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Cellphones

Nokia Trades Symbian For MeeGo In N-Series Smartphones 184

Posted by timothy from the unfortunate-name dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Nokia announced that moving forward, MeeGo would be the default operating system in the N series of smartphones (original Reuters report). Symbian will still be used in low-end devices from Nokia, Samsung, and Sony Ericsson. The move to MeeGo is a demonstration of support for the open source mobile OS, but considering the handset user experience hasn't been rolled out and likely won't be rolled out in time for its vague June deadline outlined at MeeGo.com, could the decision be premature?"
Linux

Adobe (Temporarily?) Kills 64-Bit Flash For Linux 272

Posted by Soulskill from the how-rude dept.
An anonymous reader writes "It seems that with the release of the 10.1 security patches, Adobe has, at least temporarily, killed 64-bit Flash for Linux. The statement says: 'The Flash Player 10.1 64-bit Linux beta is closed. We remain committed to delivering 64-bit support in a future release of Flash Player. No further information is available at this time. Please feel free to continue your discussions on the Flash Player 10.1 desktop forums.' The 64-bit forum has been set to read-only."
Windows

Microsoft Kills Support For XP SP2 315

Posted by timothy from the too-soon? dept.
Trailrunner7 writes "Microsoft's announcement this week that it is preparing to end support for machines running Windows XP SP2 not only represents a challenge for the thousands of businesses still running SP2, but also is the end of an era for both Microsoft and its customers. It wasn't until 2004 that the final release of XP SP2 hit the streets, but when it did, it represented a huge step forward in security for Windows users. It wasn't necessarily the feature set that mattered as much as the fact that the protections were enabled by default and taken out of the users' hands."
Image

Beijing Sweetens Rubbish With Giant Deodorant Guns 111

Posted by samzenpus from the now-that's-a-good-stink dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Beijing plans to install 100 deodorant guns at a landfill site on the edge of the city in the hopes that it will dampen complaints about the capital's rubbish crisis.The giant fragrance sprayers will be put in place by May at the Asuwei dump site. From the article: 'Municipal authorities say they will also apply more plastic layers to cover the site in response to furious protests by local residents who have to put up with the stench when the wind blows in their direction. The high-pressure guns, which can spray dozens of litres of fragrance per minute over a distance of up to 50m, are produced by several Chinese firms and based on German and Italian technology. They are already in use at several landfill sites, but they are merely a temporary fix.'"
Science

Why the First Cowboy To Draw Always Gets Shot 398

Posted by timothy from the more-guns-less-crime dept.
cremeglace writes "Have you ever noticed that the first cowboy to draw his gun in a Hollywood Western is invariably the one to get shot? Nobel-winning physicist Niels Bohr did, once arranging mock duels to test the validity of this cinematic curiosity. Researchers have now confirmed that people indeed move faster if they are reacting, rather than acting first."
Math

7 of the Best Free Linux Calculators 289

Posted by timothy from the open-in-tabs dept.
An anonymous reader writes "One of the basic utilities supplied with any operating system is a desktop calculator. These are often simple utilities that are perfectly adequate for basic use. They typically include trigonometric functions, logarithms, factorials, parentheses and a memory function. However, the calculators featured in this article are significantly more sophisticated with the ability to process difficult mathematical functions, to plot graphs in 2D and 3D, and much more. Occasionally, the calculator tool provided with an operating system did not engender any confidence. The classic example being the calculator shipped with Windows 3.1 which could not even reliably subtract two numbers. Rest assured, the calculators listed below are of precision quality."
Mozilla

Mozilla Thunderbird 3 Released 272

Posted by kdawson from the hot-bits dept.
supersloshy writes Today Mozilla released Thunderbird 3. Many new features are available, including Tabs and enhanced search features, a message archive for emails you don't want to delete but still want to keep, Firefox 3's improved Add-ons Manager, Personas support, and many other improvements. Download here."
Google

Submission + - Google's $4.6bn wireless plan grounded

Submitted by Almir
Almir writes: Google's plans to bid for a portion of America's airwaves were dealt a blow last night when the Federal Communications Commission refused to approve two of the internet company's conditions. Google had said that it would match the $4.6 billion (£2.3 billion) reserve price set for a 700MHz licence, which could be used to provide wireless broadband internet access across the US from 2009, if the eventual winner was forced to meet four "open access" conditions. However, two more controversial provisions put forward by Google, which would require the eventual licensee to sell access to its network on a wholesale basis to rivals and allow other parties physical access to infrastructure at realistic points, were not included.
Media

Submission + - World's first Blu-Ray disc camcroders from Hitachi

Submitted by morpheus83
morpheus83 writes: Hitachi Japan has announced the world's first Blu-Ray disc camcorders, the DZ-BD70 and DZ-BD7H hybrid which packs both an 8-cm BD writer and 30GB disk. The $ 22 single sided 8cms wide 4.5 GB BD-R disc can hold upto an hour of 1,920 x 1,080 MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 video and more if you dial-back the resolution. Both the cams pack in USB and HDMI jacks and a SD card slot as well.
Quickies

Submission + - ESA backs satellite broadcast(DVB-SH)to cellphones (theregister.co.uk)

Submitted by
Tech.Luver
Tech.Luver writes: "theRegister reports, " The European Space Agency (ESA) has joined the DVB-SH party by funding development of technologies for broadcasting TV to mobiles via satellite. ESA has called its standard DVB-SH (Digital Video Broadcast — Satellite, Handheld) and envisages using satellites to send out video at 2GHz to 4GHz (S-Band). Terrestrial repeaters would be used to give indoor coverage. ""
Communications

Submission + - Malicous websites can exploit & control iPhone (nytimes.com)

Submitted by
Whiney Mac Fanboy
Whiney Mac Fanboy writes: "The New York Times is reporting that a serious vulnerability has been found in the iPhone — allowing arbitrary code to be run as root. From the Security Evaulators page:

When the iPhone's version of Safari opens the malicious web page, arbitrary code embedded in the exploit is run with administrative priviledges. In our proof of concept, this code reads the log of SMS messages, the address book, the call history, and the voicemail data. It then transmits all this information to the attacker. However, this code could be replaced with code that does anything that the iPhone can do.
The security researchers have also released a white paper. This sounds like a useful vector to allow native applications to run on the iPhone."
Enlightenment

Submission + - Rolling my own parental controls in Linux

Submitted by ZekeSMZ
ZekeSMZ writes: It's been a year since I made the switch from windows to Ubuntu, and I can safely say I'm never going back. One of the best things I've done is to set up an Edubuntu system for my kids — ages 4 and 2. With applications such as Supertux, TuxPaint, G Compris, Stellarium and even Kolf, they amuse themselves for hours with the machine and can't damage it like they can a Windows box.

Now that my 4 year old is learning to read and type, I'd like to set up some form of parental controls on my network. I consider myself a moderately competant Linux user, but I do not have anything approaching the skills of the talented sysadmins I've worked with over the years. So, I'd like to reach out to the Slashdot community for advice on how to lock down my network so that they won't accidentally bump into the seedier side of the web.

What are the best firewall apps to use for internal filtering? Do (or could) any of them support pro-active whitelisting, where I could get an email with a blocked URL that my kids tried to visit, and in response — I set up a rule to allow or deny access to the URL. This is a fairly mainstream feature of various parental control software out there, how could a similar solution be set up in Linux?

I'm going to assume that my kids are smarter than me and will one day figure out how to own the network. You get bonus points if you can give pointers on setting up a dual system, one that they can hack, and one that is running in the background in silent or stealth mode to monitor activity. My intent here is not to be big brother, but rather a responsible parent.

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