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

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Censorship

Submission + - Results in for Oz Internet censorship test (computerworld.com.au)

Submitted by
angry tapir
angry tapir writes: "After much delay the Australian federal government has released the results of Enex TestLab's test pilot into mandatory ISP-level content filtering, finding that a technically competent user could circumvent filtering technology based on the site blacklist. Testing also revealed that ISPs filtering only the blacklist during the trial had no noticeable performance degradation that could be attributed to the filter itself. The news comes as the government finally considers allowing adults to play R18+ rated games."

Comment Re:Actually (Score 3, Insightful) 467

by matlhDam (#30045214) Attached to: Attack of the PowerPoint-Wielding Professors

In certain contexts -- actual ESL classes being an obvious one -- what you say makes sense. But in the broader context of this discussion (IT/science classes and anything similar), I disagree; if a student's going to study at a university that teaches in English, I don't think it's unreasonable to expect them to be able to follow a presentation, even if said presentation is simply a talk around a set of blackboard examples and doesn't feature notes at all.

At any rate, lecture notes shouldn't really be primary written sources anyway. Some people simply learn better from a written text regardless of language: that's why there are textbooks and online references, and a student who's struggling with lectures should probably be looking at those rather than a collection of slides skimming over the material. The lecture notes should really be, at most, an adjunct to what's being said, and that's where the less is more mentality (rightly, IMHO) comes in.
Mozilla

Submission + - Firefox to replace menus with Office Ribbon (pcpro.co.uk) 2

Submitted by
Barence
Barence writes: "Mozilla has announced that its plans to bring Office 2007's Ribbon interface to Firefox, as it looks to tidy up its "dated" browser. "Starting with Vista, and continuing with Windows 7, the menu bar is going away," notes Mozilla in its plans for revamping the Firefox user interface. "[It will] be replaced with things like the Windows Explorer contextual strip, or the Office Ribbon, [which is] now in Paint and WordPad, too." The change will also bring Windows' Aero Glass effects to the browser."
Security

Submission + - Microsoft's urgent patch precedes BlackHat session (wordpress.com)

Submitted by
Julie188
Julie188 writes: "Mystery solved! Microsoft's latest emergency out-of-band patch was weird beyond belief. A notice was sent to journalists and researchers late Friday evening that the patch was coming Tuesday, but Microsoft refused to explain the flaw and even put a cone of silence around researchers who would have otherwise talked about it. But finally, one researcher broke rank and explained that the patch was caused by a flaw introduced in Microsoft's own development tools. This flaw was also the source of the emergency ActiveX patch, which took about 18 months to complete and which supposedly fixed the problem by turning off ActiveX (setting a 'killbit' on the control). Researchers at Black Hat on Wednesday will be demonstrating how to override the killbit controls and get access to vulnerabilities supposedly stopped with a killbit. What's really scary is that Microsoft has issued 175 killbits fixes so far."
The Internet

Submission + - Australian ACMA blacklist on Wikileaks

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: As reported in the Australian Press, the blacklist compiled by the ACMA seems to have been posted on Wikileaks.

Many Australians have been fiercely opposing the imposition of mandatory ISP level censorship for some time. Please note that many of the sites are not safe to access depending on your location. The list includes Christian sites, a dentist, a tour operator, wikileaks pages, gambling and euthenasia related sites. This follows the leaking of the blacklists from several other countries. There is no confirmation that this is the current blacklist and there is some mention that censorware vendor filter lists may have been included. The list contains 2395 sites. ACMA said its blacklist, as at November 2008 that the list included only 1370 sites.
HP

Submission + - Bdale to lose beard at linux.conf.au

Submitted by rwmTinkyWinky
rwmTinkyWinky writes: Linux Journal is reporting the outcome of tonight's Penguin Dinner at linux.conf.au — where Bdale Garbee has pledged to have his beard shaved by Linus — all for a worthy cause. Expect to see Bdale-sans-beard photos hitting the net in the next few days!
Software

Submission + - Adobe open sources Flex SDK under MPL

Submitted by
andy_from_nc
andy_from_nc writes: "Adobe announced that they are open sourcing their Flex SDK under the Mozilla Public License incrementally by December. This move comes on the heels of Microsoft's announcement of their Silverlight and Adobe's CEO's criticism of it. The move will likely please other open source developers who use Flex like me and offer hope that we'll see a full open source version of Flash one day. You can read Adobe's FAQ on the move as well."
Novell

Submission + - openSUSE Hobbled by Microsoft Patents

Submitted by
kripkenstein
kripkenstein writes: "openSUSE 10.2 no longer enables ClearType (which improves the appearance of fonts). The reason given on the openSUSE mailing list for not enabling it is:

Note that this feature is covered by several Microsoft patents and should not be activated in any default build of the library.
As reported on and discussed here and here, this matter may be connected to the Microsoft-Novell deal. If so, Novell should have received a license for the Microsoft patents, assuming the deal covered all relevant patents. Does the license therefore extend only to SUSE, but not openSUSE?"
Announcements

Submission + - Open Source BSG Game Demo Released

Submitted by Blahbooboo3
Blahbooboo3 writes: You might have heard of an open-source project to build a BSG game set in the new BSG universe using the open-sourced Freespace 2 engine. A demo of the game has been released that allows you to take on the role of a "nugget" Viper pilot aboard the Battlestar Pegasus. Game download available at their forums. It is already quite impressive as they kept true space physics, multiplayer support, and the artwork feels like it's from the show. Oh, and it's multi-platform (Windows, Mac, Linux) as well !
PHP

Submission + - Month of PHP bugs

Submitted by
PHP
PHP writes: "Stefan Esser is the founder of both the Hardened-PHP Project and the PHP Security Response Team (which he recently left). During an interview with SecurityFocus he announced the upcoming "Month of PHP bugs" initiative: "We will disclose different types of bugs, mainly buffer overflows or double free(/destruction) vulnerabilities, some only local, but some remotely trigger-able (for example, because they are in functions usually exposed to user input). Additionally there are some trivial bypass vulnerabilities in PHP's own protection features. [...] As a vulnerability reporter you feel kinda puzzled how people among the PHP Security Response Team can claim in public that they do not know about any security vulnerability in PHP, when you disclosed about 20 holes to them in the two weeks before. At this point you stop bothering whether anyone considers the disclosure of unreported vulnerabilities unethical. Additionally a few of the reported bugs have been known for years among the PHP developers and will most probably never be fixed. In total we have more than 31 bugs to disclose, and therefore there will be days when more than one vulnerability will be disclosed. The Month of PHP bugs will take place in March 2007.""

Slashdot Top Deals

Top Ten Things Overheard At The ANSI C Draft Committee Meetings: (5) All right, who's the wiseguy who stuck this trigraph stuff in here?

Close