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Software

Submission + - Why is Firehose so hostile? 15

Submitted by
NewYorkCountryLawyer
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: "Can anyone explain to me why Slashdot's Firehose is made to be so unfriendly? It's a great idea, but in practice it's infuriating. If you see a submitted article, and click on one of the links, you can't go back to the story. You have to start all over again. If you set the filters to what you're interested in, you have to re-set them all over again. Even if you just RTFA you are punished by losing your settings. Why shouldn't Slashdot encourage people to participate in the Firehose. For a busy person, it's almost impossible to be involved. And this bizarre lack of 'stickiness' makes everything take 10 times as much times as it needs to."
Television

Submission + - Is the HD DVD Format Dead?

Submitted by
Reservoir Hill
Reservoir Hill writes: "Warner Brothers announced that it will release high-definition DVDs exclusively in Sony's Blu-ray format, dealing a big blow to Toshiba's rival HD DVD technology. Warner Brothers is Hollywood's biggest seller of DVDs, representing about 18 to 20 percent of sales in the United States and was one of the few studios backing both formats. "A two-format landscape has led to consumer confusion and indifference toward high definition, which has kept the technology from reaching mass adoption and becoming the important revenue stream that it can be for the industry," said Kevin Tsujihara, President of Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Group. Saul Hansell at the NY Times says he wouldn't spend money on an HD DVD player until this all sorts out and expects many consumers to return their Christmas HD DVD players and exchange them for Blu-ray devices."
United States

Submission + - FBI to Investigate CIA Tape Destruction

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: The US Department of Justice announced on Wednesday that the FBI will be investigating the destruction of detainee interrogation tapes by CIA personnel. CIA Director Michael Hayden claimed the tapes were destroyed to protect the identities of CIA personnel and it is widely believed these tapes showed the use of torture by the CIA. The FBI will conduct the investigation under the direction of First Assistant US Attorney John Durham instead of the US Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia who has been recused to avoid the appearance of conflict of interest.
Operating Systems

Submission + - Nokia stifles Linux tablet users (maemo.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Nokia's recently released Internet Tablets have proved popular. But Nokia has failed to properly provide for software updates for its customers. The Nokia update servers for the tablets have proven to be woefully inadequate, causing its customers tablets to crash during updates, and forcing them to BitTorrent and other servers for updates.
Businesses

Submission + - The Epic Battle between Microsoft and Google 1

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "There is a long article in the NYTimes well worth reading called "Google Gets Ready to Rumble With Microsoft" about the business strategies both companies are pursuing and about the future of applications and where they will reside — on the web or on the desktop. Google President Eric Schmidt thinks that 90 percent of computing will eventually reside in the Web-based cloud and about 2,000 companies are signing up every day for Google Apps, simpler versions of the pricey programs that make up Microsoft's lucrative Office business. Microsoft faces a business quandary as they to try to link the Web to its desktop business — "software plus Internet services," in its formulation. Microsoft will embrace the Web, while striving to maintain the revenue and profits from its desktop software businesses, the corporate gold mine, a smart strategy for now that may not be sustainable. Google faces competition from Microsoft and from other Web-based productivity software being offered by start-ups but it is "unclear at this point whether Google will be able to capitalize on the trends that it's accelerating." David B. Yoffie, a professor at the Harvard Business School, says the Google model is to try to change all the rules. If Google succeeds, "a lot of the value that Microsoft provides today is potentially obsolete.""
Government

Submission + - National ID to use Texas Instruments RF360? (obscureresearch.net)

Submitted by
SaffronMiner
SaffronMiner writes: "The Texas Instruments RF360 has been announced for use in National ID cards , and Extended Access Control (EAC) requirements developed by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) .

"RF360 smart integrated circuit platform for the government identification market The Texas Instruments RF360 is the first contactless smart integrated circuit (IC) platform developed specifically to meet the rigorous demands of the government electronic identification market. It integrates TI's ultra-low power MSP430 microcontroller, advanced embedded Ferroelectric Random Access Memory (FRAM) and high-performance RF Analog Front-End (AFE) technologies. Leveraging a low power architecture and enhanced write capability, the RF360 smart IC platform provides fast chip transaction speeds enabling governments to quickly and efficiently produce a multitude of passive electronic identification (ID) such as electronic passports (e-passports) and national ID cards . (See http://www.ti.com/govid .)"


...

"Answering the Security Call

The RF360 platform provides both the memory and processing power to accommodate current and future security and encryption requirements, such as Basic Access Control (BAC) and Extended Access Control (EAC) requirements developed by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) . It integrates advanced security countermeasures and is designed to meet the stringent requirements of the Common Criteria EAL5+ security certification per the BSI (Bundesamt für Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik) Smartcard protection profile (BSI-PPP-0002). The RF360 platform features innovative, fast hardware co-processors on chip which support both public key cryptography (RSA, Elliptic Curve) and symmetric key cryptography (DES/Triple DES, AES). The RF360 architecture supports both contactless (ISO/IEC 14443 air interface protocol) and contact (ISO/IEC 7816 smart card interface protocol) communication."
"
Security

Submission + - Russian Hackers Hijack Search Results (techluver.com)

Submitted by
TechLuver
TechLuver writes: "A huge campaign to poison web searches and trick people into visiting malicious websites has been thwarted. "The booby-trapped websites came up in search results for search terms such as "Christmas gifts" and "hospice". Windows users falling for the trick risked having their machine hijacked and personal information plundered. The criminals poisoned search results using thousands of domains set up to convince search index software they were serious sources of information. While computer security researchers have seen small-scale attempts to subvert search results before now, the sheer scale of this attack dwarfed all others. "This was fairly epic," said Alex Eckelberry, head of Sunbelt Software — one of the firms that uncovered the attack. ( http://techluver.com/2007/11/29/russian-hackers-hijack-search-results-in-coordinated-web-attack/ )"
User Journal

Journal SPAM: Sex Lift

Journal by melpol
There are countless retired men on small pensions that would like to have a great sex life but can't afford it. This is because the expenses that go along with dating an attractive female in the western world are too high. They have no choice except to make love to a homely female hoping to be turned on---but this rarely happens. Besides that, homely females are also expensive. Many times they are just as demanding as attractive women. Things have gotten so bad that even old women require that y
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft will not sue over Linux patents

Submitted by Nero Nimbus
Nero Nimbus writes: In an official statement emailed to ZDNet UK, Microsoft confirmed that it would not litigate for now.

"If we wanted to go down that road we could have done that three years ago," said a Microsoft spokesperson. "Rather than litigate, Microsoft has spent the last three years building an intellectual property bridge that works for all parties — including open source — and the customer response has been tremendously positive. Our focus is on continuing to build bridges."

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The only possible interpretation of any research whatever in the `social sciences' is: some do, some don't. -- Ernest Rutherford

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