Follow Slashdot stories on Twitter

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Television

Lost Ends 955

Posted by CmdrTaco from the talk-amongst-yourselves dept.
Unless you live in a hatch somewhere, you are probably aware that Lost has ended. If you want a simple, clear explanation of exactly how the series resolved, Lost Untangled will do nothing to clarify things for you. For everyone else, I provide this discussion thread for you to complain/revel in the most spoiler-laden manner you desire.
Graphics

BFG Exiting Graphics Card Market 108

Posted by Soulskill from the so-long-and-thanks-for-all-the-pixels dept.
thsoundman writes news that BFG appears to be giving up on the graphics card side of its business. The company's chairman said in a statement: "After eight years of providing innovative, high-quality graphics cards to the market, we regret to say that this category is no longer profitable for us, although we will continue to evaluate it going forward. We will continue to provide our award-winning power supplies and gaming systems, and are working on a few new products as well. I'd like to stress that we will continue to provide RMA support for our current graphics card warranty holders, as well as for all of our other products such as power supplies, PCs, and notebooks."
PlayStation (Games)

Final Fight Brings Restrictive DRM To the PS3 240

Posted by Soulskill from the let's-blame-ubisoft dept.
Channard writes "As reported by Joystiq, the PS3/PlayStation Network version of Final Fight Double Impact features a rather restrictive piece of digital rights management. In order to launch the game, you have to be logged into the PlayStation Network and if you're not, the game refuses to launch. This could be written off as a bug of some kind except for the fact that the error message that crops up tells you to sign in, suggesting Sony/Capcom intentionally included this 'feature.' Granted, you do have to log into the PlayStation Network to buy the title but as one commentator pointed out, logging in once does not mean you'll be logged in all the time. Curiously, the 360 version has no such restrictions, so you can play the game whether you're online or offline. But annoying as this feature may be, there may be method in Sony's madness. "
Movies

Submission + - Warner bullies Redbox into 28-day release delay (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by wkurzius
wkurzius writes: DVD rental kiosks from Redbox will no longer have Warner Bros. new releases when they hit the market. Thanks to a new agreement between the companies, Redbox will offer Warner's DVDs and Blu-ray movies 28 days after release, just like Netflix.
Security

Submission + - Rogue PDFs Behind 80% of Exploits in Q4 '09 (computerworld.com)

Submitted by CWmike
CWmike writes: Just hours before Adobe is slated to deliver the latest patches for its popular PDF viewer, ScanSafe announced that by its counting, malicious Adobe Reader documents made up 80% of all exploits at the end of 2009. In the first quarter of 2009, malicious PDF files made up 56% of all exploits tracked by ScanSafe. That figure climbed above 60% in the second quarter, over 70% in the third and finished at 80% in the fourth quarter. Mary Landesman, a ScanSafe senior security researcher, said, 'Attackers are choosing PDFs for a reason. It's not random. They're establishing a preference for Reader exploits." Exactly why hackers choose Adobe as their prime target is tougher to divine, however. 'Perhaps they are more successful,' she said. 'Or maybe it's because criminal attackers are human, too. We respond when we see a lot of people going after a particular product.... We all want to go after that product, too. In the attacker arena, they might be thinking, 'Gee, all these reports of Adobe Reader zero-days, maybe I should get in on them too.''
Security

Submission + - OpenSSH zero-day exploit in two days? (seclists.org) 2

Submitted by
ScytheBlade1
ScytheBlade1 writes: "Anti-Sec, a security group dedicated to the eradication of full disclosure (as evidenced by their recent attack on ImageShack), just posted an ominous warning to the full disclosure mailing list: "In 48 hours, the anti-sec movement will publicly unveil working exploit code and full details for the zero-day OpenSSH vulnerability we discovered. [...] Within 10 hours of the initial release of the OpenSSH 0-day exploit code, anti-sec will be unleashing powerful computer worm source code with the ability to auotmatically find and compromise systems running any and all versions of OpenSSH." The question: is this real, or just some rather potent FUD? After all, nothing scares me more than an OpenSSH vulnerability."
First Person Shooters (Games)

Submission + - John Carmack on future Linux ports.

Submitted by Tweetman
Tweetman writes: E-mail response from Mr Carmack on 20/07/09:

'Wolfenstein is pretty unlikely, since it was developed at Raven, and published by Activision. There are no firm plans for linux ports of the idTech 5 titles, but it certainly isn't off the table. I don't think it will be very difficult to gt them running on the binary nvidia drivers, but bringing them up to functionality and acceptable performance on other OpenGL drivers would probably be a more significant undertaking than we could afford.'

