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Software

Submission + - Why is Firehose so hostile? 15

Submitted by
NewYorkCountryLawyer
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: "Can anyone explain to me why Slashdot's Firehose is made to be so unfriendly? It's a great idea, but in practice it's infuriating. If you see a submitted article, and click on one of the links, you can't go back to the story. You have to start all over again. If you set the filters to what you're interested in, you have to re-set them all over again. Even if you just RTFA you are punished by losing your settings. Why shouldn't Slashdot encourage people to participate in the Firehose. For a busy person, it's almost impossible to be involved. And this bizarre lack of 'stickiness' makes everything take 10 times as much times as it needs to."
The Internet

Journal Journal: Improving Slashdot Moderation

Journal by ILikeRed

Here's an idea for improving moderation for the Slashdot Editors.

Ask the members what Slashdot Topics they are experts in. This data could then be used for two things that would be useful to Slashdot, improving moderation, and targeted advertising.
Google

Submission + - Google Unveils Hybrid Car that plugs into Grid (foxnews.com)

Submitted by
mytrip
mytrip writes: "Not content with seeking to control the information super-highway, Google wants to influence what kind of car you drive.

The online search company has unveiled a new, hyper-advanced model of hybrid car that can be charged directly from the grid, and, when its battery is not in use, the stored electricity can be sold back to the utility company.

By selling their excess electricity to the grid owners of plug-in hybrids will be able to earn up to $3,000 a year. Such savings are likely to be offset by the higher initial retail price of hybrid cars."
Books

Submission + - OJ Simpson's Book Leaked to BitTorrent (digg.com)

Submitted by
joshzweig
joshzweig writes: "In 2006 O.J Simpson announced he was releasing a book in which he would detail what would have happened, had he really committed the horrific murders of his ex-wife and her boyfriend in 1994. After public outrage, the book was shelved and 400,000 copies of the book were destroyed but now a digital version has been leaked to BitTorrent.

"If I Did It" is the title of an unreleased book by ex-NFL player and actor O.J Simpson where he gave a hypothetical account of what would've happened, had he committed the double knife-murder of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman in 1994. According to reports, Simpson was paid $3.5m for writing the book.

The PDF file is 118 pages, and 8 chapters long. The author's note is only eight words long, reading "If I did it, this is what happened." Unfortunately, the book is not very well written, and is exceptionally dull."
Democrats

Submission + - YouTube bungles CNN debate? (10zenmonkeys.com)

Submitted by
destinyland
destinyland writes: "YouTube promised CNN they'd supply questions for a July debate of the Presidential candidates — by letting users upload video questions. But five days in they've only received 50 submissions — and a lot of them were pretty stupid. The Washington Post rounded up the best videos they could find. But if this experiment with interactive democracy is doomed to fail, what's the ultimate lesson? Maybe it's that if you're going to unveil an interactive democracy online, you need to make sure you actually promote it!"
Biotech

Submission + - Vivoleum: Exxon's Answer to Fuel Crisis

Submitted by
robotim
robotim writes: "At one of North America's largest gas and oil conferences, Exxon unveiled a new product called "Vivoleum" as a possible future fuel when we run out of oil. The conference took place in Calgary, Canada (where Canada's largest oil reserves reside,) and the Exxon representatives were not paid officials from the company, but rather volunteers from the Yes Men. Wired has two articles, one with the press release from the event and another is a Q&A with Andy Bichlbaum from the Yes Men. Interestingly, not everyone seems to think burning people for fuel is a bad idea."
Spam

Submission + - Where does a sysadmin go for help?

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: I believe I have stumbled up a new FreeBSD based rootkit/hack/backdoor/whatever you want to call it. I'm pretty sure I know how it was installed on the server, I've got a pretty good idea of how most of it works, but there are parts that are over my head. I am not an idiot, but I am lacking the reverse engineer skills required to see exactly how it works. I am leery about posting my findings to a public forum because the last thing I want to do is give the script kiddies a new toy to play with without having full knowledge of how it works myself. I would prefer to disclose what I've found to a trustworthy third party who can elaborate on my findings and then have the findings posted publicly should this turn out to be something new. Please keep in mind I have googled, yahooed, searched forums, searched usenet for any mention of what I have found and have come up empty handed. It's entirely possible this is nothing new, and I am a n00b, but in either case my question is: where does a sysadmin go when he doesn't have and can't find an answer? PS: I am already aware that in Soviet Russia, answer finds you. Unfortunately I don't live in Soviet Russia. :(
Wireless Networking

Submission + - Electromagnetic Sensitivity?

