Follow Slashdot blog updates by subscribing to our blog RSS feed

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Television

Submission + - Mercedes-Benz Refuses to Help Police Nab Suspect

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: I found myself yelling at the TV over a broadcast this morning by KNBC Los Angeles. The story is here. The article talks about how the Glendale Police Department cannot believe that Mercedes-Benz of America is refusing to comply with an order they obtain to help find the driver of a hit and run accident. What the web version of the story does not say was what the Glendale police department was asking Mercedes-Benz to do was to turn on the the car's GPS tracking system so that they could help locate the suspect. I say kudos to Mercedes-Benz of America for refusing to do so.
Software

Submission + - How Adobe Rips-Off a little guy of everything... (colourlovers.com)

Submitted by
JagsLive
JagsLive writes: "a little guy from http://www.colourlovers.com/ responds to " Adobe Rip-Off " : " Back in Nov. of last year Adobe Labs launched Kuler: A 5 color palette creation tool, built around rating, tagging, commenting and sharing the palettes. Craftzine gushed, ?Not only can you create your own palettes, you can get inspired by the popular color combinations already uploaded by other users. Genius!? I take the last word in that sentence with pride. The idea is genius? I should know, I created it 2 years earlier when I built COLOURlovers. Adobe Took a Proof of Concept and Duplicated It. ""
It's funny. Laugh.

Submission + - Russian Armoured Vehicle running on screws

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Here is Russian armored military vehicle from the seventies which runs on a pair of giant screws. It was an old russian prototype of off-road vehicle which never made it to the production line. From the video it looks to be more maneuverable than a modern tank.
Networking

Submission + - Charter ISP hijacking DNS

Submitted by
koalemos
koalemos writes: "Charter.net ISP is currently hijacking DNS queries a la Verisign's $100 million dollar bad idea. Any unresolved DNS request, e.g. "abc123.fred", is currently being resolved to Charter's web search feature at 206.112.100.132.

The short term way to fix the DNS hijack is to block access to 206.112.100.132 at your router and then to change your DNS servers from Charter's to more reputable ones, however, Charter's behavior is nonetheless completely dishonest and quite possibly illegal. My question is; how widespread is this practice of ISPs hijacking DNS?"
Businesses

Submission + - The First Thing IT Managers Do in the Morning?

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: When I was a wee-little IT Manager, I interviewed for a IT management position at an online CRM provider in San Francisco, a job I certainly was qualified for, at least on paper. One of the interviewer's questions was "What is the first thing you do when you get to work in the morning." I thought saying "Read Slashdot" wouldn't be what he was looking for — so I made up something, I'm sure, equally lame. Needless to say, I didn't get the job. But the question has stuck with me over the years. What do real IT and MIS managers do when they walk in to the office in the morning? What web sites or tools do they look at or use the first thing? Tell me. And remember, this is for posterity, so be honest.
Enlightenment

Submission + - RIAA's Media Defender sets up 'fake' site to catch (blorge.com) 1

Submitted by
secretsather
secretsather writes: "RIAA's Media Defender sets up 'fake' site to catch pirates

Don't get caught up in MPAA's latest sting. Media Defender, a company which does the dirty work for the MPAA, has been caught setting up 'dummy' websites in an attempt to catch those who download copyrighted videos.

The site, MiiVi.com, complete with a user registration, forum, and "family filter", offers complete downloads of movies and "fast and easy video downloading all in one great site." But that's not all; MiiVi also offers client software to speed up the downloading process. The only catch is, after it's installed, it searches your computer for other copyrighted files and reports back.

ZeroPaid, acting on a tip from The Pirate Bay, found MiiVi to be registered to Media Defender using a whois search. Shortly after, the registrar information was changed, but the address still reflects Media Defender's address at 2461 Santa Monica Blvd., D-520 Santa Monica, CA 90404.

Not 10 hours after the site was found to be registered to Media Defender, the site went dead. There's no telling how long it was up; however, the domain was registered on February 8, 2007.

