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

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Apple

Steve Jobs Crowned "Person of the Decade" 346

Posted by CmdrTaco from the well-if-smartmoney-says-so dept.
longacre writes "Apple CEO Steve Jobs won over 30% of the vote in an online poll published by personal finance and investing news site SmartMoney.com, enough to earn their 'Person of the Decade' title by a solid margin over luminaries such as Warren Buffett (17%), Ben Bernanke (13%) and Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page (12%). From the article: 'Certainly, Jobs accomplished more than probably any other CEO since he returned to Apple in the late 1990s: Not only did he revive sales at the failing computer company, he led the stock to a more than 700% increase in value, and forever changed the way people buy and listen to music.'"

Comment Re:TPMs and related tech (Score 1) 84

by Proteus Child (#30535058) Attached to: Intel Patches Flaws In Trusted Execution Tech

Hardware can be made secure by making it tamper-resistant. Cryptographic ICs can be rigged to self-destruct when somebody opens the package.

Sometimes you don't even need to expose the silicon to mess with the guts of a chip. You can still connect to the pins or solder pads of an IC and monitor signals passively, or introduce overvoltage/undervoltage/weird signal patterns from outside.

Comment Re:It's a security issue (Score 2, Insightful) 84

by Proteus Child (#30535028) Attached to: Intel Patches Flaws In Trusted Execution Tech
...and how many people in the security community started out in the hacker community and took great pains to conceal their real names back then? More to the point, how many people in the security community go to great lengths to dissociate their all-grown-up-now professional lives from their days in the hacker scene because it would call unfavorable attention upon their employers, plus put certain of their expensive certifications in jeopardy?

Some people spend years hacking around in their basements and don't feel a need to tell anyone about their work. Others "suddenly appear" because they finally feel like publishing something, the work they publish is brilliant, and thus they gain respect for it.

The Definitive Evisceration of The Phantom Menace *NSFW* 629

Posted by samzenpus from the meesa-completely-agree dept.
cowmix writes "When TPM came out ten years ago, its utter crappiness shocked me to the core and wounded a entire generation of geeks. My inner child had been abused and betrayed. I moped around, talking to no one, for almost two weeks. I couldn't bring myself to see #2 or #3, whatever they were called. Now, a decade later, comes Star Wars: The Phantom Menace Review, the ultimate, seven-part, seventy minute analysis of this mother of all train wrecks. Not only does it nail how the film blows, but tells us why. Time, apparently, does not heal all wounds." Or, if you prefer all 7 parts embedded in one page, you can check out slashfilm's aggregation.
Security

Autonomous Intelligent Botnets Bouncing Back 152

Posted by CmdrTaco from the duck-and-cover dept.
coomaria writes "Thought that 2009 was the year botnets died? Well, think again: compromised computers were responsible for distributing 83.4% of the 107 billion spam messages sent around the world every single day this year, and it's going to get worse if intelligent and autonomous botnets arrive in 2010 as predicted."
The Military

$26 of Software Defeats American Military 534

Posted by CmdrTaco from the cheap-at-twice-the-price dept.
reporter writes "A computer program that can be easily purchased for $25.95 off the Internet can read and store the data transmitted on an unsecured channel by an unmanned drone. Drones are crucial to American military operations, for these aerial vehicles enable Washington to conduct war with a reduced number of soldiers. '... the intercepts could give America's enemies battlefield advantages by removing the element of surprise from certain missions and making it easier for insurgents to determine which roads and buildings are under US surveillance.'"
Google

Google Unveils goo.gl URL Shortening Service 242

Posted by timothy from the boiling-a-frog-in-google dept.
eldavojohn writes "The Sultan of Search is unveiling a new service (currently only available for Google Toolbar and Feedburner) that will tackle a very old problem usually solved by bit.ly or tinyurl — URL shortening. Now, we've heard cries for sanity to prevent potential issues (like what if tr.im had shut down and broken millions of links?) but with one of the goliaths of the industry jumping in the ring it looks like URL shortening is here to stay. And a quick note for people who enjoy privacy, goo.gl explicitly states: 'Please note that Google may choose to publicly display aggregate and non-personally identifiable statistics about particular shortened links, such as the number of end user clicks.' You didn't think Google was going to sit back and let bit.ly harvest juicy data on 2.1 billion links that were clicked in November without trying to corner some of that action to make their ad suggestions more accurate, did you?" Google's shortening service is called Goo.gl.
Patents

