Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×

Submission + - Beyond Comment Threads (drumbeat.org)

Submitted by
asa
asa writes: "The Knight Foundation and Mozilla are running a series of news innovation challenges. The goal: get the world's smartest hackers thinking about how news organizations can harness the open web. The current challenge is all about comment threads. This seems like the perfect question to pose to Slashdotters: how would you foster more dynamic spaces for online news discussion? How would you preserve the context of online discussions and stamp out trolls? All ideas, technical, practical or impractical are welcome. What technologies (federation, atomic commenting, moderation, algorithms) would you employ? What are the immutable social dynamics? Knight and Mozilla will work with the best challenge entrants to deploy the solutions in newsrooms at Al Jazeera English, the BBC, boston.com, The Guardian, and Zeit Online. Submissions are open until May 22nd."
Graphics

Submission + - Anatomy of a 3D Home Theater PC (hothardware.com)

Submitted by
MojoKid
MojoKid writes: "There may not be a "one size fits all" HTPC. However, there are some HTPC features that are universally desired. An HTPC should be as quiet as possible. It should also be capable of any multimedia related task. It should be easy to install and use, and it should look like it belongs in its environment. The ASRock Vision 3D HTPC reviewed here offers a host of connectivity options, a diminutive, quiet enclosure and excellent multimedia capabilities with Blu-ray and 3D support under the hood, courtesy of NVIDIA's GeForce GT 425M. Home Theater PCs have gone 3D as well and with a bumper crop of new low power technologies out there to power them, they're more capable and tinier than ever."
Java

Submission + - How Synchronization works in Java ? (blogspot.com)

Submitted by
javabuddy
javabuddy writes: "I am new to Java programming and getting difficulty in thread and I was looking for some Java Thread Synchronization tutorial in net and I found this nice tutorial quot;How Synchronization works in Java quot;, Synchronization in Java is a difficult concept and this java synchronization tutorial explains Synchronization Java with example and bullet points. It teaches basics of java synchronization and how to use synchronized block in java , how to use synchronized method in Java , how to write synchronized static method in java and how to write synchronized non static method in java. Thanks a lot"
Security

Submission + - When vuln disclosures are outlawed (theregister.co.uk)

Submitted by doperative
doperative writes: 'Legal goons from Magix AG sent a nasty gram to a researcher who goes by "Acidgen" after he reported the stack buffer overflow in the company's Music Maker 16. According to the report, Acidgen alerted Magix representatives to the bug in several emails that also included proof-of-concept code that forced the Windows calculator to open, indicating the flaw could be exploited to execute malicious code on a victim's computer.

"They misunderstood that I was getting money for doing this ... and illegally breaking into networks" link

Comment: of course the vulnerability isn't in the application but in the underlying Operating System ...

Submission + - More Data Centers Using On-SIte Solar Power (datacenterknowledge.com)

Submitted by 1sockchuck
1sockchuck writes: Solar power hasn’t been widely used in data centers because it takes a very large installation of photovoltaic solar panels to generate the levels of energy required by these facilities. But the month of April has seen the debut of four new data centers featuring on-site solar arraysn. Is this sustainability PR, or might solar power have a future in the data center?

Submission + - Nottingham Uni student arrested under terriosm act (bisa.ac.uk) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: On May 15 2008, two university members — a student and a member of staff — were arrested under the Terrorism Act (2000) because they possessed copies of the"Al-Qaeda Training Manual" which had been downloaded from the United States Department of Justice website. An extended version of the same document is available for sale in book form on Amazon.com. The student, a member of the university's Politics and International Relations department, was researching terrorism for his postgraduate studies and was being advised by a friend of his, who was a former student and administrative member of staff. Both men were held in police custody for six days before being released without charge.
The Terrorism Act (2000) stipulates that: "A person commits an offence if he possesses an article in circumstances which give rise to a reasonable suspicion that his possession is for a purpose connected with the commission, preparation or instigation of an act of terrorism."

The postgraduate tutor of the student at that time has submitted a paper to the British International Studies Association documenting how the university helped get these men arrested and what the university has done to cover up the story since

Submission + - Using googlemaps to simulate tsunamis (tsunami-maps.com)

Submitted by flemster
flemster writes: Tsunami mapper is a new site which uses the googlemaps elevation service and the flood fill algorithm to predict which areas near a coast are likely to be affected by a tsunami. You can search for your local beach, set a wave heading and height and then double click the tsunami starting point off the coast, after which the tsunami range will be drawn. Naturally, predicting a tsunami is far more complicated than this and this application is a general guide and not a true predictor. However the simulations of the recent Japanese simulation are interesting. Compare the tsunami mapper simulation with this aerial photo of Ishinomaki after the March tsunami.
Robotics

Submission + - German Aerospace Robot Plays Catch with Two Balls (hizook.com)

Submitted by
HizookRobotics
HizookRobotics writes: "German Aerospace Center (DLR) designed "Rollin' Justin" to fix satellites in space. But robotics work isn't all work and no play... In the past, DLR engineers had Justin "dancing like in pulp fiction." More recently, in work to be presented at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) in two weeks, DLR engineers demonstrated whole-body real-time control, allowing Justin to catch two balls at once or prepare you a cup of coffee."
Government

Submission + - Sweden to regulate opt-in for cookie transfer (google.com) 1

Submitted by Vitdom
Vitdom writes: The present government in Sweden has published a proposition regarding "Better rules for electronic communication". Amongst other proposed amendments, it suggests that websites must inform the user of the "purpose" regarding each individual cookie transferred to the user's browser upon connection. Secondly, it is suggested that the user must give it's consent before the transfer of the cookie in question.

The proposition is to be voted by the Swedish parliament on the 18 May this year. If accepted, the law will be in effect in June.
Games

Submission + - Valve Announces Dota 2 (blogspot.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Right after a long delay, we can now sleep comfortably acknowledging that Dota 2 is in the workplaces with a establish window set sometime in this year. It seems all of the unique heroes in DotA will probably be ported over onto Dota 2, In addtition, items , skills , plus the mapping will stay effectively unaltered. The game itself are going to be on a fresh engine (we 're assured it looks huge nicer), with other accessory modifications such as structured spokesperson chat and links to Steamworks in the works also.
Privacy

Submission + - Did Sony's PSN take one for the team? (wordpress.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Was Sony just unlucky or negligent? Whatever the cause, the security breach is sure to send other large community network providers into a heightened mode of alert.
Space

Submission + - Medicine Lose Effectiveness In Space

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Scientists at the Johnson Space Center have shown that the effectiveness of drugs declines more rapidly in space. Engineers are working on a project which could bring space travel to the general public but experiments suggest that the health hazards facing astronauts may be greater than previously thought. Astronauts on long space missions may not be able to take paracetamol to treat a headache or antibiotics to fight infection, a study has found. I wonder if diseases are also affected?
Idle

Submission + - Why Beer Skunks: Trans-Iso-Alpha Acids (scientificamerican.com)

Submitted by
erfnet
erfnet writes: "The Technical University of Munich, along with a German beer-maker, have kindly published a "Comprehensive Sensomics Analysis of Hop-Derived Bitter Compounds During Storage of Beer" http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jf104392y They determined 56 hop-derived sensometabolites which contribute to bitter taste during storage, increasing with time and temperature. If we had only had this information during our College days, we could have been even geekier! "Duuuuude, it's not skunked, it's suffering from 'proton-catalyzed cyclization of trans-iso-a-acids'." ."

Slashdot Top Deals

egrep -n '^[a-z].*\(' $ | sort -t':' +2.0

Close