Become a fan of Slashdot on Facebook

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Censorship

White House Pressuring Registrars To Block Sites 569

Posted by CmdrTaco from the strange-world-we-live-in dept.
An anonymous reader writes "While the Senate is still debating a bill that would force registrars and ISPs to block access to sites deemed 'infringing,' it appears that the White House's IP Czar is already holding meetings with ISPs, registrars and payment processors to start voluntarily blocking access to sites it doesn't like. Initially, they're focused on online pharmacies, but does anyone think it will only be limited to such sites? ICANN apparently has refused to attend the meetings, pointing out that they're 'inappropriate.' Doesn't it seem wrong for the US government to be pushing private companies to censor the Internet without due process?"
Science

Hawking: No 'Theory of Everything' 465

Posted by CmdrTaco from the you-all-been-punked dept.
Flash Modin writes "In a Scientific American essay based on their new book A Grand Design, Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow are now claiming physicists may never find a theory of everything. Instead, they propose a 'family of interconnected theories' might emerge, with each describing a certain reality under specific conditions. The claim is a reversal for Hawking, who claimed in 1980 that there would be a unified theory by the turn of the century."
Space

Russian Firm Plans Commercial Space Station 133

Posted by CmdrTaco from the love-to-visit-someday dept.
astroengine writes "Buoyed by plans for commercial space taxis, a Russian company plans to build and launch a privately owned outpost in orbit for tourists, scientists and other paying visitors. RSC Energia, which designed and built the Russian modules of the International Space Station, is partnering with Russian commercial space startup Orbital Technologies to manufacture the new hub, currently known as Commercial Space Station."
Cellphones

Many More Android Apps Leaking User Data 299

Posted by CmdrTaco from the because-they-can dept.
eldavojohn writes "After developing and using TaintDroid, several universities found that of 30 popular free Android apps, half were sharing GPS data and phone numbers with advertisers and remote servers. A few months ago, one app was sending phone numbers to a remote server in China but today the situation looks a lot more pervasive. In their paper (PDF), the researchers blasted Google saying 'Android's coarse grained access control provides insufficient protection against third-party applications seeking to collect sensitive data.' Google's response: 'Android has taken steps to inform users of this trust relationship and to limit the amount of trust a user must grant to any given application developer. We also provide developers with best practices about how to handle user data. We consistently advise users to only install apps they trust.'"
Operating Systems

Linux May Need a Rewrite Beyond 48 Cores 462

Posted by CmdrTaco from the it's-all-stacking-blocks dept.
An anonymous reader writes "There is interesting new research coming out of MIT which suggests current operating systems are struggling with the addition of more cores to the CPU. It appears that the problem, which affects the available memory in a chip when multiple cores are working on the same chunks of data, is getting worse and may be hitting a peak somewhere in the neighborhood of 48 cores, when entirely new operating systems will be needed, the report says. Luckily, we aren't anywhere near 48 cores and there is some time left to come up with a new Linux (Windows?)."
Image

Govt To Bomb Guam With Frozen Mice To Kill Snakes 229

Posted by samzenpus from the rodent-rain dept.
rhettb writes "In a spectacularly creative effort to rid Guam of the brown tree snake, an invasive species which has ravaged local wildlife and angered local residents, the US Department of Agriculture is planning to 'bomb' the island's rainforests with dead frozen mice laced with acetaminophen. While it might not seem difficult to purge an island of snakes, the snake's habit of dwelling high in the rainforest canopy has so far thwarted efforts to rid the island of the pest. Eradicating the snake is a priority because it triggers more than 100 power outages a year at a cost of $1-4 million and has driven at least 6 local bird species to extinction."
Google

Father of Java, James Gosling Unloads 337

Posted by CmdrTaco from the java-and-java dept.
javab0y writes "The folks over at basementcoders did a podcast with James Gosling, The Father of Java, last week at a coffee shop in San Francisco during the JavaOne conference. In a raw and no-holds-barred interview, James let loose on Oracle, the Google Lawsuit, and his experience with IBM. You know its going to be good when he starts out saying, 'I eventually graduated in '83. Went to work for IBM which is, you know, is within the top 10 of my stupidest career decisions I've made.' The podcast was fully transcribed."
Space

United Nations Names Ambassador To Aliens 306

Posted by CmdrTaco from the sounds-like-a-cushy-job dept.
Shag writes "Although searches for extraterrestrial intelligence have thus far come up empty-handed, the United Nations appears to be preparing for eventual 'first contact.' Many media outlets are carrying the story that Mazlan Othman, a Malaysian astrophysicist who heads the UN's Office for Outer Space Affairs in Vienna — already charged with things like keeping track of satellites to prevent Kessler Syndrome and coordinating the international response to any earth-impacting asteroids — will be the first person to meet with aliens if they do show up." Update: 09/27 16:42 GMT by S : Looks like this one's too good to be true — in an email to The Guardian, Othman said, "It sounds really cool but I have to deny it."
Image