Eolas Sues World + Dog For AJAX Patent 647

Posted by kdawson from the to-fix-patent-system-replace-judges-in-tyler-texas dept.
helfrich9000 writes "Eolas has filed suit against 23 companies (guess where), including Adobe, Amazon.com, Apple, eBay, Google, Yahoo!, JPMorgan, and Playboy. At issue are a pair of patents (US 7,599,985 and US 5,838,906), one of which (the '906) was successfully used in litigation against Microsoft Corp for a $565 million judgement. Says Dr. Michael D. Doyle, chairman of Eolas, 'We developed these technologies over 15 years ago and demonstrated them widely, years before the marketplace had heard of interactive applications embedded in Web pages tapping into powerful remote resources. Profiting from someone else's innovation without payment is fundamentally unfair. All we want is what's fair.'"
Privacy

Facebook Masks Worse Privacy With New Interface 446

Posted by CmdrTaco from the it's-a-book-of-faces dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Facebook launched new privacy settings this week. Cosmetically, this means that the settings are explained more clearly and are marginally easier to manage. Unfortunately, some of the most significant changes actually make preserving privacy harder for its users: profile elements that could previously be restricted to 'Only Friends' are now designated as irrevocably publicly available: 'Publicly available information includes your name, profile picture, gender, current city, networks, friend list, and Pages.' Where you could previously preserve the privacy of this information and remain publicly searchable only by name, Facebook now forces you to either give up this information (including your current city!) to anyone with a Facebook account, or to restrict your search visibility — which of course limits the usefulness of the site far beyond how not publicly sharing your profile picture would. That Facebook made this change while simultaneously rolling out major changes to the privacy settings interface seems disingenuous."
Star Wars Prequels

The Star Wars Christmas Special Still Exists 316

Posted by CmdrTaco from the truth-is-out-there dept.
rapturizer noted the critical news that "Fans of "Star Wars" have a chance to see a free screening of the notoriously bad 'Star Wars Holiday Special' next week in Minneapolis." Nothing brings out the Christmas spirit like watching what may very well be the worst TV ever produced. Sadly however, I'm not sure that this is the worst *Star Wars* merch ever made.
Books

Five Top Publishers Plan Rival to Kindle Format 123

Posted by samzenpus from the new-media-readers dept.
eldavojohn writes "Time Inc., News Corp., Conde Nast, Hearst Corp., and Meredith Corp. are teaming up to create a digital newsstand and somewhat open format that 'can render our content beautifully on those devices that come to market' instead of the gray inked Kindle's energy conscious display. Devices are being made for the new format with the launch coming next year. The format will also target smart phones and tablet computers. Will this pose a threat at all to the Kindle?"
Earth

Gigantic Spiral of Light Observed Over Norway; Rocket To Blame? 418

Posted by timothy from the they-get-all-the-cool-stuff dept.
Ch_Omega writes "A mysterious light display appearing over Norway last night (more pictures) has left thousands of residents in the north of the country baffled. Witnesses from Trøndelag to Finnmark compared the amazing display to anything from a Russian rocket to a meteor to a shock wave — although no one appears to have mentioned UFOs yet. The phenomenon began when what appeared to be a blue light seemed to soar up from behind a mountain. It stopped mid-air, then began to circulate. Within seconds a giant spiral had covered the entire sky. Then a green-blue beam of light shot out from its center — lasting for ten to twelve minutes before disappearing completely. The Norwegian Meteorological Institute was flooded with telephone calls after the light storm — which astronomers have said did not appear to have been connected to the aurora, or Northern Lights, so common in that area of the world." The Bad Astronomer makes the case that a malfunctioning rocket spewing fuel is a parsimonious explanation, backed up by witnesses to similar events and a cool simulation (on video). An anonymous reader suggests that this Proton-M Carrier Rocket might be responsible for the display.

Slashdot Top Deals

Work is the crab grass in the lawn of life. -- Schulz

Close