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Puzzle Games (Games)

Tetris Turns 25 177

Posted by timothy
from the where-were-you dept.
teh.f4ll3n writes "25 years ago a Russian (Soviet) researcher thought of one of the world's most popular games. It is now that we celebrate its 25th anniversary. 'Twenty-five years ago, inside the bowels of the Soviet Academy of Sciences in Moscow, a young artificial intelligence researcher received his first desktop computer — the Soviet-built Elektronika 60, a copy of an American minicomputer called a PDP-11 — and began writing programs for it.'"
Networking

Do you recognize the six early warning signs->

Submitted by
Artemis
Artemis writes "Do you recognize the six early warning signs of losing your job?

If you are a CIO and are noticing too many of the following signs, you may want to start looking for employment at a new organization.

It's not unusual for a job search to take over six months, especially if you are specialized or targeting a specific geographic area. Use the same advice for your career that you would in your disaster recovery plan: it's a lot easier to plan for disaster than recover after it strikes."
Link to Original Source
Windows

Windows Vista SP1 Coming...->

Submitted by
Artemis
Artemis writes "Microsoft has just announced the beta for Windows Vista SP1.

Find out: What is SP1? What is it not? When can I get my hands on the Beta of SP1? And what about SP1 itself — when will that be available? Besides these questions a time-line and a Windows Vista SP1 Whitepaper have also been released. Will SP1 be Vista's saving grace? Or will it be another Windows NT Service Pack 6 and cause the release of Vista SP1a?"
Link to Original Source
Security

Worm Threat Forces Apple To Disable Software? 201

Posted by Zonk
from the batten-down-the-hatches dept.
SkiifGeek writes "After the debacle that surrounded the announcement and non-disclosure of a worm that targets OS X, the vulnerability in mDNSResponder may have forced Apple to remove support for certain mDNSResponder capabilities with the recently released Security Update 2007-007. 'Seeming to closely follow the information disclosed by InfoSec Sellout, Apple's mDNSResponder update addresses a vulnerability that can be exploited by an attacker on the local network to gain a denial of service or arbitrary code execution condition. Apple goes on to identify that the vulnerability that they are addressing exists within the support for UPnP IGD... and that an attacker can exploit the vulnerability through simply sending a crafted network packet across the network. With the crafted network packet triggering a buffer overflow, it passes control of the vulnerable system to the attacker. Rather than patching the vulnerability and retaining the capability, Apple has completely disabled support for UPnP IGD (though there is no information about whether it is only a temporary disablement until vulnerabilities can be addressed).'"
Space

Newfound Planet Has Earth-Like Orbit->

Submitted by
Raver32
Raver32 writes "The new planet, spotted using the Hobby-Eberly Telescope at the McDonald Observatory in West Texas, circles its bloated parent star every 360 days and is located about 300 light-years away, in the constellation Perseus. The red giant star is twice as massive and about 10 times larger than the sun. Its planet is about the size of Jupiter or larger and was discovered using the so-called wobble technique, in which astronomers look for slight wiggles in a star's motion created by the gravitational tug of orbiting planets. The discovery could help astronomers understand what will happen to our sun's brood of planets when it exhausts its store of hydrogen fuel and its outer envelope begins to swell. When that happens in an estimated 5 billion years, our sun will be so big that it will engulf the inner planets and most likely Earth. But long before that happens, life on our planet will have perished and its seas will have boiled away."
Link to Original Source
Biotech

World's Highest Resolution HDTV Surgial Camera->

Submitted by
docinthemachine
docinthemachine writes "The world's highest resolution HDTV surgical video camera system has been developed and used for laparoscopic surgery. This system is unique in having a native chip resolution of 1920 x 1080p and the first ever (for surgery) 16:9 aspect ratio. The enhanced resolution allows the surgeron to see finer details and pathology. Surgical skills are aided by the resolution and wider field of view as well. The enhanced shadows and tonal range also provides enhanced visual clues for depth perception while working in a 2D environment. This system will be featured in the world's first ever broadcast of surgery in high definition in an upcoming national Geographic HD special. Details of the system are at http://docinthemachine.com/2007/07/31/hdsurgery/ with details of a new medical HD XDCAm blu-ray disk based recording system used to capture the footage at http://docinthemachine.com/2007/08/02/recordhd/"
Link to Original Source
Privacy

Ruling by Secret US Court Allegedly Reduces Spying

Submitted by conspirator57
conspirator57 writes "TFA http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la- na-spying2aug02,0,5813563.story?coll=la-home-cente r states that the US Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (a court that no citizen can establish standing to appear before) has ruled against Executive requests for so-called "basket warrants" as violating the 4th amendment to the Constitution, namely that such warrants do not meet the clearly expressed criteria in the second half of the amendment. To accomplish this they must have looked startlingly like British general warrants which were the original motivation for the 4th amendment. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrant_(law) for more.

TFA is very sympathetic to the Executive branch, going on to depict ways in which we're all less safe because of this ruling. Personally, I feel safer with more rulings like this one. Just wish the process were a bit more transparent.

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.""
Operating Systems

Old School Linux Remembered, Parts 0.02 & 0.03 163

Posted by CowboyNeal
from the turn-back-the-clock dept.
eldavojohn writes "Following our last history lesson of Linux 0.01, the Kernel Trap is talking about the following announcements that would lead to one of the greatest operating systems today. A great Linus quote on release 0.02 (just 19 days after 0.01): 'I can (well, almost) hear you asking yourselves "why?". Hurd will be out in a year (or two, or next month, who knows), and I've already got minix. This is a program for hackers by a hacker. I've enjoyed [sic] doing it, and somebody might enjoy looking at it and even modifying it for their own needs. It is still small enough to understand, use and modify, and I'm looking forward to any comments you might have.'"

QOTD: Silence is the only virtue he has left.