×

Submission + - Adding forums to a website, what is the best way?

Submitted by
DustyMurray
DustyMurray writes: "I am considering adding forums to my website, and am just getting confused by all the options. My first reaction is always DIY. You get better website integration, and it looks and feels 100% how you want it to look and feel. However looking at things like phpBB and Vanilla forums, I will be hard pressed to build a better user experience in a reasonable amount of time. Also these out-of-the-box solutions seem to be shouting "Easy to integrate with your website". So, considering this, how easy are these ready build forums really to integrate in your website. I remember one of my favorite site, going completely blabla when they started to use a generic forum instead. I even stopped going to them after a while... I definitely do not want that for my site.... So I want things like, looks and feels in integral part of the rest of my site. Want to be able to insert stuff on certain pages, so it's not either the forums, or my site... It must be a mix. And I do not want a second login system on my site. And last but not least, I definitely don't want to have this typical generic look that most forums sport, they just reek "out-of-the-box-very-vanilla".... So can all that be delivered with the out-of-the-box forums that exist today? And which one is the most flexible regarding these wishes."

Submission + - Marine 'Treasure Trove' in Oceans may bring Revolutions in Medicine and Industry (guardian.co.uk)

Submitted by dryriver
dryriver writes: The Guardian reports: 'Scientists have pinpointed a new treasure trove in our oceans: micro-organisms that contain millions of previously unknown genes and thousands of new families of proteins. These tiny marine wonders offer a chance to exploit a vast pool of material that could be used to create innovative medicines, industrial solvents, chemical treatments and other processes, scientists say. Researchers have already created new enzymes for treating sewage and chemicals for making soaps from material they have found in ocean organisms. "The potential for marine biotechnology is almost infinite," says Curtis Suttle, professor of earth, ocean and atmospheric sciences at the University of British Columbia. "It has become clear that most of the biological and genetic diversity on Earth is – by far – tied up in marine ecosystems, and in particular in their microbial components. By weight, more than 95% of all living organisms found in the oceans are microbial. This is an incredible resource."
Security

Submission + - Critical Vulnerabilities found in Call of Duty:MW3, CryEngine 3 (paritynews.com)

Submitted by hypnosec
hypnosec writes: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 and CryEngine 3 graphics platform suffer from critical vulnerabilities, two security researchers have revealed. ReVuln security consultants Luigi Auriemma and Donato Ferrante presented results of their research at the Power of Community (POC2012) security conference in Seoul and said that not only hackers but also other online gaming companies can benefit by exploiting these vulnerabilities. The security researchers have revealed that online gaming companies can try and steal a competitor's players or shut down a competitor’s game completely.
Security

Submission + - Nike+ FuelBand: Possibly a Big Security Hole For Your Life (hothardware.com)

Submitted by
MojoKid
MojoKid writes: "Nike+ FuelBand, a $149 wristband with LED display that tracks your daily activity, tells you how many calories you've burned, lets you know how much fuel you have left in the tank, and basically keeps track of "every move you make." If you think that sounds like a privacy nightmare waiting to happen, it pretty much is. A source directly connected to Nike reported an amusing, albeit startling anecdote about a guy who got caught cheating on his girlfriend because of the Nike+ FuelBand. "They shared their activity between each other and she noticed he was active at 1-2AM, when he was supposed to be home." That's just one scenario. What if the wristband gets lost or stolen? How much data is actually stored on these sorts of devices? And remember, you're synching it to the cloud with an iOS or Android app."
Security

Submission + - Blizzard Sued over Battle.net Authentication (ign.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A man has initiated a class-action suit against Blizzard over a product used to shore up Battle.net security. Benjamin Bell alleges that Blizzard's sale of Authenticators — devices that enable basic two-tier authentication — represents deceptive and unfair additional costs to their basic games. (Blizzard sells the optional devices for $6.50, and provides a free mobile app as an alternative.) The complaint accuses Blizzard of making $26 million in Authenticator sales. In response, Blizzard made a statement refuting some of the complaint's claims and voicing their intention to 'vigorously defend' themselves.

Submission + - NRC Report Links Climate Change to National Security (nytimes.com)

Submitted by WOOFYGOOFY
WOOFYGOOFY writes: The NY Times and Voice Of America amongst others are reporting on a study by the U.S. National Research Council which was released Friday linking global climate change to national security.

http://www.voanews.com/content/climate-change-security/1543127.html

http://chronicle.com/article/US-Urged-to-Step-Up-Research /135724/

The report which was developed at the request of the C.I.A. characterizes the threats posed by climate change
as "similar to and in many cases greater than those posed by terrorist attacks."

http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=14682&page=1

If the effect of unaddressed climate change is the functional equivalent of terrorist attacks on the nation, does the Executive Branch, as a matter of national security, have a duty and a right to begin to act unilaterally against climate change irrespective of what Congress currently believes?
Education

