Russ Steffen - Slashdot User

Submission + - Amiga in an FPGA released under GPL (hetnet.nl) 2

Submitted by exolon42 on Friday August 10, 2007 @05:34AM

exolon42 writes: This is a mandatory read for every (former or current) Amiga hacker. You have to give it to the Dutch: tulips, cheese, and now a guy named Dennis has recreated the original Amiga chipset in a Xilinx Spartan-3 FPGA, and recently released all sources under the GPL to boot! This includes the design of a PCB containing the FPGA, the required MC68000 and normal PC-style hardware connectors so you can build your own. A thought-provoking fact is that the Verilog-sources for the recreated chips (Denise, Paula, Agnus etc.) are only around 500-1000 lines each... chips in the eighties didn't contain 1 billion transistors!

Submission + - Another nail in the coffin of Global Warming

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 09, 2007 @09:14PM

An anonymous reader writes: There is an excellent summary of the many biases in global temperature here, but the key is this: One photo on Hall's blog got people talking — a station in MN with a huge jump in temperature about the same time some air conditioning units were installed nearby. Others disagreed, and argued that such a jump could not be from the air conditioners, since a lot of the jump happened with winter temperatures when the AC was dormant. Steve McIntyre, the Canadian statistician who helped to expose massive holes in Michael Mann's hockey stick methodology, looked into it. After some poking around, he began to suspect that the GISS data base had a year 2000 bug in one of their data adjustments.

Submission + - Russian video from North Pole fake 2

Submitted by viking2000 on Thursday August 09, 2007 @06:44PM

viking2000 writes: RUSSIAN LIE: A russian mini sub reached the sea floor under the North Pole, Reuters reported. Now it all is uncovered as fabrication

The pictures are not from the North pole at all, but from the Hollywood movie "Titanic"

"Location information of the videos are incorrect" says Reuters to FNB.

The images instead shows a dive done by mini subs in the Atlantic ocean while looking for the Titanic. Hollywod producer James Cameron used the same type mini sub the russians used on the North Pole, when he made the movie "Titanic" in 1997.

Submission + - Discouraging Students from Taking Math

Submitted by

Coryoth

on Thursday August 09, 2007 @12:20PM

Coryoth writes: "Following on from a previous story about UK schools encouraging students to drop mathematics, an article in The Age accuses Australian schools of much the same. The claim is that Australian schools are actively discouraging students from taking upper level math courses to boost their academic results on school league tables. How widespread is this phenomenon? Are schools taking similar measures in the US and Canada?"

Submission + - NASA GISS finds new record warmest year 1

Submitted by SleptThroughClass on Thursday August 09, 2007 @11:18AM

SleptThroughClass writes: NASA's GISS climate researchers have reexamined their temperature records and determined that the warmest recorded year in the USA was: 1938. The change was noticed by ClimateAudit and Pielke's blog. The change seems to not have been noticed by GISS, as there is no news release on their web site, so you have to look for the "U.S. Temperature" graph on this page or directly view the graph.

Submission + - PWC migrates to OpenBSD after crippling by Windows (computerworld.com.au) 1

Submitted by

Renegade88

on Thursday August 09, 2007 @08:32AM

Renegade88 writes: "After months of network failures and depleted IT budget, newly hired IT manager for PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) Japan was "forced" to migrate half of the company's Windows servers to OpenBSD to stabilize and secure their network. After eliminating the frequent downtime and data loss PWC had experienced for months, Mark Uemura was ordered to reinstate their Checkpoint firewall for political reasons. The Checkpoint server was later overwhelmed by a network virus so rather than taking it offline again, PWC placed an OpenBSD firewall in front of the Checkpoint Firewall! Mark's advice: "My experience is that if something has to be done, just do it — don't ask! [Management] will thank you later.""

Submission + - PKI/CAC authentication implementation/migration

Submitted by

dAzED1

on Wednesday August 08, 2007 @09:07PM

dAzED1 writes: "I've inherited a task for which I cannot yet prepare myself, but will have to resolve as quick as possible, once our current stumbling block is overcome. The company I work for is close to acquiring a .mil address so that we can use CAC authentication, which they are driving that all DoD systems use. Problem is, we can't access the info about CAC usage until we have the .mil, and once we have the .mil, we'll need to implement CAC usage very quickly. Who in the /. community has implemented PKI authentication, especially CAC, and has tips so that I can prepare myself for the quickest response when that day comes? No sensitive information please, obviously...just suggestions on what I could test before-hand. And yes, several of us here do have CACs to use, they're just (seemingly) worthless since we can't reach the .mil certificate authority (yet)."