Perhaps Media Defender won't use its own name on the registrar the next time around, but it just goes to show the lengths at which the MPAA is willing to go, to fight piracy."
Announcements

Submission + - Interview with LugRadio Team (lugradio.org)

Submitted by
mrBen
mrBen writes: "With the end of Season 4 reaching it's climax next week with the 3rd LugRadio Live event, I thought it would be interesting to hear some thoughts from some of the LugRadio team about Linux, LugRadio, past and future, so I spoke with Jono Bacon and Stuart "Aq" Langridge, 2 of the presenters.


Tell us a bit about the history of the LugRadio podcast?
Jono: LUGRadio was an idea conceived at a Wolverhampton Linux User Group meeting back in 2003 between Stuart Langridge, Matt Revell, Steve Parkes and Myself. The idea was to create a fun, loose and social audio show (this is before the term 'podcast' become so widely known). We wanted it to look at a range of issues and have the atmosphere of a bunch of guys chatting in a pub with all the irreverence, joking and passionate discussion associated with it.
Aq: Jono, being a musician, had microphones and mixing desks and so forth, which made it a lot easier to get off the ground. We put out the first episode, complete with renditions of the Free Software Song, and the rest is history...


Has its popularity and longevity surprised you?
Jono: Totally. We half-expected people to not listen because it is so typically English in its humor and at times controversial. We never expected its level of success and that so many people around the word listen to it.
Aq: Yep. Long-time listeners to LugRadio will know about a chap called Peter Oliver, one of the crew at LRL2007 and Wolves LUG member, who was highly scornful that we'd ever actually record a show at all. I'm sure the reason we did the first one was at least partially to spite him. Why we're still going after four seasons, though, can't be just to annoy Peter.
Jono: It is so cool to meet LUGRadio fans all over the world. We are also so incredibly thankful for having such an incredible LUGRadio community and for them helping the show grow and scale so much. LUGRadio is not just us four on the show, it is the community mirror network, the forums, the ninjas (our sysadmins), the gaming clan, #lugradio and the hashlugradio community podcast.
Aq: We always wanted to do the sort of show that *we* wanted to listen to; not formal, not dry-as-dustest reviews of the latest kernel point revision, but something like the conversations we all had about Linux, free software, philosophy, and the people involved. That there's an audience for that doesn't surprise me too much: most people I talk to are really more interested in that sort of thing than in what's new in the latest revision of Gnu Emacs!


How do you think podcasts fit in with the overall Linux/OSS community?
Jono: I think they work pretty well on the whole. The key thing is that different people look for different things, and that is the ethos behind Open Source.
Aq: There's a pretty big overlap between the sort of people who use free software and the sort of people who aren't believers in Big Media spoon-feeding us the latest "approved" music and films. We're iconoclasts, to some extent, and podcasts (along with other "user-generated media", if I can use such a horrible perversion of a term) fit in with that quite well. The fun part there is finding the balance; there comes an epiphany where you realise that the big media companies don't *just* drain money out of the market, and the expertise that they bring does take effort. I'm pretty proud of how good LugRadio sounds (which is pretty much entirely down to Jono as sound editor), and we do put in some effort to keep the quality high; people appreciate that, I think.
Jono: As such, some people will love LUGRadio, but other people will prefer their podcast in the form of other great shows such as The Linux Action Show or The Linux Link Tech Show — there is room in this tiny fishbowl for everyone.
Aq: In terms of the wider community, now that the hype around podcasting being something revolutionary has died away we're seeing it take a place along with weblogs and wikis and mailing lists as another way to get information out and to bring people together. I'm all in favour of that; anything that helps our community work better together, and stand on its own feet more without support from others who don't care about the ideals we share, is a great thing.


What prompted the decision to move to a live event?
Jono: We wanted to take the ethos and soul behind LUGRadio and produce a very fun, social and interesting event that is different and entirely community focused. This was partially inspired by one of the evenings of the annual UK Linux expo when the UK Linux community would congregate in a pub in Olympia in London. We wanted to take that seedling and grow it into a full weekend with fascinating talks, interesting things to see and do, a consistent humor and a friendly, welcoming atmosphere. We are really pleased with how it has grown and taken off, particularly as none of us had really organised events before.
Aq: LugRadio Live is a capturing of that spirit but running for a whole weekend. Every time I see someone with a smile on their face there I mark it as a success!
Oh, and getting to walk out on stage when everyone cheers. Ego, yes, but...there's no feeling like it.


