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Submission + - Eric Raymond gets the clue stick from uber-hacker 11

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Eric Raymond recently wrote to defend open-source innovation against the vicious attacks of some rabid proprietary software zealot. The guy later complains that ESR quoted him out of context, and that he exaggerates the role hackers played in the development of the web, drawing a parallel with his own role in 3D games. ESR, apparently very unimpressed, misses the clue entirely and goes all nuclear on him: "You are articulating the assumptions of someone who is merely talented. I, on the other hand, have known geniuses [...] I may actually be one myself." End of story? Not quite, here is the kicker. The guy responds: "To the best of my knowledge, there are less than 30 people on this planet who can claim having designed a successful operating system entirely from scratch[...]. I'm one of them." It turns out that ESR's "victim", not content with having written one of the earliest 3D game, is also behind HP's Itanium virtualization technology...
Hardware Hacking

Inventor Open Sources "TV-B-Gone," and Why 340

Posted by kdawson from the patents-b-gone dept.
ptorrone writes "Inventor Mitch Altman explains why he open-sourced his TV-B-Gone kit, the original stealth keychain fob for defeating TVs in public places. The title of the article is 'Patent-B-Gone' and perhaps the most interesting fact is that Mitch's brother is a patent attorney, but he still decided to release an open source hardware version of the TV-B-Gone, with pretty impressive results."
Image

Programming .NET 3.5 Screenshot-sm 224

Posted by samzenpus
lamaditx writes "The world of the .NET framework is taken to the next level by the release of .NET 3.5. The intended audience of this book are experienced .NET programmers. There are no sections that tell you details about C#, SQL servers or anything like that. I don't recommend this book if you never worked on a .NET project and don't know how to set up a SQL database. You should be aware that the code is written in C#. You might use one of the software code converters if you prefer Visual Basic instead. I think the code is still readable even if you do not know C#. I appreciate the fact that the authors decided to use one language only because it keeps the book smaller. The authors assume you are using Visual Studio 2008. You don't necessarily need to update to 2008 if you are working with an older edition because you can use the free Express Edition to get started." Keep reading for the rest of Adrian's review.

Comment Re:This Just In (Score 1) 767

by Rasit (#25095053) Attached to: Palin Email Hacker Found

If the general public were half as smart as we give them credit for the world would have never seen Napoleian, Cesar (well actually the Romans solved that problem on their own), Castro, Hugo Chavez and more.

The others are fair enough, but what's dog food got to do with it?

Dog food? Didnt his whispering work?
Networking

ICANN Loses Control of Its Own Domain Names 61

Posted by Soulskill from the heal-thyself dept.
NotNormallyNormal writes "CBC picked up an AP story about ICANN recently losing control over two of their domain names on Thursday, June 26. A domain registrar run by the group transferred the domains to someone else. ICANN's press release had this to say: 'As has been widely reported, a number of domain names, including icann.com and iana.com were recently redirected to different DNS servers, allowing a group to provide visitors to those domains with their own website. It would appear the attack was sophisticated, combining both social and technological techniques, but was also limited and focused.' Comcast has had similar troubles lately as well."
Media

Submission + - FCC Gives Five Days Notice for Media Hearing (crosscut.com) 2

Submitted by
NewsCloud
NewsCloud writes: "FCC chairman Kevin Martin moved forward his plan for public hearings on media consolidation rules as reported by Slashdot earlier by granting just five days notice for the hearing in Seattle tonight. Prior to serving as FCC chair, Martin was Deputy General Counsel to Bush-Cheney 2000 and the Bush-Cheney recount team in Florida."
Announcements

Submission + - Digital mutiny: 2,000 page iraq leak (wikileaks.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Looks like them wikileaks guys are finally putting something out there.

from the site:

This spectacular 2,000 page US military leak consists of the names, group structure and equipment registers of all units in Iraq with US army equipment . It exposes secretive document exploitation centers, detainee operations, elements of the State Department, Air Force, Navy and Marines units, the Iraqi police and coalition forces from Poland, Denmark, Ukraine, Latvia, Slovakia, Romania, Armenia, Kazakhstan and El Salvador. The material represents nearly the entire order of battle for US forces in Iraq and is the first public revelation of many of the military units described. Among other matters it shows that the United States has violated the Chemical Weapons Convention.
Programming

Submission + - Establishing user identity on free sites.

Submitted by
RPalkovic
RPalkovic writes: "I'm in a bit of a predicament. I am an administrator of a smallish online game with free registration. We're running into a problem where users are violating the terms of service by creating and using multiple accounts, but since we do not collect any personal information, nor would we have a way to verify it if we did, we're running into problems enforcing the "one account per user" section of the terms of service.

We've tried tracking IP addresses and letting people know that if they are caught sharing in game transactions with anyone they've shared an IP address with will result in termination of their account. We've also given them a list of anyone who've they've shared an IP address with.

The problem with this method is that several of our players play in internet cafes, or at school, and we've even run into people who live in different countries who end up sharing an IP address because they use the same proxy server.

