Follow Slashdot stories on Twitter

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Earth

Submission + - 100 sq-mile ice sheet breaks off Arctic glacier (cnn.com)

Submitted by suraj.sun
suraj.sun writes: The 260 square-kilometer (100 square miles) ice island separated from the Petermann Glacier in northern Greenland early on Thursday, researchers based at the University of Delaware said.

The ice island, which is about half the height of the Empire State Building, is the biggest piece of ice to break away from the Arctic icecap since 1962 and amounts to a quarter of the Petermann 70-kilometer floating ice shelf, according to research leader Andreas Muenchow.

Environmentalists say ice melt is being caused by global warming with Arctic temperatures in the 1990s reaching their warmest level of any decade in at least 2,000 years, according to a study published in 2009.

Current trends could see the Arctic Ocean become ice free in summer months within decades, researchers predict.

CNN: http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/08/07/greenland.ice.island/index.html
Politics

Submission + - UK to switch off £235m child database (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by wdef
wdef writes: The UK's controversial ContactPoint database is actually being switched off! It's rare that we hear anything this sensible from government about an expensive, privacy-destroying, 'think of the children' solution: (quote)The government argued the system was disproportionate to the problem, so is looking at developing other solutions.(unquote). Perhaps the UK coalition government really is winding back Big Brother, as they had promised to do? Does seem unlikely.

Submission + - Artificial life forms evolve basic intelligence (newscientist.com)

Submitted by Calopteryx
Calopteryx writes: New Scientist has a story on how Avidians — digital organisms in a computer world called Avida — replicate, mutate and have evolved a rudimentary form of memory. They — or things like them — might eventually evolve to become artificially intelligent life forms.
Microsoft

Submission + - Research: Weird Works When It Comes to Passwords (threatpost.com)

Submitted by Trailrunner7
Trailrunner7 writes: Researchers at Microsoft and Harvard University warn that popular passwords pose a bigger risk to online security than weak ones and suggest that many tools to enforce strong passwords actually steer users to choices that are easy to guess.

Forcing users to choose passwords that are rare and “unpopular,” rather than “strong," as it has traditionally been defined, provides a better defense against one type of attack, known as "statistical guessing," according to a paper by researchers Cormac Herley and Stuart Schechter of Microsoft Research and Michael Mitzenmacher, a professor of Computer Science at Harvard University. The researchers will present their paper, "Popularity is Everything: A new approach to protecting passwords from statistical-guessing attacks" at the USENIX HotSec '10 Workshop in Washington, D.C. on August 10.
Security

Submission + - Two Unpatched Flaws Show Up in Apple iOS (threatpost.com)

Submitted by Trailrunner7
Trailrunner7 writes: The technique that the Jailbreakme.com Web site is using to bypass the iPhone's security mechanisms and enable users to run unapproved apps on their phones involves exploiting two separate vulnerabilities. One of the vulnerabilities is a memory-corruption flaw that affects the way that Apple's mobile devices, including the iPad and iPod Touch, display PDFs. The second weakness is a problem in the Apple iOS kernel that gives an attacker higher privileges once his code is on a targeted device, enabling him to break out of the iOS sandbox.

The combination of the two vulnerabilities--both of which are unpatched at the moment--gives an attacker the ability to run remote code on the device and evade the security protections on the iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch. The technique became public earlier this week when the Jailbreakme.com site began hosting a set of specially crafted PDF files designed to help users jailbreak their Apple devices and load apps other than the ones approved by Apple and offered in its official App Store.

Submission + - Gamers beat algorithms at finding protein structur (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by
jamie
jamie writes: "Researchers have turned the biochemical challenge of figuring out protein folding structures into a computer game. The best players can beat a computerized algorithm by rapidly recognizing problems that the computer can't fix."
Open Source

Submission + - CIA Software Developer Goes Open Source (wired.com)

Submitted by von_rick
von_rick writes: Some of the people who manage and use the softwares used in CIA and defense related systems find it hard to work on cases when they have to pay, repay and keep paying for a program because it never becomes the property of the government even after paying hefty sums of money. Some of them seem to be in favor of open sourcing their work in order to share ideas and lower the costs involved in solving crime and managing the gathered intelligence.

