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

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Linux

Submission + - Egyptian FLOSS protecting the revolution (spirulasystems.com)

Submitted by ezabi
ezabi writes: Old school FLOSS advocates had their behind the scenes role protecting the Egyptian revolution for freedom since its early days, an open source solution provider based in Alexandria-Egypt had an active role securing pro-democracy websites since their beginnings pre January 25th, [their press release|http://www.spirulasystems.com/news/egypt-spirula-and-electronic-war]
Open Source

Submission + - Open Source Hardware Moves Toward the Mainstream (ostatic.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Hardware also getting Open Sourced, with gusto. "Open source hardware is hardware whose design is made publicly available so that anyone can study, modify, distribute, make and sell the design or hardware based on that design. The hardware's source, the design from which it is made, is available in the preferred format for making modifications to it. "
Android

Submission + - Android: No Proxy for You! (google.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Amid the excitement of new Android releases, Google continue to quietly ignore user requests for what many believe is a basic operating system function: the ability to set a HTTP proxy. Without this functionality handsets and tablets cannot connect to many corporate and educational networks that require web traffic to be proxied. For two years users have begged, cajoled and pleaded with Google to make this functionality available. Even more galling, if you happen to be using a Samsung device, you may be able to set the proxy while others cannot without rooting their devices or installing additional software. Who is at fault: Google or the handset makers? Either way, the wall of silence in response to ongoing requests for proxy support are baffling.
Facebook

Submission + - Saudi students in US seek segregation on Facebook (arabnews.com)

Submitted by Beetle B.
Beetle B. writes: A 22,000-member group for Saudis studying in the US on the social networking website Facebook has been split into two groups, one for women and one for men. The split follows a request from the group's female members who wanted extra privacy.

'The separate page for Saudi women is a valid decision. We took it to fulfill the wishes of the Saudi women in the US. We have been contacted by a lot of women asking for their private group,' Majed Aleid, media chair of the 'Saudis in the US' group, told Arab News in a letter.
Linux

Embedded Linux 1-Second Cold Boot To QT 141

Posted by timothy from the why-does-my-phone-need-2-minutes? dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The blog post shows an embedded device cold booting Linux to a QT application all in just one second. This post also includes a link which describes what modifications were made to achieve this."
Security

Submission + - d0z.me: The Evil URL Shortener (spareclockcycles.org)

Submitted by supernothing
supernothing writes: DDoS attacks seem to be in vogue today, especially considering the skirmishes over Wikileaks in the past few weeks. The size of a DDoS attacks, however, has historically been limited by how many computers one has managed to recruit into a botnet. These botnets almost universally require code to be executed on the participants' local systems, whether they be willing or unwilling. A new approach has been emerging recently, however, which uses some simple Javascript to achieve similar ends. d0z.me is a new service that utilizes these techniques, but provides a unique twist on the idea. Posing as a legitimate URL shortening service, it serves users the requested pages in an iframe, while simultaneously participating in a DDoS attack in the background. No interaction is required beyond clicking the link and staying on the page. This makes it relatively trivial to quickly mount large scale DDoS attacks, and affords willing participants plausible deniability in the assault. Full writeup here.
Education

Is Going To an Elite College Worth the Cost? 391

Posted by timothy from the drag-out-the-causation-correlator dept.
Pickens writes "Jacques Steinberg writes in the NY Times that the sluggish economy and rising costs of college have only intensified questions about whether expensive, prestigious colleges make any difference. Researchers say that alumni of the most selective colleges earn, on average, 40 percent more a year than those who graduated from the least selective public universities, as calculated 10 years after they graduated from and found that 'attendance at an elite private college significantly increases the probability of attending graduate school, and more specifically graduate school at a major research university.' But other researchers say the extent to which one takes advantage of the educational offerings of an institution may be more important, in the long run, than how prominently and proudly that institution's name is being displayed on the back windows of cars in the nation's wealthiest enclaves."
Government

Cablegate, the Game 90

Posted by timothy from the just-a-hopeless-semantic dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Cablegate: The Game is a game where players can read, tag and summarize the recently released US Embassy Cables. Points are awarded for finding the most tags in a cable." I wish this game were extended to more news sources generally — automated scans are nice, but can't (yet) make all the connections humans can.

Slashdot Top Deals

Never trust a computer you can't repair yourself.

Close