Slashdot

conner_bw writes "Renoise is a contemporary digital audio workstation (DAW) based upon the heritage and development of tracker software. With input from a very enthusiastic user community, two and a half months were spent on bug fixes and stability improvements for the Linux beta. The work has paid off and as of a few moments ago the Linux port is now officially 1.9.1 "GOLD" like it's OS X and Windows counterparts. If you're a "free as in freedom" software user there's good news for you too. MilkyTracker is GPL as of last week."
http://www.renoise.com/board/index.php?showtopic=16280

fbjon writes "Just before Christmas, one of Swedish broadband provider Telia's central mailservers started going wonky, and finally crashed and burned on the 3rd of January. Fortunately, backups are taken regularly. Unfortunately for 300.000 customers, all backups since the 15th of December are unreadable, and cannot be salvaged. The number of mails lost is unknown. All affected customers will receive an email, as well as a 200 euro gift card as compensation.

When did you last verify your backups?"
http://www.dn.se/DNet/jsp/polopoly.jsp?d=147&a=730285

Finnish computer security expert Harri Hursti testifies to NH Legislature

Finnish computer security expert Harri Hursti, featured in the Emmy-nominated film Hacking Democracy, explains to the NH State Legislature how his hack and studies by the University of California expose the vulnerabilities of NH's Diebold optical scanners. With these machines counting 81% of NH votes, how does the State justify not banning them immediately? Hursti testified in Summer 2007.

Noughmad writes "Skype has been known to read user passwords and Firefox profiles, but there's something more sinister going on. There is apparently a botnet of infected computers connected through Skype. It attacks both Windows and Linux machines with Skype whitelisted in their Firewall settings. The easiest solution is not to use Skype at all, the harder is to configure your firewall to block these connection attempts."

The first collection of "Perry Bible Fellowship" comics racked up pre-sales of $300,000 due to its huge online following, and within seven weeks required a third printing. Ironically, the 25-year-old cartoonist speculates people would rather read his arty comics in a book than on a computer screen, and warns that "There's something wonderful, and soon-to-be mythic, about the printed page..." He also explains the strange anti-censorship crusade in high school that earned him an FBI record!
http://www.10zenmonkeys.com/2008/01/05/records-broken-by-the-perry-bible-fellowship/

sas-dot writes "Nytimes article writes that Japan is suffering a crisis of confidence these days about its ability to compete with its emerging Asian rivals, China and India. But even in this fad-obsessed nation, one result was never expected: a growing craze for Indian education..India's more demanding education standards are apparent at the Little Angels Kindergarten, and are its main selling point. Its 2-year-old pupils are taught to count to 20, 3-year-olds are introduced to computers, and 5-year-olds learn to multiply, solve math word problems and write one-page essays in English, tasks most Japanese schools do not teach until at least second grade. America has to learn something from this? or not?"

Dr. Eggman writes "GamePolitics.com has the story the Florida Bar has ordered Jack Thompson to undergo psychological testing and have suspended his license for 91 days. According to his 2005 book, he has been asked to undergo such testing by the bar before, but sued and successfully settled with the bar for $20,000."

Astronomer thinks he has solved a 400-year-old mystery: the origin of strange optical flashes seen on the moon's surface
http://www.astronomyreport.com/Research/Astronomer_Offers_New_Theory_Into_400-year-old_Lunar_Mystery.asp

StonyandCher writes "Although the recent auctioning of the 700MHz wireless spectrum bands have garnered great interest in the media (not to mention the billions of dollars being thrown around to own some of this), it's not the be-all and end-all answer to our wireless hunger.

New research is starting to be conducted in the area of infrared radiation. Cheap to develop infrastructure for, super fast and with huge amounts of spectrum available (literally many terahertz), is this the unlicensed answer to the dearth of wireless spectrum? This article delves deeper into the world of IR and looks at its pros and foibles."

puk writes "MacWorld UK is reporting that Eminem's publisher is suing Apple, alleging that his publisher did not have the right to authorize Apple's online sales of digital versions of Eminem's music through the iTunes Music Store and that therefore Apple is violating Eminem's copyright by doing so.

Of course, if this turns out to be the case, Universal may also be on the hook for the damages, if indirectly. Looks like another more case of trying to figure out whether old contracts authorize new activities..."
http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/index.cfm?RSS&NewsID=18688

mernil writes "Santa Claus might soon be a Russian citizen. At least, that is the hope of well-known Arctic explorer Artur Chilingarov, who will lead Arctic 2007, one of the biggest expeditions in the history of polar research. [...] Chilingarov acknowledges the expedition's geopolitical goal: "We want to prove that Russia is a great polar power." A titanium capsule with the Russian flag will be dropped to the bottom as evidence of this. In other words, Russia will publicly stake its claim to the North Pole."

An anonymous reader writes "Over 5000 aspiring lawyers who took the New York bar examination on laptops using windows, word and a software from a company called SecureExam ended up with lost essays and computer problems. The New York Board of Bar Examiners released a statement and the company responsible released a second statement. Possibilities at this point might entail a software company being held liable for licensed software under a EULA for the first time. Bar examinations in Georgia reportedly had problems as well. It seems the software created a single file with all the answers and either discarded the file rather than upload it or mixed parts of the essays together."

The Living Fractal writes "So I'm reading Century Rain, a great SF book by Welsh author Alastair Reynolds, and at about page 80 or so I stumble onto a hidden Slashdot reference. Reynolds' character "Niagara" runs a finger diagonally across his chest then 'dots' next to the slash, then goes on to talk about a community of progressive thinkers on one of the earliest computer networks (today's internet) who eventually founded his society. They're even called Slashers! Maybe old news to some of you, but a nice surprise for me nevertheless.
Does anyone else have /. easter eggs they've found that they can share with us?"

NerdMaster writes "Hardware Secrets posted today an in-depth analysis of the ATI+AMD deal one year after it was first announced. Their conclusions are quite amazing: "So far the big winner from the AMD-ATI deal is clearly nVidia. Today nVidia is worth two times and a half more than it was one year ago, while AMD is worth less than it was before buying ATI! This is simply amazing, AMD bought a 5 billion dollar company and instead of becoming a 15 billion dollar company nVidia was the one that became such company! Also during the last 1-year period Intel market value increased 43%.""

Monk writes "Microsoft is claiming the hardware failures of Xbox 360's are not caused by heat, rain, solar flares, but they die because of electricity protection. More info here: http://lawofthegame.blogspot.com/2007/07/xbox-360- repair-saga-shoot-surge.html"
http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=40875