Become a fan of Slashdot on Facebook

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
OS X

Apple Patches Massive Holes In OS X 246

Posted by timothy from the well-it-wouldn't-be-polite-to-patch-windows dept.
Trailrunner7 writes with this snippet from ThreatPost: "Apple's first Mac OS X security update for 2010 is out, providing cover for at least 12 serious vulnerabilities. The update, rated critical, plugs security holes that could lead to code execution vulnerabilities if a Mac user is tricked into opening audio files or surfing to a rigged Web site." Hit the link for a list of the highlights among these fixes.

Comment Re:So they can't talk about proprietary products?? (Score 1) 587

by VolkerLanz (#30416670) Attached to: GNOME Developer Suggests Split From GNU Project

But as the corporate world began to look for ways to market Linux-based distros, it was Gnome's relative purity (not any of its technical merits, which are few) that got KDE pushed to the sidelines.

It was not "purity", it was greed: You used to have to buy Qt licenses to develop closed source software for KDE. No investment like that was necessary for Gtk apps. This has of course changed now that Nokia has put Qt under LGPL.
AMD

A $99 Graphics Card Might Be All You Need 618

Posted by kdawson from the market-beater dept.
Vigile writes "With the release of AMD's latest budget graphics card, the Radeon HD 4770, the GPU giant is bringing a lot of technology to the table. The card sports the world's first 40nm GPU (beating out CPUs to a new process technology for the first time), GDDR5 memory, and 640 stream processors, all for under $100. What is even more interesting is that as PC gaming has evolved it appears that a $99 graphics card is all you really need to play the latest PC titles — as long as you are comfortable with a resolution of 1920x1200 or below. Since so few PC gamers have screens larger than that, could the world of high-end PC graphics simply go away?"

Comment The two guys' bottom line is nearly correct (Score 5, Interesting) 559

by VolkerLanz (#26750751) Attached to: Is It Windows 7, Or KDE 4?
We did in fact not learn all that much from their little street intreviews. Apart from that people feel uncomfortable with Vista (what did that lady say -- "hard to get user-friendly with"?) we learnt that they seem to like the default looks of KDE 4. That's interesting, but not all that surprising.
Still a nice little laugh, that video.

Comment Re:The Google service I'm still waiting for ... (Score 1) 342

by VolkerLanz (#26675875) Attached to: Google Unofficially Announces GDrive By Leaked Code

Because google still hasn't indexed my website at home, several months after I filled out the form to request that they do so.

That form has been rumored to be rather useless anyway in the past (sorry, no references at hand just now). Get your website linked to by sites with high page rank and Googlebot will be there in no time.

If my website was hosted by google, and resided on google hardware and storage, they would presumably index my page a little quicker.

Why? Googlebot isn't visiting sites sooner that are less hops away, or does it? ;-)

Comment What is all this about? (Score 5, Insightful) 869

by VolkerLanz (#26591237) Attached to: Linus Switches From KDE To Gnome
There are six pages of interview with Linus. Him now using Gnome instead of KDE is covered in three and a half paragraphs. Come on, this is a little sensationalist, picking on this rather minor issue for the headline, isn't it? No, I'm not new here, I just like to point out how childish that seems.

Linus says KDE 4.0 was a "half baked release". Yes it was. He complains he got the update pushed through Fedora and that it "was not as functional". I'm sure it wasn't. He also might want to reconsider his choice of Linux distribution if he isn't happy with their update policy.

We've been through this a million times here and on most any other tech site on the whole of the web: KDE 4.0 wasn't ready for general use, KDE themselves said so, it might have been a mistake to release it anyway, or not, the communication could have been a lot clearer, yada yada yada.

Linus thinks so, too. Fine. Also, yawn.

Comment Re:Two questions: (Score 2, Insightful) 108

by VolkerLanz (#26480895) Attached to: <em>Zork</em> Returning As a Browser MMO

1. Are any of the people involved with the original in on this? I know TFA says that they were in contact with Activision regarding backstory, but that's not necessarily the same thing.

I think that's rather unlikely. Mr. Collins explicitly says in the interview that he's "continually searching for people who were involved in the games over the years" and quotes only Activision as a source for the "entire mythology". None of the original Zork Implementors works (or has worked in the past) for Activision.

Also, the artwork on http://www.legendsofzork.com/ makes you wonder if Mr. Collins has really caught up with the "entire mythology". This adventurer is from anywhere but from Zork -- not with that torch in his hand.
Cellphones

Text-Messaging Behind the Wheel 517

Posted by CowboyNeal from the move-over-cb-radio dept.
theodp writes "TIME interviews 21-year-old Taylor Leming, creator of the 600-member Facebook group I Text Message People While Driving and I Haven't Crashed Yet! While Alaska and Louisiana just became the latest states to pass laws banning text-messaging behind the wheel, Virginia resident Leming is still happily texting away while driving despite some near-accidents. 'Sometimes it just seems easier to text 'Be there in 5' instead of calling,' explains Taylor."
Graphics

NVIDIA Doubts Ray Tracing Is the Future of Games 198

Posted by kdawson from the pick-your-horse dept.
SizeWise writes "After Intel's prominent work in ray tracing in the both the desktop and mobile spaces, many gamers might be thinking that the move to ray-tracing engines is inevitable. NVIDIA's Chief Scientist, Dr. David Kirk, thinks otherwise as revealed in this interview on rasterization and ray tracing. Kirk counters many of Intel's claims of ray tracing's superiority, such as the inherent benefit to polygon complexity, while pointing out areas where ray-tracing engines would falter, such as basic antialiasing. The interview concludes with discussions on mixing the two rendering technologies and whether NVIDIA hardware can efficiently handle ray tracing calculations as well."
Security

Adobe Flash Exploit Could Log Keystrokes 156

Posted by CmdrTaco from the i-thought-adobe-was-good-in-a-wreck dept.
Kenyon Lessi writes "Adobe has issued three critical security updates, one of which is designed to stop a problem in the way the Flash player interacts with browsers, which could result in users' keystrokes being transmitted to attackers. The problem affect Adobe Flash Player version 9.0.45.0, 8.0.34.0 and 7.0.69.0, as well as their earlier versions running on all platforms."
Programming

Forget Math to Become a Great Computer Scientist? 942

Posted by Zonk from the this-is-why-i-wasn't-a-good-programmer dept.
Coryoth writes "A new book is trying to claim that computer science is better off without maths. The author claims that early computing pioneers such as Von Neumann and Alan Turing imposed their pure mathematics background on the field, and that this has hobbled computer science ever since. He rejects the idea of algorithms as a good way to think about software. Can you really do computer science well without mathematics? And would you want to?"

Comment Re:Interesting Fact to observe (Score 1) 203

by VolkerLanz (#16752441) Attached to: The 13 Enemies of the Internet
With the exception of Burma (which has long been a pariah military dictatorship), all the countries
As many others have already noted, the USA is obviously missing from the list...

are either ruled by a communist party (or direct sucessor) or they are from an islamic culture.
... so, make your pick ;-)

Also, what's "pariah military"? Isn't that just a little bit tautological?

Slashdot Top Deals

"Hey Ivan, check your six." -- Sidewinder missile jacket patch, showing a Sidewinder driving up the tail of a Russian Su-27

Close