Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Security

Security Researcher Finds Hundreds of Browser Bugs 145

Posted by Soulskill from the going-for-the-gusto dept.
An anonymous reader writes "PC Magazine reports on a very understated late night post to the full-disclosure mailing list, in which security researcher Michael Zalewski shared a fuzzing tool reportedly capable of identifying over a hundred browser bugs. Some of these bugs, he says, may be already known to third parties in China. The report also includes an account of how browser vendors fared fixing these flaws so far. Not surprisingly, Microsoft's response timeline appears depressing."
Politics

Submission + - Pirate Party founder steps down after 5 years

Submitted by ktetch-pirate
ktetch-pirate writes: 5 years to the day after he created the first Pirate Party, Rickard Falkvinge has stepped down as leader of Piratpartiet, the Swedish Pirate Party. The announcement was made in a webcast with Falkvinge and his deputy Anna Troberg, with Troberg taking on his duties effective immediately.
Censorship

Hungarian Officials Can Now Censor the Media 185

Posted by Soulskill from the constant-bleeping dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Hungary is set to regulate the media, including web-published content, under a new law applicable today. The law requires all the media to provide a 'balanced view' and must not go against 'public morality,' and places all publications under the control of a new regulating body, whose top members have all been nominated by Prime Minister Viktor Orban. Orban, whose strong ways have been compared to Putin's, has been tightening his grip over Hungary. 'In the seven months since Orban came to power with a two-thirds parliamentary majority, he has implemented retroactive taxes in violation of the constitution, curbed the Constitutional Court's power, effectively nationalized private pension funds and put ruling-party allies in charge of at least four independent institutions, including the audit office.' Citizens sentenced in application of the new law can still challenge it at the European Court of Human Rights — see you in a few years."
Science

Submission + - Zapping the brain improves math performance (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: Need to improve your math skills or do your taxes faster? Try zapping your brain with electricity. Researchers have shown that administering a small electrical charge to the brain may enhance a person's ability to process numbers for up to 6 months. The team says the approach, which it claims is harmless, could one day restore numerical skills in people suffering from degenerative diseases or stroke, and it may even improve the math abilities of the general population.
The Media

Submission + - Danish Expert Declares Vinland Map Genuine (newsdaily.com)

Submitted by
MBCook
MBCook writes: "A Danish expert named Rene Larson has finished a study of the infamous Vinland Map and declared it genuine. "All the tests that we have done over the past five years — on the materials and other aspects — do not show any signs of forgery," he said at the press conference. He and his team studied the ink, the paper, and even insect damage. They believe that the ink, which was discovered to contain titanium dioxide in 1972 and thus supposedly too new for the map to be genuine, was contaminated when it was being dried, causing the contamination."
First Person Shooters (Games)

Free Software FPS Games Compared 194

Posted by Zonk from the getting-your-frag-on-the-cheap dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Linux-gamers.net has posted a thorough, although harsh, comparison of free software shooters. It compares seven open source shooter games in a lengthy discussion. Few have gone to the trouble of comparing and carefully examining the genre before. The author ranks the games in the following order (best to worst): Warsow, Tremulous, World of Padman, Nexuiz, Alien Arena, OpenArena, and Sauerbraten. In making these choices, it claims to use gameplay, design, innovation and presentation as criteria and includes a short history of free software shooters in the introduction."
Software

Long Live Closed-Source Software? 676

Posted by Zonk from the i-am-something-of-a-fan-of-closed-source-games dept.
EvilRyry writes "In an article for Discover Magazine, Jaron Lanier writes about his belief that open source produces nothing interesting because of a hide-bound mentality. 'Open wisdom-of-crowds software movements have become influential, but they haven't promoted the kind of radical creativity I love most in computer science. If anything, they've been hindrances. Some of the youngest, brightest minds have been trapped in a 1970s intellectual framework because they are hypnotized into accepting old software designs as if they were facts of nature. Linux is a superbly polished copy of an antique, shinier than the original, perhaps, but still defined by it.'"
Software

Arguing For Open Electronic Health Records 111

Posted by Zonk from the keeping-it-on-the-up-and-up dept.
mynameismonkey writes "openEHR guru Tim Cook, writing in a guest blog at A Scanner Brightly, discusses why Electronic Health Record developers should use open standards. Why are so few doctors using EHR systems? And, as more and more hospital EHR systems come online across the country, what do we have to fear from proprietary databases? It's one thing to find out your social security number was stolen. Now add your mental health and STD results to those records."
Software

FSF Releases Third Draft of GPLv3 390

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the complaining-to-the-right-people dept.
johnsu01 writes "The Free Software Foundation has announced publication of the third discussion draft of the GNU General Public License Version 3. Because quite a few changes have been made since the previous draft and important new issues have surfaced, the drafting process has been extended and revised to encourage more feedback. The most significant changes in this draft include refinements in the "tivoization" provisions to eliminate unwanted side effects, revision of the patent provisions to prevent end-runs around the license, and further steps toward compatibility with other free software licenses. The FSF has also explicitly asked the community whether the new patent provisions should apply retroactively to the Microsoft-Novell deal."
Operating Systems

2.6.19 Linux Kernel Released 51

Posted by kdawson from the come-and-get-it dept.
diegocgteleline.es writes, "After two months, Linux 2.6.19 has been released. It includes the clustering GFS2 filesystem, Ecryptfs, the first developer-oriented version of EXT4, support for the Atmel AVR32 architecture, sleepable RCU, improvements for NUMA-based systems, an "-o flush" mount option aimed at FAT-based hotpluggable media devices (mp3), physical CPU hotplug and memory hot-add in x86-64, support for compiling x86 kernels with the GCC stack protection, and many other things. You can check the full list of changes in LinuxChanges."

Comment Re:Shockwave? (Score 1) 256

by SlashSpam (#13319724) Attached to: Linux For Supervillains
macromedia doesn't release for linux

It runs fine on my GNU/Linux system though. The trouble with flash is that there was no free (as in freedom) flash plugin. However, I guess our friends at the FSF can point you to a project that is working on just that.

/Spam .

Slashdot Top Deals

It is easier to write an incorrect program than understand a correct one.

Close