Submission + - Highway 35W Collapses into Mississippi (wcco.com)

Submitted by

dcapel

on Wednesday August 01, 2007 @08:30PM

dcapel writes: "In what has been called the worst engineering disaster in decades, a bridge of highway 35W, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, has collapsed into the Mississippi. The collapse took place during late rush-hour traffic, so an estimated 50 cars were on the bridge at the time. There is no evidence for terrorist involvement, but an engineering or safety flaw of immense proportions must have been involved. As someone who was working only blocks away at the time, this happened entirely too close to home."

Submission + - space shuttle cabin leak (yahoo.com)

Submitted by dnormant on Tuesday July 31, 2007 @05:01PM

dnormant writes: A week before Space Shuttle Endeavour's planned liftoff, NASA was analyzing a cabin leak in the space shuttle Tuesday. The leak was detected over the weekend. NASA thought it fixed the problem by tightening a loose bolt, but testing Monday night confirmed air was still escaping from the crew cabin, said NASA spokeswoman Tracy Young.

Submission + - Adblock plus users "accused" of stealing (mozilla.org) 1

Submitted by

derrida

on Tuesday July 31, 2007 @07:56AM

derrida writes: "There is this Firefox Add-on called Adblock plus that promises (and delivers) removal of "all those ads and banners on the internet that often take longer to download than everything else on the page". And there is also an ongoing debate whether this is stealing or not. Quoting two different views:
"Do you have a devise that automatically blocks all commercials on television.[?] There's a difference between ignoring commercials and blocking them." and
"My a** it is [stealing]! If your going to argue I'm taking something from you by not waiting for your ads to load, I'm going to argue you are "stealing" bandwidth.".
Going one step further some web developers released scripts that blocks Adblock (watch the oxynoron!).
How is really slashdot going to react if Adblock plus is heavily used by its readers?"

Submission + - Sophisticated Computer Crime Uncovered (reuters.com)

Submitted by Ichabod on Tuesday July 17, 2007 @04:01AM

Ichabod writes: Sophisticated computer criminals stole data from UniSys, Booz Allen, L-3 Communications, Hewlett Packard and Hughes Network Systems. It sounds like they used a combination of social hacking, undetected low-profile malware (reportedly NTOS.exe), compromised Yahoo accounts to steal, encrypt and store sensitive data. An international investigation appears imminent. Yes, unfortunately Reuters calls the criminals "hackers" further blackening the once-revered title. http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSN1 638118020070717

Submission + - Sunrocket cancels service, 200,000+ phones cut off (reuters.com)

Submitted by

sharpone

on Tuesday July 17, 2007 @03:39AM

sharpone writes: ""SunRocket Inc., the second biggest U.S. supplier of Internet phone services, appeared to have shut down its business on Monday without notifying its customers, which total more than 200,000. ... Callers to its customer service line heard a brief recorded message, saying: "We are no longer taking customer service or sales calls. Goodbye."" So much for recommending VoIP to my friends and family. Do you think they'll be refunded their annual subscription?"

Submission + - U.S. has lost ability to build its own roads

Submitted by

michaelmalak

on Tuesday July 17, 2007 @01:55AM

michaelmalak writes: "The land famous for its love of the automobile and construction of Interstates and other highways, with high-elevation tunnels, viaducts snaking through canyons, and water crossings of up to 20 miles is now outsourcing design and construction of its roads to Asia — not because it's cheaper, but because the U.S. has lost the expertise. According to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer regarding the newly opened span across the Tacoma Narrows, "the American steel industry had imploded, while steel-making — and the expertise needed to build suspension bridges — had moved to Asia" and "the detailed engineering and fieldwork and all the spinning and cable-wrapping equipment ... were provided by ... Japanese construction giants""

Submission + - MPAA are pirates too

Submitted by pdtp on Monday July 16, 2007 @07:16PM

pdtp writes: Just ran across this on Break.com where Director Kirby Dick has submitted his film to be rated by CARA only to find out that there have been illegal copies of the film made by the MPAA, and distributed.

Submission + - A Pilot on Airline Security (hotair.com)

Submitted by Paperweight on Monday July 16, 2007 @06:11PM

Paperweight writes: Dave Mackett, president of the Airline Pilots Security Alliance, recently wrote how unsafe and hole-ridden airline security still is, in spite of all the money being blown on it. There is simply no deployable technology that has a prayer of keeping a motivated, prepared terrorist out of the system. The US Transport Security Administration misses more than 90% of detectable weapons at passenger checkpoints even in their own tests. Until the mindset behind airline security is changed, using an airliner as a weapon of mass destruction is as easy today as ever.

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