We tossed around the idea of changing the terms of service to limit players to one account per computer, but that would impact single computer households and would require the installation of an ActiveX control (or similar) to gather an NIC's mac address or somehow generate a unique hash based on the hardware configuration.

We also tossed around the idea of only allowing registration via Major ISP's or pay for e-mail providers, but that hampers those that ONLY play at an internet cafe or school network, as they may not have a non-free e-mail address.

Our main goal is to keep the site free, with a secondary goal of preventing any single user from having more than one account.

Have any other SlashDotters found a creative way to prevent users from having more than one account to an online service without charging a fee for registration, or being forced to verify user identity?"
Microsoft

Submission + - ISO Paralyzed by OOXML

Submitted by
Broken Standards
Broken Standards writes: "For all intents and purposes, the ISO has been completely paralyzed. The ISO is no longer able to reach an agreement on any standard because all those new members who joined just to approve OOXML cannot be bothered to vote on anything else. Per ISO rules, any standard where more than half those eligible are non-voters, not even bothering to return an "abstain" vote, fails automatically. So the ISO is completely paralyzed, unable even to amend their voting rules, until the new members eventually get kicked out for inactivity. Hopefully, they will learn from this and forbid those inactive members from rejoining later."
Education

Journal Journal: Why is US graduate school not mainly US students? 1131

Journal by phil_ps
I am a new graduate student in Computer Engineering. I would like to get my MS and possibly my Ph.D. I have come to find out that 90% of my department is from India and many others are from China. All the students come here to study and there are only 7 US citizens in the engineering program this year. Why is this like this? I have heard that many of the smarter Americans go into the medical or law professions and that is why there are no Americans. Is this true?
XBox (Games)

Submission + - Bungie argues 640p is enough for anyone. (bungie.net) 2

Submitted by
AHuxley
AHuxley writes: "Smart people in the Beyond 3D forums have found that
Bungie's Halo 3 did meet the HD resolution of 720p.
Some math and Photoshop showed that Halo 3 was near 624p.
Bungie sees this as a "distracted conversation" in a short statement about "640 pixels", "lighting"
and "interweb detectives"."
Privacy

Submission + - Police issue Death Threats to Man with Camera 9

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Cops in St. Louis have taken objection over a local man filming their abuses of power, and have responded with death threats, and stalking. The guy they're harassing installed a pretty neat video system in his car after having received a speeding ticket that he that was unfair. What he ended up catching on tape was far worse than a speeding ticket. Luckily the news has picked up on it, so he is probably out of immediate danger.
Security

Submission + - "Chroot Is Not and Never Has Been a Security T (kerneltrap.org)

Submitted by Hyena
Hyena writes: Linux guru Alan Cox is quoted as saying 'chroot is not and never has been a security tool' in a KernelTrap article summarizing a lengthy thread on the Linux Kernel mailing list. The discussion began with a patch attempting to 'fix a security hole' in the Unix chroot command, trying to improve the ability of chroot to contain a process. When it was pointed out that people have been using chroot as a security tool for years, another kernel hacker retorted, 'incompetent people implementing security solutions are a real problem.' A quick search on the terms 'chroot+security' quickly reveals that many people have long thought (wrongly) that chroot's purpose was for improving security.
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft "Stealth Update" not harmless at

Submitted by DaMan
DaMan writes: According to WindowsSecrets.com, the super-secret stealth Update that Microsoft released back in August isn't as harmless as Microsoft claims:

The trouble occurs when users reinstall XP's system files using the repair capability found on genuine XP CD-ROMs. (The feature is not present on "Restore CDs.") The repair option, which is typically employed when XP for some reason becomes unbootable, rolls many aspects of XP back to a pristine state. It wipes out many updates and patches and sets Internet Explorer back to the version that originally shipped with the operating system.


ZDNet's Hardware 2.0 has independently confirmed that this update adversely affects repaired XP installations:

This issue highlights why it is vitally important that Microsoft doesn't release undocumented updates on the sly. Even the best tested update can have unpleasant side-effects, but if patches are documented properly and released in such a way that users (especially IT professionals) know they exist, it offers a necessary starting point for troubleshooting.
Education

Submission + - College Fires Teacher Who Says Bible Isn't Literal (desmoinesregister.com) 1

Submitted by Stanislav_J
Stanislav_J writes: A community college instructor in Iowa claims he was fired after he told his students that the biblical story of Adam and Eve should not be literally interpreted.

Steve Bitterman, 60, said officials at Southwestern Community College sided with a handful of students who threatened legal action over his remarks in a western civilization class Tuesday. He said he was fired Thursday.

"I'm just a little bit shocked myself that a college in good standing would back up students who insist that people who have been through college and have a master's degree, a couple actually, have to teach that there were such things as talking snakes or lose their job," Bitterman said.

One expects to read about this sort of thing at church-affiliated schools, but at a state-run community college? Are we really reaching a point in this country where everything said and taught in an academic setting must be weighed against the possibility of offending Christian fundamentalists? Are supposedly secular educational institutions more and more downplaying or even censoring truth and reality at the behest of a group of people who believe that ancient mythology negates and supercedes the disciplines of science, history, and reason?

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