Follow Slashdot blog updates by subscribing to our blog RSS feed

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Windows

Submission + - Nearly all Windows are proven to be insecure (secunia.com) 2

Submitted by spatialguy
spatialguy writes: 95% of all pc's with Windows have at least one program installed that was not updated with the latest available security update. Those statistics were collected by the danish security company Secunia on the basis of 20.000 consumers who have there system checked by that companies software. The security software is designed to check for the latest safe version of all installed applications. Only with 4.54 % of the systems this was the case.

Secunia thinks these numbers might be worse, because only security minded people check their systems. Check http://secunia.com/blog/18/ for the full story
Windows

Submission + - Dutch parliament questions windows pre-install

Submitted by spatialguy
spatialguy writes: Dutch members of parliament are questioning the minister of economic affairs of the pre-install of windows on all commercially available personal computers. The Socialist party says this is bad for the free choice of consumers and that other OSes have a economical disadvantage. They stipulate it is hard to get a cash refund when people do not want to use the pre-installed OS. Microsoft reacted with a statement that there is a procedure to get a cash refund. The member of parliament Arde Gerkens states that a better option would be if Windows is available as a separate option. People buying computers in non-specialized shops, like supermarkets, will have a very difficult time to obtain a refund in the case the do not use the pre-installed OS. The article is in a dutch: http://www.nu.nl/news/1299808/52/SP_stelt_kamervragen_over_meeleveren_Windows.html
Wireless Networking

Submission + - Researchers Develop Wireless, Battery-less Sensor (geeksinside.com) 1

Submitted by
s1axter
s1axter writes: "If we need power for a device, most of us will place it near a power outlet in a building. When we want power on the move, we charge a storage battery and run the device until the battery is depleted, then charge it back up again. But what do you do when you want to run hundreds of devices, for decades, with no power outlet, in the frigid cold of upper New York state? You build your device with its own unlimited power generator. This is exactly what two graduate students have done at Clarkson University in Potsdam, NY."
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft Loses Anti-Trust Appeal in EU (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by
sjdaniels
sjdaniels writes: "(From of BBCNews) The European Court of First Instance has dismissed Microsoft's appeal in its long-running competition dispute with the European Commission. The court upheld the ruling that Microsoft had abused its dominant market position. A probe concluded in 2004 that Microsoft was guilty of freezing out rivals in server software and products such as media players. It was ordered to change its business and fined 497m euros (£343m; $690m)."
Sci-Fi

Submission + - Indian made car running on compressed air is ready

Submitted by
Gary
Gary writes: "The first commercial car to be powered by compressed air could be about to hit the production lines, as Indian automaker Tata Motors prepares to build ex-Formula One engineer Guy Nègre's design. The City Cat runs on nothing but compressed air — which can be refueled at "air stations," and overnight using a built-in compressor, it has a top speed of 68 mph and a range of 125 miles. The Air Car designers are working on a hybrid version that can compress air while it's operating, potentially making cross-India journeys possible."
Links

Submission + - The Fascination With Tornadic Beauty

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: NASA calls them "twin tornados" (photos: #1, #2, #3), and due to the danger they pose to aircraft NASA is taming these dangerous, very impressive vortices. Smoke from a hot flare salvo can also reveal these tornados, also known as wingtip vortices, to human sight (photos: #4, #5). Their size, structure, longevity, and beauty have — as evident in recent posts at Neatorama.com, Microsiervos.com, and Barrapunto.com — an aesthetic appeal on par with, and aside from, scientific interests (videos: #1, #2). (Interestingly, according to some wingtip vortices afficianados, the vortices can be noisy.) Then there's the tornado that cannot be tamed: it's the one that forms during severe weather, triggering within us helplessness, fear, and attraction due to its immense raw power, size, noise, and unpredictability. Sometimes courageous human beings with a video camera get up close and personal with this very violent storm, bringing footage back to us that spectacularly shows the beauty of the tornado (video: #3).
Google

Journal Journal: Google is going to contribute on distcc project

Journal by antenore
From distcc site:

distcc is a program to distribute builds of C, C++, Objective C or Objective C++ code across several machines on a network. distcc should always generate the same results as a local build, is simple to install and use, and is usually much faster than a local compile.
Databases

Submission + - MySQL vs PostgreSQL benchmarks

Submitted by spatialguy
spatialguy writes: Tweakers is a dutch community of online tweakers that are deciding on new hardware for their website and databases.
The link http://tweakers.net/reviews/674/7 [tweakers.net] leads you to some stunning performance graphs on a 8-way opteron system.
It shows that not only postgresql 8.2 is faster then MySQL 5.0, it also scales much better on heavy loads.
The tweakers community are longterm MySQL users and were new to PostgreSQL. However they even brought in a MySQL/Solaris expert to configure it optimally.
Still PostgreSQL turned out to be the better dbms under heavy loads.
They are very thorough in their tests, are themselves MySQL users, and give insight in which optimizations they used to perform these tests.

Interesting is that they discovered a small issue in the stable release of postgresql 8.2 which was subsequently patched by the postgresql developers.
The version pg 8.2.1 did ship with these patches.
They also revealed issues with Solaris, which were investigated by Sun developers, who helped in configuring the Solaris installation.

This second link http://tweakers.net/search?DB=Reviews&item_catId=1 2&productCatId=&Query=postgresql&x=0&y=0
will give you a search results page with links to many similar benchmarks on different architectures of MySQL vs PostgreSQL on their site.

All in all a very convincing read.
Mozilla

Mozilla Releases Thunderbird 2.0.0 311

Posted by samzenpus from the come-and-get-it dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The Mozilla Corporation has released Thunderbird 2.0.0. Among the improvements are Message Tagging, updated UI, Advanced Folder Views, Better New Mail Notification and Full Support for Windows Vista and 64-bit versions of Windows."
Security

Submission + - STEAM 'Hacked', Credit Card Details Stolen

Submitted by
Harv
Harv writes: "According to DailyTech, a hacker known as MaddoxX made a posting on an anti-STEAM website about how he successfully bypassed VALVe's security system and stole a significant amount of data mostly regarding VALVe Cafe owners and users' credit card information."
The Courts

Submission + - Literary agent sues Wikimedia Foundation & SFW

Submitted by
julesh
julesh writes: "Literary agent Barbara Bauer, listed as one of the 20 worst literary agents by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America and well known for making legal threats has initiated a law suit against a long list of individuals who have reported on her inclusion in the list, including the SFWA, the Wikimedia Foundation, and a number of prominent publishing industry personalities who maintain web sites that discussed her actions. One defendant is named only as "Miss Snark, Literary Agent", a well-known psuedonym of an anonymous blogger. See her Wikipedia article for more details. This action prompted the deletion and then restoration of her Wikipedia article, which is now being considered for deletion again. This raises the question: can you effectively silence criticism of you via litigation, even when the criticism is based on widely published (and almost-certainly true) information?"
Databases

Submission + - Are stored procedures bad?

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: I use stored procedures all the time; if not for anything else, but just for the isolation it provides between the business logic and data management. And that's was school taught me! But I was just going through Frans Bouma's article and it shattered all my beliefs. If not all, atleast a few of Frans's points are undeniable. It's an old article and I believe it dates back to 2003 so I'm sure someone would have figured what is best.

Slashdot Top Deals

"By the time they had diminished from 50 to 8, the other dwarves began to suspect "Hungry." -- a Larson cartoon

Close