Follow Slashdot blog updates by subscribing to our blog RSS feed

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Media

New AACS Crack Called "Undefeatable" 554

Posted by kdawson from the go-ahead-revoke-all-the-keys dept.
Tuoqui writes "With all the focus on the infamous hexadecimal number, people may be ignoring a bigger weakness in the AACS armor, which emerged two weeks ago. Some hackers have figured out how to crack AACS in a way that cannot be defeated, even by revoking all the keys in circulation."

Feed Space shuttle crashes in Alabama (theregister.com)

From feed by registerfeed
It was on a train at the time

A train carrying the solid rocket boosters used on space shuttles has crashed in Alabama, injuring six people. The accident happened when a bridge collapsed over boggy ground, according to reports. One of the people is reported to have been critically hurt.

Feed Maggots Rid Patients Of Antibiotic-resistant Infection, MRSA (sciencedaily.com)

From feed by sdfeed
Medical researchers are ridding diabetic patients of the superbug MRSA -- by treating their foot ulcers with maggots. The scientists used green bottle fly larvae to treat 13 diabetic patients whose foot ulcers were contaminated with MRSA and found all but one were cured within a mean period of three weeks, much quicker than the 28-week duration for the conventional treatment.
Red Hat Software

Submission + - Comodo Releases Free CentOS and Red Hat-based ZTL

Submitted by
Yuvaraj
Yuvaraj writes: "Comodo Releases Free CentOS and Red Hat-based Versions of Zero Touch Linux (ZTL) Server Suite New version of 'all in one' Linux server infrastructure and configuration package expands the deployment options available to administrators.

Jersey City, NJ (May 3, 2007) — Comodo, a global Certification Authority and leading provider of Identity and Trust Assurance Management solutions, announced today the launch of Red Hat- and CentOS-based versions of their back office server suite, Zero Touch Linux (ZTL). ZTL is a complete suite of Linux server applications centrally controlled by a user friendly web-based interface. The new versions compatible with Red Hat and CentOS, join the existing Trustix Secure Linux based version — providing administrators with greater flexibility and choice.

ZTL takes a 'best of breed' approach by offering administrators industry-leading server software pre-configured on a choice of Linux distributions. It is available free of charge and can be downloaded in ISO format from http://ztl.comodo.com. ZTL can be immediately installed on network servers and is ideal for small businesses looking to achieve an easy way to migrate to a Linux driven back office infrastructure.

A single installation of ZTL brings under one umbrella a File Server, Print Server, Domain Controller, DNS, Mail Server, Web Mail, Database Server, Web Server, Proxy Server, DHCP server, Content Filtering Server and a Firewall. The package overcomes the traditional difficulties of deploying a Linux infrastructure by reducing the setup of multiple server types to a one time installation and configuration.

Zero Touch Linux uses a familiar Windows style GUI instead of a command line interface to administer Linux based servers. One benefit of this is that companies may not have to re-train IT personnel and can continue to utilize their existing Windows trained staff to administer their server infrastructure. Features in brief:
  • Highly intuitive GUI — ZTL's point and click interface vastly simplifies administration of Linux servers
  • Ability to remotely install and configure Web, Mail, DNS, LAN, Database, Firewall and other server types
  • SSL secure, web based interface means ZTL can be used to administer Linux servers from Windows workstations and clients
  • Choice of Linux setups — the ZTL control panel and best of breed package selection is available as a pre-configured install with either Trustix Secure Linux, Red Hat or CentOS
  • One click upgrades of all server packages — ZTL intelligently updates all packages in a particular deployment with one click


"Many businesses are aware that Linux is the most stable, secure and cost effective server operating system available — but are often reluctant to migrate because they also perceive Linux as difficult to configure and use." commented Melih Abdulhayoglu, President and CEO Comodo, "Zero Touch Linux helps to ease this situation by providing a single clean install of an entire back office server infrastructure that is effortlessly managed through a central web interface."

