Lawrence Ho - Slashdot User

Submission + - Major Skype outage "not caused by a crash"

Submitted by dhollist on Friday August 17, 2007 @07:36AM

dhollist writes: According to Skype's website their system "has not crashed or been victim of a cyber attack. We love our customers too much to let that happen. This problem occurred because of a deficiency in an algorithm within Skype networking software. This controls the interaction between the user's own Skype client and the rest of the Skype network."

What is the difference between an outage where nobody can access the system and a crash? If my desktop computer locks up, but I don't get a BSOD, did it really crash, or is it an "outage" since I am merely unable to do anything? Is there truly a difference, or is it just semantics? An article in The Sydney Morning Herald provides additional information.

New Linux Desktop Environment Built on Firefox 198

Posted by CmdrTaco on Sunday July 22, 2007 @09:15AM from the believe-it-when-it's-useful dept.

IL-CSIXTY4 writes "'Pyro is a new kind of desktop environment for Linux built on Mozilla Firefox. Its goal is to enable true integration between the Web and modern desktop computing.' This looks like an interesting marriage of the web and the desktop. In Pyro, Web apps run in windows on the desktop, right alongside desktop apps (through compositing). Features expected in a desktop environment, like task/window selection and an Expose-like function, are written in Javascript." "

Submission + - Gmail Paper

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 01, 2007 @12:59AM

An anonymous reader writes: Google in another first has released Google Paper a paper archive service for gmail users... Details state that it will be free and funded by advertising revenue. From press release:

Is it free? Yes. The cost of postage is offset with the help of relevant, targeted, unobtrusive advertisements, which will appear on the back of your Gmail Paper prints in red, bold, 36 pt Helvetica. No pop-ups, no flashy animations — these are physically impossible in the paper medium. How about attachments? All part of the deal. Photo attachments are printed on high-quality, glossy photo paper, and secured to your Gmail Paper with a paper clip. MP3 and WAV files will not be printed. We recommend maintaining copies of your non-paper Gmail in these cases. Is there a limit? You can make us print one, one thousand, or one hundred thousand of your emails. It's whatever seems reasonable to you.

Submission + - Gmail Paper Launches

Submitted by

theodp

on Sunday April 01, 2007 @12:53AM

theodp writes: "Checked your Gmail lately? Thanks to Gmail Paper, you can now request a physical copy of any message with the click of a button, and Google will print it and mail it to you using ad-supported stamps."

Submission + - When will Slashdot fix its CSS?

Submitted by

scjnsn

on Sunday April 01, 2007 @12:33AM

scjnsn writes: "Every day before I check out SlashDot I secretly hope that the stylesheets have been repaired. How long will the lowly Firefox users have to suffer with link text that bleeds into and over the top of paragraph text? How long with they have to piece together stories because the two words on the right-hand side of the page flow under the floating icon? SlashDot should get its carp together!"

Submission + - IE7 and FF 2.0 share vulnerability

Submitted by hcmtnbiker on Sunday February 25, 2007 @01:35PM

hcmtnbiker writes: Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox 2.0 share a logic flaw. The issue is actually more severe, as the two versions of the Microsoft and Mozilla browsers are not the only ones affected. The vulnerability impacts Internet Explorer 5.01, Internet Explorer 6 and Internet Explorer 7, and Firefox 1.5.0.9. "In all modern browsers, form fields (used to upload user-specified files to a remote server) enjoy some added protection meant to prevent scripts from arbitrarily choosing local files to be sent, and automatically submitting the form without user knowledge. For example, ".value" parameter cannot be set or changed, and any changes to .type reset the contents of the field," said Michal Zalewski, the person that discovered the IE7 flaw. There are Proof of concepts for both IE7 and firefox

Comment Re:In Hong Kong... Using Tor (Score 1) 154

by Lawrence Ho on Monday January 01, 2007 @09:57AM (#17421684) Attached to: Geeks In Asia Use Clever Hacks To Get Slashdot

That's good for you. I tried Tor too and it could not find enough nodes to build a circuit for me. It did work after a while but not until many sites became directly accessible again. So, for me, Tor was not particularly helpful to workaround the connection problems.

BBC Episodes Legally Available Via Peer To Peer 212

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Wednesday December 20, 2006 @01:34PM from the drink-the-kool-aid dept.

