Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Cellphones

Submission + - Android OS to rule the world by 2014 (cnn.com)

Submitted by Singer4096
Singer4096 writes: Gartner research projects that the Android OS will outpace all others by 2014 to become the leading Smartphone OS. Projections are that by the end of 2010, it will be in second place behind Symbian, the Nokia-backed OS. This is bad news for Apple and RIM who are projected to fight for third place in the Smartphone market.

Submission + - Researchers Develop a Way to Funnel Solar Energy

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Using carbon nanotubes (hollow tubes of carbon atoms), MIT chemical engineers have found a way to concentrate solar energy 100 times more than a regular photovoltaic cell. Such nanotubes could form antennas that capture and focus light energy, potentially allowing much smaller and more powerful solar arrays. "Instead of having your whole roof be a photovoltaic cell, you could have little spots that were tiny photovoltaic cells, with antennas that would drive photons into them," says Michael Strano, the Charles and Hilda Roddey Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering and leader of the research team.
Wireless Networking

Submission + - 802.11n Wi-Fi making huge impact 1-year later (networkworld.com)

Submitted by alphadogg
alphadogg writes: Shipments of 802.11n access points have accelerated since the IEEE standard was formally approved one year ago. But what the numbers alone don't show is the new reality of Wi-Fi networks: they are fast becoming the preferred way to connect and stay connected in the enterprise.

And that reality is sparking new demand from enterprise customers, and new innovation from wireless LAN vendors, to make Wi-Fi networks "work" like wired Ethernet – reliably, consistently, securely – for all kinds of traffic, including video.

"Enterprise wireless LAN vendors are continuing to work on spectrum management and other features for 2011 to create a self-adapting, self-healing wireless LAN," says Paul DeBeasi, vice president, research director, with Gartner's network and telecom strategies group. "The idea is a wireless network that will function like a wired network in terms of performance and reliability."

Ground zero for the 11n revolution is the college campus, with hospitals not far behind. Colleges and universities have a growing population of the unplugged: students who've never used an Ethernet cable.
The Internet

Ad Block Plus Filter Maintainer "rick752" Dies At 56 385

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the guy-who-made-the-intertubez-liveable-again dept.
A user on Reddit pointed out that Richard "rick752" Petnel, maintainer of one of the most popular filter lists for Ad Block Plus, has passed away at age 56. In an article last year Petnel described a bit of what he was up against in the ad world. "'I'm playing against some pretty big players,' he said, explaining his reluctance to step forward. 'I don't want to be harassed. . . . I don't want to be bribed. I started it because I was frustrated with getting my computer infected from ads -- malware and spyware and all that stuff,' he said. 'I kind of went overboard with it. But you have to admit, it's pretty amazing, right?'" Update 15:05 GMT by SM: updated to reflect Rick's status as maintainer of the most popular Ad Block Plus filter as opposed to Ad Block Plus itself.
Mozilla

Command Lines and the Future of Firefox 360

Posted by CmdrTaco from the wouldn't-that-be-nice dept.
Barence writes "Mozilla has revealed how it plans to integrate plain text commands directly into future versions of Firefox. Dubbed Taskfox, the move sees Mozilla's Ubiquity project become part of the browser itself, allowing users to type commands directly into the address bar. You can, for example, type 'map cleveland street london' to bring up a Google Map of that location, or 'amazon-search the great gatsby' to find that book on Amazon, without visiting the website directly. 'The basic idea behind Taskfox is simple: take the time-saving ideas behind Ubiquity, and put them into Firefox,' the Taskfox wiki claims. 'That means allowing users to quickly access information and perform tasks that would normally take several steps to complete.'"
Slashdot.org

Slashdot Keybindings, Dynamic Stories 220

Posted by CmdrTaco from the we're-still-here dept.
We've been working hard on the new dynamic Slashdot project (logged in users can enable this by enabling the beta index in their user preferences). I just wanted to quickly mention that there are keybindings on the index. The WASD and VI movement keys do stuff that we like, and the faq has the complete list. Also, if you are using Firefox or have Index2 beta enabled, you can click 'More' in the footer at the end of the page to load the next block of stories in-line without a page refresh. We're experimenting now with page sizes to balance load times against the likelihood that you'll click. More features will be coming soon, but the main thing on our agenda now is optimization. The beta index2 is sloooow and that's gotta change. We're aiming for 2 major optimizations this week (CSS Sprites, and removing an old YUI library) that I'm hoping will put the beta page render time into the "Sane" time frame (which, in case you are wondering, is several seconds faster than that "Insane" time frame we're currently seeing).
Image

