Frozen-Solid - Slashdot User

Submission + - Digital Easter Egg Hunt (slashdot.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 05, 2011 @04:35PM

An anonymous reader writes: I'm asking the slashdot community, how would they go about setting up a digital easter egg hunt. I've got ideas ranging from a very complex web based solution, to just modding Diablo 2, but some ideas are too complex, and then diablo only allows 8 players in at a time. I mean I suppose you could run multiple instances and make the eggs a boss drop, but ehh, its not ideal. I'm looking for something thats fairly easy to set up, hard to abuse/hack, and fun for people to play. Any ideas would be great. Thanks. :)

Submission + - Borders Tells Customers Where To Find Restroom (consumerist.com)

Submitted by ideaz on Tuesday April 05, 2011 @04:21PM

ideaz writes: Consumerist reader Sam says he snapped this sign at a store which will be closing in Chicago, telling customers where they can now go to find a bathroom.

Borders filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in mid-February, after struggling for years to compete against Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble, which have cornered the digital and physical book store markets, respectively. As a result, they have been in the process of closing 30% of their stores.

Submission + - Key Music Ind. Lawyer named EU Copyright Chief (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by halfEvilTech on Tuesday April 05, 2011 @04:21PM

halfEvilTech writes: The European Union's new point person on copyright policy won't take up her post until mid-April, but she's already stirring up controversy. That's because Maria Martin-Prat spent years directing "global legal policy" for IFPI, the global recording industry's London-based trade group, before moving back into government. The appointment raises new questions about the past private-sector work of government officials, especially those crafting policy or issuing legal judgments on the same issues they once lobbied for.

Submission + - Oil at sea is recoverable with greasy wool (bloomberg.com)

Submitted by

tchernobog

on Tuesday April 05, 2011 @04:18PM

tchernobog writes: "Sometimes simple ideas are the best ones. An Italian group from Biella has developed a new method to clean oil spilled at sea by using greasy wool. Up to 950,000 tons of oil can be collected with 10,000 tons of inexpensive wool, without the risk of polluting the sea any further. The method has been presented to BP to be employed in the recovery of the Gulf of Mexico."

Submission + - Google Chrome to Warn Users On Malicious Downloads (threatpost.com)

Submitted by Trailrunner7 on Tuesday April 05, 2011 @04:10PM

Trailrunner7 writes: Google is testing a new feature in its Chrome browser that will warn users when they attempt to download a potentially malicious executable file. The feature is an extension of the existing Web-based security mechanisms the company has integrated into Chrome and the Safe Browsing API and will be available to all users later this year.

The new warning about malicious executables is based on the data that Google collects and publishes in its Safe Browsing API, which is used in most of the major browsers, including Firefox and Safari. Google security officials said that the new warning mechanism is meant to help protect users against sites that use bait-and-switch tactics to entice them into downloading malicious files by promising seemingly legitimate content.

Submission + - Intel Unveils 10-Core Xeon Processors (hothardware.com)

Submitted by

MojoKid

on Tuesday April 05, 2011 @03:50PM

MojoKid writes: "Intel announced its new E-series of Xeon processors today, claiming that they will deliver nearly unparalleled advances in CPU performance and power efficiency. It has been just over a year since Santa Clara released its Nehalem-based octal-core Beckton processors. Whereas Beckton was focused entirely on performance and architectural efficiency, these new Xeons are more balanced. The new chips boost the core count to ten (up to 20 threads with HT enabled) and will be offered at a wide range of power envelopes. The new E7 series incorporates the benefits of the Sandy Bridge architecture, its support for new security processing instructions, and its improved power management technology. Intel has also baked in support for low-voltage DIMMs, which allows vendors to opt for 1.35v products. The power savings, at 1W per DIMM, might not sound like much, but the E7 series supports up to 2TB of RAM in a 4S system. According to Intel, low-voltage DDR3 can cut a server's power consumption by up to 128W."

Submission + - CenturyLink Buys Qwest (ap.org)

Submitted by dancinfrandsen on Tuesday April 05, 2011 @03:45PM

dancinfrandsen writes: CenturyLink Inc. (started as a rural carrier) completed its purchase of Qwest Communications International Inc. on Friday, combining the country's third- and fourth-largest traditional phone companies into one

Submission + - Patent Troll going after Alzheimer's researchers (nature.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 05, 2011 @02:19PM

An anonymous reader writes: The website of the Alzheimer's Institute of America (AIA) doesn't reveal much about the organization, but portrays it as committed to supporting research and patients. Among people who study Alzheimer's disease, however, the AIA, based in St Louis, Missouri, is best known for filing lawsuits against companies and researchers — a practice that scientists say could hamper the progress of research into combating the dreaded disease.