Describe how you think the event has evolved in the last 3 years?
Jono: It has just grown and grown. The first year was an experiment with one day, 14 speakers a small exhibition, all crammed into a tiny venue. We expected about 45 people and around 230 showed up. Stunned and surprised, we organised the next event with two days, over 35 speakers and a full exhibition and this time had around 400 people show up. For the 2007 event we have two days, over 40 speakers, a full exhibition, BOF sessions, special events, live LUGRadio recording, social events, and more. The event has grown, but we have been keen to always keep it community focused and be a really special experience for everyone who attends.
Aq: It's got bigger, and we've got better at doing it. We've learned quite a few things about what you need to do this sort of event, like how much time it takes to set up all the microphones, how many people we need in the crew, that sort of thing. As LRL's got bigger we've also been seen by speakers as a good place to come to; the first year we chased most of the speakers to ask them to talk, but this year we had most of the speakers approach us.


What's the most exciting thing (that isn't a secret) about this years event?
Jono: I am really looking forward to Adam Sweet's Gong-a-thong Lightbulb Talk Extravaganza [Aq: it's a succession of three-minute talks; what other conferences call "lightning talks"]and also looking forward to a bunch of LUGRadio Live virgin speakers such as Nat Friedman, Alan Cox, Chris diBona and Aaron Seigo. Should be a blast!


You've released 2 promo videos this year (Freedom March and Don't Listen Alone) — what was the thinking behind these?
Jono: We wanted to help jack up the event in the blogosphere and Linux community in the build up to the big weekend, so we decided to do a few promo videos. We were very keen to have two very different videos to get people thinking and talking about different things.
Aq: We can say "come to LugRadio Live" as much as we like, but something to capture the imagination or make people laugh is going to get attention a lot more than a post on a weblog. We've talked about making videos for a while (although there's no LugTV in the pipeline, so don't get your hopes up), and this seemed like the perfect opportunity!


'Freedom March' in particular has received some mixed reviews/criticism — any thoughts on this?
Jono: When we were brainstorming ideas, I came up with the idea of Freedom March and Aq had the idea of Don't Listen Alone. I wrote the script for Freedom March and was keen to project a very different side of LUGRadio. Most people know LUGRadio for its raucous discussion and comedy, but we often spend a lot of time on the show discussing serious subjects in a serious and passionate way. I quite liked the idea of us pushing out this side of us and trying to write as rousing a script as I could for it. I love the fact it caused a chunk of discussion and I knew it would not be everyone's cup of tea, but I love the fact that both videos caused such a reaction.
Aq: The Freedom March was designed to inspire people who might be new to free software, who are interested in becoming part of our community, and maybe just a little for those of us who are a bit jaded with the whole thing. It's difficult sometimes, in between wars about whether the GPLv3 is a good idea and which desktop environment to use, to remember how far the free software movement has come and what the goals that we all share are. That's what The Freedom March tries to embody.
Don't Listen Alone was much more the fun side. Just the idea of throwing a laptop off a tall building made me laugh so much that we had to make a video out of it! The two videos should, between them, cover most of our audience, I think. If you didn't like one, hopefully you liked the other!


Last year saw the event double in size — are you expecting any more growth?
Jono: We hope so, but it is so difficult to tell. So long as the event feels busy and has a buzz, we will be happy. We are not bothered about everyone and their dog showing up, we just want a fun, electrifying atmosphere on the weekend, and we are looking forward to it this year. It is certainly not something to be missed.
Aq: I imagine it'll be a little bigger this year, but I don't think we'll double in size again. On the other hand, the number of people that turn up is always a bit of a guess, even after the event; most of the people who come to LRL pay on the door and don't pre-register, so we have to stick our fingers in the air and guess numbers a lot. If five thousand people show up then it'll be pretty exciting. We can't put that many people in the venue, mind!


