Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Displays

Submission + - Interactive 3D Holographic Display (usc.edu)

Submitted by
emil10001
emil10001 writes: "Researchers at the University of Southern California have created an interactive 3D holographic display that is viewable 360 degrees around. "The display consists of a high-speed video projector, a spinning mirror covered by a holographic diffuser, and FPGA circuitry to decode specially rendered DVI video signals. The display uses a standard programmable graphics card to render over 5,000 images per second of interactive 3D graphics, projecting 360-degree views with 1.25 degree separation up to 20 updates per second.""
The Internet

Submission + - Swedish Police Prepares To Block ThePirateBay.Org (www.dn.se) 1

Submitted by
Xemu
Xemu writes: "The Swedish National Police Board has issued a statement that the famous file-sharing site ThePiratebay.Org will be added to the Swedish national Web blacklist next week, which in effect would shut down public access to the site. The Swedish national Web blacklist was created to give the Police means to prevent access to sites offering child pornography. When the blacklist was first implemented, many critics voiced concern that it would later be used to block non-child pornography sites with contents less liked by authorities, and indeed this now seems to be happening. In a blog interview, Anakata from ThePiratebay says "We see ThePiratebay as a search engine like any other. The police has never contacted us about suspected child porn. They should block Google." ( Sorry, links in Swedish only, this scoop is less than 30 minutes old. )"
Programming

Submission + - Are 80 columns enough? 1

Submitted by ThinkGeek
ThinkGeek writes: Dating back to the venerable DEC VT100, the 80 column terminal has served us well for over 25 years. Even now, many open source projects and common conventions require lines of code and documentation to fit on that terminal. I am not alone, judging by code I've seen in and out of the open source world, in finding that number insufficient for coding, much less more verbose writing. Given that modern graphical displays (and all popular editors) are capable of far more, is it time we came up with a new standard-sized terminal? If so, what should the new standard be?
Censorship

Submission + - Agree with the President or Leave (aclu.org)

Submitted by Sadye
Sadye writes: "Presidential Advance Manual" obtained by the ACLU. White House policy is to keep people who are critical of the president away from him and from the news media. A lawsuit was filed against a White House staffer who arrested two people wearing anti-Bush shirts to a 4th of July Presidential appearance. Although other attendees were allowed to wear pro-Bush paraphernalia, the couple was charged with trespassing despite having tickets to the event. http://www.aclu.org/pdfs/freespeech/presidential_a dvance_manual.pdf
It's funny. Laugh.

Submission + - Scientific Savvy? In U.S., Not Much (nytimes.com) 1

Submitted by
Raver32
Raver32 writes: "When Jon D. Miller looks out across America, which he can almost do from his 18th-floor office at Northwestern University Medical School in Chicago, he sees a landscape of haves and have-nots — in terms not of money, but of knowledge. Dr. Miller, 63, a political scientist who directs the Center for Biomedical Communications at the medical school, studies how much Americans know about science and what they think about it. His findings are not encouraging. Dr. Miller's data reveal some yawning gaps in basic knowledge. American adults in general do not understand what molecules are (other than that they are really small). Fewer than a third can identify DNA as a key to heredity. Only about 10 percent know what radiation is. One adult American in five thinks the Sun revolves around the Earth, an idea science had abandoned by the 17th century."
Google

Submission + - China's new nuclear sub spotted on Google Earth

Submitted by Plasma_droid
Plasma_droid writes: A new class of nuclear-powered Chinese submarine has been spotted for the first time through Google Earth. The Jin-class of sub has been rumored to exist for some time but has not been seen publicly until now. "They're very much in the testing phase," says Hans Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists. "But if they're able to deploy one of these things then obviously our attack submarines will be right on their tail. Then the cat and mouse game starts."
Digital

Submission + - Dell Plugs the Analog Hole via Vista Drivers

Submitted by
Dr_Xadium
Dr_Xadium writes: "For months, irate Dell customers whose computers ship with a Sigmatel audio chipset have complained that line-in / microphone monitoring (the feature on that lets you listen to what passing through your soundcard from an external source on your speakers (like when you run your TV through your card's input to take advantage of its 5.1 surround decoder) has been completely disabled in software, using their Vista drivers to basically remove a feature that has been a stock part of soundcard technology for almost 20 years. Dell even tried to claim that line-in monitoring was an "advanced feature" and that it wouldn't be supported on "low-end" soundcards, but quickly backpedaled. Users have resorted to using drivers from rival hardware manufacturer LG or hacking the Vista registry to try and reclaim the functionality that no one ever expected to lose. Unfortunately, the solution doesn't work for everyone, and even though the hardware itself supports monitoring, users are left in the dark as Dell continually promises to provide a revised driver which re-enables monitoring but fails to deliver, even going so far as to suggest users use the WinXP driver instead (which also doesn't work for everyone) Is Dell dragging its feet or tacitly co-operating in a plan to close the "analog hole?" Will we see more actions like this from other OEMs in the future?"
PHP

Submission + - Death of php4 imminent - say open source projects (gophp5.org)

Submitted by
b.rudge
b.rudge writes: "Several open source projects have joined forces and given web hosts an ultimatum to upgrade or die with php4.

