Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
Hardware

Submission + - SPAM: 3D Printers to Save Hermit Crabs

Shareable writes: "Makerbot just launched Project Shellter which will leverage the Makerbot community's network of 5,000 3D printers to make shells for hermit crabs who face a species threatening, man-made shell shortage (they inhabit abandoned shells)."
Link to Original Source

Comment Phone company (Score 1) 231

Reminds me of a phone company that we looked into for a security class at university (I'm Australian). They allowed access to anyone's account balance simply by calling a number and entering their mobile number. The system provided no other means of verifying your identity. They were investigated by the Privacy Commission and were found to he in breach of the Privacy Act. I can't imagine this company cannot also be.

Comment Re:Fine grained bans (Score 1) 36

I don't really understand why this is something people want so badly to be honest. Even if I could deny permissions to an app, do I really want to give business to someone who is clearly making a Trojan of some description. If a photo editing app is asking for permissions for things it really shouldn't (okay, I can think of reasons why a photo app would want what you said, but I'm speaking more generally here) then it kind of draws into question whether the app is actually any good or the developer is just trying to data mine everyone or something. Give your business to the app makers that don't require almost every permission to be installed and hopefully the developers will realise people aren't just going to accept anything anymore.

Submission + - Stereoscopic 3D for VLC media player (videolan.org)

An anonymous reader writes: Support for stereoscopic 3D is under development for the VLC media player. It was started by a student as part of Summer of Code 2011 and continues to be updated. Currently, only NVidia 3D Vision/Windows is supported but more formats (AMD, Quad Buffered OpenGL, Linux support) are planned. You can help out development by donating.
Security

Submission + - Dutch Agency Bars DigiNotar From Issuing Some Cert (threatpost.com)

Trailrunner7 writes: A Dutch agency that regulates the actions of telecommunications providers has revoked DigiNotar's ability to issue certificates for digital signatures. The agency said that because of the way that DigiNotar behaved during the attack on its certificate authority infrastructure, the company no longer has the authority to issued so-called qualified certificates.

In a report released on Wednesday, the Board of the Independent Post and Telecommunications Authority (OPTA) said that because there was evidence of an attacker having compromised the server that was used to issue qualified certificates, the agency couldn't allow DigiNotar to continue issuing those certificates.

Windows

Submission + - Windows 8's Metro browser won't support Flash (techreport.com)

J. Dzhugashvili writes: Microsoft let out an interesting bit of news early this morning: Internet Explorer 10 won't support plug-ins in its Metro incarnation. That means no Flash support. Apparently, the only way to get Flash to run will be to toggle over to Windows 8's classic "desktop" mode and use IE10 in there. Justifying the move, Microsoft says not supporting plug-ins in the Metro version of IE10 "improves battery life as well as security, reliability, and privacy for consumers." Interesting... all of that sounds awfully familiar.

Comment Re:Ubuntu the best choice? (Score 2) 298

Though the table has what I assume is the section detailing the x86_64 machines cut off, the two systems are running two different DEs. And two different versions of X. Also have different amounts of RAM, different sized HDDs, different motherboards, and are using different file systems. Not that those last things will have as much of an effect on the benchmark I don't imagine, but it desperately raises the question why they didn't just dual boot Ubuntu and PC-BSD on the same machine...
Microsoft

Submission + - Windows 8 will have Hyper-V OS virtualization (extremetech.com)

MrSeb writes: "In an interesting twist, Microsoft has confirmed that Windows 8 will feature the enterprise-echelon Hyper-V machine virtualization hypervisor. This will mean that Windows 8 users will be able to run almost every other operating system inside a Remote Desktop window, including Windows 7 and XP, SUSE and Red Hat Linux, and more (including Ubuntu) with a little hacking. At its most basic, this will just mean that you won’t have to download the free (and excellent) VirtualBox software if you want to virtualize a guest operating system — useful for power users and developers who want to try out different build and runtime environments, but not exactly a killer feature for consumers. But what if Hyper-V comes with a copy of Windows 8 (or 7) guest OS pre-installed? It would be the best security sandbox and backwards compatibility layer that money can buy."
Japan

Submission + - Fukushima and Chernobyl side-by-side (nature.com)

gbrumfiel writes: "It's now been six months since an earthquake and tsunami sparked a triple meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. New data from the Japanese government is now allowing a closer comparison of the fallout from the disaster with the Chernobyl. In terms of Cs-137, the contaminant of greatest concern, Fukushima appears to be about a fifth as bad as Chernobyl. Nature News has a Google Earth mash-up that lets you see the two accidents together. Nature also reports that chaos and bureaucracy are slowing efforts to research the crisis."
Microsoft

Submission + - Windows 8 to natively support ISO and VHD mounting (extremetech.com)

MrSeb writes: "With a masterful nail in the optical disc coffin, Microsof has announced that its new operating system will natively mount ISO disc images. On the slightly more enterprisesque side of the equation, VHD files will also be supported by Windows 8. Both new features will be smoothly integrated into Windows 8 Explorer’s ribbon menu, and mounting an ISO or VHD is as simple as double clicking the file. This is obviously an important addition with Windows 8 being available on tablets — and in a year or two, it wouldn't be surprising if all software is made available as an ISO on a USB drive which can be read by tablet and PC alike."

Comment Re:NOT based on Linux? (Score 2) 121

Not really sure what you're saying but Syllable is both a custom Linux distro, which is their server edition, and an operating system which was built from AtheOS which has it's own kernel, which is what is their desktop edition. The server edition is basically just there so that you can have a server with all the capabilities of Linux but a UI similar to the desktop OS's. It's been a while since I've used Syllable so things may have changed a bit though.

I think it's important to develop alternatives to Linux and BSD even if they don't have the app support (though some things can just be recompiled).

And I mean, if the developers enjoy working on it then that's up to them any way.

Slashdot Top Deals

Two can Live as Cheaply as One for Half as Long. -- Howard Kandel

Working...