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

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Handhelds

Submission + - iPhone Contains Secret Keylogger (tuaw.com)

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: Not quite a keylogger, but still disturbing. It's been discovered that a file on the iPhone automatically stores new words that are typed on the phone for its auto correction feature. So far, so good, but unfortunately it also appears to store passwords in plain text within the file. With all the methods of accessing the iPhone filesystem, this is bad news for people who lose their iPhones or sell them without a full wipe.
The Almighty Buck

Submission + - Black Monday: Twenty Years Ago Today (wikipedia.org)

Submitted by
The Living Fractal
The Living Fractal writes: "On October 19th, 1987, the world stock markets endured a drop so large that it would eventually be known as Black Monday. Today is not Monday, though there is certainly a similarity between what happened today in the US stock markets and what happened on the Friday before Black Monday back in 1987. Can we expect that the same thing that happened twenty years ago happens again at the open of the markets on Monday? What are the causes of this potential recession, and what, if any, is the light at the end of the tunnel?"
Sony

Submission + - Use a surge protector, Void your PS3 Warranty

Submitted by Direwolf20
Direwolf20 writes: A friend of mine called Sony Customer Support when his 4 month old Playstation 3 bricked one night (while sitting idle). Customer support tried to tell him that it probably got hit by an electrical surge. When he told the CSR that the PS3 was connected to a surge protector, the CSR informed him that connecting his PS3 to a surge protector voids the warranty, and therefore he'll have to shell out $150 to get it fixed.
It's funny. Laugh.

Submission + - Japanese Wikipedia 'editors' rapped by employer (scotsman.com) 1

Submitted by
sufijazz
sufijazz writes: "JAPAN'S agriculture ministry has reprimanded six bureaucrats for shirking their duties after an internal inquiry found that they had spent many work hours contributing to the Wiki-pedia website — including 260 entries about cartoon robots.
The ministry verbally reprimanded each of the six officials, and slapped a ministry-wide order to prohibit access to Wikipedia at work, while disabling access to the site from the ministry."
Privacy

Submission + - MediaDefender gets source code cracked!

Submitted by
DragonTHC
DragonTHC writes: "Slyck news is reporting that MediaDefender has been cracked again and this time, their source code for anti-freedom efforts against p2p and bit torrent. The fifty megabyte download is by the same group that brought you the MediaDefender emails, MediaDefender-Defender."
The Courts

Submission + - Coop Discourages Notetaking in Bookstore (thecrimson.com) 1

Submitted by
mikesd81
mikesd81 writes: "The Harvard Crimson reports that the Harvard Coop asked Jarret A. Zafran to leave the Coop after writing down the prices of six books required for a junior Social Studies tutorial he hopes to take. The apparent new policy could be a response to efforts by Crimsonreading.org — an online database that allows students to find the books they need for each course at discounted prices from several online booksellers — from writing down the ISBN identification numbers for books at the Coop and then using that information for their Web site. The coop claims the prices are their intellectual property. Crimson Reading disagrees. "We don't think the Coop owns copyright on this information that should be available to students," said Tom D. Hadfield, co-creator of the site. According to UC President Ryan A. Petersen, discussions with an intellectual property lawyer have confirmed Crimson Reading's position."
Wireless Networking

Submission + - Order a burger at McDonalds using your cell phone

Submitted by
Matt
Matt writes: "McDonald's and SK Telecom Korea showed a new ordering system using mobile phones and infra-red sensors which let customers make orders from their table and sends them a phone message when the meal is ready. The "Touch Order" menu is the first in the world to utilize the radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology in a self-ordering system at a restaurant."
Privacy

Submission + - 700mb of Media Defender e-mails leaked (torrentfreak.com)

Submitted by
Lonin
Lonin writes: "It appears Media Defender, the company behind the supposed honeypot trap video sharing website MiiVi.com, and friend to the MPAA, is going to have a very bad week. Some 700mb of e-mails, some as recent as September '07, were leaked onto the net and are being uploaded to various torrent sites as we speak. The e-mails have only been skimmed so far, but it appears to show the inner workings of a company dedicated to lying and entrapping people in the name of copyright. This should be interesting."
Security

Submission + - 700MB of MediaDefender internal emails leaked (torrentfreak.com) 2

Submitted by qubezz
qubezz writes: The company MediaDefender which works with the RIAA and MPAA against piracy (setting up fake torrents and trackers and disrupting p2p) had earlier set up a fake internet video download site designed to catch and bust users. They denied the entrapment charges. Now 700MB of internal emails from the company from the last 6 months leaked onto BitTorrent trackers detail their entire plan, how they intended to distance themselves from the fake company they set up, future strategies, and reveal other company information such as logins and passwords, wage negotiations, and numerous other aspect of their internal business! torrentfreak.com details some of the jems!
Portables

Submission + - New cellphone bill will clarify contracts (senate.gov)

