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Games

More Evidence For Steam Games On Linux 256

SheeEttin writes "Back in November 2008, Phoronix reported that Linux libraries appeared in the Left 4 Dead demo, and then in March, Valve announced that Steam and the Source engine were coming to Mac OS X. Now, Phoronix reports that launcher scripts included with the (closed beta) Mac version of Steam include explicit support for launching a Linux version."
Red Hat Software

Red Hat Releases RHEL 6 Public Beta 1 148

An anonymous reader writes "It was way back on 2006-09-07 when Red Hat released its first public beta of Enterprise Linux 5. Today, after more than three years, Red Hat finally releases its first public beta of its next-generation OS: RHEL 6 public beta 1. From the news release: 'We are excited to share with you news of our first public step toward our next major Red Hat Enterprise Linux platform release with today's Beta availability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6. Beginning today, we are inviting our customers, partners, and members of the public to install, test, and provide feedback for what we expect will be one of our most ambitious and important operating platform releases to date. This blog is the first in a series of upcoming posts that will cover different aspects of the new platform.'"
Microsoft

Microsoft Clears MechWarrior4 Free Launch 131

Vamman writes "If you've been following the drama surrounding the free release of MechWarrior4, then you're probably aware that the initial announcement, made last summer, was a bit premature. Now, nearly a year since that announcement was made, MekTek Studios has announced that Microsoft Legal has given clearance for the free release of Mechwarrior4. This move by Microsoft Games couldn't come at a better time for the community, as the owners of MechWarrior are attempting a reboot of the franchise."
Networking

Alcatel-Lucent Boosts Broadband Over Copper To 300Mbps 160

alphadogg writes "Alcatel-Lucent has come up with a way to move data at 300Mbps over copper lines. So far the results have only been reproduced in a lab environment — real products and services won't be available for at least a year. From the article: 'Researchers at the company's Bell Labs demonstrated the 300Mbps technology over a distance of 400 meters using VDSL2 (Very high bitrate Digital Subscriber Line), according to Stefaan Vanhastel, director of product marketing at Alcatel-Lucent Wireline Networks. The test showed that it can also do 100Mbps over a distance of 1,000 meters, he said. Currently, copper is the most common broadband medium. About 65 percent of subscribers have a broadband connection that's based on DSL, compared to 20 percent for cable and 12 percent for fiber, according to market research company Point Topic. Today, the average advertised DSL speeds for residential users vary between 9.2 Mbps and 1.9Mbps in various parts of the world, Point Topic said.'"

Comment Correlation and Causation mayhem (Score 1) 561

I read this news a couple of days back and I wanted to find more about the paper, so I typed 'smokers are dumber' on Google.
The headlines of the articles appeared in the results given by Google. However, while the first three or four results correctly cited the paper
with titles like 'Smokers dumber than non smokers' around the 6 or 7 result articles like 'Smoking makes you dumber' started to appear.

Social Networks

Submission + - Better web host to scale up in the future?

mrstrano writes: I am developing a web application and, after registering the domain, I am now looking for a suitable web hosting provider.
It should be cheap enough so I can start small, but should allow me to scale up if the web site is successful (as I hope).
The idea is simple enough so I do not need other investors to implement it. This also means that I don't have a lot of money to put on it
at the moment.
Users of the website will post their pictures (no, it's not going to be a porn website), so scalability might be an issue even with a moderately high
number of users.
I would like to find a good web hosting provider from day one, so I don't have to go through the pain of a data migration.
Which web host would you choose?
Biotech

Submission + - Keeping Pacemakers Safe from Hackers

mrstrano writes: Many medical devices, such as pacemakers, come equipped with wireless communication systems these days, allowing doctors to monitor patients or change device's parameters. The use of wireless communications in pacemakers or implanted defibrillators opens the door to attacks. However, researchers from the ETH Zurich and INRIA, the French National Institute for Research in Computer Science, have now developed a scheme for protecting implantable medical devices against wireless attacks. The approach, presented at ACM CCS'09, relies on using ultrasound waves to determine the exact distance between a medical device and the wireless reader attempting to communicate with it. Access to implantable medical devices is restricted depending on the physical proximity of the communicating device. A device will always be accessible from up to 10 meters away, and will normally enforce a series of authentication steps before allowing access. In an emergency, however, when the device detects that the patient using it is in trouble, it will grant access to anyone who is physically close to the patient (within about three centimeters).

Submission + - Wall Street cheating proven impossible to detect (about.com)

mrstrano writes: "A new paper by Princeton computer scientists and economists suggests that complex financial
derivatives are computationally intractable to detect: that is, once you have mixed together a bunch
  of weird-ass securities and derivatives, you literally can't tell if the resulting security is being
tampered with as it pays off (or doesn't)." A nice and simple explanation of the idea behind the paper is given by Richard J. Lipton.

Comment Re:Note: AlFeO *not* Al2O3 (Score 1) 271

The real question is, why?

There is cryptography for that. Now, apart from the unfortunate and deprecated WEP protocol, there are some really secure alternatives out there, like WPA2.
Certainly more secure than a leaky insulation.
It would be like sending a secure mail over in a physical vault, rather than using PGP or GPG. Who would do that?

Comment Re:Screams "action movie" (Score 2, Interesting) 226

It might be better to keep the GPS on in situations of 'extreme' distress. Let's assume you are so sick you can't even talk. Then when you call 911 the phone might recognize you are not talking and synthetise a message saying for example 'The owner of this phone appears to be in extreme distress and at this moment the GPS says that he is at X address. Please send an ambulance at the address'.

You could apply the same concept to action movies too. Like Jack Bauer being trapped and unable to talk that calls CIA head quarters :)

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