quadra23 - Slashdot User

Microsoft Policies Help Virus Writers, Says Security Firm 166

Posted by timothy on Tuesday December 22, 2009 @01:00PM from the this-door-to-remain-unlocked-at-all-times dept.

Barence writes "Security firm Trend Micro has accused Microsoft of giving malware writers a helping hand by advising users not to scan certain files on their PC because 'they are not at risk of infection.' Trend Micro warns that by making such information available, Microsoft is effectively creating a hit list for malware writers. 'Following the recommendations does not pose a significant threat as of now, but it has a very big potential of being one,' the company's researcher, David Sancho, writes on theTrend Micro blog."

Submission + - Signs of Life Detected on the Moon? (spacefellowship.com)

Submitted by Matt_dk on Thursday December 17, 2009 @08:33AM

Matt_dk writes: Surendra Pal, associate director of the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) Satellite Centre says that Chandrayaan-1 picked up signatures of organic matter on parts of the Moon’s surface. “The findings are being analyzed and scrutinized for validation by ISRO scientists and peer reviewers,” Pal said. At a press conference Tuesday at the American Geophysical Union fall conference, scientists from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter also hinted at possible organics locked away in the lunar regolith. When asked directly about the Chandrayaan-1 claim of finding life on the Moon, NASA’s chief lunar scientist, Mike Wargo, certainly did not dismiss the idea.

Response To California's Large-Screen TV Regulation 619

Posted by kdawson on Friday November 20, 2009 @11:55AM from the i-want-my-i-want-my dept.

An anonymous reader writes "It's great that unelected bureaucrats in California are clamoring to save energy, but when they target your big-screen TVs for elimination, consumers and manufacturers are apt to declare war. CEDIA and the CEA are up in arms over this. Audioholics has an interesting response that involves setting the TVs in 'SCAM' mode to meet the energy criteria technically without having to add additional cost or increase costs to consumers. 'In this mode, the display brightness/contrast settings would be set a few clicks to the right of zero, audio would be disabled and backlighting would be set to minimum. The power consumption should be measured in this mode much like an A/V receiver power consumption is measured with one channel driven at full rated power and the other channels at 1/8th power.' This is an example of an impending train wreck of unintended consequences, and many are grabbing the popcorn and pulling up chairs to watch."

Comment Yeah, the Peter Principle (Score 1) 541

by quadra23 on Wednesday August 29, 2007 @01:13AM (#20394631) Attached to: Transitioning From Developer To Management?

Ever heard the saying "people are promoted to the level of their own incompetence"?

Yes, and its not just a saying, its called the Peter Principle. And according to Wikipedia, the official quote is: "In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence." I would have to agree with original beware comment. I also feel this quote from the Wikipedia article is also meaningful in this context and provides some additional insight:

"The employee's incompetence is not necessarily exposed as a result of the higher-ranking position being more difficult -- simply, that job is different from the job in which the employee previously excelled, and thus requires different work skills, which the employee usually does not possess. For example, a factory worker's excellence in his job can earn him promotion to manager, at which point the skills that earned him his promotion no longer apply to his job."

Submission + - Wikipedia Blocked by Schools

Submitted by

Malkara

on Tuesday February 20, 2007 @12:43PM

Malkara writes: "Apparently my school system, in Central Florida, has blocked Wikipedia access on all school computers. I had known wikipedia was blocked for the last week, but I was just recently informed that it had indeed been a conscious decision. Apparently they're worried about people quoting directly from Wikipedia, and decided to take the easy way out by simply completely blocking the website in all schools from Elementary to High School."

Submission + - Sounds that Indicate your Hard Drive is Failing

Submitted by

Snoring Cure

on Monday February 05, 2007 @08:57PM

Snoring Cure writes: "Hitachi Global Storage has a support document with actual recordings of the various sounds hard-drives make when failing. If your drive sounds like "Head Damage 4.wav" you probably don't need to read a tech note to work out that you have a problem."

Unreal 3 Engine to Skip the Wii 245

Posted by Zonk on Monday February 05, 2007 @07:06PM from the it's-okay-wii-you-can-still-be-mario's-friend dept.

Mark Rein, speaking with Chris Kohler and Game|Life, has stated that Epic's next-gen Unreal engine will never make it to the Wii. Touting the virtues of high-definition gaming, the 360, and the PS3, Rein said that their engine is simply not designed for Nintendo's hardware. He also quickly mentioned the upcoming deal between Epic and Square Enix: "It's definitely a challenge to convince Japanese developers to work with a third-party technology like ours. But Square Enix, they're the granddaddy. I'm hoping that'll be pulling the stopper out of the drain, and we'll gradually crack that nut. We've been looking to hire somebody in Japan, to be our representative there. " Update: 02/06 04:19 GMT by Z : Accidentally misattributed the interview to CVG when it was a Game|Life piece. Fixed. Also, Chris made sure to point out that a partner of Epic's is trying to get UE3 onto the Wii, so ... maybe someday?

Submission + - Google Lights the Open Source Fuse on OSX

Submitted by

Jim Buzbee

on Thursday January 11, 2007 @09:41PM

Jim Buzbee writes: "Thanks to the Google Macintosh Team OSX users now have a port of the Linux File System in User Space (FUSE) to play with. MacFuse brings along support for NTFS, CryptoFS, SSHFS and others to the Mac platform. Kudos to Google!"

Submission + - Firefox 3 Plans and IE8 Speculation

Submitted by

ReadWriteWeb

on Thursday January 11, 2007 @05:08PM

ReadWriteWeb writes: "Information about the next versions of Firefox and Internet Explorer suggest that the two biggest browsers are heading in different directions. Mozilla has published a wiki page detailing its plans for the next version of Firefox, codenamed "Gran Paradiso". Among the mandatory requirements listed for FF3 are improving the add-on experience, providing an extensible bookmarks back-end platform, adding more support for web services "to act as content handlers" — all of which show that Firefox wants to be an independent information broker rather than a simple HTML renderer in its next version. Also in the works is Microsoft's IE8. According to ActiveWin.com, a Microsoft official at CES told them that work has already begun for IE 8 and it may be released as a final product "within 18-24 months". Looking ahead, it's obvious that IE will continue to hook into the advanced functionality that Vista offers.

So while IE7 and Firefox 2 were more alike than different (feature-wise they're practically identical!), with IE8 and FF3 we will likely see the two biggest browsers head off into different directions."

Submission + - A Cheaper iPhone?

Submitted by mattnyc99 on Thursday January 11, 2007 @04:49PM

mattnyc99 writes: Now that it's been a full 48 hours since the iPhone announcement, some of the "wow" factor is transitioning into the cold reality of how expensive the thing is. The result? A ton of chatter about cheaper alternatives (or at least Apple's coming competition), from the open-sourced Moko to Samsung's secret weapon to an LG model that the masses are claiming Steve Jobs ripped off. Would you settle for anything less than the iPhone cometh?

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