Zero Touch Linux can be downloaded in ISO format with a free, lifetime license from the Comodo website at http://ztl.comodo.com About Comodo

Comodo, through its group of Internet security companies, is a leading Certification Authority and global provider of Identity and Trust Assurance services on the Internet. Comodo secures and authenticates online transactions and communications for over 2,000,000 businesses and consumers. With a global presence Comodo offers businesses and consumers third-generation solutions for intelligent security and authentication technologies that create trust online. Comodo's technological expertise includes PKI digital certification, integrated authentication infrastructure services, regulatory compliance solutions, and digital e-commerce services.

The Comodo companies develop technologies that address critical authentication and security needs with proven and reliable solutions such as SSL certificates, Multi factor Authentication solutions, PCI compliancy services, Web Content authentication, Authentication email solutions, integrated Web hosting management solutions, infrastructure services, Desktop Security solutions, Code signing certification, digital e-commerce white list technologies, Two Factor identity assurance and vulnerability management solutions.

For additional information on Comodo — Creating Trust Online visit http://www.comodo.com

For more information, media representatives should contact
Judy Shapiro
Comodo
(201) 963-9471
Email: judy.shapiro@comodo.com"
Unix

Submission + - Define: /etc

Submitted by ogar572
ogar572 writes: There has been an ongoing and heated debate around the office concerning the definition of what /etc means on *nix operating systems. One side says "et cetera" per Wikipedia. Another side says it means "extended tool chest" per this gnome mailing list entry or per this Norwegian article. Yet another side says neither, but he doesn't remember exactly what he heard in the past. All he remembers is that he was flamed when he called it "et cetera", but that "extended tool chest" didn't sound right either. So, what does it really mean?
Communications

Submission + - Blackberry-style smartphone runs Linux

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: Looks like the Research-in-Motion (RIM) Blackberry and Palm Treo are no longer the only smartphones with full hardware keyboards and "push" email. Dutch consumer electronics giant Grundig has come out with a B700 mobile communicator, a quad-band EDGE phone with a nice sleek design and lots of Linux-based multimedia and messaging goodness.
Announcements

Submission + - The world's most anti-reflective coating

Submitted by
Roland Piquepaille
Roland Piquepaille writes: "Researchers from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) have created a material that reflects virtually no light — or absorbs it like a black hole. They've built this new material by stacking layers of 'silica nanorods.' And they reached a refractive index of 1.05. This can be compared with 1.0 for air or 2.4 for diamonds. This coating, which is effective for all wavelengths, could be used for brighter light-emitting diodes (LEDs), more efficient solar cells, and new classes of 'smart' light sources that adjust to their environments. But don't expect to see your next glasses or the windshields of your cars protected with this coating: it's too sensitive to water and it would be destroyed by rain. Here is a link to more details and references about this anti-reflective coating."
NASA

Submission + - Virtual Black Hole

Submitted by
mounce
mounce writes: "NSF News reports a new coating that virtually captures all light and prevents reflection. I heard that NASA spent a lot on developing this type of reflective coating in the 1980's (history clarification, please?), and only managed to about break-even with what you can get in the soot deposited from a burning candle. Why? The soot, which is known as "carbon black," looks like a bunch of tiny fingers when you view them up-close (you might say they are natural carbon nanotubes) which is what the NASA engineers tried to duplicate. Now comes-along Jong Kyu Kim and a team from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, working with National Science Foundation-supported electrical engineer Fred Schubert, using a common silica deposit process to grow ranks of nanoscale rods that look like piles of shag carpet. This high surface-to-volume ratio makes a good pigment, of course, but can also be used to conduct heat, and the authors believe it will be useful for transferring energy in developing solar cells. I think NASA originally wanted the Right Stuff for the ultimate sunglasses. The article was published in the 1 March 2007 issue of Nature Photonics NSF News Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Fred Schubert Nature Photonics"
Role Playing (Games)

Submission + - No more FoxTrot daily comic strips; WoW to blame?

