Darkninja666 - Slashdot User

Submission + - Usaspending.gov Federal Spending Tracker Online (usaspending.gov)

Submitted by FiniteElementalist on Sunday December 16, 2007 @04:33PM

FiniteElementalist writes: Champions for government transparency can now view some of the fruits of their labor as Usaspending.gov is online. This site provides easy access to a plethora of searchable data about US Federal Government spending, such as federal contracts and assistance. It also provides an API for small scale accesses to the available data. Usaspending.gov was created as a result of the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006 introduced by Senators Coburn (R-OK) and Obama (D-IL).
(PS Don't get too worried about the red warning text at the bottom, other than you shouldn't setup automated or bulk data gathering from the site.)

Submission + - Wired: How Tech Almost Lost the War 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 28, 2007 @07:10PM

An anonymous reader writes: Blame the geeks for the mess in Iraq? Wired says so. Networked troops were supposed to be so efficient, it'd take just a few of 'em to wipe out their enemies. But the Pentagon got their network theory all wrong, with too few nodes and a closed architecture. Besides, a more efficient killing machine is the last thing you want in an insurgency like Iraq.

Submission + - Hackers Exploit SafeDisc DRM in Windows XP

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 06, 2007 @09:42PM

An anonymous reader writes: InfoWorld has a story on how hackers are taking advantage of a privilege escalation bug in the SafeDisc DRM that ships with Windows XP and Server 2003. What I wonder is why did Microsoft include this more subtle DRM at all, and can't users simply remove the secdrv.sys file and avoid what could be a slimy patch/secret DRM upgrade?

Read: http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/11/06/Hackers-exploiting-bug-in-DRM-shipped-with-Windows_1.html

Submission + - Radio Frequency Allows Salt Water To Burn! (breitbart.com)

Submitted by

curmudgeon99

on Tuesday September 11, 2007 @01:55PM

curmudgeon99 writes: "A researcher has found a way to use a radio-frequency generator to allow salt water to burn. Apparently, the radio waves weaken the bond that hold the hydrogen atom in the water molecule. As long as the radio waves are maintained, the effect persists. [Recall that this bond is normally broken using Electrolysis, which takes a lot of energy to achieve]."

Submission + - 'Racetrack memory' increases data density by 100 (nytimes.com)

Submitted by lazyforker on Tuesday September 11, 2007 @12:52PM

lazyforker writes: This short article describes IBM's research into novel forms of data storage technologies. In particular the lab is working on a type called "racetrack memory". This racetrack is a lot smaller than your local dog track. Promises of huge amounts of data in tiny form factors are made.
This research is being led by the man who brought us GMR — consequently I think there's a chance this could work.

Submission + - Linux market share at 1.34%, surpassing Win 98 (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by

athloi

on Tuesday September 04, 2007 @02:38PM

athloi writes: "Recent statistics released by W3Counter reveal that the market share of Windows 98 fell from 1.44 percent to 1.34 percent in August, reducing it to the same level of popularity as the open source Linux operating system, which saw its market share increase from 1.33 to 1.34 in the same period. (These are web statistics, probably less than reality depending on what sites they measure. See the "bad science" story posted earlier: I personally think this is probably inaccurate, but i trust the wisdom of Slashdot editors.)

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070903-linu x-marketshare-set-to-surpass-windows-98.html"

Submission + - MS says: Linux is inappropriate language

Submitted by

mocm

on Tuesday September 04, 2007 @02:05PM

mocm writes: "The Inquirer has a story about a guy who wanted to use "linux" as his XBox Motto and got the message that this is inappropriate language. I tried it myself and got the same result. It seems that "linux" is on the same level as "sucks" and "baka" which it also won't accept. It will accept "linuxx" though and also "msbaka""

Submission + - More damaging compounds found in HFCS drinks (newswise.com)

Submitted by on Tuesday September 04, 2007 @06:00AM

An anonymous reader writes: Chi-Tang Ho, Ph.D., conducted chemical tests among 11 different carbonated soft drinks containing HFCS. He found 'astonishingly high' levels of reactive carbonyls in those beverages. These undesirable and highly-reactive compounds associated with "unbound" fructose and glucose molecules are believed to cause tissue damage, says Ho, a professor of food science at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J. By contrast, reactive carbonyls are not present in table sugar, whose fructose and glucose components are "bound" and chemically stable, the researcher notes.