Kript writes "According to the BBC they are going to make a number of their shows available on the Azureus network. A number of old favorites will be available such as Red Dwarf, Doctor Who and even Little Britain."

Sony Says Nobody Will Ever Use All the Power of a PS3 581

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday December 20, 2006 @11:19AM from the they-never-heard-of-the-robsort-algorithm dept.

Tighthead Prop writes "Sony executive Phil Harrison has made some brash comments about the Cell processor and the PlayStation 3. Harrison says that the current PS3 game lineup is using less than half of the machines power, adding that 'nobody will ever use 100 percent of its capacity.' Is he right? 'The major reason Harrison wants to hype up the "unlimited" potential of the PS3's architecture is to downplay comparisons between games running on Sony's console and Microsoft's Xbox 360. The two systems are not completely dissimilar: they both contain a PowerPC core running at 3.2 GHz, both have similarly-clocked GPUs, and both come with 512 MB of RAM.'"

Apple Closes iSight Security Hole 213

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday December 20, 2006 @10:22AM from the nobody-wants-to-see-me-naked dept.

Gruber Duckie writes "Apple's security update 2006-008, posted yesterday, is a little more interesting than it sounds. According to information (and a demo!) posted at Macslash the "information leak" mentioned in Apple's advisory actually makes it possible for a web site to send whatever your (isight) web cam sees up to the server. I'm glad they fixed this quickly."

Parallels Beta Adds Boot Camp, Desktop 244

Posted by CmdrTaco on Sunday December 03, 2006 @12:08PM from the stuff-to-play-with dept.

Verunks writes "Parallels has released a new beta of its virtualization product for Mac OS X. This new release includes one major new feature, something Parallels calls Coherency: "Shows Windows applications as if they were Mac ones. Try it and enjoy best of both worlds truly at the same time. No more switching between Windows to Mac OS." Check out this Screenshot" More interesting to me is the Boot Camp support so you can have a single partition to run IE7 in Parallels to test compatibility of a website but reboot to play video games that need a little more juice.

Google or Wikipedia - Which is Your First Stop? 171

Posted by Cliff on Saturday October 21, 2006 @11:26AM from the depends-on-the-topic-but-google-still-the-king dept.

dwarfking asks: "Over the last several months I have noticed that more and more often, when I am searching for information on the web, I find myself starting at Wikipedia instead of Google. It used to be that the first hit on many of my Google searches linked to Wikipedia articles, so I started going there first. I've found that except for searching for current events, by starting with Wikipedia I get a good explanation of the topic of interest and the pages generally have links to other good resources that are right on topic (without the need to scroll through dozens of hits). Are others of you seeing similar shifts in your search usage and if so, do any of you think this could become a trend for the larger community? If so, then what could that potentially mean for Google?"

Mars Rover Upgraded 132

Posted by CmdrTaco on Sunday May 28, 2006 @10:37AM from the everyone-likes-upgrades dept.

MrShaggy writes "According to a BBC article, NASA is upgrading their MARS rovers. The upgrade will allow the rovers to sift through the pictures of dust-devils, decide which is the most appropriate, send it back. 'Clouds typically occur in 8-20% of the data collected right now,' Castano said. 'If we could look for a much more extended time and select only those images with clouds then we could increase our understanding of how and when these phenomena form. Similarly with the dust devils.' The article also discusses upgrades to the Mars Odyssey. They plan to make it self-reacting to events on the planet as they are happening."

SQL on Rails Launched 117

Posted by CowboyNeal on Saturday April 01, 2006 @02:02PM from the web-three-point-oh dept.

Daniel writes "Developers have created a new Rails framework for SQL, SQL on Rails. Check out the screen cast that shows you how to develop an internet search engine with three lines of code. Version 4.1 of the SQL on Rails framework is available for download on the site, and the O'Reilly title is expected to hit shelves next month." ZOMG L@@K at the kitten site it powers!@#!11

MONKEYS USE ROBOTS TO FLING POO!!! GROSS!!! :) :) 52

Posted by CmdrTaco on Saturday April 01, 2006 @12:17PM from the technology-continues-to-impress dept.

Bananatree3 writes "A monkey has learned to control a remote arm to fling its own poo at researchers. From the article: " Researchers at Duke University have taught a lab monkey to control the movement of a robotic arm, using only signals from its brain. The monkey's immediate utilization of this new skill was to shower a group of neurobiologists with feces, according to the report by lead researcher Miguel Nicolelis.""

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