Submitted by Philaretus
Philaretus writes: A press release at the Universal Press Syndicate is announcing that Bill Amend will cease production of daily FoxTrot comic strips, long popular in the nerd community. Amend "is taking time to pursue other creative outlets." But in other news, Bill discusses being hooked on World of Warcraft. Coincidence? I don't think so! Says Amend: "Seriously, it's a full-time job just getting my strips out the door each week. And Warcraft doesn't help."
PlayStation (Games)

Submission + - Sony plays off failed advertising campaign.

Submitted by
kinglink
kinglink writes: "Sony's site has finally admitted to being a shill for the site. Sony's response to the public is to shrug it off and act like there was no problem. "Busted. Nailed. Snagged. As many of you have figured out (maybe our speech was a little too funky fresh???), Peter isn't a real hip-hop maven and this site was actually developed by Sony. Guess we were trying to be just a little too clever. From this point forward, we will just stick to making cool products, and use this site to give you nothing but the facts on the PSP.""
Programming

Submission + - Review of "The Art of C++"

Submitted by
scottsk
scottsk writes: "THE ART OF C++
by Herbert Schildt
Osborne, 2004
0-07-225512-9
$39.99

I had seen some of Schildt's material in the early 90s, and had
recently found a copy of his original "Turbo C: The Complete
Reference" book because I was working with Turbo C 1.0 and 1.5 for
historical research. But what was Schildt up to now? I found a chapter
on garbage collection in C++ which looked really interesting, and
bought "The Art of C++" very cheaply because it's no longer in print
even though it is from 2004. I've been looking through it, trying to
brush up on both C and C++. The bottom line is, there's some good
stuff in this book, but some bad stuff too. It's probably worth what a
used copy would sell for to get the garbage collection chapter. Many
of Schildt's books have a quote about his material being "first-rate",
but much in this book is second-rate, as I'll explain when I get into
the individual chapters.

The goal of the book is to demonstrate the "Art" of C++ (does the
title echo Knuth on purpose?) by showing the artistry with which the
language can be used to craft elegant solutions. The book's chapters
are hands-on projects the novice can build to get some experience with
the language. It's by no means a professional programming book, but
not aimed at the rank novice, either. Because the book is a grab-bag
of extremely varied projects, there's probably something in here for
almost anyone. You're assumed to have some facility with your C++
compiler, editor, etc; and to know the basics about the
language. There are two chapters (multithreading and the Internet file
downloader) which are specific to the Windows environment, but the
other chapters could be worked through by anyone with a C++ compiler
(such as g++ on Linux).

Let's look at the chapters!

Chapter one is just a preface masquerading as a chapter. The author
basically could have said "C++ is a powerful language" on the title
page and skipped this. His point is valid, but doesn't require a
chapter to make. C++ allows the programmer to get close to the
machine and write expressive code. I assume anyone buying a
project-oriented book on C++ already knows this. It's curious that,
writing in 2004, the author doesn't even mention why p-code systems
such as the C# CLI and Java's JVM have eclipsed C++. That would be
interesting to examine, since there's got to be some reason people are
going back to the inefficiency of p-code.

Chapter two is the garbage collection chapter, and is actually very
interesting. Schildt uses C++ fully, and does a decent job explaining
how garbage collectors work. I was pleased by this. The explanation is
very simple and straightforward. I've seen garbage collectors in LISP
implementations written in C before, but never fully reverse
engineered them. Unlike LISP versions, this garbage collector is a
reference counter. It's probably not adequate for real-world use, but
it's fascinating to look under the covers of a simple garbage
collector and learn how it works.

Chapter three is about Windows multithreading, which I didn't pay much
attention to since I don't program on Windows. He extends the garbage
collector to run as a separate thread.

Chapter four is interesting. Schildt builds a front-end for C++ so new
language features can be implemented, much like the "cfront" program
added new C++ language features to C. The front-end reads your program
and translates several new features into their C++ equivalents. What's
interesting is that he adds a foreach keyword, but then doesn't extend
it to iterate over STL containers, just built-in arrays, so that's
underwhelming. If it supported STL containers, it would have made this
a killer chapter. Because I don't use C#, I don't understand the
benefits of the "typeof" operator Schildt develops. I thought it was a
cool idea to do to C++ what C++ did to C. The only beef I have is this
front-end is little more than C code. It isn't developed as an
object-oriented program from the ground up, even though it does throw
an exception. Where is the parser factory, and delegation to helper
objects which do the code rewrites, and the design patterns?

