Become a fan of Slashdot on Facebook

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
GNU is Not Unix

Submission + - A commercial look at the GPL (nyud.net)

Submitted by
also-rr
also-rr writes: "I needed to present a five minute brief on the GPL and what it could offer a company.

My aim was to give a clear idea of the basics of the GPL and why it should be considered for some projects. In particular there is a focus on partnered projects and how the GPL might be used to build a better relationship.

Entitled "The GNU GPL: A Commercial View" I hope it's useful for anyone else that needs to persuade a value-focused audience of the benefits of the GPL.

What changes would you make to put the point across more effectively? What changes need to be made for GPL3?"
Programming

Submission + - Multi-language Game AI Competition

Submitted by A competitor
A competitor writes: Thousand Parsec, an open source framework for turn-based space empire building games, is running an AI programming competition. Entries can be written in any language with a Free implementation. Existing client libraries are available in Python and C++, with several others in various states of completion. Major prizes include AU$300 plus goodies. Competition closes at the end of March, so get cracking!
Power

Submission + - Saudi Arabian oil production declines 8% in 2006

Submitted by
BadOctopus
BadOctopus writes: "The guys over at The Oil Drum have the story that the world's biggest oil exporter, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, experienced an 8% drop in oil production since the beginning of 2006. This decline coincides with a large increase in the number of oil rigs in the country, which implies that either the Saudis are preparing for a large future increase in production, or it is getting ever harder to extract the oil. What seems more likely? What does this mean for the KSA's internal and external political relations?

If the world's largest producer joins the multitude of other nations that are post-peak, can a global peak in oil production be far off?"
Security

Submission + - Hacker Defeats Hardware-based Rootkit Detection

Submitted by
Manequintet
Manequintet writes: "Joanna Rutkowska's latest bit of rootkit-related research shatters the myth that hardware-based (PCI cards or FireWire bus) RAM acquisition is the most reliable and secure way to do forensics. At this year's Black Hat Federal conference, she demonstrated three different attacks against AMD64 based systems, showing how the image of volatile memory (RAM) can be made different from the real contents of the physical memory as seen by the CPU. The overall problem, Rutkowska explained, is the design of the system that makes it impossible to reliably read memory from computers. "Maybe we should rethink the design of our computer systems so they they are somehow verifiable," she said."
Security

Submission + - Flash 9 Plugin Vulnerability

Submitted by
Aristotle's Fearless
Aristotle's Fearless writes: "The current Flash Player 9 plugin for IE and Firefox on Windows (9.0.28.0) has a serious bug. Certain bitmap draws using the BitmapData class in ActionScript 3 cause immediate page faults and close both IE and Firefox on all flavors of Windows.

This writer has isolated a proof of concept code fragment in AS3 and submitted a bug report to Adobe. Details are being withheld pending a reply from Adobe because of concerns this may be exploitable by buffer overrun code injection.

See this page for the proof of concept SWF. Be warned: your windows browser will exit with a page fault upon clicking the link on this page."
Bug

Submission + - Redefining Avogadro's number

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Have you ever asked questions like What went first, the universal gas constant or the Boltzmann's constant? In this article. the ultimate definitions for mass, time, and distance are discussed; and the authors propose a new operative definition (i. e. not based on references to physical objects) for both mole and mass units. Maybe it is the final improvement the SI needs to be completely reproducible.
Announcements

Submission + - Computer Archive Used to Find Stolen Art

Submitted by Standup
Standup writes: The request was simple enough: Lloyd's underwriters had been approached to insure the movement of seven paintings, including one by Cezanne, from Russia to London for valuation and sale.So Lloyd's contacted the Art Loss Register, a small private company in London whose computer archive lists 180,000 items ranging from sculpture and silver to textiles, books, stamps and vehicles — and many of the great art works stolen or missing around the world.
OS X

Submission + - PC World Picks OSX Over XP, Vista (and, uh, Linux)

Submitted by
DenmaFat
DenmaFat writes: "The article is buried in PC World's web site, but the ordinarily Redmond-centric magazine comes right out and says that OS X is the best operating system for its readers, over Linux and Windows XP, with Windows Vista ranked dead last. The review is the subjective assessment of just one author, but he provides a lengthy qualitative comparison chart to back up his recommendations. On a related note, chilled beverages now available in Hades."
Power

Submission + - Saudi oil production in trouble

Submitted by IamTheRealMike
IamTheRealMike writes: As one of the worlds most prolific producers of oil, Saudi Arabian production is of vital importance to maintaining our standard of living in the west. A new analysis from Stuart Staniford appears to show large, fast declines in production throughout 2006 that are uncorrelated with price, world events or OPECs own announced production cuts (in fact, no evidence for those cuts occurring is found at all). Given that the apparent steep decline (8%/year) matches the rates seen in other areas where horizontal drilling and water injection were used, and high prices give the Kingdom every incentive to produce, is this the beginning of the end for Saudi oil?
The Internet

Submission + - Book Publishers Agree to Online Browsing

Submitted by
eldavojohn
eldavojohn writes: "Random House & HarperCollins have agreed to allow book browsing and searching on all their books. From the article, "Book publishers are to trying to update their businesses as more young readers consume media via the Web, a trend that already has affected the music, movie and newspaper industries." Although this is a good step forward, I still have no way of searching the thomes of Robert Jordan (Tor) or any of the many standards of Penguin Classics. I am definitely looking forward to more publishers following suit. It's not that far of a stretch to imagine a person searching for a book, finding something else and then buying both books."
It's funny. Laugh.

Submission + - The simple pleasure of breaking things.

Submitted by rlandmann
rlandmann writes: When my mobile phone "failed me for the last time", I smashed it to pieces and have offered the remains on eBay as my way of making a public mockery of the hapless device.

The phone was still under warranty, but to tell the truth, I really couldn't be bothered arguing about it with my phone company, and preferred the visceral satisfaction of the violent destruction of the offending hardware.

The comments and questions other eBayers have been leaving suggest to me that I may have touched on something here. What's the most satisfying way that you've destroyed a technological menace?
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft kills off J# language

Submitted by
twofish
twofish writes: "Microsoft have announced that J#, its Java clone for .NET, and the Java Language Conversion Assistant will be discontinued and will not appear in the next version of Visual Studio. At the same time they have announced pans for a 64-bit version of the J# Redistributable this year."
The Internet

Submission + - Proposed Internet Censorship Law in Israel

Submitted by
Shlomi Fish
Shlomi Fish writes: "Gal Mor reports on YnetNews.com on a new proposal for an Israeli Internet censorship law, which will require ISPs to implement censorship at the ISP level, and the surfers to identify themselves using bio-metric means and passwords to prevent minors from viewing sites with unsuitable content. Also see a discussion on the Israeli Linux mailing list.

This law is very bad and should better be stopped so please help spread the word."

Slashdot Top Deals

1 + 1 = 3, for large values of 1.

Close