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Submission + - Stuxnet was designed to subtly interfere with uran (wired.com)

Submitted by
ceswiedler
ceswiedler writes: "Wired.com is reporting that the Stuxnet worm was apparently designed to subtly interfere with uranium enrichment by periodically speeding or slowing specific frequency converter drives spinning between 807Hz and 1210Hz. The goal was not to cause a major malfunction (which would be quickly noticed), but rather to degrade the quality of the enriched uranium to the point where much of it wouldn't be useful in atomic weapons. Statistics from 2009 show that the number of enriched centrifuges operational in Iran mysteriously declined from about 4,700 to about 3,900 at around the time the worm was spreading in Iran."
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft vs McAfee:How free antivirus outperforme (zdnet.com)

Submitted by suraj.sun
suraj.sun writes: Microsoft vs. McAfee: How free antivirus outperformed paid

How effective is free antivirus software? I had a chance to see a real, in-the-wild example just this month, and the results were, to put it mildly, unexpected. The bottom line? Microsoft’s free antivirus solution found and removed a threat that two well-known paid products missed.

Microsoft Security Essentials had detected several files files that it considered malicious. One was a rigged PDF file (not shown here). The other was a single file in the Java cache folder on this system that contained three separate exploits. Using the information in the MSE history pane, I found the file and uploaded it to Virustotal.com, which is a free service that allows you to scan a suspicious file using 43 separate antivirus engines.

Only 17 of 43 antivirus products detected this as a threat. The full results page showed the identification, if any, for each product on the list. Microsoft, Symantec, Avast, and F-Secure were among the engines that flagged the file. But the majority didn’t.

ZDNet: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/bott/microsoft-vs-mcafee-how-free-antivirus-outperformed-paid/2614

Submission + - Michio Kaku: Invisibility Cloaks, Singularity (singularityhub.com)

Submitted by kkleiner
kkleiner writes: Michio Kaku is a physics professor at CUNY with an impressive resume of publications – he was among the first to develop string field theory. Despite this intimidating background, or perhaps due to it, Kaku is also a very approachable popularizer of science. He’s a best selling author many times over, hosts two radio programs that explain and discuss experiments and technology, and has an ongoing blog at Big Think wherein he answers questions from his readers. Recently, he discussed the possibilities of invisibility cloaks, programmable matter, and a Technological Singularity. According to Kaku, Moore’s Law alone isn’t enough to guarantee the rise of artificial intelligence, but we may have human like AI by the end of the 21st century.

Comment Re:Skidrow didn't do the hard work (Score 1) 443

by Beelzebud (#31979998) Attached to: Ubisoft's DRM Cracked — For Real This Time
You can play dumb and naive all you want, but give me a break. How were they pirating? Are you serious? They were pirating by making a website that gave away all the DRM hashes, and then helping to build an emulated server that let others play without paying. You can go with the 'proxy for offline play' if you like, but don't piss down my back and tell me it's raining.

Mod this one flamebait too, warez kiddies, the truth must hurt.

Comment Re:Perhaps nobody else cares? (Score 1) 952

by alphabetsoup (#31951802) Attached to: HDTV Has Ruined the LCD Market

The summary is slightly incorrect. What the OP is complaining about is actually the DPI, not pixels per se. He wants more pixels on a screen of given size, not larger screens. Its a position I completely agree with. Most LCD screens are only 96 dpi. Compare that to a Kindle screen at 170 dpi. Guess which one is easier on the eyes ?

Imagine a 22 inch screen with the resolution of a 30 inch display. In a OS like Win 7, just increase the DPI setting, and your text will be the same size as a 96 DPI screen, but far crisper. Sharper text, sharper pictures, less eye-strain.

Submission + - Best Resource for Identifying Legit Applications?

Submitted by bjb
bjb writes: While helping a somewhat computer illiterate person figure out a problem recently, they pointed out that their PDF files stopped working. Upon investigation I found something installed called "PDF Suite". Never hearing of it, I googled it with "malware" and other key words, but nothing turned up though my suspicion remained (and WOT somewhat confirmed.) So my question is where can you go to find if something is legitimate? Given the person's dial-up connection, downloading malware detection applications (and updates) is too heavy and I don't maintain a USB stick with such apps since I don't do this kind of thing often. Where can you quickly find information?
Windows

Submission + - Windows for UNIX lovers 2

Submitted by dkixk
dkixk writes: After having spent many years successfully avoiding all things Windows, not having ever owned a computer of my own that ran it nor done development on it for pay, I find myself sadly doing quite a lot of work on it. Having been a UNIX developer for more than a decade, I keep finding myself wondering things like "where does this damn thing put the core files?" or "is there really no way to start the %!$$@#% VS debugger without having first defined a 'solution' file?". So what I'm asking /. is for pointers to good references on Windows for UNIX lovers. I'm already prepared to get a deluge of helpful answers like "get a lobotomy" or "just walk away..." but perhaps I might get even one useful answer?