Chapter five is about Internet file downloads, which is so 1998. To
develop this program, Schildt uses a Windows high-level API called
WinInet, which I have to guess is a wrapper around the usual socket
functions common to UNIX and Windows. It's certainly easy! Basically
you just have to call about five functions in the right order and it's
all magic. You learn nothing about TCP or UNIX socket calls in this
chapter, so I'm not sure what the point is. Since this is a book on
C++, you would expect to be using the Borland VCL, or maybe MFC, but
the demo program is a Petzold-era Windows program written in C. The
author even includes a manual resource definitions file! Get out your
Petzold book and try to remember how to manually compile a resource
file. I am not very impressed by this chapter, since you don't learn
anything useful!

Chapter six has a bunch of financial formulas from your college
economics book coded in C++. This chapter is totally awful! Every
single formula uses C++'s built-in floating point data type. Surely
you're joking, Mr. Schildt? I expected this chapter to discuss
rounding errors, BCD packages, fixed-point class libraries, and so
on. A guy billed as "a genuine C++ guru" on the cover (it really says
that; I couldn't invent anything that corny) ought to know more about
this. This chapter alone is a good reason to put all copies of this
book in the recycle bin. I hope no one from my bank reads it! The
chapter is so bad I don't even need to get into the fact that the code
isn't very object-oriented.

On to chapter seven, where things get better. This is a chapter on
(very basic) AI based problem solving. Back in 1987, Schildt wrote a
classic book on Borland's Turbo Prolog which included this chapter. He
actually did a commendable job bringing it up to date for this book,
re-writing the examples in C++. What this chapter covers is creating a
decision tree and walking it in different orders. Again, like most of
these chapters, it's really basic, but gives a newcomer to AI a way to
get started before, say, venturing into "Structured Interpretation Of
Computer Programs".

Chapter eight is how to build your own STL container. This is a gentle
chapter, which works through the standard interfaces containers need
to support to interoperate with the standard algorithms and
iterators. I liked this chapter because I find the STL a little
disorienting, and most books (like one I have, "Generic Programming
and the STL") to be almost too detailed for a novice. What he builds
is an array that's indexed from any number, not just zero. This gives
the container a nice, clean implementation (subtract the index from
the base and index a real array) that doesn't get in the way of the
STL stuff.

The final chapter is a Mini-C++ interpreter. Many of us will remember
Little C, Schildt's August 1989 contribution to Dr. Dobb's
Journal. (If not, you can find the original source and article online
if you convince Google you want it badly enough.) This is the same
code! The interpreter is a hand-coded recursive descent parser that
knows a rudimentary form of C. It does not use LEXX and YACC, so it's
actually a fascinating example of how these parsers work. Or, it
was. The trouble is this code has been around for a long time, and is
not even a C++ interpreter. It does not understand classes at
all. What else is there that distinguishes C++ from C? The interpreter
does understand using "cout > var" but not deeply,
it's just syntactic sugar.

If you're too lazy to enter the programs, you can download the source
online from Osborne's site, but a word of warning that the zip file
has a single text file for each chapter with the listings one after
the other, so it's hard to pick each file's source code apart. There
aren't any markers in the file to show you where one file ends and the
other begins. Almost silly to do it this way, since (hopefully) the
code was in separate files during testing!

My feeling at the end of the book was one of being underwhelmed. I
wouldn't waste much time with this book. If you can get it for a
couple of dollars, you might like to see the garbage collection
chapter. Given that the book bills its author as "the world's
number-one programming author" and "a genuine C++ guru", there's not
much to back up these claims.

(If you want to read the garbage collector chapter, see the link to it
on Schildt's Wikipedia entry.)"

Slashdot Top Deals

"God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh." - Voltaire

Close