Tatisimo - Slashdot User

Submission + - Researcher says Sears downloads spyware (networkworld.com)

Submitted by BobB-NW on Tuesday January 01, 2008 @09:29PM

BobB-NW writes: Sears and Kmart customers who sign up for a new marketing program may be giving up more private information than they'd bargained for, a prominent anti-spyware researcher claims. According to Harvard Business School Assistant Professor Ben Edelman, [cq] Sears Holdings' My SHC Community program falls short of U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) standards by failing to notify users exactly what happens when they download the company's marketing software.

Submission + - Canonical Passing on KDE? (linuxjournal.com)

Submitted by

eldavojohn

on Saturday December 29, 2007 @12:34PM

eldavojohn writes: "With the announcement that Kubuntu won't have long term support (LTS) from Canonical, many are speculating that KDE will fall by the roadside in terms of use as Ubuntu seems to be the dominant distribution largely by the hand of Dell. Religious wars aside, will KDE suffer from the popularity and momentum of Canonical's Ubuntu?"

Submission + - Snorting a Brain Chemical Could Replace Sleep (wired.com) 3

Submitted by james968 on Friday December 28, 2007 @11:15AM

james968 writes: Scientists have isolated a Nose Spray which seems to negate the effects of lack of sleep. (And it isn't illegal, yet) http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2007/12/sleep_deprivation

Submission + - Largest Diamond in the galaxy discovered 5

Submitted by morpheus83 on Friday December 28, 2007 @10:04AM

morpheus83 writes: Astronomers have discovered the largest diamond in the galaxy, located at a distance of 50 light years from earth in the Constellation Centaurus. The space diamond is virtually an enormous chunk of crystallized carbon, 4,000 kilometers in diameter which makes up ten billion trillion trillion carats or five million trillion trillion pounds. Scientists believe that the diamond is the heart of an extinct star that used to shine like the Sun.

Submission + - A new low in restrictive software licensing 4

Submitted by Coutal on Tuesday December 25, 2007 @05:52PM

Coutal writes: Licensing is usually looked upon as a burden by software customers, although one we're grudgingly used to living with. However, at times one encounters new lows which can still invoke sufficient outrage — a stealable license.
Recently, my i-go based pocket pc navigation unit was stolen. However, I still retained my valid serial number, certificate of authenticity, proof of purchase and even a backup of the software. I figured restoring my software to another device should be a matter of unit service or (tops) minimal fee for media restoration. Tech support, however, had other ideas in mind. They informed me that my license was stolen with the unit. No amount of explanation of the lack of logic in that statement made through. They insisted that my backups were also void because I no longer have the original SD card and that I am not allowed to use them (which kind of defeats the whole purpose of backup, as the device only stores extremely little other data than the original software — no more than a few points of interest and marginal settings).

Submission + - Embedded Linux on a Digital Stethoscope (calvin.edu)

Submitted by on Monday December 24, 2007 @06:05PM

An anonymous reader writes: A team of electrical and computer engineering students at Calvin College is designing a digital electronic stethoscope running uClinux as its operating system. While there are many embedded devices built on Linux operating systems, medical devices running open-source software are extremely rare because of the perceived difficulty in obtaining FDA validation. The device is in its early stages of development, but major hardware choices have been made, and the team has recently released a Project Proposal and Feasibility Study.

Submission + - Click here to turn your HP laptop into a brick (fargelius.com)

Submitted by Kots85 on Friday December 21, 2007 @08:27PM

Kots85 writes: http://www.fargelius.com/archives/click-here-to-turn-your-hp-laptop-into-a-brick Check your HP laptop ASAP

Submission + - Torvalds on where Linux is headed in 2008

Submitted by Stony Stevenson on Sunday November 25, 2007 @08:59PM

Stony Stevenson writes: In this new interview, Linus Torvalds is excited about solid-state drives, expects progress in graphics and wireless networking, and says the operating system is strong in virtualisation despite his personal lack of interest in the area.

From the article: "To get some perspective on what lies ahead in 2008, we caught up with Linus Torvalds via email. His responses touched on the Linux development process, upcoming features, and whether he's concerned about potential patent litigation."

Torvalds on Linux biggest strength: "When you buy an OS from Microsoft, not only you can't fix it, but it has had years of being skewed by one single entity's sense of the market. It doesn't matter how competent Microsoft — or any individual company — is, it's going to reflect that fact. In contrast, look at where Linux is used. Everything from cellphones and other small embedded computers that people wouldn't even think of as computers, to the bulk of the biggest machines on the supercomputer Top-500 list. That is flexibility. And it stems directly from the fact that anybody who is interested can participate in the development, and no single entity ends up being in control of where it all goes.