Submission + - Why Music From World War I Isn't The Public Domain (techdirt.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: While Disney and others have done a great job pushing the end date for works entering the public domain ever further forward, most people have assumed that anything from before 1923 is in the public domain. However, it turns out that this is not true for sound recordings, in part due to an accidental quirk in copyright law history — in that Congress, way back in 1909, believed that sound recordings could not be covered by copyright (they believed the Constitution did not allow recordings to be covered), and thus, some state laws stepped up to create special copyrights for sound recordings. A court ruling then said that these state rules were not overruled by federal copyright law. End result? ANY recorded work from before 1972 (no matter how early it was recorded) won't go into the public domain until 2049 at the earliest.
Advertising

Submission + - Fallout advert mocks Japanese RPGs (kotaku.com)

Submitted by RogueyWon
RogueyWon writes: Kotaku is reporting that Bethesda's Japanese marketing campaign for the upcoming Fallout: New Vegas is based around some pretty savage mockery of commonly perceived failings of Japanese role-playing games. While it's dubious whether this tactic will actually boost the game's sales in a notoriously hard market for Western developers to crack, many of the criticisms contained in the advert of Japan's domestic RPGs ring true. Is it time that Japanese RPG developers, increasingly focussed on underwhelming extended cinematic experiences and low-budget hand-held titles, took note of the lessons from Western developers such as Bioware and Bethesda?
Space

Submission + - Solar Flare Means Crazy Light Show Tonight (motherboard.tv)

Submitted by jordooo
jordooo writes: Massive amounts of plasma were shot at the Earth by the Sun the other day. As Motherboard reports,

"The Sun is waking up after a nearly 10-year slumber, indicating that it is headed toward another period of pronounced activity, expected for 2013, the last of which occurred in 2001. Contrary to some concerns expressed on Youtube, it is not likely that the solar flare will kickstart the apocalypse. But it will make the sky look like a Jimi Hendrix solo. Just make sure you’re not in the city when it happens (because you won’t be able to see the effects amidst the big city lights.)"
Government

Submission + - Google, AT&T, and Verizon in closed meeting w/ (businessweek.com)

Submitted by
Presto Vivace
Presto Vivace writes: " Business Week reports that:

The companies and senior FCC aides have been holding private meetings since June over the regulations, known as net neutrality rules, according to disclosure statements on the agency’s website. Issues include the extent of FCC power over Internet service providers, and whether phone and cable companies can favor some traffic, such as making their own videos run faster.

Art Brodsky says that the FCC is playing a dangerous game of "lets make a deal" If you are an Application Service Provider or sell SaaS, or are a Web 2.0 company, any threat to net neutrality is a threat to your business model. If you have an opinion about net neutrality, now is the time to make yourself heard. Note — comments to the FCC or any other regulatory agency are considered public records and will be made available to the public."
Science

Submission + - Video Game Helps Solve Protein Structures (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: Science reports: People playing a simple video game can match, and even surpass, the efforts of a powerful supercomputer to solve a fiendishly difficult biological problem, according to the results of an unusual face-off. The game isn't Pac-Man or Doom, but one called FoldIt that pushes people to use their intuition to predict the three-dimensional (3D) structure of a protein.
Science

Submission + - Bizarre materials can't be stretched thin (sciencemag.org) 1

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: Science reports: Imagine a rubber band that grows fatter when stretched and thinner when released. Such materials, called auxetics, actually exist, but scientists haven't totally figured out how they work. A new mathematical model may help. Researchers say the model can accurately predict the properties of these materials, opening the way for a number of applications, including bandages that dispense medication when a wound swells and earthquake-resistant building structures.
Hardware

Submission + - Rethinking computer design for an optical world (technologyreview.com)

Submitted by holy_calamity
holy_calamity writes: Technology Review looks at how some traditions of computer architecture are up for grabs with the arrival of optical interconnects like Intel's 50Gbps link unveiled last week [slashdot.org]. The extra speed makes it possible to consider moving a server's RAM a few feet from its CPUs to aid cooling and moving memory and computational power to peripherals like laptop docks and monitors.

Slashdot Top Deals

"One lawyer can steal more than a hundred men with guns." -- The Godfather

Close