Submission + - GNOME vs. KDE: The Latest Round (earthweb.com)

Submitted by

jammag

on Tuesday April 05, 2011 @02:10PM

jammag writes: "The debate about whether KDE or GNOME is the better Linux desktop is longstanding. Yet as Linux pundit Bruce Byfield discusses, it has entered a fresh chapter now that both desktop have versions that are radically different from their incarnations just a few years back. Moreover, "the differences in KDE 4.6 and GNOME 3 (the latest releases) are greater than they have ever been," he writes. Casting aside his usual diplomacy, Byfield acknowledges that he's heard rave reviews about GNOME 3, but disagrees: "I suspect that the majority of users are more likely to be satisfied with KDE 4.6 than GNOME 3.""

Submission + - Sony's NGP Delayed By Japan Quake (ibtimes.com)

Submitted by RedEaredSlider on Tuesday April 05, 2011 @02:07PM

RedEaredSlider writes: Sony's upcoming portable, code named NGP, may be latest victim of the ongoing crisis afflicting Japan.

Sony America president Jack Tretton told Bloomberg that Sony may stagger the global release of its next portable as the company is hit with disruptions to its production cycle.

Submission + - Radeon HD 6790 brings performance to $150 market (pcper.com)

Submitted by

Vigile

on Tuesday April 05, 2011 @12:11AM

Vigile writes: "While the wildly expensive graphics cards tend to get all of the headlines, it is really the ~$150 market that gets the most sales. Recently NVIDIA released the GeForce GTX 550 Ti that brought the Fermi architecture to this market segment and AMD was depending on last generation's model to hold its own. Now, with the Radeon HD 6790, AMD has a new design that takes all of the features of the HD 6800-series and offers them (though slightly slower) at the $150 price point. Performance results show that the new card is much faster than the GTX 550 Ti while also being more power efficient in the process. The aging GTX 460 card from NVIDIA offers another alternative, but it looks like AMD has the best card for this value segment for the time being."

Submission + - Woz: Tablet is the PC for 'normal people' (techworld.com.au)

Submitted by

angry tapir

on Tuesday April 05, 2011 @12:07AM

angry tapir writes: "Tablets are the culmination of what Steve Jobs wanted to create at Apple from the beginning, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has said. During a keynote session at Storage Networking World in Santa Clara, California, Wozniak was asked how tablets would change the computer industry. He compared them to TVs. "The tablet is not necessarily for the people in this room," Wozniak told the audience of enterprise storage engineers. "It's for the normal people in the world.""

Submission + - AMD, Nvidia square off with $149 graphics cards (techreport.com)

Submitted by crookedvulture on Tuesday April 05, 2011 @12:06AM

crookedvulture writes: In the last two weeks, we've seen Slashdot cover a throwdown between $700 graphics cards and the ensuing posturing by AMD and Nvidia over which is best. Now, the two companies are at it again, this time facing off at a much more affordable $149. AMD has released a new Radeon HD 6790 to compete with Nvidia's freshly minted GeForce GTX 550 Ti, and The Tech Report has pit the two cards against each other and a collection of similarly priced rivals to see what's what. As it turns out, neither offering is a particularly good value considering what else is available on the market. If you can afford to spend just $15 more, you can get yourself a much more capable graphics card.

Submission + - Samsung keylogger could be false (networkworld.com) 2

Submitted by mug funky on Sunday April 03, 2011 @11:19PM

mug funky writes: UPDATE 3/31/11: GFI Labs, the maker of VIPRE, has issued an explanation and apology for generating the false positives that led to these articles: "We apologize to the author Mohamed Hassan, to Samsung, as well as any users who may have been affected by this false positive."

looks like it wasn't just me who was surprised that of all the Samsung laptops in the world, only two have this issue and both were found by one guy (who was loath to divulge the AV tool he was using)

Submission + - Man steers R/C car with his hands using Kinect (indianjack.com)

Submitted by

hasanabbas1987

on Sunday April 03, 2011 @03:58PM

hasanabbas1987 writes: "With the right Arduino board, an R/C race car, a couple paperclips and the MacGyver spirit, we imagine most anyone can hack together a creative remote control these days... but how many can open-source an HTML5 web app that'll do the deed from any tablet, phone or PC? Gaurav Manek crafted just such a thing, and he'll demonstrate it for you on an Apple iPad in the video immediately above. What's more, he's also got a Kinect hack that uses Microsoft depth camera to control the very same with the wave of a well-placed hand. That said, you don't need to wait for an illustrious creator to have all the fun."

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