Follow Slashdot stories on Twitter

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
Education

Submission + - MBA 'Fuqua-Up' at Duke

theodp writes: "Prompted by Duke's B-school cheating scandal, The Christian Science Monitor questions if business schools are training honest corporate leaders when so many MBA students cheat. Looking beyond the 10% of the '08 class at Duke that was caught cheating, The Monitor notes that a recent study of 54 universities found 56% of MBA students admitted to having cheated. Wonder what this portends for Google, the new #1 darling of the MBA-set."
Announcements

Submission + - Nano Light Bulbs for Your Shirt

moscowde writes: Craighead Research Group at Corenll University created a so-called "Nano-Lamp" — a microscopic collection of light-emitting fibers with dimensions of only a few hundred nanometers. The fibers are made of a polymer that is spiked with light-emitting molecules using technique called — electrospinning. The nanofiber glows bright orange when exposed to an electric field and can be seen in the dark by a naked eye. A professor at Princeton University called this "a breakthrough in the way nanosize light sources are made". Since the nanofibers are flexible they can be potentially used in clothing and flexible computer display.
Programming

Submission + - Get Closure with JavaScript Memory Leaks

An anonymous reader writes: Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox are the two Web browsers most commonly associated with memory leaks in JavaScript. The culprit in both browsers is the component object model used to manage DOM objects. This article explains how circular references can lead to memory leaks in JavaScript, particularly when combined with closures. You'll see several common memory leak patterns involving circular references and some easy ways to work around them.
Communications

Submission + - AT&T Dumps VOIP Customers

Proudrooster writes: In the past two-weeks AT&T sent out disconnect letters to VOIP customers in big rude red letters, stating that VOIP service would be suspended in 30-days and permanently disconnected in 60-days. AT&T cited E911 service as the reason. Many AT&T VOIP customers have found that they are unable to transfer their AT&T VOIP phone numbers to a new provider. Further, AT&T is unwilling to provide a forwarding message directing callers to a new phone number for those that are unable to transfer their old AT&T VOIP phone numbers. In effect, AT&T has told many long-term VOIP subscribers, we are turning off your phone in 30-days, goodbye, and good luck. AT&T does not appear a corporation that values customer loyalty, especially of those who hung on during the experimental days of the AT&T VOIP service

Many longterm subscribers are extremely upset at the AT&T cold shoulder and short notice. It is also interesting AT&T is unable overcome this E911 technical hurdle, since AT&T is also the local landline company (SBC/AT&T) in many areas where VOIP cancellation notices are being received.
Patents

Submission + - Brazil voids Merck AIDS drug patent

JoeBackward writes: "Merck has this useful anti-AIDS drug Elfavirenz, and Brazil has lots of poor people with AIDS. So, after trying really hard to get Merck to cooperate on pricing, the Brazilian government has decided to take a "compulsory license" to the patent, and get the drug from a factory in India. This "compulsory license" is basically a way to take the patent by eminent domain. Check out this story from the Reuters news agency."
Security

Word Vulnerability Compromised US State Dept. 207

hf256 writes "Apparently hackers using an undisclosed (at the time) vulnerability compromised the State Departments network using a Word document sent as an email attachment. Investigators found multiple instances of infection, informed Microsoft, then had to sever internet connectivity to avoid leaking too much data!"
Linux Business

Submission + - HP: "Massive Deals for Linux Desktops" ahe

Doener writes: "Will the critical mass für Linux on the Desktop soon be reached? LinuxWorld writes :

'Last month, HP revealed that it is involved in 'a number of massive deals for Linux desktops' and called such deals 'an indicator of critical mass.' This is according to Doug Small, the worldwide director of open source and Linux marketing at HP. Small cited a potential sale that could put thousands of Linux-based HP desktops into an enterprise organization.'

