Follow Slashdot stories on Twitter

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
AI

Submission + - Creator Of Lisp, John McCarthy, Dead At84 (techcrunch.com)

edesio writes: The creator of Lisp and arguably the father of modern artificial intelligence, John McCarthy, died today. He studied mathematics with the famous John Nash at Princeton and, notably, held the first “computer-chess” match between scientists in the US and the USSR. He transmitted the moves by telegraph.

See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_McCarthy_(computer_scientist)

Security

Submission + - Mass SQL Injection Attack Opens 180K Sites (itworld.com)

itwbennett writes: "Kevin Fogarty is blogging about a new SQL injection attack that has cracked 180,000 sites so far. This attack 'differs from existing SQL injections like the ones that cracked Sony 17 or 18 times because it attacks not one site at a time, but dozens.' The attacks started Oct. 9, according to web security provider Armorize, which also found only six of 43 virus detectors can pick up the malicious code."

Submission + - Giant single-celled organism found deep underwater (ucsd.edu)

Hentes writes: Giant unicellular organisms were found deep in the Mariana Trench. The cells, about 10cm in size, were found at depths up to 10,641 meters. The organisms, called xenophyophores, only exist in deep sea and thus are very hard to study. The researchers of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography used untethered autonomous probes called 'dropcams' to capture images of the organisms.
The Internet

Submission + - The Netherlands surpasses South Korea in broadband (readwriteweb.com)

AmyVernon writes: Akamai's servers carry about a third of the world's internet traffic, so a snapshot its traffic is a pretty solid look at worldwide internet trends. Read Write Web plowed through their second-quarter report (just released) for the best tidbits, including:
  Attack traffic "originated from 192 unique countries/regions around the world. Taiwan was the top attack traffic source, accounting for 10% of observed attack traffic in total. Myanmar and the United States held the second and third place spots, respectively."
  The Netherlands leaped above South Korea in broadband adoption rates, in part because South Korea's connection rates dropped 17% over the same quarter a year earlier. (Also, though the U.S. remains a distant third, it is continually making gains.)
Rhode Island surpassed Delaware as the U.S. state with the fastest average connection speed — 8.2 Mbps.
  Just one of the top 10 cities in average connection speed — San Jose, Calif. — is from outside Japan and South Korea. The next U.S. city on the list is no. 51, Fredericksburg, Va.

Google

Submission + - Concerns Over Google Modifying SSL Behavior (vortex.com)

Lauren Weinstein writes: "Google is handling SSL search queries on https://www.google.com/ in a manner significantly different than the standard, expected SSL end-to-end behavior — specifically relating to referer query data. These changes give the potential appearance of favoring sites that buy ads from Google. Regardless of the actual intentions, I do not believe that this appearance is in the best interests of Google in the long run."
NASA

Submission + - NASA to test new atomic clock (physorg.com)

edesio writes: "Many satellites and spacecraft require accurate timing signals to ensure the proper operation of scientific instruments. In the case of GPS satellites, accurate timing is essential, otherwise anything relying on GPS signals to navigate could be misdirected.

The third technology demonstration planned by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory is the Deep Space Atomic Clock. The DSAC team plans to develop a small, low-mass atomic clock based on mercury-ion trap technology and demonstrate it in space."

Submission + - DHS scaremongering while Anonymous actually gettin (pastebin.com) 2

ClemensW writes: While the DHS released a scaremongering report on Anonymous yesterday, Anonymous has silently and unnoticed by any mainstream media taken down 40+ child porn websites, deleted the largest collection of childporn on the internet and published the usernames of almost 1600 pedophiles. Makes one wonder who the bad guys actually are...
Cloud

Submission + - Cloud slashes cost of video encoding at PBS, Zenco

An anonymous reader writes: The Cloud is changing the economics of video transcoding and encoding — for broadcasters and webmasters, for TV and the iPad. And all the formats inbetween. With a host of new devices, many with their ‘own’ video formats, rapidly making their way to consumers to supporting streaming video, libraries of video content, and more. Zencoder changes the game, significantly less cost and far more performance.

