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Security

Submission + - Security risk of OSS software

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: WordPress announced that someone cracked their server and inserted malicious code in their product. This, in itself, has nothing to do specifically with Open Source Software — the same problem could have arisen with proprietary software that is made available on an imperfectly-secured web site. OSS may be more susceptible to this kind of problem, however, because the software is often distributed through a wide variety of mirrors, and because their servers are by nature more open to access to the general public. How many OSS distributions supply an MD5 hash, and how many users check their download against it? Does anyone besides me prefer to download directly from the originating organization, instead of from a server at some university that might be hacked?
Programming

Submission + - How do you change careers into programming?

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: I have worked in tech support for the last several years, but find myself wanting to move on to something else — programming. I've written some small programs in my limited spare time but nothing particularly impressive; just functional stuff to make my life easier. I've spent a lot of time recently working through programming books, and feel I'm ready to make the switch in my career. That said, I don't have a CS degree, and find that responses to my resume have been along the lines of "Thanks, but we aren't hiring for tech support positions." Surely someone from the slashdot crowd has been in the same position — what would you recommend?
Announcements

Submission + - Help Find Jim Gray With Satellite Images

Submitted by Bananatree3
Bananatree3 writes: On January 29th, Jim Gray who was sailing to the Farallon Islands off San Francisco went missing. A massive search is now underway using satellite imagery and distributed human effort. Satellite images were taken where Jim is thought to have been. Help find Jim by reviewing these images and looking for any evidence of him on Amazon's Mechanical Turk. Instructions on what to look for can be found on the Mechanical Turk site. Also, further information and updates on the search can be found on the blog of Amazon's chief technology advisor, Werner Vogels.
Hardware Hacking

Submission + - DocuColor Tracking Dot Decoding Guide

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The EFF has posted a nice little guide decoding the grid that is printed by the Xerox DocuColor series printer. The FBI and NSA use this to keep track of certain groups, like Greenpeace, here in the US. The article itself only covers the DocuColor series printers, but the EFF warns that this maybe used by other printers as well. Very interesting read, and also very scary knowing that whatever we print can possibly be tracked with exact date and times and the serial number of the printer used. Enjoy!
Education

Submission + - OSSDI to Distribute OpenOffice.org in Schools

Submitted by
Xampper
Xampper writes: "The Open Source Software Distribution Initiative (OSSDI) is a new organization planning to distribute open source alternatives to expensive commercial software packages, primarily in education. Initially, OSSDI will be focusing its efforts on giving away professionally pressed CD-ROMS containing the OpenOffice.org software suite within school districts in poverty-stricken regions. These distributions will give students access to a professional office suite, which they might otherwise be unable to afford, while spreading awareness of open source software."
AMD

Submission + - Anyone else confused by AMD?

Submitted by
Alfius
Alfius writes: "I'm the proud owner of an high end Nvidia590 skt AM2 motherboard which I bought last summer, I furnished it with the rather low end single core Athlon 3800+ on the understanding that AMD would be releasing a conroe beating quadcore chip sometime in 2007. Since then I've read many seemingly conflicting reports about how/when/what AMD will actually be producing quad core wise. I find this whole 4x4 or should I say 2x2 business exceedingly confusing to say the least, and then there's socket F which I thought was supposed to be a server socket, and what really is AM3 anyway? Does anyone have the facts, can I look forward to quad core goodness on my AM2 board anytime this year? Or should I just forget all about it and buy an x2?"
Media

Submission + - Fight DRM while there's time

Submitted by ageor
ageor writes: It seems (not only) to me that DRM is about far more than intellectual property. It's also about monopoly and freedom of choice. It's one of those cases where us, the consumers, have to decide against accepting the new control-and-money-making-is-all-we-care-about industry's rules.

