rx-sp - Slashdot User

Submission + - Deceptive file names under Vista (heise-security.co.uk)

Submitted by

devkhadka

on Tuesday September 25, 2007 @07:44AM

devkhadka writes: "An Attackers can use Unicode character under Vista to conceal filenames and filename extensions. A demonstration by Max Ried makes an executable screen-saver file (.scr) look like a harmless image (.jpg).The display of the false filename is due to the inclusion of Unicode control characters that change the direction of writing. These are required for the Arabic language where writing runs from right to left. Unicode recognizes the control characters (PDF) right-to-left override (RLO, 202E) and left-to-right override (LRO, 202D) to switch the writing direction. more about this:
demonstration here"

Submission + - PC-BSD 1.4 Released

Submitted by

wolf369T

on Tuesday September 25, 2007 @06:51AM

wolf369T writes: "PC-BSD evolved in the last year, after aquisition from iXsystems. They have a new website and recently they've launched PC-BSD, version 1.4, the KDE based FreeBSD flavour for the desktop users. PC-BSD offers a graphical installer, the PBI package system and various applets, that makes life easier for most users. PC-BSD 1.4 was built on FreeBSD 6.2 with KDE 3.5.7, X.Org 7.2, compiz, flash7 and NVIDIA driver enabled out-of-the box. Very impressive work, as PC-BSD might be one of the most easy to install BSD out there."

Submission + - Plz lose the Intel "slamming door" fx ads!

Submitted by rx-sp on Tuesday September 25, 2007 @06:32AM

rx-sp writes: Please Slashdot (and some other tech sites): Remove the annoying Intel adverts with the slamming door sound FX. This really isn't encouraging me to buy any Intel products, and is creating a very negative impression of Intel bearing in mind every time I view a new page I hear a strange click/splash sound. I don't know what they're thinking. It hasn't caused me to click on the advert. It's just getting on my nerves.

Submission + - General spreadsheet bug (feature?) 1

Submitted by sztuczny-kot on Tuesday September 25, 2007 @05:56AM

sztuczny-kot writes: It seems that many spreadsheets have a sort of a bug in automatic creation of arithmetic series which can be replicated as follows:

Select a cell, say A1 and input a value of 10. Then go to the cell below it (in this case A2) and input 9.8. Now select the two cells and drag the lower-right corner of the selection down to create arithmetic series. Drag until you get to cell A60. Then look at the numbers below 8.6. For example, insted of 0 you might get something like 3.5527136788005E-14. Other cells with numbers lower than 8.6 will most likely also contain a value that is somehow close to the one you would expect, but not the one. I guess that this bug might be somehow caused by floating-point number representation. Or perhaps it should be called a (rather unintuitive) computational feature and there is nothing to make fuss about?

As far as I could check, this applies to the following spreadsheets:
Microsoft Excel — versions 4.0, 97, 2007
Gnumeric 1.6.3
Open Office Calc 2.0.4

Submission + - Why are MS betas fast, but the releases slow?

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 25, 2007 @04:33AM

An anonymous reader writes: Recently I've been reading about Vista's slowness on even high powered machines. I played with the Vista release candidate early this year and found it to be quite speedy on my low-spec notebook (768MB RAM, 1.5GHz Celeron). I remember the same situation with the Windows XP release candidates some years ago: they ran fast on modest hardware of the time, yet the final release arrived and ran slowly on the same hardware. The question is: What are Microsoft doing between RC and final releases to pour treacle into the works? Some people I've mentioned this to have suggested a conspiracy theory (duh) that Microsoft deliberately enhances the RC release to build hype amongst journalists who see it, but why can't they just released the "enhancements" with the final build?

Apple's Leopard Will Exclude 800MHz G4 Processors 371

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday September 24, 2007 @03:57PM from the older-tech-gets-forked dept.

goombah99 writes "According to AppleInsider, Apple is about to announce that Leopard will not support 800 MHz G4 PowerPC processors. Previously developers had been told that it would require at least an 800 MHz G4. But AppleInsider alleges only 867 MHz G4s and higher will now be supported because of speed issues, and testers have been told that the new OS 'cannot be installed' on lesser machines. This cutoff in minimum requirements means that all those original iMac flat screens and Titanium PowerBooks are now forked to the Tiger (10.4) Update Path."

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