Comment Baked. It's called HashCash. (Score 1) 491
And working implementations have been around since 2002. Bitcoin is nothing new.
Comment But PCI isn't, and never was, a local bus. (Score 1) 415
PCI has a controller sitting between the CPU and the expansion slots -- it's not truly local. The definition of a "local bus" was stretched (mostly by Intel) to include PCI despite this, but in its original meaning, it referred to an architecture where the expansion slots are directly connected to the CPU, possibly permitting level shifters or buffers but certainly no logic. PCI doesn't even run at the CPU's FSB anymore! How local is that?
VESA Local Bus truly was, although its reliance on 5-volt levels condemned it to obsolescence as soon as chips went to 3.3 and lower voltages for their I/O. These days nothing except the northbridge is local.
Comment Hibernate once, resume many. (HORM) (Score 2, Informative) 660
XP Embedded SP2 has this funky Hibernate Once, Resume Many thing now. I don't know if it's possible to properly license the Embedded toolkit for personal use, but the technology is out there and it's interesting.
Hi, I Want To Meet (17.6% of) You! 372
Frequent Slashdot contributor Bennett Haselton wants to make online dating better. Here's how he wants to do it.
"Suppose you're an entrepreneur who wants to break into the online personals
business, but you face impossible odds because everybody wants to go where
everybody else already is (basically, either Match.com or Yahoo Personals).
Here is a suggestion that would give you an edge. In a nutshell:
Each member lists the criteria for people that they are looking for. Then
when people contact them, they choose whether or not to respond. After the
system
has been keeping track of who contacts you and who you respond to, the site
lists your profile
in other people's search results along with your criteria-specific response
rate: "Lisa has responded to 56% of people who contacted her who meet her
criteria." Read on for the rest of his thoughts.
Submission + - Free global virtual scientific library
An anonymous reader writes: More than 20,000 signatures, including several Nobel prize winners and 750 education, research, and cultural organisations from around the world came together to support free access to government funded research, "to create a freely available virtual scientific library available to the entire globe.
The European Commission responded by committing more than $100m (£51m) towards facilitating greater open access through support for open access journals and for the building of the infrastructure needed to house institutional repositories that can store the millions of academic articles written each year.
From the BBC article:
"Last month five leading European research institutions launched a petition that called on the European Commission to establish a new policy that would require all government-funded research to be made available to the public shortly after publication.
That requirement — called an open access principle — would leverage widespread internet connectivity with low-cost electronic publication to create a freely available virtual scientific library available to the entire globe."
Isn't this the way its suppose to be?
Submission + - Big 'Ocean' Discovered Beneath Asia
anthemaniac writes: Seismic observations reveal a huge reservoir of water in Earth's mantle beneath Asia. It's actually rock saturated with water, but it's an ocean's worth of water ... as much as is in the whole Arctic Ocean. How did it get there? A slab of water-laden crust sank, and the water evaporated out when it was heated, and then it was trapped, the thinking goes. The discovery fits neatly with the region's heavy seismic activity and fits neatly with the idea that the planet's moving crustal plates are lubricated with water.
Submission + - Solaris Telnet Worm
An anonymous reader writes: The previously discovered Solaris telnet vulnerability is now being used by a worm to spread. In addition, the worm opens up a /bin/sh backdoor and has a payload of sending funny system broadcast messages related to security researchers including one that says "Theo deRaadt SUCKS!" in ASCII art.
Submission + - DRM Free music is everywhere
guisar writes: I continue to endure stories on Slashdot and elsewhere complaining about EMI, itunes and other organizations maybe (or maybe not) releasing material in DRM free format. Well- here's some news there's LOTS of material out there. So instead of complaining, download what you like. There are plenty of artists releasing their material in FLAC and other DRM free format. Just look around. Most artists are doing their part by releasing their music in the hopes they can gain enough exposure to earn a living at what they love. If you're complaining about major labels not releasing material, it's probably too late and you are part of the problem.
Journal Journal: Instruct Search Engines to come back to site after you finis
Instruct Search Engines to come back to site after you finish working on it
What do you think Googlebot and other Search Engines do when they try to reach your site while you are tinkering with it?
Nifty SEO tip to get Search Engine Bots to check your site every hour until you finish working on it and tell them you are finished.
Submission + - Bird-brained scientists learn to fly pigeons
Tiger writes: "Reuters is reporting that scientists in eastern China say have succeeded in controlling the flight of pigeons with micro electrodes planted in their brains, state media reported on Tuesday."
Submission + - Music execs: Apple and DRM are the problem
EMB Numbers writes: C-Net says last year saw a 131 percent jump in digital sales, but overall the industry still saw about a 4 percent decline in revenue.
http://news.com.com/2100-1027_3-6162729.html?part= rss&tag=2547-1_3-0-5&subj=news At the opening of the conference, some of the panel members lashed out at Jobs. Members said Jobs' call three weeks ago for DRM-free music was "insincere" and a "red herring." Apple has maintained a stranglehold on the digital music industry by locking up iTunes music with DRM......and "it's causing everybody else who is participating in the marketplace — the other service providers, the labels, the users — a lot of pain. If they could simply open it up, everybody would love them."