Submission + - Why Choose Ruby or PHP Instead of Java? (web2journal.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 24, 2007 @01:10PM

An anonymous reader writes: Software executive and chief technology officer Coach Wei, whose Java credentials are impeccable, has opened up a can of worms over at Web 2.0 Journal by raising the issue of why Java's not in favor any more for building web sites, even complex ones. Even a latge-scale site like Facebook, Wei notes, is not written in Java. [From the article: 'Why do "cool kids" choose Ruby or PHP to build websites instead of Java? I have to admit that I do not have an answer. ... the power of Java is a perfect fit for the areas where websites may need more than markups or scripting, such as middleware logic.']

Submission + - Ham Radio Operator Finds Cure For Cancer (latimes.com) 5

Submitted by

CirReal

on Tuesday November 13, 2007 @07:31PM

CirReal writes: "John Kanzius, K3TUP, himself suffering from cancer with nine months to live, used nanotechnology and a radio transmitter to kill cancer cells. "Kanzius did not have a medical background, not even a bachelor's degree, but he knew radios. He had built and fixed them since he was a child, collecting transmitters, transceivers, antennas and amplifiers, earning an amateur radio operator license. Kanzius knew how to send radio wave signals around the world. If he could transmit them into cancer cells, he wondered, could he then direct the radio waves to destroy tumors, while leaving healthy cells intact?" Reseachers "recently killed 100% of cancer cells grown in the livers of rabbits, using Kanzius' method.""

Submission + - Cloning: a giant step

Submitted by

mernil

on Tuesday November 13, 2007 @07:30PM

mernil writes: "The Independent reports: "For the first time, scientists have created dozens of cloned embryos from adult primates. /.../ A technical breakthrough has enabled scientists to create for the first time dozens of cloned embryos from adult monkeys, raising the prospect of the same procedure being used to make cloned human embryos."

Submission + - Proprietary Linux Desktop Mimics Windows 2000

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 13, 2007 @06:14PM

An anonymous reader writes: A Brazilian company is selling a Windows 2000 clone based on Linux, called Blanes (English translation). The screenshots are promissing, but the catch is: Blanes is a proprietary software, and requires an activation key. My question is: from an ethical and legal point of view, shouldn't they release the source code?

Submission + - Producer Thanks Pirates for Stealing his Film (rlslog.net)

Submitted by Klatoo55 on Tuesday November 13, 2007 @06:11PM

Klatoo55 writes: Eric Wilkinson, producer of the late Jerome Bixby's "The Man From Earth", wrote an email to Releaselog thanking them for the free publicity spurred by their review of a ripped screener of his film.

Wilkinson writes: "Our independent movie had next to no advertising budget and very little going for it until somebody ripped one of the DVD screeners and put the movie online for all to download. After that happened, people were watching it and started posting mostly all positive reviews... ...People like our movie and are talking about it, all thanks to piracy on the net!"

Wilkinson is, however, asking for people who enjoyed the pirated release to consider contributing via PayPal on his MySpace.

Submission + - Stash: free adult media manager

Submitted by awhite on Tuesday November 13, 2007 @05:56PM

awhite writes: Some things just go together: peanut butter and chocolate, Ballmer and developers, and Slashdotters and internet porn . Now Hedonic Software has released Stash 1.1 for free (as in beer, not speech). Stash helps you download, protect, organize, and playback your adult images and videos. Built with .NET 3.0 and based on a zooming user interface, Stash features virtual and automatic albums, instant search, inline video viewing, full-screen slideshows, a built-in tabbed browser and integrated web crawler, content scrambling, and many additional privacy features. Check out the promotional video for a teaser, the general use video for more in-depth coverage, and the website for the full scoop. Warning: link content rated PG-13.

Submission + - Hydrogen from Biomass 288x energy positive (dealse311.com)

Submitted by

ScrewTivo

on Tuesday November 13, 2007 @05:44PM

ScrewTivo writes: "This article New technique creates cheap, abundant hydrogen explains a bit about converting renewable biomass such as cellulose or glucose into hydrogen using a microbial fuel cell. This process is know as electrohydrogenesis. It does take a bit of electricity to run the process yet it produces 288 times more electricity than consumed. The part I like the best was "The technology is economically viable now""

Slashdot Top Deals