Submitted by
bibliophage
bibliophage writes: "Here's an article from the UK's Daily Mail about a woman who has symptoms, including "hair loss, sickness, high blood-pressure, digestive and memory problems, severe headaches and dizziness," she believes are caused by sensitivity to electromagnetic radiation from household appliances, wireless devices, and other common technologies. After wallpapering her house in a special foil-backed paper, she claims her symptoms abated."
Privacy

Submission + - Woman Denied Teaching Degree Over MySpace Photo

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A woman was denied a teaching degree by Pennsylvania based Millersville University at the last minute, due to a "Drunken Pirate" photo of her on her own MySpace page. According to the story, even though Ms. Snyder received "competent" or "superior" ratings in her final student-teacher evaluation, she was ultimately denied the teaching degree. Conestoga Valley High School threatened to no longer accept student-teachers from Millersville University if Ms. Snyder went unpunished for her "Drunken Pirate" photo.
Microsoft

Submission + - OLPC to run Windows, come to the US

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: 'Yesterday Nicholas Negroponte, former director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab now head of the nonprofit One Laptop Per Child project, gave analysts and journalists an update on the OLPC project. Two big changes were announced — the $100 OLPC is now the $175 OLPC, and it will be able to run Windows. Even in a free and open market where there are free and legal alternatives to using Windows and Office, there's a huge demand for Microsoft software. The OLPC was seen as a way for open source Linux distributions to achieve massive exposure in developing countries, but now Negroponte says that the OLPC machine will be able to run Windows as well as Linux. Details are sketchy but Negroponte did confirm that the XO's developers have been working with Microsoft to get the OLPC up to spec for Windows.' We also find out that the OLPC gets a price hike and will officially come to the US. Could this be tied into Microsoft's new $3 Windows XP Starter and Office 2007 bundle? Now that the OLPC and Intel's Classmate PC can both run Windows, is Linux in the developing world in trouble?
Movies

Submission + - "Magneto" Announced, "Wolverine" i

Submitted by
eldavojohn
eldavojohn writes: "While Hugh Jackman is working on "Wolverine," A second X-Men spinoff, "Magneto," has been announced that will center on Ian McKellen's character of the same name. From the article, "McKellen is unlikely to feature prominently in the new film however as it will tell the story of Magneto's early life as he struggles to survive a Nazi death camp before hunting down war criminals in revenge." The director has been announced as David Guyer, the director of Blade Trinity while the screenplay is being written by Sheldon Turner who has also written the screenplays to "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning" & "The Longest Yard.""
Role Playing (Games)

The Call On Lord of the Rings Online 64

Posted by Zonk from the a-wizard-is-never-late-frodo-baggins dept.
The Beta has been going on for some time now, and for all intents and purposes Lord of the Rings Online has launched. Pre-order players will be able to move their characters to the live game when the title officially lights up on April 24th, and commentators on Massively Multiplayer games have weighed in. Their opinion, generally, is unanimous: buy it. Tobold contributes a full-on review, as does CVG. AFK Gamer doesn't go in for such long-form opinions, but he still has a lot to say. Specifically, Foton comments on the good, the okay, and the bad, as well as a few words on the game's (somewhat out of the ordinary) classes. "[The game is] deep and broad. An MMOG, any MMOG, with its premium box price and its premium subscription prices, needs to offer more activities than: you can kill stuff, and, umm, you can kill other players, and umm, you could check the auctions/trade channel. There's many ways to screw around in this MMOG: Deeds, accomplishments, exploration (easy to outrun higher level mobs), titles, player-made music, engaging quest text, a solid start to the crafting system, MONSTER PLAY!!! There's probably more, but that's all I've tried so far."

Mars Space Suit Trials in North Dakota 124

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the dust-catchers dept.
AbsoluteZero writes to tell us Space.com is reporting that a new spacesuit prototype being designed for Mars exploration is currently being tested in North Dakota. From the article: "The Mars spacesuit is the culmination of 14 months of work by faculty and students with the North Dakota Space Grant Consortium, which received $100,000 from NASA to develop the prototype. The local public is invited to view the Mars spacesuit in action on Sat. May 6, weather permitting, at its North Dakota test site."

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