paradigmic - Slashdot User

Submission + - Why the gaming-violence connection is comforting

Submitted by Warm Coffee on Thursday March 01, 2007 @05:42PM

Warm Coffee writes: It's is well-established that the science supporting a connection between video game violence and real-world violence is tenuous. A new article examines why society finds a gaming-violence connection so comforting. 'Sternheimer suggests that gaming is simply the latest in a long series of media influences to take the blame. "Over the past century, politicians have complained that cars, radio, movies, rock music, and even comic books caused youth immorality and crime, calling for control and sometimes censorship." She terms the targets of such efforts "folk devils," items branded dangerous and immoral that serve to focus blame and fear.'

Submission + - P2P Virus threatens to kill people

Submitted by

Burento

on Thursday March 01, 2007 @05:35PM

Burento writes: "The virus has two variants Troj/Pirlames-A and Troj/Pirlames-B, masquerades as a screensaver and attacks files with these popular extensions — EXE, BAT, CMD, INI, ASP, HTM, HTML, PHP, CLASS, JAVA, DBX, EML, MBX, TBB, WAB, HLP, TXT, MP3, XLS, LOG, BMP — overwriting them with images of comic book character Ayu Tsukimiya. http://www.weirdasianews.com/2007/03/01/p2p-virus- threatens-to-kill-people/"

Submission + - DST Update Test Page

Submitted by

Jeff Williams

on Thursday March 01, 2007 @05:32PM

Jeff Williams writes: "Using some fancy javascript I came up with a neat way to check if you have the DST patch. This works for the US (DST) and Europe (summertime). I looked around and was surprised that none of the OS vendors had thought of (or implemented) this. You can check your desktops, servers, phones — nearly anything with a web browser — for DST07 status at http://dst.cdes.umn.edu/"

Submission + - Attempt No Landings There

Submitted by Intron on Thursday March 01, 2007 @05:30PM

Intron writes: The New Horizons mission to former planet Pluto just had it's closest approach to gravity assistant Jupiter. Despite the cutely named instruments Lorri and Pepssi, it performed some serious scientific work sending back pictures of Tvashtar's Plume, a volcano on Io and a nice closeup shot of Europa.

Sun Joins the Free Software Foundation 116

Posted by Zonk on Thursday March 01, 2007 @05:29PM from the putting-themselves-out-there dept.

RLiegh writes "Ars Technica reports that Sun has joined the FSF Corporate Patron program. The article explains that the FSF corporate program allows companies to provide financial assistance to the FSF in return for license consulting services. The article goes on to observe that this move is doubtlessly motivated by Sun's interest in GPL3's direction. Now that Sun has opened up Java and become an FSF corporate sponsor...could the move to dual license OpenSolaris under the GPL3 be far behind?"

Sanyo Blamed in Lenovo Battery Recall 66

Posted by Zonk on Thursday March 01, 2007 @04:53PM from the started-explodey-and-then-got-less-so dept.

ukhackster writes "Those overheating laptop batteries are back. Lenovo is recalling 205,000 'extended' batteries which shipped with its ThinkPad machines, or were bought as replacements. Slashdot readers will doubtless remember the flak which Sony attracted last year, after it was blamed for exploding Dell notebooks and several massive recalls. This time, the batteries were made by Sanyo. Their engineers determined that the failure was repeatable by dropping machines using the batteries from a certain height and at a certain angle. As soon as the repeatable nature of the flaw was determined, a recall was issued."

Growth of E-Waste May Lead to National 'E-Fee' 199

Posted by Zonk on Thursday March 01, 2007 @04:10PM from the e-xactly-what-we-e-want dept.

jcatcw writes "A bill in Congress would add a recycling charge to the cost of laptop PCs, computer monitors, televisions and some other electronic devices, according to a story at Computerworld. The effort to control what's called e-waste could lead to a national 'e-fee' that would be paid just like a sales tax. Nationwide the cost could amount to $300 million per year. Already, California, Washington, Maryland and Maine have approved electronics recycling laws, and another 21 states plus Puerto Rico, are considering them."

AMD Demonstrates "Teraflop In a Box" 182

Posted by kdawson on Thursday March 01, 2007 @12:10PM from the speedy-silicon dept.

UncleFluffy writes "AMD gave a sneak preview of their upcoming R600 GPU. The demo system was a single PC with two R600 cards running streaming computing tasks at just over 1 Teraflop. Though a prototype, this beats Intel to ubiquitous Teraflop machines by approximately 5 years." Ars has an article exploring why it's hard to program such GPUs for anything other than graphics applications.

Submission + - Asus announce laptop made from Bamboo

Submitted by on Thursday March 01, 2007 @10:38AM

An anonymous reader writes: It seems like Asus has recently been inspired by what nature has to offer judging by its latest laptop designs. The Asus EcoBook comes with real bamboo panelling and will be available early next year. "Making a laptop out of wood doesn't sound all that sane a project, but we should probably get accustomed to this sort of thing — Asus has already delivered the first leather-bound laptops, and Tulip does a range of crazy laptop skins for its Ego range." All I can say is watch out for pandas.

Submission + - ebaY hacked by Romanian, scrambling to cover-up

Submitted by vdovault on Friday February 23, 2007 @05:16PM

vdovault writes: You all ought to check into this developing story that ebaY is trying (for obvious reasons) to supress discussion of: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/02/23/vladuz_str ikes_again/ and earlier http://www.theregister.com/2007/02/20/ebay_conspir acy/ Pics of the hacked ebaY database are available at: http://www.ebaymotorssucks.com/rflello.htm Pics of vladuz's very own (presumably self-created) ebaY pink account are at: http://www.ebaymotorssucks.com/vladuz-suppliment.h tm Articles from those who make their living via ebaY and are really ticked off at ebaY's inaction, ineptitude and/or insincerity are at: http://www.auctionguild.com/generic149.html http://www.auctionguild.com/generic148.html http://blog.auctionbytes.com/cgi-bin/blog/blog.pl? /comments/2007/2/1172237333.html Vladuz's own 'press relase' in German http://www.falle-internet.de/de/html/pr_vlad2.htm

Submission + - Law targets retail security screwups

Submitted by

coondoggie

on Friday February 23, 2007 @05:04PM

coondoggie writes: "In the face of a massive data security breach by one of the state's largest companies, TJX, Massachusetts lawmakers are set to look at a bill that would make companies liable their security systems are hacked and credit card data or personal information is stolen. According to reports, the law would be one of the first of its kind in the United States, forcing retailers and other companies along with government agencies and nonprofit groups to pay for losses if financial data is stolen. Proponents hope the Mass. law would prompt retailers to invest more heavily in security technology and trigger other states to pass similar legislation. Banks, who absorb most of the nefarious charges when these data breeches occur would also like to see such bills. U.S. House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat, said in a Reuters report he is drafting a similar provision for a federal bill that he expects to introduce to Congress in the next month or two. http://www.networkworld.com/community/?q=node/1179 9"

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