The whole matter is very well put in DRM, Vista and your rights where you can read about it and also follow the subject as deep as you like through numerous relevant links.
The Internet

Submission + - Search with your voice

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Acccording to this report, Music social networking site midomi.com is showcasing a new search technology that allows you to search for music by singing, whistling or humming a few bars of a song to identify the track. The search engine technology was even able to correctly identify songs sung by the writer, who is says he is a hopeless singer.
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft wanted to "whack" Dell

Submitted by pboyd2004
pboyd2004 writes: According to emails obtained in Iowa's antitrust case against Microsoft. Microsoft wanted to "whack" Dell over their Linux sales. "We should whack them, we should make sure they understand our value," wrote Paul Flessner, a senior vice president in Microsoft's server applications unit. The email exchange can be found here.
OS X

Submission + - Court Documents Show Microsoft's Tiger Envy

Submitted by
phillymjs
phillymjs writes: "PC Pro is reporting on another juicy e-mail nugget from the Sent Items of Jim Allchin, (nyud link, PDF) courtesy of Iowa's Comes v. Microsoft trial. It's a lengthy e-mail conversation from late June, 2004 — in which several Microsofties ooh and ahh over features of the yet-unreleased Mac OS X 10.4. IMHO the award for best quote goes to Lenn Pryor, who said, 'It is like I just got a free pass to Longhorn land today.'"
It's funny. Laugh.

Submission + - Very funny IT ads (songs/video) by 80s hair bands

Submitted by
rabblerouzer
rabblerouzer writes: "A song about 2-factor authentication is so bad it's laughable, and it's just one of five songs Symantec has developed so far. Combine that with the video on identity theft and you may run from the room screaming. Even CheckPoint has its own song — one that could make your ears bleed. I ask, "What's the point?" http://blogs.csoonline.com/node/111"
Spam

Submission + - Is Linux.org hurting Linux?

Submitted by xivulon
xivulon writes: Linux.org is not the official Linux website, but millions of people believe it is. Is it a nice, modern, exciting page fostering Linux adoption? Hardly so. Even worse, far too many energies seem to be dedicated to raising money in a way that may even hurt the Linux image... I guess you have to turn adblock off for this one.
Privacy

Submission + - University E-Mails Not Private?

Submitted by Anonymous University Student
Anonymous University Student writes: Hello Slashdot. I go to a large Canadian university where all students are given an e-mail account when they enroll. I've recently been receiving a lot of targeted spam (for study programs, student surveys, et cetera,) sent to my University e-mail account. The problem is that nobody has ever been given this address — the only people who should know are Professors who are given access to a class list. When I first got the account, I set it to forward to my GMail account, simply because I wasn't interested in using multiple e-mail addresses. When I e-mailed my school's network services to explain the problem and see if it was a known issue, I was actually told that all e-mail addresses are on a public list that anyone can view. This, in my opinion, is an enormous breach of privacy, and I've been basically told that there's nothing I can do to stop this. So, Slashdot, I ask you — is this common practice for most universities, or is my school just not concerned about the privacy of its students? Many people would not care, however I get enough spam in my inbox that any more is just ridiculous.
SuSE

Submission + - Distribution building for everybody !

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The openSUSE project just released all their tools which they use to build their distribution. What it makes extra cool is that not only SUSE is supported, but also other rpm based distros. deb packages for Debian based distros can be build as well and even Windows targets are planned ! And that by building directly from a tar ball or any public svn server ...
Graphics

Submission + - NVIDIA and ATI Talk About MXM

Submitted by jkwdoc
jkwdoc writes: Two years ago, NVIDIA announced its MXM initiative for the mobile market. This new technology would allow for a modular GPU slot in all laptops, thus making servicing and upgrades much easier. But two years later, the consumer still can't go into a store and buy a graphics card to upgrade their laptop, and the entire mobile graphics market is a mess. [H] investigates and gets ATI and NVIDIA to talk about the problems. http://consumer.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTI2N iwxLCxoY29uc3VtZXI=

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