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Comment Re:Ulduar (Score 1) 204

The problem is, when you have 10 million plus players, you have to develop content to please the majority who usually happen to be people who want near instant gratification on completing something. Blizzard has realized this, and so make the game easier with every patch so that those who whine the loudest can get their (insert class name here) leveled out faster so they can "rayd and g3tz teh ub4r geer to pwn" AI mobs that much faster. I quit the game close to one year ago, and the only reason I would go back would be because there is nothing else to play on the market. Thankfully, the MMO market being as it is, I can usually find something else to take my attention away from games like this where FOTM classes run the game. Those who enjoy WoW, by all means, continue doing so. I think though you will get bored eventually with the ease at which you succeed at things. It is comparable to someone starting in AP English, then watching as it gets turned into remedial just because everyone is given the thought that they should be there too.
Robotics

Robotic Aircraft To Supply Troops 111

Cowards Anonymous writes "PC World reports on a prototype driverless aircraft designed to shuttle hundreds of pounds of supplies to soldiers in war zones. Dubbed a flying Humvee by Frontline Aerospace's CEO, the robotic vehicle can fly 600 to 1,000 miles carrying a full cargo of 400 pounds. It's about the size of a large SUV, weighing in at 2,400 pounds and measuring 21 feet long and up to 26 feet wide."
Security

Man Fired When Laptop Malware Downloaded Porn 635

Geoffrey.landis writes "The Massachusetts Department of Industrial Accidents fired worker Michael Fiola and initiated procedures to prosecute him for child pornography when they determined that internet temporary files on his laptop computer contained child porn. According to Fiola, 'My boss called me into his office at 9 a.m. The director of the Department of Industrial Accidents, my immediate supervisor, and the personnel director were there. They handed me a letter and said, "You are being fired for a violation of the computer usage policy. You have pornography on your computer. You're fired. Clean out your desk. Let's go."' Fiola said, 'They wouldn't talk to me. They said, "We've been advised by our attorney not to talk to you."' However, prosecutors dropped the case when a state investigation of his computer determined there was insufficient evidence to prove he had downloaded the files. Computer forensic analyst Tami Loehrs, who spent a month dissecting the computer for the defense, explained in a 30-page report that the laptop was running corrupted virus-protection software, and Fiola was hit by spammers and crackers bombarding its memory with images of incest and pre-teen porn not visible to the naked eye. The virus protection and software update functions on the laptop had been disabled, and apparently the laptop was 'crippled' by malware. According to Loehrs, 'When they gave him this laptop, it had belonged to another user, and they changed the user name for him, but forgot to change the SMS user name, so SMS was trying to connect to a user that no longer existed ... It was set up to do all of its security updates via the server, and none of that was happening because he was out in the field.' A malware script on the machine surfed foreign sites at a rate of up to 40 per minute whenever the machine was within range of a wireless site."
Security

Mac OS X Root Escalation Through AppleScript 359

An anonymous reader writes "Half the Mac OS X boxes in the world (confirmed on Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger and 10.5 Leopard) can be rooted through AppleScript: osascript -e 'tell app "ARDAgent" to do shell script "whoami"'; Works for normal users and admins, provided the normal user wasn't switched to via fast user switching. Secure? I think not." On the other hand, since this exploit seems to require physical access to the machine to be rooted, you might have some other security concerns to deal with at that point, like keeping the intruder from raiding your fridge on his way out.
Graphics

Register, Others Call Plagiarism in "Limbo of the Lost" Game 400

Fallen Andy writes "'The Register' has an article describing 'Limbo of the Lost' (developed by Majestic and sold in the U.S by Tri Synergy) which seems to have 'borrowed' copiously graphics assets from other games. Over at the GamesRadar forum there is a thread with some screenshots. Finally, this game has its own Wikipedia entry. Warning to all — move the soft drink away from the keyboard and monitor before you look at those screenshots. Blatant this is, very blatant indeed."
Hardware Hacking

Wii Update 3.3 Defeats Twilight Hack, Freeloader 125

Richter X writes "The newest update to the Nintendo Wii's Menu, version 3.3, contains code specifically designed to find and kill the popular Twilight Hack used by homebrewers to play unauthorized code on the Wii. The update also prevents the Freeloader software used to play imported games on the Wii. However, it does not seem to affect the Homebrew Channel in Wiis that already have it installed. The updated code is currently being researched in order to find what code has been changed. So far it has been confirmed that Nintendo included specific instructions to target the Twilight Hack. Work is also being done to update the Twilight Hack in order to bypass this new code."

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