More here: http://www.newswise.com/articles/view/532433/

Submission + - Lobbying Could Cause Legal Trouble for Microsoft (robweir.com) 2

Submitted by

Rob Isn't Weird

on Thursday August 30, 2007 @05:39PM

Rob Isn't Weird writes: "After the smoking gun memo exposing how Microsoft tried to buy Sweden's vote on OOXML and Sweden's annulment of that vote due to the irregularities, IBM's Rob Weir points out that the fiasco could cause anti-trust worries for Microsoft. He quotes ALLIED TUBE & CONDUIT CORP. v. INDIAN HEAD, INC., 486 U.S. 492 (1988), which says "What petitioner may not do (without exposing itself to possible antitrust liability for direct injuries) is bias the process by, as in this case, stacking the private standard-setting body with decision makers sharing their economic interest in restraining competition.""

Submission + - AutoPatcher.com community fights MS takedown (neowin.net)

Submitted by

athloi

on Thursday August 30, 2007 @05:13PM

athloi writes: "Microsoft's move this week to close down the AutoPatcher project, a project well known and supported here on Neowin, that allows users to update their computers without requiring an internet connection, has met with cries of outrage from members of the Neowin community, and IT professionals from around the world. http://www.neowin.net/index.php?act=view&id=42304"

Submission + - SPAM: IETF warns of potential Internet "train wreck

Submitted by alphadogg on Thursday August 30, 2007 @04:48PM

alphadogg writes: The IETF and ITU standards bodies are sparring over a set of next-generation network transport specifications that some say could lead to massive interoperability issues for service providers if left unchanged.``The situation is catastrophic,'' says Stewart Bryant, IETF liaison to the ITU-T on MPLS issues and a technical leader at Cisco. ``There's a fundamental opportunity for a major train wreck'' between the IETF's MPLS and the ITU-T's T-MPLS. [spam URL stripped]. html

Submission + - Man Arrested for Post on craigslist.com (grupthink.com)

Submitted by

davidthedrake

on Thursday August 30, 2007 @04:44PM

davidthedrake writes: "Kevin Zimmerman posted his eye-witness account of an arrest by Kalispell police (which occurred on July 28th, 2006) on a Montana craiglist.com site. The official police report stated the prank-pulling kids, whom Zimmerman witnessed, were arrested without incident. Zimmerman's post on craigslist.com painted a different picture saying police:

"...yanked the boy down, twisted him sideways, then grabbed his arm and cuffed him. He then kicked the boy in his leg twice, patted him down then shook the boy really hard." Zimmerman went on further in his post to insult the officers associated with the arrest.

Nearly a year later, police showed up at his door and arrested him for 'criminal defamation.' The police obtained Zimmerman's information by first sending a subpoena to craigslist.com and then sending a subpoena to Zimmerman's ISP."

Submission + - High-tech software a bright spot in summer of hell (networkworld.com)

Submitted by

coondoggie

on Thursday August 30, 2007 @01:53PM

coondoggie writes: "Flight delays are up 19% from where they were last summer but if not for two of the Administration's high-tech babies things could be much worse. That was the bottom line in a speech given today by Marion Blakey, the administrator of the FAA. The first is called adaptive compression. Between April and July, this technology reduced delays by more than 863,000 minutes saving airlines about $35 million a year in fuel and other operational expenses, she said.The second technology is airspace flow program that gives airlines the option of either accepting delays for flights scheduled to fly through storms or flying longer routes to maneuver around them. Blakey said the FAA deployed these program in 11 new locations, distributed throughout the center of the country. The idea is that it will help the air traffic control system move traffic through constrained areas. http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/18906"

Submission + - Picture scaling error in graphical softwares (4p8.com)

Submitted by

Eric Brasseur

on Thursday August 30, 2007 @12:46PM

Eric Brasseur writes: "Every picture scaling software I could test makes a gross error: the gamma of the picture being scaled is not taken into account. This makes that for example a pixel that should be at 50% brightness can get only 22% brightness. Depending on the kind of picture, the damage can be quite important. I wrote a page to explain the whole: www.4p8.com/eric.brasseur/gamma.html"

Submission + - Pssst...Wanna buy a data center? (networkworld.com)

Submitted by

coondoggie

on Thursday August 30, 2007 @11:12AM

coondoggie writes: "So what do you do with 250 servers and thousands of terabytes of data storage when nobody else wants it? Auction it online what else? High-tech online asset liquidator Rasmus Auctioneers is prepping $15 million worth brand new — still in the box data center gear that was dumped in its lap from a Department of the Interior lease cancellation. The entire lot, which includes Egenera blade servers, EMC Centera Servers and ADIC Digital Tape Libraries is online today to be sold to the highest bidder regardless of price. The inventory will be sold by internet-only auction at 2 pm eastern time on Wednesday, September 12, 2007. "The liquidation will be like an e-bay sale on steroids," Rasmus said on a statement. http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/18901"

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