Christopher Bibbs - Slashdot User

WPA bug in Vista, is that a security problem?-> 1

Submitted by

Anonymous Coward

on Thursday August 02 2007, @09:25PM

Anonymous Coward writes "Many people, such as me-said-the-idiot, or maybe all, cannot connect to a WPA protected WiFi network with Vista. So many will have to use an unsecured network configuration in order to go online. Practically all new PC laptops sold now are bundled with Vista, so this could well become the biggest and easiest to exploit security leak.. Many posts on MS forum http://forums.microsoft.com/TechNet/ShowPost.aspx? PostID=481371&SiteID=17 but apparently it still isn't considered a problem by MS.."
Link to Original Source

Winnie Wrote a Math Book 0

Submitted by SoyChemist on Thursday August 02 2007, @03:50AM

SoyChemist writes "Hollywood is not known for providing a wealth of positive female role models. Danica McKellar, the actress that played Winnie Cooper on The Wonder Years and Elsie Snuffin on The West Wing, has written a math book for teenage girls. Math Doesn't Suck is in the style of a teen magazine. It even includes a horoscope, cute doodles of shoes and jewelry, and testimonials from attractive young career women that use math at work. It focuses on fractions and pre-algebra and uses mnemonics like calling a reciprocal a "refliprocal", because you just take the fraction and flip it upside down. Wired interviewed McKellar about the new book and her crusade to eliminate the achievement gap between boys and girls in math courses. McKellar graduated Summa Cum Laude from UCLA. While studying there, she co-authored a proof and presented it at a conference. After she and Mayim Bialik — star of Blossom and a PhD in neuroscience — appeared in a 20/20 episode about intellectual actresses, several literary agents came knocking on her door."

Google Lawyer: First Kill All the Patent Trolls 0

Submitted by

theodp

on Wednesday August 01 2007, @10:53PM

theodp writes "Speaking at the Stanford Summit, Google's Patent Poobah told conference attendees that the U.S. patent system is in crisis and lamented the quality of patents coming out. If associate general counsel and EECS grad Michelle Lee is truly serious about remedying the system, perhaps she'd like to kick things off by relinquishing Google's patent for encoding and decoding variable-length data, a circa-1965 novel concept that Google now has exclusive use of through the year 2024."