Please create an account to participate in the Slashdot moderation system

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
Editorial

Submission + - Reactor that chews up old nuke waste to be built?

zentropa writes: "A nuclear reactor that chews up old radioactive waste, can never melt down and cannot be used to make weapons? Sounds too good to be true, but that's apparently the promise of a new type of thorium reactor, according to a feature in Cosmos Magazine. It's theorectically possible to build such a reactor, but no-one's done it yet. But now the Norwegians have decided to seriously investigate the construction of such an accelerator-driven thorium-fuelled plant. Why isn't everyone looking into this?"
Mozilla

Submission + - In-depth interview with Mozilla CEO Mitchell Baker

SlinkySausage writes: "APC Magazine in Australia has posted an 8,000 word interview with Mozilla CEO Mitchell Baker about where Firefox came from and where it's going. Baker talks about putting Firefox on mobile phones; how Firefox will take on Flash and Silverlight with open source animation and video rendering; where the $55million a year Firefox earns comes from; the struggle with patents in the software industry; how businesses are recontemplating moving to Firefox rather than dealing with the upgrade to IE7, and why Mozilla hasn't yet built an ad-blocker into Firefox. She also talks about how Firefox 3.0 will have a lot more capability around "branding" — will it be the corporate visual theming disaster that was IE4? And how Mozilla's small development office in New Zealand is developing the ability to run web abbs in Firefox without an internet connection. Mozilla Japan's cartoon character, "Foxkeh" makes an appearance too."
Google

Submission + - Google's Blogger output fails XHTML standards

saccade.com writes: "The headers generated by Google's Blogger web site assert it's output is complient with the "XHTML 1.0 Strict" document type definition. Well, John Walker tested it against that standard, and discovered even the simplest Blogger page fails with 73 errors. Walker comments:

...whatever standard you choose, you should be willing to be held to it, and in this case the blogging platform used by tens of millions of people falls flat on its face. Personally, I would be stone ashamed to ship something in this state. That Google, with what amounts to unlimited funds in our talent-constrained industry, plus the putatively smartest and certainly most smug technical staff, contents themselves with this is perhaps an indication that before expounding on issues of good and evil, one should first address the more mundane matter of competence.
"
United States

Submission + - EPA modifiying fuel efficiency standards in 2008

antifoidulus writes: Yahoo finance is running an article detailing how the EPA is changing fuel efficiency standards for 2008 models. This seems to be the first overhall of the miles per gallon(1 mpg=.42 kpl) since the 1980's. Previous tests assumed that drivers did not exceed 55 mph(88 kph), that drivers never used their air conditioner and heaters. The new tests push cars up to 80 mph(128 kph) and drive them in hot and cold weather conditions. Naturally the reported MPG number has dropped, for example the Prius' reported mileage dropped 20%, but the new number reflects what most drivers see. And as always, your mileage may vary. (Your kilometres per litre may vary)
Windows

Submission + - Microsoft starts selling Linux??

antibios writes: Microsoft and Novell says Dell has agreed to buy Suse Linux Enterprise Server certificates from Microsoft and that the computer maker will set up a services and marketing program aimed at getting users of open-source platforms to switch to the new Suse Linux offering.

http://www.theage.com.au/news/Business/Dell-Micros oft-Novell-to-push-Linux/2007/05/07/1178390206427. html
Sci-Fi

Submission + - Favorite flamewar?

An anonymous reader writes: Favorite flamewar?

Kirk vs. Picard
Joel vs. Mike
Tom Baker vs. Chris Eccelston
FreeBSD vs. OpenBSD
Linux vs. Windows
KDE vs. GNOME
CowboyNeal vs. Polls
Education

Submission + - Ants rank as first true animal teachers

DownintheUpside writes: "So everyone knows a good teacher when they see one right? They already know the information to be taught and they slow down to teach it to you. With this kind of help, you learn far faster than you could on your own. Other great qualities (human) are they listen to your questions and can steer you in the right direction to find the answer. Well, a research team in England have discovered a species that have these exacting qualities of a 'true teacher'... http://www.ignorancedenied.com/viewthread.php?tid= 5728"
The Courts

