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Submission + - Ask: Portable High Resolution External Displays

Submitted by paragonc
paragonc writes: I am a software engineer who works remotely. I'm amazingly lucky to live in Austin Texas where i have access to multiple high quality co working facilities within biking distance. While these places are great for networking and establishing a rhythm to daily life, not having a permanent desk forces me to pack my gear in and out each day. This means i pack light. My current Go Bag includes a 13.3 inch macbook pro, and an iPad running avatron Air Display. This has worked well, but i’m sorely missing having a real high resolution external monitor. I've looked at a few of the USB powered external displays, but the resolution seems to only hit 1366 X 768. I'd be curious if slashdotters have any tricks up their sleeves on how to implement a high resolution portable external displays.

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: How to start and manage a linux users group in a university

Submitted by ckugblenu
ckugblenu writes: I'm an undergrad computer engineering student in Ghana with some linux knowledge under my belt. How do i start a linux users group at my university and what kind of activities should occur. The engineering department is willing to provide meeting space but that's about it. The other computer groups are into mobile web and not as specialized as i would like. How do i successfully achieve it and build a following since it will be the first in the university.

Submission + - Nevermind the epidemic, who gets patent rights for the cure?

Submitted by Presto Vivace
Presto Vivace writes: Why a Saudi Virus Is Spreading Alarm

But impeding an effective response is a dispute over rights to develop a treatment for the virus. The case brings to the fore a growing debate over International Health Regulations, interpretations of patent rights, and the free exchange of scientific samples and information. Meanwhile, the epidemic has already caused forty-nine cases in seven countries, killing twenty-seven of them.

At the center of the dispute is a Dutch laboratory that claims all rights to the genetic sequence of the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus [MERS-CoV]. Saudi Arabia's deputy health minister, Ziad Memish, told the WHO meeting that "someone"--a reference to Egyptian virologist Ali Zaki--mailed a sample of the new SARS-like virus out of his country without government consent in June 2012, giving it to Dutch virologist Ron Fouchier of Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam.
Intel

Intel Haswell CPUs Debut, Put To the Test 189

Posted by timothy from the good-to-live-when-advances-are-boring dept.
jjslash writes "Intel's Haswell architecture is finally available in the flagship Core i7-4770K and Core i7-4950HQ processors. This is a very volatile time for Intel. In an ARM-less vacuum, Intel's Haswell architecture would likely be the most amazing thing to happen to the tech industry in years. Haswell mobile processors are slated to bring about the single largest improvement in battery life in Intel history. In graphics, Haswell completely redefines the expectations for processor graphics. On the desktop however, Haswell is just a bit more efficient, but no longer much faster when going from one generation to another." Reader wesbascas puts some numbers on what "just a bit" means here: "Just as leaked copies of the chip have already shown, the i7-4770K only presents an incremental ~10% performance increase over the Ivy Bridge-based Core i7-3770K. Overclocking potential also remains in the same 4.3 GHz to 4.6 GHz ballpark."

Submission + - Oracle's attempt to copyright its Java APIs (groklaw.net)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The remarkable outpouring of support for Google in the Oracle v. Google appeal continues, with a group of well-known innovators, start-ups, and those who fund them — innovators like Ray Ozzie, Tim O'Reilly, Mitch Kapor, Dan Bricklin, and Esther Dyson — standing with yesterday's group of leading computer scientists in telling the court that Oracle's attempt to copyright its Java APIs would be damaging to innovation.
Google

Questioning Google's Disclosure Timeline Motivations 73

Posted by timothy from the comparative-advantage dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The presence of 0-day vulnerability exploitation is often a real and considerable threat to the Internet — particularly when very popular consumer-level software is the target. Google's stance on a 60day turnaround of vulnerability fixes from discovery, and a 7-day turnaround of fixes for actively exploited unpatched vulnerabilities, is rather naive and devoid of commercial reality. As a web services company it is much easier for Google to develop and roll out fixes promptly — but for 95+% of the rest of the world's software development companies making thick-client, server and device-specific software this is unrealistic. Statements like these from Google clearly serve their business objectives. As predominantly a web services company with many of the world's best software engineers and researchers working for them. One could argue that Google's applications and software should already be impervious to vulnerabilities (i.e. they should have discovered them themselves through internal QA processes) — rather than relying upon external researchers and bug hunters stumbling over them."
Programming

Too Many Smart People Chasing Too Many Dumb Ideas? 376

Posted by timothy from the your-ideas-might-be-dumb-but-mine-are-great dept.
theodp writes "In The Unexotic Underclass, C.Z. Nnaemeka argues that too many smart people are chasing too many dumb ideas. 'What is shameful,' writes Nnaemeka, 'is that in a country with so many problems, with such a heaving underclass, we find the so-called 'best and brightest,' the 20-and 30-somethings who emerge from the top American graduate and undergraduate programs, abandoning their former hangout, Wall Street, to pile into anti-problem entrepreneurship.' Nnaemeka adds, 'It just looks like we've shifted the malpractice from feeding the money machine to making inane, self-centric apps. Worse, is that the power players, institutional and individual — the highflying VCs, the entrepreneurship incubators, the top-ranked MBA programs, the accelerators, the universities, the business plan competitions have been complicit in this nonsense.' And while it may not get you invited to the White House, Nnaemeka advises entrepreneurs looking for ideas to 'consider looking beyond the city-centric, navel-gazing, youth-obsessed mainstream' and instead focus on some groups that no one else is helping."