Submission + - MOOC Mania

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: Online education has had a fifty-year road to 'overnight' success (PLATO@50 commemorative booklet). MIT Technology Review calls the emergence of free online education, particularly massive open online courses (MOOCs), The Most Important Education Technology in 200 Years. 'If you were asked to name the most important innovation in transportation over the last 200 years,' writes Antonio Regalado, 'you might say the combustion engine, air travel, Henry Ford’s Model-T production line, or even the bicycle. The list goes on. Now answer this one: what’s been the single biggest innovation in education? Don’t worry if you come up blank. You’re supposed to.' Writing about MOOC Mania in the Communications of the ACM, Moshe Y. Vardi worries that 'the enormous buzz about MOOCs is not due to the technology's intrinsic educational value, but due to the seductive possibilities of lower costs.' And in MOOCs Will Eat Academia, Vivek Haldar writes, 'MOOCs will almost certainly hollow out the teaching component of universities as it stands today...But all is not lost, because the other thing universities do is research, and that is arguably as important, if not more, than teaching.' So, are MOOCs the best thing since sliced bread, or merely the second coming of 1920s Postal Course Mania?
The Courts

Submission + - Tesla Motors Sued By Car Dealers (npr.org) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Car dealers in New York and Massachusetts have filed a lawsuit that seeks to block Tesla from selling its pricey electric vehicles in those states. The dealers say they are defending state franchise laws, which require manufacturers to sell cars through dealers they do not own. Robert O'Koniewski of the Massachusetts State Automobile Dealers Association says, 'Those dealers are investing millions of dollars in their franchises to make sure they comply with their franchise agreements with the manufacturers. Tesla is choosing to ignore the law and then is choosing to play outside that system.'
Twitter

Submission + - Geomapping Racist Tweets After Obama's Re-election 1

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Megan Garber writes that in the age of the quantified self, biases are just one more thing that can be measured, analyzed, and publicized. The day after Barack Obama won a second term as president of the United States, a group of geography academics took advantage of the fact that many tweets are geocoded to search Twitter for racism-revealing terms that appeared in the context of tweets that mentioned "Obama," "re-elected," or "won," sorting the tweets according to the state they were sent from and comparing the racist tweets to the total number of geocoded tweets coming from that state during the same time period. Their findings? Alabama and Mississippi have the highest measures followed closely by Georgia, Louisiana, and Tennessee forming a fairly distinctive cluster in the southeast. Beyond that cluster North Dakota and Utah both had relatively high scores (3.5 each), as did Missouri, Oregon, and Minnesota. "These findings support the idea that there are some fairly strong clustering of hate tweets centered in southeastern U.S. which has a much higher rate than the national average," writes Matthew Zook. "But lest anyone elsewhere become too complacent, the unfortunate fact is that most states are not immune from this kind of activity. Racist behavior, particularly directed at African Americans in the U.S., is all too easy to find both offline and in information space.""
Portables

Submission + - Toshiba Pursues Copyright Claim Against Laptop Manual Site (tim.id.au)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: I'm sure most Slashdot readers have had occasion to suffer through a hardware manufacturer's terrible website in the search of product documentation. It's often hidden away in submenus of submenus, and if the your product is more than a couple years old, you probably have to deal with broken links. One guy has been helping to change that; he runs a site called Tim's Laptop Service Manuals, where he collects by hand materials from many different companies and hosts them together in one spot. Now Toshiba has become aware of his project, and helpfully forced him to remove all of their manuals under a copyright claim.
Apple

Submission + - UK court sanctions Apple for non-compliance (groklaw.net)

Submitted by
drinkypoo
drinkypoo writes: "Per PJ over on Groklaw as always, "Since Apple did not comply with the order in its estimation, adding materials that were not ordered and in addition were "false", the judges ordered Apple to pay Samsung's lawyers' fees on an indemnity basis, and they add some public humiliation". And per the judge, "what Apple added was false and misleading". Your move, Apple."
Google

Submission + - What to do when your page gets nuked by Google Search (wecheck.org) 5

Submitted by
sparkydevil
sparkydevil writes: "Over the past few weeks I've been building up a wiki timeline of the attacks on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, which is now the most comprehensive on the web. As the page grew and more blogs and sites linked to the page it moved up Google's search pages for the search term "Benghazi Attack Timeline" until it was the second listing on the first page. I had a few days of steady traffic (and pride) and then the page just completely disappeared from the search results. Completely gone without a trace. I didn't use any SEO tricks and the page has no ads, so I don't think it could be counted as spam. I don't think it's any kind of conspiracy. Has this happened to anyone else and how did you fix it?"
GNOME

Submission + - GNOME 3.8 To Scrap Fallback Mode (phoronix.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Via LXer, an article at Phoronix tells of GNOME's plans to eliminate "fallback mode" (GNOME classic) in the 3.8 release.
Security

Submission + - How To Tell if Your Hotel Guest Is a Terrorist (schneier.com) 2

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Bruce Schneier takes a look at a list from the Department of Homeland Security which details 19 suspicious behaviors for hotel guests as indicators of possible terrorism. Further discussed is the DHS initiative "If you see something say something", and the possible problems with recruiting amateurs for security, and likely result of getting amateur security in return.

Slashdot Top Deals