Christmas Tree Made From 70 SCSI Hard Drives 248

Posted by samzenpus from the free-time dept.
Trigger writes "At our work we were decomissioning six old HP/Compaq servers to clear up space for new servers and, naturally, each server had a fairly large raid array. Instead of formatting every hard drive (would have taken weeks performing a DoD level wipe) and disposing them all together with the servers, I decided to disassemble the hard drives and recycle them into something neat. With a lot (a lot) of patience, I made this shiny Xmas tree. In total there are around 70 old SCSI hard drives, between 9gb and 18gb in size each. They were nice and chunky, oldschool style. There were quite a few different hard drive models, which is good because they each had different bits which I could use. The Xmas tree is made with parts from hard drives only except for one nut which I had to purchase for $0.39." It's good to see that this guy has plenty to do at work.
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft Offers Windows Vista Ultimate For Free (blogspot.com) 1

Submitted by marulez
marulez writes: Microsoft is providing free Vista edition for taking survey and giving feedback. Sign up for the chance to get free Vista. Go to the website provided at the end of this topic, and sign up for the chance to win.
The Almighty Buck

Submission + - RIAA, MPAA, Microsoft & Co Form Copyright Alli

Submitted by
The Illegal Subset of the Integers
The Illegal Subset of the Integers writes: "Not satisfied with the current strength of copyright law, in which children and grandmothers who have never used computers can be forced to face expensive lawsuits to prove their innocence, the RIAA, MPAA, Microsoft, Disney and others have banded together to form the Copyright Alliance. This new lobbying group's members have previously argued for strengthening legal protections for DRM, lowering the standards of proof required for successful infringement claims, and increasing penalties for copyright infringement, while wishing to limit defenses against infringement like copyright misuse and fair use. Reactions fall along predictable lines with Rep. Berman (D-CA), who cites Jack Valenti as his inspiration, praising the new group's creation as "a tremendous idea" while the EFF, CEA & co. are launching the Digital Freedom Campaign to support reforms like Rep. Boucher's (D-VA) Fair Use Act, that would repeal or weaken parts of the DMCA."
Security

Submission + - Top 10 Web Application Vulnerabilities in Q1 2007

Submitted by Alejandro
Alejandro writes: The Application Security Trends Report identified 1,561 unique vulnerabilities during the first quarter of 2007. Of the reported vulnerabilities, file inclusion, SQL injection, cross-site scripting and directory traversal were the most prevalent, totaling 63 percent. While this report highlights the Top 10 vulnerabilities in commercial and open source applications, the problem is much worse if you factor in proprietary home grown applications, as these typically contain a large number of vulnerabilities.
Power

Submission + - President Bush Gives Self Dictatorial Powers

Submitted by MSTCrow5429
MSTCrow5429 writes: WorldNetDaily (http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=55 825) reports on National Security Presidential Directive NSPD-51/Homeland Security Presidential Directive HSPD-20, issued by President Bush, which effectively would give the Presidency dictatorial powers during a declared national emergency, without any Congressional or other oversight, over all levels of government throughout the United States and its territories, as well as over the entire private sector. It apparently is meant to override the National Emergencies Act, which gives Congress the power to check Presidential power during national emergencies. The office of National Continuity Director has been created, without authorization from Congress. Frances Fragos Townsend, the assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, would be appointed as the National Continuity Director during a national emergency. Perhaps most worryingly, the President can now unilaterally declare a national emergency, and proceed to implement directives, answerable to no one, not even Congress.
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft's ODF Add-in Found Lacking

Submitted by
Send Bug Reports Here
Send Bug Reports Here writes: "In all the fuss over open standards, with Microsoft touting its OOXML in favor of the ISO standard ODF, Microsoft eventually changed its tune to say that there's room in the market for both formats and created an add-in to import ODF files into Word. But just how "committed to interoperability" were they? Of the 12 major features that comprise what most people think of as standard Windows and Office integration, Microsoft's extension supports zero of them. You can't double click ODFs to open them, you can't select ODF via the "save as" dialog, and you have to save new documents as something else before you can convert them to an ODF. In fact, when you open an ODF, it automatically converts it to an OOXML DOCX file, and you have to use the ODF menu (not any of the save menus) to convert it back when you're done. Apparently, some see compatibility as a one-way street."
Sony

Submission + - Sony blames poor PS3 sales on Internet

Submitted by i_like_spam
i_like_spam writes: During a recent interview with GamePro, Sony's PR head, Dave Karraker, responded candidly to questions about the negative consumer perceptions of the PS3. He responded, 'I think a lot of this goes back to the proliferation of the Internet, where a very vocal minority can make a lot of noise and potentially alter perceptions of the masses, whether they are accurate or not.'

He also replied: 'A lot of the perceptions are not justified and seem fueled by people who don't have all the facts or have some kind of axe to grind. It is funny how myopic people can be when a new system comes along.'

There you have it, Sony's biggest quarterly loss in four years is due to inept consumers and FUD.

Slashdot Top Deals

"Who alone has reason to *lie himself out* of actuality? He who *suffers* from it." -- Friedrich Nietzsche

Close