Submission + - Aussie pirate extradited to the US

doll_yoko writes: "Setting a disturbing precedent, the Australian Government has co-operated fully with US authorities to facilitate the extradition of Australian resident Hew Griffith to face charges in Virginia for US copyright violations. Griffith was allegedly the leader of a New South Wales branch of Drink or Die, a software cracking network, which circulated warez for free download. He has been fighting extradition in the Australian courts since the US Department of Justice charged him in 2003. He is facing a fine of US $500,000 and up to 10 years in prison. He will be sentenced in June 2007. http://www.smh.com.au/news/technology/aussie-softw are-pirate-extradited/2007/05/06/1178390182639.htm l"
Microsoft

Submission + - Question on Vista's Testing

LiquidNitrogen writes: The author of the blog cacheyourcash has found three bugs in less than 4 months that would question the extent of testing or even design that has gone to built windows Vista. Some of the silliest bugs in Vista are "Showing file size in negative (minus)" or "not updating the status bar on hitting refresh". It seems small pieces like these which though are used every day were not tested thoroughly or dropped due to other reasons.
Censorship

EFF and Dvorak Blame the Digg Revolt On Lawyers 262

enharmonix writes "A bit of an update on the recent Digg revolt over AACS. The NYTimes has taken notice and written quite a decent article that actually acknowledges that the take-down notices amount to censorship and documents instances of the infamous key appearing in purely expressive form. I was pleased to see the similarity to 2600 and deCSS was not lost on the Times either. More interesting is that the EFF's Fred von Lohmann blames the digg revolt on lawyers. And in an opinion piece, John Dvorak expands on that theme."
The Courts

Submission + - Aussie software pirate extradited

JEGSYDAU writes: The Sydney Morning Hearald has an article on how the Australian Government has allowed a national to be extridited to the U.S. for leading the now-disbanded pirate group Drink or Die. The article claims it is a "triumph for US authorities, demonstrating their ability to enforce US laws protecting US companies against Australians in Australia, with the co-operation of the Australian Government."
Media

Submission + - Wikipedia as a political battleground

Denis Troller writes: "During the French debate between the two presidential contestants on TV thursday 04/03, among other discussions, Segolene Royal asked her rival if he new what generation the EPR (Europeean Pressurized Reactor). "Fourth", was Nicolas Sarkozy's answer, which Segolene Royal corrected saying "you're wrong, it's third".

The issue at hand is not the trivia exchanged by the condidates, but the fact reported by the French journal "Liberation" [liberation, in french].

Under a few hours, the french EPR page on wikipedia underwent a succession of changes (about 50), Sarkozy's supporters trying to mask their candidate's mistake, and Segolene's trying to maintain the correct information. An interesting twist on wikipedia's open modification scheme and the growing usage of "online medium" for political campaigning, be it in France or in the US (see Obama's MySpace "scandal" on that matter)."
PHP

Submission + - PHP 5.2.2 and 4.4.7 Released

daeg writes: PHP 5.2.2 and 4.4.7 have been released with a plethora of security updates. Many of the security notifications come from the Month of PHP Bugs effort, and range from double freed memory to bugs in functions that allow attackers to enable register_globals, to memory corruption with unserialize(), to input validation flaws that allow e-mail header injections, with an unhealthy sprinkling of other bugs and flaws fixed. All administrators that run any version of PHP are encouraged to update immediately.
The Internet

Submission + - Is "Personal" Computing Dead?

jg21 writes: Yahoo!'s Jeremy Zawodny recently asked What the heck is Web 2.0 anyway? and received a set of responses reminiscent of those garnered by The Reg back in 2005, which famously concluded, based on its readers' responses, that Web 2.0 was made up of 12% badger's paws, 6% JavaScript worms, and 26% nothing. Nonetheless, as Social Computing (SoC) widens and deepens its footprint, we seem to be witnessing the death of "Personal" Computing. SoC has already, for better or for worse, become an academic field of study.

Slashdot Top Deals

It's a naive, domestic operating system without any breeding, but I think you'll be amused by its presumption.

Working...