What's next for LugRadio / LugRadio Live?
Jono: (With) LUGRadio Live, we hope to keep running it and bringing new and exciting features to it while always retaining its key community ethos. We want LUGRadio Live to be *the* community free software and Open Source event that people want to get along to each year.
Aq: We've got a few ideas for the (next) season. One of them is that we'd like to do more things involving the LugRadio community: we're very proud that so many cool people have joined the LR community and we want to get more people in to that. We've also talked about LugRadio on tour, which would be a deeply fun week or so of doing live shows around the country (and other countries?) On a more mundane note, I'm rewriting the scripts that underlie the website so that we'll release at a more predictable time, to make things easier on our mirror maintainers! We want to hear ideas from everyone about what they'd like to hear LugRadio do: tell us!
Jono:We are always trying to keep the show fresh, and we are always keen to get ideas and views from our listeners. We love trying new things out and seeing if they sink or swim.


LugRadio Live 2007 is this weekend, 7th and 8th July, at the Lighthouse Centre in Wolverhampton, UK. Tickets are £5 for the whole weekend.
LugRadio is a fortnightly podcast covering all topics of interest to all levels of Linux users"
PC Games (Games)

Submission + - Auto Assault Runs out of Gas (gamasutra.com)

Submitted by
Brian Damage
Brian Damage writes: "After barely a year of operation the scantly populated post-apocalyptic MMORPG Auto Assault is slated for termination this coming August 31. Despite NCsoft's failure to make back the game's initial development investment this news comes as a surprise as it is contrary to developer Net Devil's recent announcement declaring a new retooled version to be in the works. Auto Assault's monthly subscribers will not be billed beyond the cutoff date, and for those who have purchased time cards "NCsoft will reconcile these accounts appropriately."

From the article:

"In August of last year, NCsoft said it saw quarterly losses of 200 million won ($207,000), which it explained was due to a write-off of some 12.6 billion won ($13.1m) in costs related to the flagging title.""
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft uses legacy formats to push OOXML (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by kazade84
kazade84 writes: The BBC reports that we will lose access to data stored in legacy formats as we move to newer standards. The National Archives have made a deal with Microsoft to set up virtual machines running old versions of Windows and Office to access the legacy files to prevent them being lost forever.

The report, although interesting, seems like another marketing attempt by Microsoft to push OOXML as a 'standard' format and makes me wonder why these legacy files aren't just converted to ODF?
Education

Submission + - Trouble remembering the basics of computing

Submitted by john_malloc
john_malloc writes: I'm having a hard time trying to remember the very basics of computing and maths (algorithms, data structures, algebra). I had a master degree from an elite university, but nowadays I rely too much on Google to find answers in everyday programming. I screwed up very ridiculous in my last job hunting attempt.

The questions were not hard at all (string conversions, simple sorting, linked lists, concurrency and even basic geometry) but I was totally stuck and ashamed of not remembering the foundations, making the situation even worse. I have plans to do a PhD at the same uni in vision research.

I have one more interview in a few days in a leading company, but at the moment I have lost my confidence on my skills and even plan to drop the idea of doing a PhD in a few years.

Is this something normal that happens to everybody in the field? Should I have to worry about my memory? Or the tech interviews are bad designed? By the way, the last time I was exposed to those basic topics was on my 1st year as undergrad (about 6 years now).

Thanks
John
Power

Submission + - Nuclear Power: Too Hot to Handle?

Submitted by miketheanimal
miketheanimal writes: The Oxford Research Group http://www.oxfordresearchgroup.org.uk/ have published a report arguing that Nuclear Power is incapable of providing anything like enough generating capacity to have any useful effect on greenhouse emissions. In their report http://www.oxfordresearchgroup.org.uk/publications /briefing_papers/toohottothandle.php they argue that there is no way that the nuclear industry can build anywhere near the number of reactors needed; that even if they could then the global supply of suitable Uranium is limited to around 25 years, at which point it would be necessary to build Plutonium producing breeder reactors; and that most of the expected 50% increase in electricity needed over the next half-century is in the developing world (ie., in countries you might not want to have nuclear reactors).

