Slashdot is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×

Submission + - FreeBSD Foundation Donations Exceed 2012 Goal (freebsdfoundation.org)

Submitted by mbadolato
mbadolato writes: On December 9, 2012, Slashdot reported that the FreeBSD Foundation was falling short of their 2012 goal of $500,000 by nearly 50%. For all of those that continued to echo about how FreeBSD is dying, it's less than three weeks later and the total is presently nearing $200,000 OVER the goal. Netcraft continues to be wrong.
Facebook

Submission + - Michigan makes it illegal to ask for employees' Facebook logins (mlive.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Michigan joins Maryland as a state where employers may not ask employees or job applicants to divulge login information for Facebook and other social media sites. From the article:
"Under the law, employers cannot discipline employees or decline to hire job applicants because they do not give them access information, including user names, passwords, login information, or “other security information that protects access to a personal internet account,” according to the bill. Universities and schools cannot discipline or fail to admit students if they do not give similar information."
There is one exception, however:
"However, accounts owned by a company or educational institution, such as e-mail, can be requested."
Power

Submission + - Apple Files Patent for Wind Turbine That Can Produce Power Without Wind (appleinsider.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Critics of wind power all like to point out the same problem with turbine technology: “What happens when the wind doesn’t blow”? Apple, usually a maker of products that consume energy, recently filed for a patent that may answer that question once and for all. The tech giant’s latest patent details a wind turbine that generates electricity from heat energy rather than rotational energy created by the rotation of the unit’s blades. According to the patent, this could allow wind energy to be stored in a “low-heat capacity fluid” which could then be tapped on an as-needed basis, i.e. whenever the wind dies down.

Submission + - Senate Renews Warrentless Eavesdropping Act (wired.com)

Submitted by electron sponge
electron sponge writes: On Friday morning, the Senate renewed the FISA Amendments Act, which allows for warrentless electronic eavesdropping, for an additional five years. The act, which was originally passed by Congress in 2008, allows law enforcement agencies to access private communications as long as one participant in the communications could reasonably be believed to be outside the United States. This law has been the subject of a federal lawsuit, and was argued before the Supreme Court recently.
Facebook

Submission + - How the internet became a closed shop (smh.com.au)

Submitted by AcidAUS
AcidAUS writes: A little over a decade ago, just before the masses discovered the digital universe, the internet was a borderless new frontier: a terra nullius to be populated by individuals, groups and programmers as they saw fit. There were few rules and no boundaries. Freedom and open standards, sharing information for the greater good was the ethos. Today, the open internet we once knew is fracturing into a series of gated communities or fiefdoms controlled by giants like Apple, Google, Facebook, Amazon and to a lesser extent Microsoft. A billion-dollar battle conducted in walled cities where companies try to lock our consumption into their vision of the internet. It has left some lamenting the ''web we lost''.

Submission + - genode 12.11 released (osnews.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The latest release of the Genode OS is self-hosting. The Genode project provides both a meta-OS framework ( ie. it provides a framework that allows you to custom build your own OS) and also an instance of an OS built using this framework. It is designed especially for implementing high security OSes using a recursive object capability security architecture. This release allows for self-hosting of the OS-- a significant milestone on the path to building a general purpose OS which people can easily compile, develop and extend.

Submission + - Huawei got caught copying - again (lightreading.com)

Submitted by sabri
sabri writes: Huawei, the industry leader in copying other companies code and property, has done it again. This time they did not even bother removing their victim's contact information:

"Sabina Berloffa, vice president of marketing at Kapsch CarrierCom, made her views quite clear on her company's website — see Kapsch vs. Huawei: Find the differences — after Huawei issued promotional materials that not only resembled Kapsch's in practically every respect but which also included a hyperlink to Kapsch's contact details."

You'd think they would learn at some point...

Submission + - Dell Laptop $70 cheaper with Ubuntu (thevarguy.com)

Submitted by dgharmon
dgharmon writes: More than five years after it began selling PCs with Ubuntu Linux preinstalled in the United States, Dell has compiled a lackluster record in the eyes of many Linux advocates when it comes to promoting open source alternatives to Windows.

Yet as a Canonical employee recently pointed out, Dell is now offering a $70 markdown on one laptop model when customers purchase it with Ubuntu instead of a Microsoft OS. Is this a mistake, or a sign of changes to come on Dell’s part?
Censorship

Submission + - Splinternet Behind the Great Firewall of China (acm.org)

Submitted by
CowboyRobot
CowboyRobot writes: "The ACM has an article describing the history and present of the Great Firewall of China (GFW). "Essentially, GFW is a government-controlled attacking system, launching attacks that interfere with legitimate communications and affecting many more victims than malicious actors. Using special techniques, it successfully blocks the majority of Chinese Internet users from accessing most of the Web sites or information that the government doesn't like. GFW is not perfect, however. Some Chinese technical professionals can bypass it with a variety of methods and/or tools. An arms race between censorship and circumvention has been going on for years, and GFW has caused collateral damage along the way.""
Science

Submission + - Humans evolving faster than ever (wired.com)

Submitted by Kwyj1b0
Kwyj1b0 writes: In a massive study on genetic variation among humans, researchers found that most changes occurred in the last 200 generations, too fast for natural selection to catch up. Recent papers show that rare genetic variations have a more drastic effect than previously believed. Another result shows that "we carry a much larger load of deleterious variants" (as well as positive variants) than our ancestors 200 generations ago.

Submission + - First Direct Image of DNA Double Helix (acs.org)

Submitted by bingbat
bingbat writes: Scientists at the University at Genoa, Italy have successfully photographed the double-helix structure of a single strand of DNA. Using a TEM, this marks the first visual confirmation of it's structure.
Piracy

Submission + - British Pirate Party Asked To Pull Pirate Bay Proxy (techweekeurope.co.uk)

Submitted by
judgecorp
judgecorp writes: "The British Pirate Party has been asked by the music business organisation BPI to pull the plug on the Pirate Bay proxy it has been running. The Pirate Party provides a way round the court-ordered ban on ISPs providing connections to the file-sharing site, The Pirate Bay. So far the Pirate Party says the proxy is a "legitimate route" to the site, but the BPI says the Pirate Bay is "not above the law"."

Slashdot Top Deals

"May your future be limited only by your dreams." -- Christa McAuliffe

Close