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

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
Government

FCC Mulling More Control For Electronic Media 176

A recent Notice of Inquiry from the FCC is looking for opinions on how the "evolving electronic media landscape" affects kids, and whether the FCC itself should have more regulatory control over such media. The full NOI (PDF) is available online. "FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski included a statement with the NOI in which he noted that 'twenty years ago, parents worried about one or two TV sets in the house,' while today, media choices are far more widespread for children, including videogames, which 'have become a prevalent entertainment source in millions of homes and a daily reality for millions of kids.'"
Internet Explorer

Reports of IE Hijacking NXDOMAINs, Routing To Bing 230

Jaeden Stormes writes "We just started getting word of a new browser hijack from our sales force. 'Some site called Bing?' they said. Sure enough, since the patches last night, their IE6 and IE7 installations are now routing all NXDOMAINs to Bing. Try it out — put in something like www.DoNotHijackMe.com." We've had mixed results here confirming this: one report that up-to-date IE8 behaves as described. Others tried installing all offered updates to systems running IE6 and IE7 and got no hijacking.
Update: 08/11 23:24 GMT by KD : Readers are reporting that it's not Bing that comes up for a nonexistent domain, it's the user's default search engine (noting that at least one Microsoft update in the past changed the default to Bing). There may be nothing new here.

Comment Re:But some software is more free than others (Score 1) 312

everyone who uses free software must give
back changes they make to the code, because that was the deal in the first place.

That's what my little GPL-firmly-believing voice says. Perhaps I'm not fervorish enough for the masses?

 
Regardless of how one might define "free," I like these stipulations and would release code under them. Call it derpaderpasource software if you want, I'd still feel the same way about the underlying meaning

Role Playing (Games)

Champions Online Delayed Until September 12

Erik J writes "Cryptic Studios has announced that their upcoming superhero MMORPG, Champions Online, has suffered a delay. The title, originally slated to arrive for PC and Xbox 360 on July 14th, has been pushed back to September 1st of this year. The studio claims the postponement stems from the need to make the game as polished as possible. 'It is critically important for an MMO to be as good as it possibly can be at launch,' said executive producer Bill Roper. 'Through our constant dialogue with our vocal and supportive community of beta testers, we quickly realized that in order to implement certain features that we all considered important the development of Champions Online would require more time.'" Roper also spoke recently about the lessons he's taken from his years in the MMO industry, commenting on why big-budget games are such a gamble, and why it's ridiculous to measure success by comparing a new game to World of Warcraft.
Software

Office 2010 Technical Preview Leaked 341

An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft was planning on giving out the Office 2010 Technical Preview to select testers in July on an invite-only basis. Office 2010 will be available in 32-bit and 64-bit versions, and both flavors have been leaked to torrent sites and the like. Multiple screenshots of each application are available. '... some applications have changed a lot more than others. The ribbon seems to be on every application now, which is great for consistency's sake. ... The biggest change, in my opinion, is that the no file/orb menu is no longer a menu. When you click the colored office button, you get a screen that is shown in the second screenshot for each application.'"

Comment Post your banlist (Score 2, Informative) 203

I get about 5 of these a day, on a relatively small site. I wrote a small shell script out of sheer boredom that parses hosts.deny and gives me country and hostname info. Here's the output from the past week or so. It seems to confirm that most of these are from public isps overseas.

117.21.249.75 CN, China
121.166.163.142 KR, Korea, Republic of
122.128.36.3 KR, Korea, Republic of
189.19.245.182 BR, Brazil 189-19-245-182.dsl.telesp.net.br.
200.111.157.187 CL, Chile
201.6.124.155 BR, Brazil c9067c9b.static.spo.virtua.com.br.
202.229.120.74 JP, Japan
203.125.51.23 SG, Singapore
207.5.149.188 US, United States 149-188.suscom-maine.net.
211.87.224.190 CN, China
211.99.203.168 CN, China
216.164.162.155 US, United States 216-164-162-155.pa.subnet.cable.rcn.com.
217.219.67.86 IR, Iran, Islamic Republic of
218.241.177.241 CN, China
219.121.10.35 JP, Japan m010035.ppp.asahi-net.or.jp.
221.3.131.110 CN, China
61.184.136.164 CN, China
61.191.53.99 CN, China 99.53.191.61.broad.static.hf.ah.cndata.com.
77.79.88.247 TR, Turkey reverse-77-79-88-247.grid.com.tr.
80.179.149.122 IL, Israel 122.sharatim.co.il.
82.165.27.220 DE, Germany p15173261.pureserver.info.
83.19.20.66 PL, Poland byq66.internetdsl.tpnet.pl.
84.53.78.183 NL, Netherlands 84-53-78-183.wxdsl.nl.
87.197.110.47 SK, Slovakia static-dsl-47.87-197-110.telecom.sk.
99.53.191.61 --, N/A adsl-99-53-191-61.dsl.mtry01.sbcglobal.net.
200.219.194.74 BR, Brazil static.200.219.194.74.datacenter1.com.br.
202.190.177.144 MY, Malaysia
164.77.195.60 CL, Chile
89.119.5.106 IT, Italy 89-119-5-106-static.albacom.net.
221.154.206.233 KR, Korea, Republic of
218.208.91.111 MY, Malaysia
65.120.74.22 US, United States
210.185.64.195 AU, Australia 210-185-64-195.intrapower.net.au.
202.168.58.111 AU, Australia 111.58.168.202.static.comindico.com.au.
85.25.71.36 DE, Germany loft1551.serverloft.de.
193.136.39.26 PT, Portugal genid.dcc.fc.up.pt.
150.146.40.173 IT, Italy mspasiano.cedrc.cnr.it.
221.194.128.66 CN, China
82.135.192.72 LT, Lithuania 82-135-192-72.static.zebra.lt.
80.10.250.17 FR, France
207.28.220.1 US, United States voyager.iavalley.cc.ia.us.
164.77.208.198 CL, Chile
38.107.141.131 US, United States host-38-107-141-131.mtl.net.vexxhost.com.
222.218.156.41 CN, China

Comment Re:OK, Let's have a big, hearty chorus, folks! (Score 0) 194

It's a shame really, I love SuSE as a distro. Yast is probably the most complete centralized gui based configuration tool for linux. Much better in that sense than ubuntu with gnome which is obsessively minimal and redhat who scatters random tools everywhere that all have varying levels of completeness, stability, and support.

Comment Insidious thought (Score 1) 464

Hide one of these behind a desk somewhere in a computer lab, sneak a cable to the switch or through one of the workstations, and have it connect via rootkit to a remote server somewhere. Then connect to the server and do whatever naughty things you desire. If you were clever you could even disguise it as an AC adapter.
The Internet

Submission + - Copyright Alliance Presses Presidential Candidates (arstechnica.com)

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes: "Not satisfied with the current life plus seventy copyright terms and huge financial liabilities for infringement, the Copyright Alliance is pressuring presidential candidates for stronger copyright laws. In particular, they want the candidates to divert police resources to punish even non-commercial copyright infringement. After all, without copyright, what would become of the next Shakespeare, Michaelangelo, or da Vinci?"

Slashdot Top Deals

Some of my readers ask me what a "Serial Port" is. The answer is: I don't know. Is it some kind of wine you have with breakfast?

Working...