rootnl - Slashdot User

Submission + - Security researcher reveals iPhone design flaws

Submitted by rootnl on Wednesday December 10, 2008 @08:33AM

rootnl writes: Apple's iPhone has two design flaws that could pose potential security problems, according to a researcher. http://www.macworld.co.uk/ipod-itunes/news/index.cfm?RSS One of the biggest problems is that the email client loads remote images and there is no way to disable it.

Sending Secret Messages Via Google's SearchWiki 160

Posted by kdawson on Wednesday November 26, 2008 @01:23AM from the your-mission-should-you-choose-to-accept-it dept.

We discussed the advent of Google's SearchWiki when it was introduced a few days back. Now Lauren Weinstein offers a thought experiment in transmitting coded messages using SearchWiki, with a working example encoded into the results of this Google search.

GTA IV DLC Announced 49

Posted by Soulskill on Saturday November 22, 2008 @02:12AM from the does-it-let-me-jack-the-space-shuttle dept.

Rockstar Games recently announced upcoming downloadable content for Grand Theft Auto IV, entitled The Lost and Damned. It's due out on February 17th, and it focuses on a member of a Liberty City biker gang, rather than Niko Bellic. Joystiq has some early screenshots. "In the original game, Niko crossed paths with The Lost several times. This time, Niko has only a bit part, [Rockstar's Dan Houser] says. 'The story is not directly impacted by decisions you took in the main game,' he says. But 'tons of details and mysteries from the main story get explained, so it will add a lot of color to the main story.'"

Linux 2.6.27 Out 452

Posted by timothy on Thursday October 09, 2008 @11:58PM from the not-all-fancy-like-gnu dept.

diegocgteleline.es writes "Linux 2.6.27 has been released. It adds a new filesystem (UBIFS) for 'pure' flash-based storage, the page-cache is now lockless, much improved Direct I/O scalability and performance, delayed allocation support for ext4, multiqueue networking, data integrity support in the block layer, a function tracer, a mmio tracer, sysprof support, improved webcam support, support for the Intel wifi 5000 series and RTL8187B network cards, a new ath9k driver for the Atheros AR5008 and AR9001 chipsets, more new drivers, and many other improvements and fixes. Full list of changes can be found here."

Submission + - Ubuntu 8.40 Released Today (ubuntu.com) 2

Submitted by

damienhunter

on Thursday April 24, 2008 @06:19AM

damienhunter writes: "Canonical Ltd. announced the upcoming availability of Ubuntu 8.04 LTS Desktop Edition for free download on Thursday 24 April. In related news, Canonical also announced the simultaneous release of Ubuntu 8.04 LTS Server Edition. Ubuntu 8.04 Long Term Support (LTS) provides a stable platform for software and hardware vendors, developers and users. With three years of support and maintenance on the desktop, 8.04 LTS is a great choice for large-scale deployment. A substantial and growing ecosystem of free and commercial software built for Ubuntu provides a rich set of choices for desktop users. This is the eighth desktop release of Ubuntu. Ubuntu's track record in delivering — on a precise schedule every six months — a commercial operating system that is free, stable, secure and fully supported, remains unique."

Submission + - Bill Gates: "the GPL, which we disagree with&# (arstechnica.com) 2

Submitted by

Dionysius, God of Wine,

on Wednesday April 23, 2008 @06:06PM

Dionysius, God of Wine, writes: ""There's free software and then there's open source," he suggested, noting that Microsoft gives away its software in developing countries. With open source software, on the other hand, "there is this thing called the GPL, which we disagree with." Open source, he said, creates a license "so that nobody can ever improve the software," he claimed, bemoaning the squandered opportunity for jobs and business. (Yes, Linux fans, we're aware of how distorted this definition is.) He went back to the analogy of pharmaceuticals: "I think if you invent drugs, you should be able to charge for them," he said, adding with a shrug: "That may seem radical."

http://arstechnica.com/journals/microsoft.ars/2008/04/23/bill-gates-the-gpl-which-we-disagree-with"

Submission + - IBM's Pilot Program for Internal Use of Macs

Submitted by

geoffrobinson

on Friday April 18, 2008 @08:35AM

geoffrobinson writes: "Roughly Drafted has obtained internal IBM documents detailing the results of a small pilot program for internal use of Macs. Positive and negative results were detailed. But, overall, most participants were happy with their experience. The pilot will be expanded this year. One advantage cited: they will be less reliant on Windows. So it seems a mix of Macs, PC's, and Linux boxes are in IBM's future. Given the history between the two companies, this is quite interesting."

Submission + - Windows is 'collapsing,' Gartner analysts warn (computerworld.com)

Submitted by rootnl on Friday April 11, 2008 @07:34AM

rootnl writes: In a presentation a Gartner-sponsored conference in Las Vegas, analysts Michael Silver and Neil MacDonald said Microsoft has not responded to the market, is overburdened by nearly two decades of legacy code and decisions, and faces serious competition on a whole host of fronts that will make Windows moot unless the software developer acts.

"For Microsoft, its ecosystem and its customers, the situation is untenable," said Silver and MacDonald in their prepared presentation, titled "Windows Is Collapsing: How What Comes Next Will Improve.