Submission + - Best practices for a lossless music archive
Sparagmei writes: I'm a big music fan, and I like listening to the music I own on various pieces of digital gear. Right now my library's at about 20,000 tracks, ripped from CDs to MP3 at 256kbps (enough that I can't tell the difference on my low-end playback gear).
However, with the MP3 judgment rippling through the world, I'm interested in perhaps moving to a different compression standard. Before I do that, I'd like to ask a question: what lossless format would you recommend for making a digital "master library", which could be (relatively) easily downsampled to a compressed format? Important factors would be true losslessness, filesize (smaller than PCM WAV would be nice), embedded metadata (id3v2-like), existence of automated ripper software, and (to a lesser extent) open-source implementation of such software. Widespread playback implementation of the lossless codec is not an issue for me; the lossless library would likely be burnt to archival DVD media and stored after being downsampling with the chosen compressor.
The reason I ask is this: I've got a 20,000-track re-ripping job ahead of me. I'd like to do that just once, lossless, so that years from now, when I decide to jump from Vorbis to "komprezzor_2039_1337" or whatever, I don't need to drag out the old plastic discs. Thanks!
However, with the MP3 judgment rippling through the world, I'm interested in perhaps moving to a different compression standard. Before I do that, I'd like to ask a question: what lossless format would you recommend for making a digital "master library", which could be (relatively) easily downsampled to a compressed format? Important factors would be true losslessness, filesize (smaller than PCM WAV would be nice), embedded metadata (id3v2-like), existence of automated ripper software, and (to a lesser extent) open-source implementation of such software. Widespread playback implementation of the lossless codec is not an issue for me; the lossless library would likely be burnt to archival DVD media and stored after being downsampling with the chosen compressor.
The reason I ask is this: I've got a 20,000-track re-ripping job ahead of me. I'd like to do that just once, lossless, so that years from now, when I decide to jump from Vorbis to "komprezzor_2039_1337" or whatever, I don't need to drag out the old plastic discs. Thanks!
Submission + - Laptop hibernation a security risk?
wally writes: "I was having a long think today when it popped into my mind, is hibernation on laptops a security risk?
My flow of thought went like this: if I stole a laptop knowing that it had encrypted home and root partitions (assuming a Unix-like OS), presumably if it has a separate swap partition, that'd contain an unencrypted snapshot of the system prior to hibernation.
Therefore, this RAM image is presumably exploitable. Booting a USB stick would allow closer examination, presumably I could do anything from reading an open sensitive OpenOffice document to inserting some exploitable code into the frozen kernel to do something nasty when the laptop is next booted.
Even if the system keeps a checksum somewhere hidden to ensure the integrity of the RAM image before loading, you could at the least extract some potentially sensitive details that would otherwise be safe?
What do other slashdotters think? Is this an easily exploitable threat that should see suspended RAM images encrypted?"
My flow of thought went like this: if I stole a laptop knowing that it had encrypted home and root partitions (assuming a Unix-like OS), presumably if it has a separate swap partition, that'd contain an unencrypted snapshot of the system prior to hibernation.
Therefore, this RAM image is presumably exploitable. Booting a USB stick would allow closer examination, presumably I could do anything from reading an open sensitive OpenOffice document to inserting some exploitable code into the frozen kernel to do something nasty when the laptop is next booted.
Even if the system keeps a checksum somewhere hidden to ensure the integrity of the RAM image before loading, you could at the least extract some potentially sensitive details that would otherwise be safe?
What do other slashdotters think? Is this an easily exploitable threat that should see suspended RAM images encrypted?"
Submission + - VMware cries foul over Microsoft virtualisation
daria42 writes: The battle to control the virtualisation market has heated up with the launch of a white paper from VMware, which accuses Microsoft of anti-competitive practices. In language reminiscent of Microsoft's anti-trust battles in the US and its ongoing struggle with the European Union, VMware claimed that the software giant is "forcing [its] specifications and APIs on the industry", and "trying to restrict customers' flexibility and freedom to choose virtualisation software".
Submission + - Comcast challenges FCC over subscriber limits
illeism writes: Ars Technica is reporting that Comcast is challenging the FCC over subscriber limits.
FTA — Comcast has decided to challenge the Federal Communications Commission's "unofficial" cap on cable system ownership. In a filing earlier this month, Comcast criticized the FCC's 30 percent horizontal ownership cap, saying that limits on how many subscribers a given cable operator can service are no longer necessary.
FTA — Comcast has decided to challenge the Federal Communications Commission's "unofficial" cap on cable system ownership. In a filing earlier this month, Comcast criticized the FCC's 30 percent horizontal ownership cap, saying that limits on how many subscribers a given cable operator can service are no longer necessary.
