sun and Earth in view, we could track solar storms and watch them evolve as they move toward Earth. Also, since we could see sides of the sun not visible from Earth, we would have a few days warning before stormy regions on the solar surface rotate to become directed at Earth," says Kaiser."

Submission + - $99 HP Laptop -- no Intel Chips. (engadget.com)

Submitted by jmccarty on Thursday April 09, 2009 @08:52PM

jmccarty writes: From the article: ... NVIDIA is showing off an HP Mini 1000 at CTIA that it has totally gutted, replacing the laptop's stock Atom-based circuitry with its own Tegra wares atop a bone-stock Windows CE build. At first the move seems counterproductive since Tegra can't run XP or Vista, but if you look at this as the first prototype of a large Tegra-powered $99 MID, you're thinking along the right lines.

Submission + - Sun's lead chip designer defects to Microsoft (eetimes.com)

Submitted by

Amiga Trombone

on Thursday April 09, 2009 @07:53PM

Amiga Trombone writes: "Looks like Sun has suffered another humiliation on the heels of it's failed attempt to get acquired by IBM. Microsoft has hired Sun's lead Sparc developer, Marc Tremblay. From the article: "Sun Microsystems has reportedly lost one of its top microprocessor architects, Marc Tremblay, a Sun veteran who was leading the company's next-generation Sparc team. The departure is the latest in a stream of losses that have sapped the company's top tech talent.
According to a New York Times report, Tremblay left Sun for a position at software rival Microsoft. Tremblay led several major CPU projects during his time at Sun including Rock, a multicore processor aimed at refreshing Sun's big back-end servers."

Submission + - Edge of Space Found (space.com)

Submitted by

sean_nestor

on Thursday April 09, 2009 @06:20PM

sean_nestor writes: "Hold on to your hats, or in this case, your helmets: Scientists have finally pinpointed the so-called edge of space — the boundary between Earth's atmosphere and outer space. With data from a new instrument developed by scientists at the University of Calgary, scientists confirmed that space begins 73 miles (118 kilometers) above Earth's surface. A lot remains very fuzzy, however, as the boundary is surrounded by a host of misconceptions and confusing, conflicting definitions. For starters, astronauts can say they've been to space after only passing the 50-mile (80-kilometer) mark."

Submission + - Gecko-inspired dry adhesive set for space (canadianmanufacturing.com) 1

Submitted by

AndreV

on Thursday April 09, 2009 @03:16PM

AndreV writes: "Biomimetic adhesives aren't new, but a PhD graduate in British Columbia has developed a new method of creating microscopic, mushroom-like plastic structures in order to produce a dry adhesive that mimics the stickiness of gecko feet—and is prepping his glue-free innovation for outer space. A research group at his university, in collaboration with the European Space Agency, is engineering a spider-like, sticky-footed climbing robot destined to explore Mars, and it is also developing reusable attaching systems for astronauts to use where magnetic and suction systems generally fail. In the future, he says, single-use versions could be used in any number of medical applications as well as for replacements for everyday sticky needs, such as Post-It notes and Scotch tape."

Submission + - Virginia Says Slashdot Users May Be Terrorists 6

Submitted by megamerican on Thursday April 09, 2009 @01:58PM

megamerican writes: A leaked document from a Virginia Fusion Center titled 2009 Virginia Terrorism Threat Assessment lists Slashdot users and other websites alongside Al-Qaeda, HAMAS, "Lone-Wolf Extremists" and many others as potential terrorists. Slashdot and other websites have been labeled under the ominous sounding title of Anonymous:

A "loose coalition of Internet denizens", Anonymous consists largely of users from multiple internet sites such as 4chan, 711chan, 420chan, Something Awful, Fark, Encyclopedia Dramatica, Slashdot, IRC channels, and YouTube. Other social networking sites are also utilized to mobilize physical protests. Anonymous has no leader and is reliant on the collective power of individuals acting in such a way that benefits the movement.

According to the Report, cell phones, digital music players are signs that you may be a terrorist. It lists podcasting as a cause for concern citing a recent ban by Australia. Citizens for a legitimate government, where the document was leaked to has a write-up here.

Submission + - What If Oracle Bought Sun Microsystems? (infoworld.com) 1

Submitted by

snydeq

on Thursday April 09, 2009 @01:24PM

snydeq writes: "Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister believes Oracle is next in line to make a play for Sun now that IBM has withdrawn its offer. Dismissing server market arguments in favor of Cisco or Dell as suitors, McAllister suggests that MySQL, ZFS, DTrace, and Java make Sun an even better asset to Oracle than to IBM. MySQL as a complement to Oracle's existing database business would make sense, given Oracle's 2005 purchase of Innobase, and with 'the long history of Oracle databases on Solaris servers, it might actually see owning Solaris as an asset,' McAllister writes. But the 'crown jewel' of the deal would be Java. 'It's almost impossible to overestimate the importance of Java to Oracle. Java has become the backbone of Oracle's middleware strategy,' McAllister contends."

Submission + - SPAM: Group urges NASA to embrace Colbert space toilet

Submitted by

coondoggie

on Thursday April 09, 2009 @11:21AM

coondoggie writes: "The Space Frontier Foundation advocacy group today urged NASA to respect the results of a nationwide contest to name a new space toilet for International Space Station (ISS). The Foundation proposed using either the first or second place winners of the contest: "The Colbert" (for the popular Comedy Central comedian Steve Colbert or "Serenity" (for the popular Firefly sci-fi television pilot and film) as the official name for the super toilet, whose purpose is to re-cycle human waste products and is the first of its kind to be flown in space. "If NASA rejects the popular winner of its contest, they'll be sending the wrong message: that space is just for humorless, undemocratic bureaucrats!" said Foundation co-Founder Rick Tumlinson"
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