Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×

Comment Re:Text to speech (Score 1) 384

by ddillman (#34566098) Attached to: 'Tron: Legacy' Director Explains the Tron World

Not until the 32 bit era (68000 Amiga, 80486 +SoundBlaster) did they have enough power to convert text to speech.

Sure they did. I attended a demo of the technology in 1978 or so. Sounded much like the Wargames computer, but it definitely was not a small personal computer doing the work.
Google

NSS Labs Browser Report Says IE Is the Best, Google Disagrees 205

Posted by samzenpus from the stacking-the-deck dept.
adeelarshad82 writes "Independent testing company NSS Labs recently published a report on the ability of popular browsers to block socially engineered malware attack URLs. The test, funded by Microsoft, reported a 99 percent detection rate by Internet Explorer 9 beta, 90 percent by Internet Explorer 8, and 3 percent by Google Chrome. However, Google doesn't entirely approve of this report's focus and conclusions. According to Google not only didn't the report use Chrome 6 for the tests, the current version is Chrome 8; it also focused just on socially engineered malware, while excluding vulnerabilities in plug-ins or browsers themselves. Google defended its browser by claiming that it was built with security in mind and emphasized protection of users from drive-by downloads and plug-in vulnerabilities."
Technology

Ultra-Thin Alternative To Silicon 83

Posted by Soulskill from the delicious-thin-mint-technology dept.
An anonymous reader writes "There's good news in the search for the next generation of semiconductors. Researchers with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and UC Berkeley have successfully integrated ultra-thin layers of the semiconductor indium arsenide onto a silicon substrate to create a nanoscale transistor with excellent electronic properties (abstract). A member of the III–V family of semiconductors, indium arsenide offers several advantages as an alternative to silicon, including superior electron mobility and velocity, which makes it an outstanding candidate for future high-speed, low-power electronic devices."
Operating Systems

Oracle Solaris 11 Express Released 160

Posted by Soulskill from the long-time-coming dept.
comay writes "Today Oracle released Solaris 11 Express 2010.11. It includes a large number of new features (PDF) not found in either Oracle Solaris 10 or previous OpenSolaris releases, including ZFS encryption and deduplication, network-based packaging and provisioning systems, network virtualization, optimized I/O for NUMA platforms and optimized platform support including support for Intel's latest Nehalem and SPARC T3. In addition, Oracle Solaris 10 support is available from within a container/zone so migration of existing systems is greatly simplified." Reader gtirloni adds, "Oracle also announced that this is not a beta or preview, but a full, supported release aimed at everybody developing, testing, prototyping or demonstrating applications running on the latest Solaris release (not allowed to be used in production)."

Comment Thermostat? (Score 1) 402

by ddillman (#34099702) Attached to: The temperature where I am now is controlled by...
Missing option? My Honeywell setback thermostat is not a full computerized HVAC system, but it is more complex than your traditional set temperature thermostat. It is electronic and programmable, as opposed to the simple mercury switch on a bi-metal coil that my parents had in their house.
Space

The Galaxy May Have Billions of Habitable Planets 380

Posted by Soulskill from the going-full-drake dept.
The Bad Astronomer writes "A recent astronomical report (abstract in Science) came out stating that as many as 1 in 4 sun-like stars have roughly earth-mass planets. But are they habitable? A simple bit of math based on some decent assumptions shows that there may be billions of potentially habitable worlds in the galaxy. '... astronomers studied 166 stars within 80 light years of Earth, and did a survey of the planets they found orbiting them. What they found is that about 1.5% of the stars have Jupiter-mass planets, 6% have Neptune-mass ones, and about 12% have planets from 3 – 10 times the Earth’s mass. This sample isn’t complete, and they cannot detect planets smaller than 3 times the Earth’s mass. But using some statistics, they can estimate from the trend that as many as 25% of sun-like stars have earth-mass planets orbiting them!' Getting to them, of course, is another problem altogether..."
Facebook

FarmVille Now Worth More Than EA 344

Posted by CmdrTaco from the i-hate-the-sims-anyway dept.
tekgoblin writes "Zynga, the creators of the popular hit Facebook game FarmVille, should be happy today as the company's worth has passed that of EA (Electronic Arts)."
Piracy

Sony Gets Nasty With PSBreak Buyers 246

Posted by Soulskill from the give-it-a-rest dept.
YokimaSun writes "The war between hackers and Sony over the PlayStation 3 has now taken an even more sinister turn, with Sony going after not just shops but actual buyers of the PSBreak dongle, threatening them with fines of many thousands of Euros and forcing them to sign cease-and-desist letters. It seems Sony will use any means necessary to thwart both homebrew and piracy on the PS3."
Transportation

Digital Dashboard Device Detects Driver Drowsiness 117

Posted by timothy from the string-between-ceiling-and-nostril dept.
Pickens writes "Science Daily Headlines reports that researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Media Technology have developed a self-contained, dashboard-mounted assistant system that tracks a driver's eye movements and issues a warning before the driver has an opportunity to nod off to sleep. 'What we have developed is a small modular system with its own hardware and programs on board, so that the line of vision is computed directly within the camera itself,' says Professor Husar. 'Since the Eyetracker is fitted with at least two cameras that record images stereoscopically — meaning in three dimensions — the system can easily identify the spatial position of the pupil and the line of vision.' The cameras, which can be installed in any model of car, evaluate up to 200 images per second to identify the line of vision. If the camera modules detect that the eye is closed for longer than a user-defined interval, it sounds an alarm. The Eyetracker also has applications in computer games where players could look around themselves without requiring a joystick to change their viewing direction, and in marketing and advertising, where researchers could determine which parts of a poster or advertising spot receive longer attention from their viewers."
Bug

Why You See 'Free Public WiFi' In So Many Places 260

Posted by Soulskill from the deja-vu-all-over-again dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Almost anywhere you go these days (particularly at airports), if you check for available WiFi settings, you have a pretty good chance of seeing an ad hoc network for 'Free Public WiFi.' Of course, since it's ad hoc (computer to computer) it's not actually access to the internet. So why is this in so many places? Turns out it's due to a bug in Windows XP. Apparently, the way XP works is that if it can't find a 'favorite' WiFi hotspot, it automatically sets up the computer to broadcast itself as an ad hoc network point, using the name of the last connection the computer attempted. So... people see 'Free Public WiFi' and they try to log on. Then their own computer starts broadcasting the same thing, because it can't find a network it knows. And, like a virus, the 'Free Public WiFi' that doesn't work lives on and on and on."

Slashdot Top Deals

You knew the job was dangerous when you took it, Fred. -- Superchicken

Close