Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror

Submission + - Artwork literally re-sells itself on eBay weekly (wired.co.uk)

Submitted by Lanxon
Lanxon writes: How much would you pay for an artwork that you could only own for a week? A Tool to Deceive and Slaughter, 2009, is a black, acrylic box that places itself for sale on eBay every seven days thanks to an embedded internet connection, which, according to the artist's conditions of sale, must be live at all times. Disconnections are only allowed during transportation, says the creator, Caleb Larsen. Larsen tells Wired: "Inside the black box is a micro controller and an Ethernet adapter that contacts a script running on server ever 10 minutes. The server script checks to see if box currently has an active auction, and if it doesn't, it creates a new auction for the work."

Submission + - How Apple orchestrates controlled leaks, and why (macobserver.com)

Submitted by Lanxon
Lanxon writes: "I was a Senior Marketing Manager at Apple and I was instructed to do some controlled leaks," confesses John Martellaro in a fascinating article in Mac Observer. Monday's article at the Wall Street Journal, which provided confirmation of an Apple tablet device, had all the earmarks of a controlled leak. Here's how Apple does it. Often Apple has a need to let information out, unofficially. The company has been doing that for years, and it helps preserve Apple's consistent, official reputation for never talking about unreleased products. The way it works is that a senior exec will come in and say, "We need to release this specific information. John, do you have a trusted friend at a major outlet? If so, call him/her and have a conversation. Idly mention this information and suggest that if it were published, that would be nice. No e-mails!"

Submission + - Last.fm: The hardware powering the music (cnet.co.uk)

Submitted by CNETNate
CNETNate writes: Last.fm has streamed an incredible 275,000 years of audio around the world, and it's most popular songs are packed onto SSD-powered servers to completely eliminate some of the problems associated with streaming from platter-based hard disks. This detailed interview with Last.fm's Matthew Ogle, the company's head of Web development, explains some of the facts and figures behind the global music service. From the article: "We stream all music directly off our servers in London. We have a cluster of streaming nodes including a bunch of powerful machines with solid-state hard drives. We have a process that runs daily which finds the hottest music and pushes those tracks on to the SSDs streamers that sit in front of our regular platter-based streaming machines. That way, if someone is listening to one of our more popular stations, the chances are really good that these songs are coming off our high-speed SSD machines. They're fast because every song is sitting in memory instead of being on a slow, spinning platter."

Submission + - Modern Tech versus The Past (cnet.co.uk)

Submitted by CNETNate
CNETNate writes: Most of us assume modern life is the peak of human achievement, but is it really? We decided to take a look at the major technologies of the modern world and compare them to their closest equivalent of pre-digital mankind — Facebook vs dinner parties, World of Warcraft vs actual war craft, iPhones vs hills on fire — and the results are surprising. And slightly dumb, so laugh.

Submission + - After 35 years, another message sent from Arecibo (centauri-dreams.org)

Submitted by 0xdeadbeef
0xdeadbeef writes: Two weeks ago, MIT artist-in-residence Joe Davis use the Arecibo radio telescope to send a message to three stars in honor of the 35th anniversary of the famous Drake-Sagan transmission to M13 in 1974. It was apparently allowed but not endorsed by the director of the facility, and used a jury-rigged signal source on what will now be known as the "coolest iPhone in the world". The message encoded a DNA sequence, but no word yet on whether it disabled any alien shields. You can get the low-down on Centauri Dreams: Part 1, Part 2.
Google

Submission + - Releasing the Chromium OS open source project (blogspot.com)

Submitted by Kelson
Kelson writes: Google has released the source to what will eventually become Chrome OS, and will begin developing it as an open source project like Chromium. The OS differs from the usual computing model by (1) making all apps web apps (2) sandboxing everything and (3) removing anything unnecessary, to focus on speed.

Submission + - Alternative mobile browsers tested: Opera vs y'all (cnet.co.uk)

Submitted by CNETNate
CNETNate writes: Do Opera Mobile, Skyfire or Mozilla's Fennec have the power to take down the BlackBerry browser, IE on Windows Mobile or Safari on the iPhone? This lengthy test aimed to find out. Speed, Acid3 compliance, Javascript rendering capabilities and general subjective usability were all tested and reviewed. So was Opera Mini and the default Symbian browser actually, but these two were unable to complete some of the tests and benchmarks.

Submission + - Pirate Bay shuts down tracker (torrentfreak.com)

Submitted by think_nix
think_nix writes: The Pirate Bay has shut down their bit torrent tracker. Instead TPB is now using DHT [torrentfreak] (Distributed Hash Table) to distribute the torrents. TPB Blog [thepiratebay] states that DHT along with PEX (Peer Exchange) Technology is just as effective if not better for finding peers than a centralized service. The local (thelocal se) reports that shutting down the tracker and implementing DHT & PEX could be due to the latest court rulings in Sweden against 2 of tpb owners, and may decide the outcome of the case.

Submission + - The European GPS Galileo 'pathfinders' take shape (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by oliderid
oliderid writes: After all the wrangling, the delays and the furore over cost, Europe's version of GPS is finally starting to take shape. Due for launch in pairs in late 2010 and early-2011, the "pathfinders" will form a mini-constellation in the sky. They will transmit the navigation signals that demonstrate the European system can become a reality. Discover an interesting video clip introducing the main feature of a Galileo's satellite.
Idle

Submission + - Internet slower than rat, horse, rabbit, and dog. (cnet.co.uk)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: CNET demonstrates that the internet is "actually slower than every major animal. It's even slower than the apocryphal tortoise over a mile." In order to prove this they "pitted the world's top animals against the Web over a one-mile course, transferring 32GB of data.". The results of the experiment showed the Internet to be the worst way to transfer data over short distances. "If you put 32GB of data on a bite-proof USB key and strapped it to a cheetah, for example, it would be available to read at the destination 11 times faster than the Internet. The cheetah takes 30.9 minutes, the Internet over 6 hours!" Pigeon, horse and dog also perform very well at transferring 32GB of data, and even the lowly rat is over 8 times faster than the internet. CNET suggests the internet "should hang its head in shame over its ranking in the one-mile speed test."
XBox (Games)

Submission + - Project Natal release details emerge (criticalgamer.co.uk)

Submitted by scruffybr
scruffybr writes: Today the first information about the pricing and launch of Microsoft’s Project Natal. The pricing for the hardware will be much much lower than many had anticipated, coming in at around £50 when sold separately from the console. The idea being that it’s low enough that people will purchase on impulse.
Idle

Submission + - What does Google Suggest suggest about humanity? (cnet.co.uk)

Submitted by CNETNate
CNETNate writes: You'll laugh, but mostly you'll cry. Some of the questions Google gets asked to deliver results for is beyond worrying. 'Can you put peroxide in your ear?', 'Why would a pregnancy test be negative?', and 'Why can't I own a Canadian?' being just a selection of the truly baffling — and disturbing — questions Google is regularly forced to answer.

Submission + - Plug vs Plug: Which nation's plug socket is best? (cnet.co.uk)

Submitted by CNETNate
CNETNate writes: Is the American mains socket really so much worse than the Italian design? And does the Italian socket fail at rivaling the sockets in British homes? This feature explores, in a not-at-all-parodic-and-anecdotal fashion, the designs, strengths and weaknesses of Earth's mains adapters. There is only one conclusion, and you're likely not to agree if you live in France. Or Italy. Or in fact most places.

Slashdot Top Deals

Advertising is a valuable economic factor because it is the cheapest way of selling goods, particularly if the goods are worthless. -- Sinclair Lewis

Close