Slashdot is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Editorial

Submission + - WARNING TO PUBLIC ABOUT HOSTING SERVICES (avidhostingsucks.com)

Submitted by
pjkinann
pjkinann writes: "If you have a web site, you need hosting. I just want to warn people about AvidHosting.com. In my experience and my opinion they are an unethical company to deal with. I have found other people having the same experience as I am. I feel it my public duty to warn anyone who is researching a host to NOT use Avidhosting.com See more at http://www.avidhostingsucks.com/ and temporarily (because Avid is threatening to sue me) http://www.avidhosting.org./ He is also holding two of my clients' domains hostage; either I pay for them or the clients don't get them back. AND he just purchased two of my clients' company name domains and thinks that's okay for him to do, but not for me to do. He can sue me for doing the same thing he is doing. Avidhosting is threatening litigation because I purchased Avidhosting.org; however, I am not infringing on a Trademark, because their name is not a TM; I am not in direct competition with them for hosting, because I'm criticizing their services not selling hosting or products; and I did not purchase the domain in bad faith, as I have no intention of making a profit with it. It is merely to warn the public. The site is not confusing to anyone looking at avidhosting.com and comparing it to avidhosting.org wondering — gee! who shall I host with! Because avidhosting.org and avidhostingsucks.com are obvious criticism and warnings and people can send me email with their experiences with Avidhosting.com You will see some links on the right-hand side of the page showing other people having issues with Avid. I have also received some personal letters from people who are sick to death of being taken advantage of by Avidhosting.com So, I'm not sure this is in the correct forum, but if it is not, please move it where the public can be forewarned of eminent danger! They could lose their domains! And that is MY experience and my opinion. Please see: http://www.avidhostingsucks.com/ PJ Kinann"
Data Storage

Submission + - Open Source storage: Top picks (computerworld.com.au)

Submitted by
StonyandCher
StonyandCher writes: "Combining "open source" and "storage" in the same sentence used to trigger a sardonic grin, but no longer. The availability of free and open software is as true today for storage as it is for operating systems and applications. Not only is it available, but this article talks about some of the best on offer."
Security

Submission + - Security expert used Tor to collect government e-m (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by
stevedcc
stevedcc writes: "You may have heard about Swedish security expert Dan Egerstad exposing password and login information for various embassy accounts and government servers. Well, anandtech are running a story about how he got the information: he ran a specialised packet sniffer on 5 Tor exit nodes ran by his corporation. From the article

Unfortunately, many Tor users do not realize that all of their network traffic is being exposed to Tor nodes. Tor users who do not use encryption are broadly exposing themselves to identity theft. Egerstad was originally doing a study on e-mail encryption, but during the course of the research project, he decided to create the packet sniffer and expose sensitive e-mail login data in order to increase awareness of the fact that Tor exposes sensitive information when not used with encryption.


I've heard people criticise anonymising networks before, saying you never know who's running them or watching them. Is this a taste of goverments' own medicine?"
Programming

Submission + - Free Pascal 2.2 has been released (freepascal.org)

Submitted by
Daniel Mantione
Daniel Mantione writes: "Free Pascal 2.2 has been released. Several new platforms are supported, like the Mac OS X on Intel platform, the Game Boy Advance, Windows CE and 64-Windows. Free Pascal is now the first and only free software compiler that target 64-bit Windows. These advancements were made possible by Free Pascal's internal assembler and linker allowing support for platforms not supported by the GNU binutils. The advancement in internal assembling and linking also allow faster compilation times and smaller executables, increasing the programmer comfort. Other new features are stabs debug support, many new code optimizations, resourcestring smartlinking and more.

Further, Free Pascal has become extremely powerfull in developing portable software over the last years. The release article explains why."
Businesses

Submission + - Insight Cable Hijacking 404 Pages

Submitted by
Vulva R. Thompson, P
Vulva R. Thompson, P writes: "Here we go again. After checking with a number of fellow Insight subscribers, any mistyped URLs are redirected to www.not-found-help.com. Screenshot here. There's no mention of the ISP on the page and querying whois shows the domain name is protected by a proxy.

At first glance, it looks like a DNS hijack because the page is laid out like a typical cheesy squatter site, not something from a reputable ISP. But after viewing the source, the server simply inserts some javascript and sends the page off to perform the lookup. Extending the cheesiness factor, opt-out is via a cookie that can be set in a page linked from the microscopic "About" link (opt-out screenshot here). Again, no mention of Insight anywhere.

It's been argued before that grabbing 404's for profit is wrong ethically and, more importantly, RFC-wise. But another issue, as demonstrated here, is that it's tough enough training our Joe Sixpack friends not to go happy clicking and recognize when their system has been compromised, DNS or otherwise. Stuff like this doesn't help. What would your first reaction have been upon seeing that page?"
First Person Shooters (Games)

Submission + - Bioshock: did the reviewers mess up? (custompc.co.uk)

Submitted by
mr_sifter
mr_sifter writes: "With a whopping average review score of 96% it's clear that the press can't heap enough praise on Bioshock — yet some are beginning to wonder just how it managed to get such high scores. In this column one gamer argues that far from being a masterpiece, Bioshock is derivative stuff, and its high review scores represent a serious lapse by the games press. "The underwater city of Rapture is a thing of beauty, but most of the locations you actually see in the game are repetitive and dull. It's all dripping corridors and small, dark rooms, with only the occasional port hole to provide a view of some kelp and corpses to lighten things up. The enemies, aside from the Big Daddies are uninspiring. Mostly you've got a horde of maudlin zombie types, called Splicers, and gun turrets; pretty much the same sort of stuff anybody who played through System Shock 2 has killed enough of to last a lifetime.... the boring enemy design is further weakened by poor AI: the splicers' basic tactic is just to run at you, weaving around and cackling. You may recognise this behaviour from, ooh, most PC games of the past fifteen years, and also schoolchildren at playtime. "Then there are the game's primitive controls; Bioshock completely lacks modern innovations such as the ability to lean around corners or aim down the gun sights, and your character moves at a fixed pace — a pace more suited to viewing paintings in a gallery rather than evading gun turrets or, heaven forbid, fighting.""
Announcements

