Short Circuit - Slashdot User

Submission + - China Sets Sights on Comprehensive Lunar Survey (physorg.com)

Submitted by

eldavojohn

on Friday August 10, 2007 @10:13AM

eldavojohn writes: "Perhaps unsatisfied with the closeups that Google Moon has to offer, China has decided to survey the moon down to the "inch". In the second half of 2007, they plan to launch an unmanned lunar satellite to first orbit the moon, land on the moon & then return samples to earth for them to analyze. One would hope that we could work together in space exploration but it looks like everyone's planning on their own route."

Submission + - Windows XP SP3 and Vista SP1 released (pclaunches.com)

Submitted by

Vinit

on Friday August 10, 2007 @10:12AM

Vinit writes: "Microsoft has silently released Windows XP SP3 and Vista SP1 versions to a small group of testers. Tagged as 5.1.2600.3180 (xpsp.070718-2058) the 350MB XP Service Pack 3 includes fixes for over 900 reported problems, some of which have already been resolved with post-Service Pack 2 hotfixes. http://www.pclaunches.com/software/microsoft_windo ws_xp_sp3_and_vista_sp1_released_to_small_group_of _testers.php"

Submission + - Babya Software to support OpenDocument format

Submitted by

aafuss

on Friday August 10, 2007 @10:11AM

aafuss writes: "Babya has pledged support for the OpenDocument format in their freeware software-instead of Office Open XML because of its wide cross-platform support and open standard.
Babya's AA Fussy notes that as they use Macs, having OpenDocument support was the the better option. The first Babya software to support the standard will ship this October."

Submission + - Schneier: Police data-mining done right (www.cbc.ca)

Submitted by

enharmonix

on Friday August 10, 2007 @09:56AM

enharmonix writes: "Courtesy of Bruce Schneier, it's nice to hear something good about data mining for a change: predicting and stopping crime. For example, police in Redmond, VA, "started overlaying crime reports with other data, such as weather, traffic, sports events and paydays for large employers. The data was analyzed three times a day and something interesting emerged: Robberies spiked on paydays near cheque cashing storefronts in specific neighbourhoods. Other clusters also became apparent, and pretty soon police were deploying resources in advance and predicting where crime was most likely to occur.""

Submission + - Quakecon 2007: Carmack Shows id Tech 5 Engine (hothardware.com)

Submitted by

MojoKid

on Friday August 10, 2007 @09:52AM

MojoKid writes: "Coverage of Quakecon 2007 has just hit the web. This article includes a multitude of images and information from all of Quakecon's events, including id's keynote address in which John Carmack revealed details of the id tech 5 engine. NVIDIA also held a kick-off event and there were many other OEMs like Dell and MSI that had wares to show. From Case Mod contest winners, to the lovely Frag Dolls, and news about a handful of yet to be released titles including Rage, Left 4 Dead, John Woo's Stranglehold, and Quake Wars: Enemy Territory, there was a lot to see. There was even a bit of information given regarding the upcoming movie based on id's Wolfenstein franchise."

Submission + - Consumer Vista support slashed by Microsoft

Submitted by

Mytob

on Thursday March 01, 2007 @11:52AM

Mytob writes: "Microsoft is to limit support for three versions of Windows Vista, including its most expensive, to five years rather than the usual 10 years. The company defended the difference by noting that the clock just started ticking. "End of life-cycle support for Windows Vista is still five years out," a spokesperson said. http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/news/index.cfm?newsid=8 550"

Submission + - Is working for DARPA ethically defensible?

Submitted by

evil_breeds

on Thursday March 01, 2007 @11:12AM

evil_breeds writes: "I've recently been offered a job to write software for a company contracting to DARPA and I'm stuck on the ethics of the situation. Take as given that the nature of the job and its benefits to me are excellent — what I'm interested in is the ethics of working for the U.S. military and what that supports, versus the net Good that some of DARPA's past work (like say, the internet) has produced. I think it's fair to suspend Godwin's Law for this discussion."

Submission + - Nifty shell tricks for new UNIX users

Submitted by

BlueVoodoo

on Thursday February 22, 2007 @10:13AM

BlueVoodoo writes: "The objective of this tutorial is to show new users how to use and implement many of the shell's methods for providing automation at various levels. It demonstrates these methods by giving tricks and tips for special situations, and it also presents a rundown of useful shell one-liners for common tasks."

Submission + - Creating a read-only mirror of your SVN repository

Submitted by on Thursday February 22, 2007 @09:24AM

An anonymous reader writes: A nice article that describes SVN mirroring:
http://trac.centricware.org/wiki/2007/02/22/03.11

Submission + - Flash simulation of the three-rotor ENIGMA machine

Submitted by

morpheus83

on Thursday February 22, 2007 @08:54AM

morpheus83 writes: "The Enigma machine was one of the impressively complex physical encryption devices ever built. This flash file as reports Newlaunches simulates the inner workings of the Enigma machine in real time as you type in the plain text. The Enigma machine was used for encrypting communications during World War II."

Submission + - Visual Basic on GNU/Linux!

Submitted by

jeevesbond

on Wednesday February 21, 2007 @08:27AM

jeevesbond writes: "The Mono Project on Feb. 20 announced that it has developed a Visual Basic compiler that will enable software developers who use Microsoft Visual Basic to run their applications on any platform that supports Mono, such as Linux, without any code modifications."

Submission + - HD DVD Cracking Software Released

Submitted by

fattmatt

on Tuesday February 20, 2007 @01:58PM

fattmatt writes: "Newsfactor.com reporting on commercial HD cracking software now available from Slysoft for the masses... Blue Ray on the way..."

Submission + - U.S. Copyright Lobby Out of Touch

Submitted by

Ontheright

on Tuesday February 20, 2007 @11:57AM

Ontheright writes: "The BBC features a story on how the U.S. copyright lobby is increasingly out of touch with the rest of the world. The article focuses on a recent report designed to highlight the inadequacies of IP protection around the world by arguing for a global expansion of the DMCA and elimination of copyright exceptions. In the process, it shines the spotlight on how US copyright policy has become isolated from much of the rest of the globe."

Submission + - The Story behind funky, ad-laden domains

Submitted by Dollaz on Monday February 19, 2007 @10:58AM

Dollaz writes: Entrepreneurs have been taking advantage of a five-day grace period to sample millions of domain names, keeping the relative few that might generate advertising revenues and dropping the rest before paying. It's akin to buying new clothes on a charge card only to return them for a full refund after wearing them to a big party.

The grace period was originally designed to rectify legitimate mistakes, such as registrants mistyping the domain name they are about to buy. But with computer automation and a burgeoning online advertising market, entrepreneurs have turned the return policy into a loophole for generating big bucks. http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/20070219/domain-en trepreneurs-sampling.htm

Submission + - Ubuntu Studio revealed

Submitted by

lukeknipe

on Saturday January 20, 2007 @09:56PM

lukeknipe writes: "Ubuntu announces the April release of the Ubuntu Studio. An exceptionally ambitious project, it is described by Ubuntu as a "multimedia editing flavor of Ubuntu for the Linux audio, video, and graphic enthusiast or professional who is already familiar with the Ubuntu-Gnome environment.""

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