Submitted by theorem4
theorem4 writes: From TFA: "Washington, D.C. — Senators Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) today unveiled legislation aimed at empowering the 200 million cell phone customers nationwide to make informed choices about a wireless service that best fits their needs and their budget. The Cell Phone Consumer Empowerment Act of 2007 will require wireless service providers to share simple, clear information on their services and charges with customers before they enter into long-term contracts; a thirty-day window in which to exit a contract without early termination fees; and greater flexibility to exit contracts with services that don't meet their needs." It goes on to explain that the bill will tell the FCC to inquire about the practice of "locking" phones.
Communications

Submission + - Charter Claims Big SMTP Outage Due to Microsoft

Submitted by Pissed Off Charter Communications Customer
Pissed Off Charter Communications Customer writes: People I know who use Charter Communications in the upper Midwest have been unable to send email from their home clients (Outlook, Thunderbird, Eudora, etc.) since Saturday. All get a "connection refused" message from Charter's mail server. When pressed by irate customers on day 4 of this ridiculous outage, a Charter supervisor blamed "incompatible Microsoft software" and said that it could be "a month" before any service might be restored.

I didn't want to sign up for Charter in the first place out here in the hinterlands (AT&T seemed to be the only other choice), but I'm thinking they're going to lose a few thousand customers just like me this month.

I can't help but wonder if this is related to Charter's recent company-wide roll-out of Vista. This "Vista Bug Costs Users In Swedish Town Their Internet" article may also be related:
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/09/02/122320 9

Sorry — no official URL; I haven't gotten anyone at Charter to put the "we blame Microsoft" bit in writing yet and they sure haven't told anyone who doesn't pry about the massive and sustained outage.
Graphics

Submission + - ATI/AMD Announces Driver Breakthrough (phoronix.com)

Submitted by
schestowitz
schestowitz writes: "AMD has just dropped the bomb when it announced a major driver breakthrough. To Linux users, the effect of this news is enormous. To gamers and to projects like Compiz-Fusion, this will be the end of a lot of trouble. Phoronix.com seems to have had some insider information because the site already boasts extensive benchmarks and detailed information. From one among five articles: 'Whether you are using a Radeon X300 purchased a few years ago or the Radeon X1950PRO, the 8.41 driver is noticeably faster. How much faster? In many cases it is about 50% faster while in some configurations it may go as high as 90% or more. In fact, in some benchmarks the Mobility Radeon X300 was over 10x faster!'"
Windows

Submission + - Creative Labs' Vista driver team feeling stressed? (creativelabs.com) 2

Submitted by
regular_gonzalez
regular_gonzalez writes: "While the X-Fi's issues under Vista have been widely reported, that doesn't prevent a flood of complaints pouring into the Creative Labs website, posted for all to see. What is more surprising is the employees' responses. A sampling:

# The drivers will be released when we are good and ready and happy with them
# Bitching like a 5 year old won't magically solve all our problems on the drivers.
# Call us hopeless and whatever else all you like, noone else is going to fix these drivers but us, demoralizing us won't bring it faster
# There are already reasonably working drivers supplied with the card, legally our responsibility stops there, think yourselves lucky we even bother updating the drivers at all.
# Anymore of these derogatory posts and we might well just flush the whole XFi/Vista64 saga to the toilet and move on.
Is Creative Labs obliged to treat even the most obnoxious of whiners with a certain level of respect, or is it refreshing to have a company actually state opinions that normally would be kept to themselves?"
Microsoft

Submission + - British Standards Institute votes NO to OOXML (bsi-global.com)

Submitted by mikeb
mikeb writes: Although it's not as plain as a pikestaff from the wording of the press release at http://www.bsi-global.com/en/About-BSI/News-Room/B SI-News-Content/Disciplines/Information-Management /ISOIEC-DIS-29500/ , the key bit is "a number of technical issues in the document which need to be addressed before the UK can approve ISO/IEC DIS 29500 OOXML as an International Standard" — in other words, NO with comments (the alternative would be yes with comments but that cannot force a ballot resolution meeting). I wish anyone well who tries to resolve some of the comments!
Privacy

Submission + - Man Arrested for Refusing to Show Receipt at Circu (michaelrighi.com)

Submitted by
NMerriam
NMerriam writes: "Michael Righi was arrested in Ohio over the weekend for refusing to show his receipt when leaving Circuit City. When the manger and "loss prevention" employee physically prevented the vehicle he was a passenger in from leaving the parking lot, he called the police, who arrived, searched his bag and found he hadn't stolen anything. The officer then asked for Michael's driver's license, which he declined to provide since he wasn't operating a motor vehicle. The officer then arrested him, and upon finding out Michael was legally right about not having to provide a license, went ahead and charged him with "obstructing official business" anyways."

Slashdot Top Deals

It is easier to write an incorrect program than understand a correct one.

Close