Submission + - Wyoming teen who built fusion reactor disqualified from science fair (trib.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: "A Wyoming high school student who built a nuclear reactor in his dad's garage was disqualified from the International Science and Engineering Fair this month on a technicality."

His crime: competing in too many science fairs.
Input Devices

Oculus VR Co-founder Andrew Reisse Killed In Auto Collision 302

Posted by timothy from the sad-news dept.
ccguy writes with this excerpt from a sad report on CNET: "Oculus Rift co-founder and lead engineer Andrew Reisse was hit in Santa Ana, where he was a resident, by a speeding car being pursued by police." Reisse was killed, says the report, when the car "slammed into two vehicles during the pursuit before hitting Reisse at Flower Street and MacArthur Boulevard."

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: Web developers, why restrict special characters in passwords? 5

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: I recently had to reset a password used to access an investment account. The instructions stated:

"Do not use symbols, punctuation marks, or spaces (e.g.,#,@,/,*,-.)"

Are there any valid technical reasons for this? If I were to build such a web authentication system, I would have the application server convert the %XX characters from the POST string, salt and hash the value, convert it to a format applicable to the application/storage (i.e. unsigned int, HEX64, etc), then compare it to what I had stored in some flat file or database (depending on the application). Since the format of the password would be immediately converted to a different format, character limitations wouldn't be necessary. At most I would limit the size of acceptable password to save CPU cycles on computing hashes on long inputs. I can see limitations on usernames because it is likely this information is stored in a SQL queried DBMS. Limiting characters would protect the database from SQL injection.

I have worn several different IT hats, web developer is one of the few I haven't worn. I am hoping some web developers here might be able to shine some light on this. Is my general idea of how to go about building an authentication system solid? Am I missing some storage or performance/session related issue?

Submission + - UDOO looks to combine Raspberry Pi and Arduino through Kickstarter (kickstarter.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Kickstarter campaign for the UDOO board is 7 days out from closing and they currently sit just under $4,000 short of their stretch goal of $500,000. The UDOO is an attempt to produce a single board which would combine the best parts of both Raspberry Pi and Arduino. UDOO will have a 1GHz ARM i.MX6 CPU in either a Dual Core or Quad Core flavor, 1 GB DDR3 RAM, HDMI and LVDS + Touch, and both an RJ45 port and an on board Wifi Module. Along with those specs, it will be compatible with Arduino DUE R3. The UDOO will utilize Micro SD as a boot device and run both Linux and Android. Currently on Kickstarter, the Dual Core starts at a pledge of $109.
Earth

OK City Data Center Built To Withstand Winds Up To 310 MPH, Says Contractor 139

Posted by timothy from the I'll-huff-and-I'll-puff-and-I'll-wheeze dept.
dcblogs writes "The area around and to the southwest of Oklahoma City, where more tornadoes were striking Friday night, 'has perhaps the greatest frequency of tornadoes in the U.S.,' said John Snow, a professor of meteorology at the University of Oklahoma. About 95% of all tornadoes are below EF3 intensity, and only 0.1% achieve EF5, which is what hit Moore earlier this month. To build a data center capable of surviving an EF3, Perimeter Technology in Oklahoma City surrounded the raised floor portion of the data center with 8.5-in. reinforced concrete walls. The data center is in the middle of the building, and around it are offices protected by another 8.5-in. exterior wall. But there's another data center in Oklahoma City that may be able survive 310 MPH winds. The company, Devon Energy, isn't talking about its data center or even confirming that it has one capable of handling these winds. But a contractor has disclosed details."
Censorship

In UK, Search Engines Urged To Block More Online Porn Sites 186

Posted by timothy from the they'll-know-it-when-they-see-it dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Search engines such as Google should do more to restrict access to online pornography, a government adviser on child internet safety has said. John Carr said increasing the number of sites automatically blocked by search engines would make it more difficult for paedophiles to get images of abuse. It comes after Mark Bridger was found guilty of the abduction and murder of five-year-old April Jones in Powys." It sounds like a continuation of the blocked-by-default porn white-listing plan that's been going around in the UK for a few years now.

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