Submission + - Low-Cost Linux Computers Now on Sears.com (linspire.com) 1

Submitted by

christian.einfeldt

on Thursday January 17, 2008 @02:19AM

christian.einfeldt writes: "In the wake of reports that low-end GNU Linux computers and devices sold very well on Amazon.com in 2007, now comes an announcement from Linspire that its community distro, Freespire, will come pre-installed on a desktop box offered on Sears.com for under $200.00 USD. Built by long-time Linspire partner Mirus Innovations, the box will ship with a Celeron D 420-1.6Ghz chip, one 1 gigabyte of RAM, and an 80 gigabyte hard drive. With Wal-Mart selling out its low-end Linux offering in weeks, this new offering by the risk-adverse venerable old Sears lends some objective credence to opinions by industry observers who see a trend of Linux occupying the low-end PC market. While the Mirus desktop is at the other end of the spectrum from the high-end MacBook Air, also announced this week, it is nonetheless interesting to compare the power of these two very different products, while contrasting the six to one price differential of the two products."

Submission + - "Extremely critical" vulnerability in Exce

Submitted by

Bernie

on Wednesday January 16, 2008 @05:26AM

Bernie writes: "Secunia are reporting an 'actively exploited' 0-day vulnerability in the handling of Excel files. If you are tricked into opening a maliciously crafted Excel file, you no longer own your computer. No patch is available as yet."

Submission + - OS X Sales Surpass Windows Sales Internationally (osweekly.com)

Submitted by tubs on Wednesday January 16, 2008 @04:22AM

tubs writes: According to latest reports, Apple's OS X operating system is doing much better in international markets, such as Japan, than the United States. Quote: "The report went on to say that sales of OS X have outdone those of Windows for the first time in history, which is huge. Apparently Leopard gave the numbers just the right amount of push they needed to really start snowballing. In any case, six days after Leopard's launch in Japan, the sales took over 53.9 percent of the OS market. Perhaps this is a sign of greater things to happen in the US as well."

Submission + - Has Microsoft Learned Anything from Vista Failure? (osweekly.com)

Submitted by

abudd

on Wednesday January 16, 2008 @04:17AM

abudd writes: "With Windows 7 on its way, has Microsoft learned anything from its mishaps with Vista? According to this article, "I'm a former Windows user and despite me being appalled at Vista being called "ready for prime time," I believe that considering the painfully obvious lessons on compatibility Microsoft had to learn with Vista, it's quite possible that Windows 7 may indeed be a solid OS release. If indeed, Microsoft does decide to start over completely (MinWin anyone?) and this time, make sure that both hardware and software compatibility are running well out of the box, there is no question that MS can save face with a well thought out Windows 7 release."

Submission + - Microsoft unleashes perverted Santabot on children

Submitted by ShieldW0lf on Friday December 07, 2007 @03:14AM

ShieldW0lf writes: Microsoft has been encouraging children to chat with "Santa" by adding northpole@live.com to their contact lists. The bot would pretend to be Santa, asking what they want for Christmas and replying intelligently.

Until, one fateful day, a young girl invited Santa to eat pizza too many times, only to have Santa say "You want me to eat what?!? It's fun to talk about oral sex, but I want to chat about something else."

Microsoft spokesman Adam Sohn said the company's engineers tried to clean up Santa's vocabulary, but even after making changes to the software, the company wasn't comfortable keeping him online.

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hfu6h1t4qkRcUbVddT45BCQ5MnQAD8TBITI80

Feed Engadget: Sony rumored to give PS3 owners Blu-ray Profile 1.1 for Christmas (engadget.com)

From feed by engfeed on Friday December 07, 2007 @03:12AM

Filed under: Gaming, HDTV, Home Entertainment

Sony is said to have yet another PlayStation 3 firmware update ready for download before Christmas, with the gift for movie-loving gamers being Profile 1.1 compatibility for Blu-ray Discs. Competing format HD DVD has had support for Profile 1.1 features such as picture-in-picture, secondary audio, and local storage since its inception, while in the Blu-ray spec they were optional. There aren't any Profile 1.1 Blu-ray titles on the market yet, and only a single 1.1-compatible player for sale from Panasonic, so this is really about having one more bullet point on a box for fanboys to argue about. The only major HD DVD feature that becomes required in Profile 2.0 is Internet connectivity, so downloadable content will still be optional for some 1.1-compatible BD players -- but not the PS3 with its built-in Ethernet jack. Considering the PS3 is still one of the cheapest and most widely-owned Blu-ray players, and Sony continues to improve its capabilities via firmware updates, PS3 fans and Blu-ray Disc aficionados have that much more ammo to use in the never-ending format war.

[Thanks, ag23]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Submission + - Broken on Vista, Java Problems Continue (dekoh.com)

Submitted by

Online Voting

on Monday November 05, 2007 @01:14PM

Online Voting writes: "Hot on the heels of a major patch for nearly a dozen "highly critical" vulnerabilities, developers of Java applets for the Windows Vista operating system are running into a roadblock. It seems the default settings for IE7 on Vista includes a "Protected Mode" which blocks even signed Java applet features."

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