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Christmas Cheer

Ask Slashdot: Good, Useful Free Software For Gifts? 377

Posted by timothy from the lump-of-coal-doesn't-fit dept.
First time accepted submitter Jeng writes "I'm planning on sending flash drives to friends and family as stocking stuffers. Rather than just send a blank drive, I'm looking for what good useful free software that I can load on it — from system utilities and encryption software to fun little games." We've asked similar questions before, but software keeps getting better, and so do the prices on flash drives. So what would you give as a gift this holiday season?
Earth

Researchers Find Possible Atlantis Location 218

Posted by samzenpus from the does-aquaman-know? dept.
An AC writes"It seems that Plato's Atlantis has a new spot candidate. Some archaeologist used satellite imagery to identify a structure in an once tsunami-ed Spanish plain. From the article: '"This is the power of tsunamis," head researcher Richard Freund told Reuters. "It is just so hard to understand that it can wipe out 60 miles inland, and that's pretty much what we're talking about," said Freund, a University of Hartford, Connecticut, professor who lead an international team searching for the true site of Atlantis.'"
Education

Students, the Other Unprotected Lab Animals 236

Posted by kdawson from the protection-available-but-not-to-you dept.
theodp writes "Slate reports on the horrible — and preventable — death of a young UCLA biochemist in a t-butyl lithium incident, which led a Chemical Health and Safety columnist to the disheartening conclusion that most academic laboratories are unsafe venues for work or study. It's estimated that accidents and injuries occur hundreds of times more frequently in academic labs than in industrial ones. Why? For one thing, Slate says, occupational safety and health laws that protect workers in hazardous jobs apply only to employees, not to undergrads, grad students, or research fellows who receive stipends from outside funders."
Graphics

AMD Releases Open-Source R600/700 3D Code 307

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the playing-nice-with-others dept.
Michael writes "AMD has just released code that will allow for open-source 3D acceleration on their ATI R600 and R700 graphics cards, including all of their newest Radeon HD 4xxx products. This code consists of a demo program that feeds the commands to the hardware, updates to their RadeonHD driver, and a Direct Rendering Manager update. With this code comes working 2D EXA acceleration support for these newer ATI graphics processors as well as basic X-Video support. AMD will be releasing sanitized documentation for these new ATI GPUs in the coming weeks. Phoronix has an article detailing what's all encompassed by today's code drop as well as the activities that led to this open-source code coming about for release."
Security

Now From Bruce Schneier, the Skein Hash Function 139

Posted by timothy from the renaissance-man dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Bruce Schneier and company have created a new hash function called Skein. From his blog entry: 'NIST is holding a competition to replace the SHA family of hash functions, which have been increasingly under attack. (I wrote about an early NIST hash workshop here.) Skein is our submission (myself and seven others: Niels Ferguson, Stefan Lucks, Doug Whiting, Mihir Bellare, Tadayoshi Kohno, Jon Callas, and Jesse Walker). Here's the paper."

Comment Re:BBC: Microsoft's unethical system of restrictio (Score 1) 976

by Jo Owen (#24074079) Attached to: Stallman Attacks Gates, Microsoft, & Charity Foundation
Yea, but to repeat an earlier posters point - how do you think India's eco system woud benefit if corporations didn't have to spend all the money on licenses, but instead used that money to develop FOSS and develop new software?

There's no reason that the IT industry wouldn't be even bigger.
Music

Submission + - Should copyright be perpetual?

Submitted by QRDeNameland
QRDeNameland writes: In a NY Times Op-Ed piece today, Mark Helprin argues for what amounts to perpetual copyright, and that anything less is essentially an unfair public taking of property. According to Helprin, "No good case exists for the inequality of real and intellectual property, because no good case can exist for treating with special disfavor the work of the spirit and the mind." Well, I can think of quite of few arguments for such a case, unfortunately the NY Times did not see fit to publish any contrary view for equal time.

Comment Re:Sale has already been completed (Score 2, Interesting) 756

by JaxGator75 (#18025838) Attached to: Amazon Adjusts Prices After Sales Error
If I'm at a restaurant and the check arrives with some of the items I ordered absent from that total, I am probably going to assume that the waiter comped them to me, and leave a generous tip. No sneering involved.

As a former food-service worker, you are 100% correct. You leave the difference as a tip and you don't have to worry about tipping above that number. It's called "a Win-Win". For the record, most restaurants throw more food away than they actually serve to customers. But I digress...

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