Submission + - Brain Differences In Democrats and Republicans

Submitted by i_like_spam
i_like_spam writes: Scientists from NYU and UCLA report in Nature Neuroscience that the brains of Democrats and Republicans process information differently. This new study finds that the differences are apparent even when the brain processes common information, not just political topics. From the study, liberals were more likely to be accurate and showed more brain activity in the region associated with analyzing conflicts. A researcher not affiliated with the study stated, liberals 'could be expected to more readily accept new social, scientific or religious ideas.' Moreover, 'the results could explain why President Bush demonstrated a single-minded commitment to the Iraq war and why some people perceived Sen. John F. Kerry ... as a flip-flopper.
Editorial

Submission + - When Was The Exact Day Slashdot Jumped The Shark? (oreillynet.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: by Noah Gift in Opinion from O'Reilly OnLamp Blog: "I remember in the early 2000's, Slashdot was THE geek website, but something has changed and it appears they have lost the magic. ...I find their stories trite, boring and dare I say, irrelevant to IT? What is your best bet to the cause of their demise?
HP

Submission + - HP Blackbird 002 High-End Gaming System Takes Off (hothardware.com)

Submitted by
Spinnerbait
Spinnerbait writes: "After HP's acquisition of Voodoo PC last year, many speculated that the company's entrance into the high-end gaming PC market was imminent. After all, why else would they have bought Voodoo in the first place? However, HP was also secretly working on their own gaming PC, and its codename was Blackbird. Blackbird wasn't being designed solely by the newly acquired engineers from Voodoo. In fact, the Blackbird project was well underway at HP before the acquisition was finalized. The two did collaborate on a design though, that ultimately became the product that is shown here at HotHardware — a high-end, fully customizable machine that's poised to do battle with the best gaming systems the industry has to offer. Benchmarks and a full design showcase are included in the article."
GNU is Not Unix

Submission + - GNU PDF as an alternative to poppler

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The FSF has decided that the GNU PDF project is a high priority project. Motivations for yet another open source pdf library (poppler already exists and works fine)? Here:

"But we found enough arguments to not use it. First of all, there is the portability issue. poppler is written in C++. If it is difficult to write portable C code, to use C++ is to call for portability problems. Someone may want to embed the gnu library in an embedded device, for example. There is another reason against to use C++ for the library: the vast majority of the GNU system is written in C, and one of the goals of the library is to provide convenient PDF support to other GNU packages."

It doesn't matter that there are already projects like evince written in C using poppler, or that there are already compilers for C++ for so many platforms, the FSF wants its own PDF library implemented in C.
Data Storage

Submission + - Toshiba boosts hard drive density by 50%

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Toshiba has unveiled a ground breaking technology that boosts recording density on an 80GB 1.8-inch single platter drive by 50%. Using the Discrete Track Recording (DTR) technology Toshiba was able to pack 120GB storage on a single 1.8-inch platter. The new development will hugely benefit media player, UMPC, and ultra-portable laptop segment where 1.8" drive with maximum possible capacity are in great demand.
Microsoft

Submission + - ISO reform proposed: response to OOXML shenanigans

Submitted by qcomp
qcomp writes: In the aftermath of the irregularities surrounding the recent vote on Mircosoft's standard proposal OOXML Freecode CEO Geir Isene questions whether ISO is "prepared for a politicized process" and proposes ISO reforms "to safeguard future standardization and to ensure that the processes scale in the face of increased pressure" and calls for an "investigation" to determine if OOXML "was unduly put on the ISO fast track." There's interesting commentrary on the proposal over at Ars Technica.
Windows

Submission + - Samba 4 has reached Alpha Stage (samba.org)

Submitted by DaMattster
DaMattster writes: Samba4 alpha1 is the culmination of 4.5 years of development under our belt since Tridge first proposed a new Virtual File System (VFS) layer for Samba3 (a project which eventually lead to our Active Directory efforts), and 1.5 years since we first released a Technology Preview. We wish to allow users, managers and developers to see how we have progressed, and to invite feedback and support.
Math

Submission + - Game theory predicts the future of Adwords (arxivblog.com)

Submitted by
KentuckyFC
KentuckyFC writes: "Google Adwords isn't perfect. arXivblog.com reports that researchers are using game theory to calculate how these inefficiencies can be exploited. The theory predicts the emergence of a new kind of online middleman that buys up popular keywords and resells them to advertisers who want to secure a decent advertising spot above the fold. This should make the market more efficient and so provide a benefit to all concerned."
Announcements

Submission + - Komodo Spawns New Open Source IDE Project (techrythm.com)

Submitted by techoon
techoon writes: Development tools vendor ActiveState is opening up parts of its Komodo IDE (define) in a new effort called Open Komodo. Komodo is a Mozilla Framework-based application that uses Mozillas XUL (XML-based User Interface Language), which is Mozillas language for creating its user interface.The Open Komodo effort will take code from ActiveStates freely available, but not open source, Komodo Edit product and use it as a base for the new open source IDE.

Slashdot Top Deals

Old programmers never die, they just hit account block limit.

Close