What do SlashDoters think? Realism in the face of a nuclear whitewash? Green propaganda from the environmentalists? Global warming is a load of rubbish so it doesn't matter a jot?
Republicans

Submission + - Elaine Chao: US workers are smelly complainers 1

Submitted by Tablizer
Tablizer writes: According to Parade Magazine, Labor Secretary Elaine Chao says American employees are rude and have B.O., and this is allegedly why foreign workers are preferred. "U.S. employers say that many workers abroad simply have a better attitude toward work. 'American employees must be punctual, dress appropriately and have good personal hygiene,' says Chao. 'They need anger-management and conflict-resolution skills, and they have to be able to accept direction. Too many young people bristle when a supervisor asks them to do something.'" Do we need to reshape ourselves into compliant borg?
Announcements

Submission + - Jack Thompson faces suspension, psychological test (kotaku.com)

Submitted by grassy_knoll
grassy_knoll writes: The Florida Bar is proposing Jack Thompson submit to psychological testing and accept a 91-day suspension of his law license as part of a Florida Supreme Court mandated mediation.

From TFA, Thompson speaks:

"Mediation failed today because there was no mediation whatsoever... [Florida Bar official] Ms. Tuma not only did not move off her [suspension] demand one iota, not one smidgeon, but she instead upped her demand by requiring that Thompson undergo a battery of psychological tests as part of the fabulous deal The Bar offered him...
Ms. Tuma [sic] last demand going into the mediation was a 91-day suspension, and she opened and ended with that and a shrink's couch. This is bad faith...

This "mediation" was a charade... Finally, [Thompson] requests a status conference herein as soon as possible so that we can... shut this Star Chamber down. Thompson is not the one who needs a psych evaluation. "
Spam

Submission + - What do you do when a botnet spams you to death? 1

Submitted by
micromuncher
micromuncher writes: "A month ago I was a happy IT geek. I host my own web site and email server (and have been for over 10 years), and I had been running MDaemon (v7) successfully for four years. A low percentage of spam reached my desktop, though admittedly its gone from a few a day a couple years ago to about twenty now, but then something bad happened. I had measures in place to rudely disconnect spammers; fail on no RDNS, fail on no MX records, and use several spam filters to weed out spam. But the trouble came, from what I can tell, when a non-existant email account got into a botnet — and from what I can tell — its huge. Even though my connections were throttled, I received so many requests, and something odd about the requests, it crashed my mail server. So I flipped on tarpitting and the like, and set my timeouts short, and throttle tight... and I still got crushed. All of the originating servers were passing through the spam filters. Most of them were passing through RBLs. I tried to find information on current spam outbreaks; and I didn't find much useful. I contacted my mail server vendor, and they suggested I fork out the money for an upgrade (that I did), that had the feature of a "bait account". But I'm still getting overloaded by spam (though I am not crashing as far as I can tell.) So my questions to the world; how the heck do you monitor spam outbreaks? What are the most effective measures for dealing with botnets (where all the senders seem legit)? And what the heck can you do to stick it to the foul scum who either advertise through this fraud, or facilitate it?"
Microsoft

Submission + - Gates' Generosity Under Investigation (lewrockwell.com)

Submitted by vashfish
vashfish writes: In a fit of irony, the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation is under investigation by the DoJ for being TOO generous. From the article:

"After the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced plans to donate five billion dollars to help rebuild libraries destroyed by Hurricane Katrina, the Department of Justice's Antitrust Division launched a formal investigation into the Foundation. Thomas O. Barnett, Assistant Attorney General, said in a press release that, 'The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the world's largest charity cartel, has overstepped its boundaries and entered into the realm of predatory pricing. How is FEMA supposed to compete with private charities?'"

Slashdot Top Deals

Today is a good day for information-gathering. Read someone else's mail file.

Close