Ist this — as LinxWorld reckons — the "news that open source fans have been waiting for"?"
Republicans

Submission + - Conservatives buy VT Professor's domain name

overlook77 writes: "I wanted to make a website honoring the life and bravery of Liviu Librescu, the Engineering professor slain at Virginia Tech this week. However, a WHOIS reveals that LIVIULIBRESCU.COM was purchased on April 17th by Politech Consulting, a conservative fundraising organization. This raises the ethical question: should a political group buy this man's own name for what could easily be interpreted as a strategic move to deflect a website advocating gun control laws? I am very curious to know what the rest of the Slashdot community thinks of this. http://www.networksolutions.com/whois/results.jsp? domain=LiviuLibrescu.com"
Supercomputing

Submission + - Linux runs into a scalability problem

jcaruso writes: "What happens when you try to run Linux on a 4,096-processor system? You get some "interesting kernel behavior," says this article, which lays out the problems and some potential solutions."
The Almighty Buck

Submission + - Fight Fraudulant Disaster Domains

UnderAttack writes: "The SANS Internet Strom Center (ISC) setup a web page listing about 500 domains that use keywords related to the Virginia Tech shooting. Turns out that most of them got registered just the last 2 days. While some are used for innocent purposes, others are used for fraud. The page allows everybody with an ISC or DShield account to help categorize the pages. The ISC did the same after Hurricane Katrina, which spurred a lot of these scum-domains."

Feed Google Makes It Easier For Sites To Cut Off Free Publicity (techdirt.com)

Google's found itself on the end of some lawsuits from people who aren't happy that it links to their web content, usually making the off-base accusation that Google's somehow stealing their content, rather than realizing it makes it more valuable by making it easier to find. While a robots.txt file or the use of meta tags already gave web masters a relatively simple way to keep their content out of Google and other search engines, that apparently wasn't enough, so Google has beefed up its site removal tools, giving webmasters several new ways and options to control how their pages are indexed and displayed in its results. Will this stop the lawsuits and complaints? That's doubtful, since the existing ability for site owners to get themselves taken out of Google's results wasn't enough. Furthermore, it seems like this could open up a new avenue of complaints for Google, since it gives third parties the ability to have pages removed from Google's cache or have pages that contain personal information removed from the index. Anything Google does is unlikely to make much difference, since its power and riches makes it an attractive target for lawsuits. Meanwhile, it would also seem that anything Google does won't make some site owners understand how it and other search engines are their friends, not their foes.
Microsoft

Submission + - MS releases Media Player Firefox plugin

SilentChris writes: Microsoft today released a new Media Player plugin for Firefox. According to MS's Port 25 blog it's backwards compatible to Windows Media Player 6.4. The plugins are Windows XP and Vista only, but if you have to watch WMV video (CNN.com anyone?) at least it's less likely to crash your browser.
Security

Submission + - Spoofing insecure pages as secure

Anorlunda writes: "My broker, TD Ameritrade, has a home page that is not secure according to Firefox or IE. It does not display the SSL icon or the name of the certificate signer in the status bar. Nevertheless, it has log in fields and it shows a little picture of a padlock beside those fields.

TD Ameritrade's customer service people wrote to me with the explantion that although the page is not secure, the login segment of the page is secure, and that I should not the padlock icon. To me that's baloney. Nobody should trust a page to be secure just because the content of the page itself claims to be secure. Especially for something likely to be the target of crooks like a brokerage account login.

What do Slashdotters say? Am I paranoid, or are the TD Ameritrade programmers brain dead?"
Linux Business

Submission + - Linux over Broadband

rar42 writes: "BabelDisc Computing are advertising a trouble free computing service based on Linux. They provide you with a CD that boots your computer and then connects over broadband to their application servers. This a subscription service with a monthly fee of 1 GBP — about 2 dollars.

There is a little technical detail on the site, but it is a safe bet that they are using something like FreeNX to compress the X session between server and client."

Slashdot Top Deals

"More software projects have gone awry for lack of calendar time than for all other causes combined." -- Fred Brooks, Jr., _The Mythical Man Month_

Working...