Submission + - LHC Broke Again (zdnet.com)

Submitted by thomasw_lrd
thomasw_lrd writes: The LHC was taken offline again do to cooling problems. Looks like it will be Monday before they can get it back up again.
Java

Submission + - Java devs spend 1/3 of their dev time on tooling 3

Submitted by nerdyglasses
nerdyglasses writes: Developers don't code 8 hours a day, more like 5 hours. Out of those 5 hours the Java guys spend 1/3 on waiting for tools to complete their tasks (compiling, packaging) and also for the resulting applications to run (redeploy) — altogether turnaround cost. This is a lot of wasted time and forced context switching. Take those numbers, average pay and # of Java devs and we see money sent to /dev/null. Are the other technology stacks also so developer unfriendly? How much time is wasted in the .NET/(your fav platform) realm?
HP

Submission + - HP’s Windows 7 Slate Strikes at the iPad (cnet.com)

Submitted by suraj.sun
suraj.sun writes: CNET News: http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10465596-1.html

Just hours after Apple revealed the first iPad commercial, HP has followed with a pair of video demos showing off its own touch-screen tablet, the Slate.

The first video, embedded below, feels remarkably similar to Apple's own ad, just sped up and with backing music that's a little harder-edged than Apple's usual choice of cutesy indie pop. Like the iPad as well as iPhone and iPod Touch ads, the demo features just the screen and a pair of hands swiping and pressing the Slate's screen.

Wired: http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/03/hp-slate-strikes-at-the-ipad/

“With this slate product, you’re getting a full web browsing experience in the palm of your hand,” posted Phil McKinney, vice president and chief technology officer for HP’s personal system group on the company’s blog ( http://www.nextbench.net/t5/Voodoo-Blog/The-HP-s-Slate-Device-Runs-The-Complete-Internet-Including-Flash/bc-p/53841#M1063 ). “No watered-down internet, no sacrifices.”

YouTube:

HP Slate: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3MSjwUrxT0

Adobe Demos Flash on HP Slate: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-p-RZAwQq0E
Microsoft

Submission + - The secret origin of Windows (technologizer.com)

Submitted by harrymcc
harrymcc writes: Windows has been so dominant for so long that it's easy to forget that Windows 1.0 was vaporware, mocked both outside and inside of Microsoft--and that its immediate successors were considered stopgaps until OS/2 was everywhere. Tandy Trower, the product manager who finally got Windows 1.0 out the door a quarter century ago has written a memoir of the experience. (He thought being assigned the much-maligned project was Microsoft's fiendish way of trying to get rid of him.) The story involves such still-signifcant figures as Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, Ray Ozzie, and Nathan Myhrvold; Trower left Microsoft only in November of 2009 after 28 years with the company.
Security

Submission + - NSA Still Ahead in Crypto - But Not by Much

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "Network World reports that former National Security Agency technical director Brian Snow told the RSA Conference that cryptographers for the NSA have been losing ground to their counterparts in universities and commercial security vendors for 20 years but still maintain the upper hand in the sophistication of their crypto schemes and in their ability to decrypt. "I do believe NSA is still ahead, but not by much — a handful of years," says Snow. "I think we've got the edge still." Snow added that that in the 1980s there was a huge gap between what the NSA could do and what commercial encryption technology was capable of. "Now we are very close together and moving very slowly forward in a mature field." The NSA has one key advantage with their deep staff of Ph.D. mathematicians and other cryptographic experts who work on securing traffic and breaking codes. "We cheat. We get to read what [academics] publish. We do not publish what we research," says Snow. Snow's claim of NSA superiority seemed to rankle some members at the conference. Adi Shamir, the "S" in the RSA encryption algorithm and a computer science professor at Israel's Weizmann Institute of Science, says when the titles of papers in NSA technical journals were declassified up to 1983, there were none that included public key encryption. "That demonstrates that NSA was behind," says Shamir although Snow replied that when technologies are developed separately in parallel, the developers don't necessarily use the same terms for them."

Submission + - How to deal with and improve poor handwriting?

Submitted by TrueKonrads
TrueKonrads writes: Many of slashdotters, yours truly included type on keyboard significantly more than write with pen on paper. However, when interviewing clients or generally taking notes, notebook is still the easiest way to do it. Unfortunately, my handwriting is barely legible and I am happy I can read what I wrote; giving notes to somebody else is simply out of question. How do you deal with it? Abandon notebooks at all or have you found a way to improve legibility?
Censorship

Submission + - Thanks readers for not expressing yourself (newenglishreview.org) 1

Submitted by
santosh maharshi
santosh maharshi writes: "Richard Dawkins has recently learned that he should thank his readers for not expressing themselves.

He ran a website for people of like mind, but noticed that many of the comments that appeared on it were beside the point, either mere gossip or insult. So he announced that he was going to exercise a little control over what appeared on it — as was his right since it was, after all, his site. Censorship is not failing to publish something, it is forbidding something to be published, which is not at all the same thing, though the difference is sometimes ill-appreciated.

The torrent of vile abuse that he received after his announcement took him aback. Its vehemence was shocking; someone called him ‘a suppurating rat’s rectum.’ He replied to this abuse with admirable restraint:

"Surely there has to be something wrong with people who can resort to such over-the-top language, overreacting so spectacularly to something so trivial".

"

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