"PHP 4 has served the web developer community for seven years now, and served it well. However, it also shows its age. Most of PHP 4's shortcomings have been addressed by PHP 5, released three years ago, but the transition from PHP 4 to PHP 5..."
GoPHP5.org has given web hosts exactly 214 days warning to upgrade, and is trying to gather more open source php projects to gain momentum."
Digital

Submission + - Burned by DRM and MLB (kousenit.com)

Submitted by
kousen
kousen writes: "Back in late 2004, I purchased and downloaded several Major League Baseball game files from mlb.com. The files all have a "wmv" extension. The first time they are played in Windows Media Player (the only media player supported at the time), they are supposed to access a site at MLB.com and acquire a license.

As you may have guessed, I recently tried to play one of those files, and the license site no longer exists. My "backup" of the licenses, acquired at the time, is on an old system I no longer use.

I tried calling the toll free number at MLB. Eventually a manager there told me I need to access their digital download service. He also admitted the service is not only not available, it has not been available all year. Even worse, he wasn't even sure whether or not it will ever be available again, though he suggested I keep checking.

So basically, I'm out of luck, unless someone here has any ideas how I can get around this idiotic DRM issue. Can anyone help me?"
Security

Submission + - Cyberwar - Where do your loyalties lie?

Submitted by
jxs2151
jxs2151 writes: "It's the year 2013 and the world is fully involved in the first open 'cyberwar' in history. The Chinese are disrupting PC's with massive virus attacks, Russia is disabling satellites, the US is spreading nanobots throughout the world, Europe is in the grips of a medical panic as instruments in hospitals cease to work. Jihadis are shutting down websites left and right. Online banking is impossible and commerce is slowly grinding to a halt. Normal communications become strained as the load on the infrastructure increases. There is no way to tell how it all started. Your country calls on your skills and talents. What do you do? Where do your loyalties lie?"
Space

Submission + - Man survives getting partially sucked out of plane

Submitted by Vicissidude
Vicissidude writes: A Boise man says he's lucky to be alive after he was sucked partially out of a medical evacuation airplane 20,000 feet in the air. Chris Fogg is a critical-care nurse with an air ambulance company. He said he was flying with a patient from Idaho to Seattle last Wednesday when he got out of his seat on a two-engine turbo prop to fetch a water bottle. When he sat back down he heard a loud boom and the window next to him exploded. He hadn't yet buckled his seat belt, and his head and his right arm were sucked out of the window.
Microsoft

Submission + - Mass. now likely to OK Microsoft's OOXML (computerworld.com)

Submitted by
Ian Lamont
Ian Lamont writes: "Computerworld reports that the Massachusetts state government's IT department has designated Microsoft's Office Open XML as an open document format, along with ODF, plain text and HTML. It's only a draft policy, but it sets the stage for the format being given an official stamp of approval by state authorities — and weakens earlier Massachusetts support for the Open Document Format. Microsoft got a big boost at the end of 2006 when Ecma approved OOXML, and again this spring when it turned out that pro-ODF legislation had been defeated or watered down in six states. Andy Updegrove suggests that Massachusetts new governor, Deval Patrick, had been contacted about approving OOXML. He also laments what it means for ODF:

Where does this leave proponents of ODF now? Clearly, if Ecma 376 achieves equal status with ODF in Massachusetts, it will be a cause of great disappointment. One can assume that privately, if not publicly, ODF opponents will have a field day one-on-one with other government purchasers, and will declare the open format battle over. Indeed, earlier this year Microsoft did just that, calling a unilateral truce and announcing that there had been "two winners").
"
Wine

Submission + - Parallels Releases WineD3D Source Code (winehq.org)

Submitted by something_wicked_thi
something_wicked_thi writes: Seeing as Slashdot ran the story about Parallels being out of compliance with the [L]GPL, I think it's only fair that they provide an update. On the very next weekday after the Slashdot story ran, Parallels, apparently, has released the source code. The Wine developers are verifying that it really is what they say it is. The Wine page provides a link to the sources, though it is temporary. It would be nice if someone could mirror that before it gets Slashdotted.
Wireless (Apple)

Submission + - iPhone for corporate account users. Buyer beware! (arabx.com.au)

Submitted by
arabxptyltd
arabxptyltd writes: "If you and existing AT&T/Cingular cell phone customer under a corporate account, buyer beware. You may not be able to activate your new iPhone leaving it a useless paperweight (even the iPod features are not accessible). It's easy to buy the phone, but AT&T state the iPhone is targeted towards individual users, and that excludes individual users that have their account paid for in a corporate account. Fine detail like, your iPhone is not eligible for corporate discount, and your iPhone must be specifically listed as a regular device are just two of the problems you can read about at iPhone for corporate users. What a debacle"

Slashdot Top Deals

"I've seen it. It's rubbish." -- Marvin the Paranoid Android

Close