PBS moved to Zencoder and details are below. New benchmarking from independent CloudHarmony are below and shows Zencoder’s cloud-based video transcoding service leads the industry in performance across every file type and use case, including video in standard-definition (SD) and high definition (HD). Zencoder’s service is up to 10x performance advantage.

CloudHarmony Video Encoding Benchmarks
http://blog.cloudharmony.com/2011/10/encoding-performance-comparing-zencoder.html

PBS switch to Zencoder :
https://zencoder-blog.s3.amazonaws.com/Zencoder_PBS_Case_Study.pdf?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAJ6C33B3F6OOMQYRA&Expires=1491757288&Signature=wHrFa8iOaIWnshVZQA4bw04373I%3D
Data Storage

Submission + - Entry-Level NAS Storage Servers Compared (infoworld.com)

snydeq writes: "InfoWorld's Desmond Fuller provides an in-depth comparison of five entry-level NAS storage servers, including cabinets from Iomega, Netgear, QNAP, Synology, and Thecus. 'With so many use cases and potential buyers, the vendors too often try to be everything to everyone. The result is a class of products that suffers from an identity crisis — so-called business storage solutions that are overloaded with consumer features and missing the ease and simplicity that business users require,' Fuller writes. 'Filled with 10TB or 12TB of raw storage, my test systems ranged in price from $1,699 to $3,799. Despite that gap, they all had a great deal in common, from core storage services to performance. However, I found the richest sets of business features — straightforward setup, easy remote access, plentiful backup options — at the higher end of the scale.'"
Apple

Submission + - Dropbox CEO Turned Down Nine-Figure Buyout From St (blogspot.com)

quantr writes: ""According to an article in Forbes, Dropbox founder Drew Houston and his business partner met with Steve Jobs in Cupertino in 2009. The purpose of the meeting? Jobs wanted to buy Dropbox for a reportedly nine-figure sum. The outcome of the meeting? Houston essentially said thanks but no thanks; Dropbox wasn’t for sale."

Submission + - Parking Garage to Become A Data Center (datacenterknowledge.com) 1

1sockchuck writes: A parking garage in Seattle will soon become a new data center. Colocation provider Equinix says it plans to house up to 1,000 cabinets of servers in the facility once the conversion is complete. The six-story garage is located next to the Westin Building, Seattle's primary Internet connectivity hub. A similar carpark-to-server farm conversion has been contemplated in Chicago.
Debian

Submission + - Updated Debian 6.0: 6.0.3 released (debian.org)

edesio writes: The Debian project is pleased to announce the third update of its stable distribution Debian 6.0 (codename squeeze). This update mainly adds corrections for security problems to the stable release, along with a few adjustments to serious problems. Security advisories were already published separately and are referenced where available.
Debian

Submission + - Debian 6.0 “Squeeze” frozen (debian-news.net)

edesio writes: From debian-news.net:

"In this very moment, during the ongoing annual Debian Developer
Conference “Debconf10 in New York, Debian’s release managers have
announced a major step in the development cycle of the upcoming stable release Debian 6.0 “Squeeze”: Debian “Squeeze” has now been frozen.

In consequence this means that no more new features will be added and
all work will now be concentrated on polishing Debian “Squeeze” to
achieve the quality Debian stable releases are known for.

The upcoming release will use Linux 2.6.32 as its default kernel
in the installer and on all Linux architectures."

Comment Re:2010 (Score 1) 233

A major bank (Banco Real of Santander Group) in Brazil had a problem on New Years Day: its ATMs would not accept 2010-01-04 (Monday) as a working day. But accept current day (on 2010-01-01) as valid and then send a message stating the transaction would be schedule for 2010-01-04!

Slashdot Top Deals

E = MC ** 2 +- 3db

Working...