Selling Incandescent Light Bulbs As Heating Devices 557

Posted by samzenpus from the a-bulb-by-any-othe-name dept.
Csiko writes "The European Union has banned by law trading of incandescent light bulbs due to their bad efficiency/ecology (most of the energy is transformed into heat). A company is now trying to bypass this restriction by offering their incandescent light bulb products as a heating device (article in German) instead of a light device. Still, their 'heat balls' give light as well as heating. So — every law can be bypassed if you have some creativity!"
The Courts

Supreme Court May Tune In To Music Download Case 339

Posted by samzenpus from the from-on-high dept.
droopus writes "The US Supreme Court is weighing into the first RIAA file-sharing case to reach its docket, requesting that the music labels' litigation arm respond to a case testing the so-called 'innocent infringer' defense to copyright infringement. The case pending before the justices concerns a federal appeals court's February decision ordering a university student to pay the Recording Industry Association of America $27,750 — $750 a track — for file-sharing 37 songs when she was a high school cheerleader. The appeals court decision reversed a Texas federal judge who, after concluding the youngster was an innocent infringer, ordered defendant Whitney Harper to pay $7,400 — or $200 per song. That's an amount well below the standard $750 fine required under the Copyright act. Harper is among the estimated 20,000 individuals the RIAA has sued for file-sharing music. The RIAA has decried Harper as 'vexatious,' because of her relentless legal jockeying."
Handhelds

2011, Year of the Tablet? 324

Posted by CmdrTaco from the doesn't-fit-in-the-palm-of-your-hand dept.
frontwave writes "After the huge success of the iPad, with over 4 million units sold since its introduction, all major hardware vendors of PCs and mobile devices are coming out with new tablets in the next few months, including Apple with a smaller version of the popular product. Analysts estimate the market for tablet devices (over 6" screen size) to be around 25 million units for 2011."
Security

Are Desktop Firewalls Overkill? 440

Posted by CmdrTaco from the not-in-my-office dept.
Barence writes "Should you be running firewalls on your desktop and server machines? PC Pro's Jon Honeyball argues the case for switching off Windows firewalls and handing over responsibility for security to server-based solutions. 'I'd rather have security baked right into my network design than scattered willy-nilly around my desktops and servers,' Honeyball argues. 'It seems to me that there's much sense in concentrating your security into a small number of trusty gatekeepers rather than relying on a fog of barely managed faux security devices. Of course, it puts your eggs into fewer baskets, but it does mean these gatekeepers are easier to control and manage: monitoring them in real-time becomes routine.'"
Microsoft

Xbox Head Proclaims Blu-ray Dead 547

Posted by CmdrTaco from the he's-only-resting dept.
Blacklaw writes "Microsoft has sided with Apple in a rare case of solidarity between the two companies, and declares that Blu-ray will be 'passed by' as a high-definition format. In many ways, it's hard to disagree. US markets have seen the demand for legal digital downloads of PC games exceed sales of the physical object for the first time, and Apple famously refuses to put a Blu-ray drive in its Macs, as Jobs prefers to send people towards iTunes to download their entertainment. That said, there's an argument for physical media, too. A recent survey suggested that the majority of gamers prefer physical discs, and digital downloads have the secondary effect of entirely cutting out the popular market for second-hand films and games — a plus for publishers, but a big negative for the consumer."
Image

Today's Children Are Officially Potty Mouths 449

Posted by samzenpus from the kids-say-the-#@^*est-things dept.
tetrahedrassface writes "When the Sociolinguistics Symposium met earlier this month swearing scholar Timothy Jay revealed that an increase in child swearing is directly related to an increase in adult swearing. It seems that vulgarity is increasing as pop culture continues to popularize vulgarities. The blame lies with media, public figures, politicians, but mostly ourselves. From the article: 'Children as young as two are now dropping f-bombs, with researchers reporting that more kids are using profanity — and at earlier ages — than has been recorded in at least three decades.'"
Privacy

Introducing the Invulnerable Evercookie 332

Posted by CmdrTaco from the evil-and-clever dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Using eight different techniques and locations, a 'security' guy has developed a cookie that is very, very hard to delete. If just one copy of the cookie remains, the other locations are rebuilt. My favorite storage location is in 'RGB values of auto-generated, force-cached PNGs using HTML5 Canvas tag to read pixels (cookies) back out' — awesome."

Slashdot Top Deals

Work without a vision is slavery, Vision without work is a pipe dream, But vision with work is the hope of the world.

Close