Good news that the Zenimax deal has not thrown Linux ports out the window for definite.
No surprise about Nvidia and the superior quality of their GLX drivers under Unix based OS's.
Privacy

Submission + - Deleted Tweets are here to stay (time.com) 1

Submitted by
fudreporter
fudreporter writes: "Delete a Tweet? Not so fast. For your voyeuristic pleasure, allow me to introduce Tweleted. All public Tweets are recoverable, but be sure sure to switch to "Evil" mode first. Be the first on your block to recover that most embarrassing of Tweets..."I think I will take a hike on the Appalachian Trail today."

Time.com has the full scoop here...

Get past the cheesy name — honestly, this Twitter-izing of words needs to stop — and you'll find Tweleted is an occasionally useful service. Set against clouds on a bright blue background, Tweleted promises to recover any Twitter posts you may have accidentally deleted. A nice feature, but one hardly worth, well, twittering about.

But across the top of the page, there's an option to switch the site into evil mode. Click on it and the blue skies disappear, replaced with the fires of Hell and an ominous message: "Recover embarrassing deleted tweets for fun and profit." Because Tweleted uses publicly available records, the website can recover not only your deleted tweets but also everyone else's. And since Twitter users aren't exactly known for filtering their thoughts, the few things they think twice about should be interesting.

Tweleted raises some larger privacy concerns. When a user deletes a post on Twitter, it disappears from their user profile but not from Twitter's search engine results. Tweleted uses this loophole to dig up its deleted posts. Some Twitter users are crying foul, arguing that when they delete something, it should be gone for good. The company says they're working to make this happen, although setting your Twitter profile to private fixes the issues. For now, it's worth remembering the old adage: If you don't want someone to read it, it's better not to write it — or tweet it — in the first place."
Earth

Submission + - Brazil Demands Repatriation of British Rubbish

Submitted by
Peace Corps Online
Peace Corps Online writes: "BBC reports that Brazilian authorities are demanding the return of more than 1,400 tons of hazardous British waste found in about 90 shipping containers on three Brazilian docks. The waste, which includes syringes, condoms, and bags of blood has been identified as being of UK origin from the names of British supermarkets and newspapers among the rubbish. Reports in the UK media say the waste was sent from Felixstowe in eastern England to the port of Santos, near Sao Paulo, and two other ports in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul. The British government has launched an investigation into how and why the waste was sent to Brazil and the British Embassy in Brazil has said in a statement that it was investigating and would "not hesitate to act" if it was found that a UK company had violated the Basel Convention on the movement of hazardous waste. Meanwhile Brazil is demanding the immediate return of the rubbish to the UK. "We will ask for the repatriation of this garbage," says Roberto Messias, head of the Brazilian environment agency. "Clearly, Brazil is not a big rubbish dump of the world.""
Patents

Submission + - USPTO Fast-Tracks Michael Jackson Patent Tribute

Submitted by
theodp
theodp writes: "They may drag their feet on things like the three-and-a-half-year-old Amazon 1-Click Patent Reexam, but the USPTO can put on their fast-shoes when they want to. For evidence of the agency's sense of urgency, just look at how quickly they put together an Exhibit of Michael Jackson's Patent and Trademarks. If you can't make it out to the USPTO Museum (store) by Labor Day, you can check out Michael's expired-due-to-nonpayment-of-fees patent for a Method and Means for Creating Anti-Gravity Illusion online, and also see it in action in Smooth Criminal (7:16). BTW, Jackson's co-inventors also designed Michael's L.A. funeral suit."
Privacy

Submission + - The NSA wiretapping story nobody wanted (computerworld.com)

Submitted by
CWmike
CWmike writes: "They sometimes call national security the third rail of politics. Touch it and, politically, you're dead. The cliché doesn't seem far off the mark after reading Mark Klein's new book, "Wiring up the Big Brother Machine ... and Fighting It." It's an account of his experiences as the whistleblower who exposed a secret room at a Folsom Street facility in San Francisco that was apparently used to monitor the Internet communications of ordinary Americans. Amazingly, however, nobody wanted to hear his story. In his book he talks about meetings with reporters and privacy groups that went nowhere until a fateful January 20, 2006, meeting with Kevin Bankston of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). Bankston was preparing a lawsuit that he hoped would put a stop to the wiretap program, and Klein was just the kind of witness the EFF was looking for. He spoke with Robert McMillan for an interview."
Security

Submission + - ImageShack Hacked! (mashable.com) 5

Submitted by
revjtanton
revjtanton writes: "Tonight a group calling themselves "Anti-Sec" hacked ImageShack and replaced many of the site's hosted images with one of their own detailing their manifesto. The group's grievance is against full-disclosure. They simply want the practice in security cirlces to end, and they've promised to cause mayhem and destruction if it doesn't.

These guys/gals are taking direct aim against a sect of the IT industry who is already armed to fight them...but they also already know that. It should be interesting to see how this plays out, whether you agree with them or not."

Slashdot Top Deals

"More software projects have gone awry for lack of calendar time than for all other causes combined." -- Fred Brooks, Jr., _The Mythical Man Month_

Close