Comparing Microsoft and Apple Websites' Usability 314
An anonymous reader writes 'In the article entitled Apple vs. Microsoft — A Website Usability Study, Dmitry Fadeyev, co-founder of Pixelshell, compares Apple's and Microsoft's web sites from a usability perspective, and Apple is the winner. Scott Barnes, PM at Microsoft, agrees with him and suggests the problem is because various site sub-domains have different management.'
Comment Re:SLOW FUCKING JAVASCRIPT (Score 1) 230
It's the comment control box(the one with "X Full, Y Abbreviated, Z hidden")
Click on the little arrow on the right, it sticks itself up somewhere, and the pages scroll fast again.
A Visual Expedition Inside the Linux File Systems 85
RazvanM writes "This is an attempt to visualize the relationships among the Linux File Systems through the lens of the external symbols their kernel modules use. We took an initial look a few months back but this time the scope is much broader. This analysis was done on 1377 kernel modules from 2.6.0 to 2.6.29, but there is also a small dip into the BSD world. The most thorough analysis was done on Daniel Phillips's tree, which contains the latest two disk-based file systems for Linux: tux3 and btrfs. The main techniques used to establish relationships among file systems are hierarchical clustering and phylogenetic trees. Also presented are a set of rankings based on various properties related to the evolution of the external symbols from one release to another, and complete timelines of the kernel releases for Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD. In all there are 78 figures and 10 animations."
BIND 10 Development Now Fully Underway 76
darthcamaro writes "A decade after work first began on version 9 of BIND, the widely deployed open source DNS server, work is now fully underway on its successor, BIND 10. '"One of the goals for BIND 10 is to allow people to customize and extend without too much trouble," Shane Kerr, BIND 10's program manager at the Internet Systems Consortium (ISC), told InternetNews.com.' Sounds good right? Only problem is that it's going to take a bit of time until BIND 10 is actually ready for production — potentially as long as five years!"
Interview With UIzard Creator Ryu Sunt-tae 73
volume4 writes "A couple of days ago, the folks over at Ajaxian introduced the world to UIzard, an awesome creation by a Korean developer using YUI. There is actually a heck of a lot more about it, and the excitement about the app caused the UIzard website to go down. Most people could not interact with the app or learn more. A day or so later, the website was back but I could still not access the app. I went on a search to find the creator of UIzard to learn more about it, and finally, through Jinho.Jung on Flickr, I got ahold of his email address and hooked up with Ryu Sunt-tae to learn more."
Comment Re:raise your hand... (Score 1) 210
two hands for "life's self-assembly".
OP: not all people at slashdot are biologists, you know that right?
Comment Re:front page? really? or any page? it's 2009! (Score 1) 481
Obviously, Captain Obvious contracted some people, he says the job is slow nowadays.
Opting Out Increases Spam? 481
J. L. Tympanum writes "I used to ignore spam but recently I have been using the opt-out feature. Now I get more spam than ever, especially of the Nigerian scam (and related) types. The latter has gone from almost none to several a day. Was I a fool for opting out? Is my email address being harvested when I opt out? Has anybody had similar experience?"
Valve Takes Optimistic View of Piracy 509
GameDaily recently spoke with Jason Holtman, director of business development and legal affairs for Valve, about online sales and piracy. Holtman took a surprising stance on the latter, effectively taking responsibility for at least a portion of pirated games. Quoting:
"'There's a big business feeling that there's piracy,' he says. But the truth is: 'Pirates are underserved customers. When you think about it that way, you think, "Oh my gosh, I can do some interesting things and make some interesting money off of it." We take all of our games day-and-date to Russia,' Holtman says of Valve. 'The reason people pirated things in Russia,' he explains, 'is because Russians are reading magazines and watching television — they say "Man, I want to play that game so bad," but the publishers respond "you can play that game in six months...maybe." We found that our piracy rates dropped off significantly,' Holtman says."
Attitudes like this seem to be prevalent at Valve; last month we talked about founder Gabe Newell's comments that "most DRM strategies are just dumb."
Report Says China Will Demand Source Code 305
An anonymous reader alerts us to a two-week-old story that hasn't gotten much traction in the press to date. A Japanese newspaper and the AP report that China plans to demand source code from hardware manufacturers, and ban the sale of products from companies that don't comply. China is calling this an "obligatory accreditation system for IT security products." The plan is to go into effect next May, according to sources. "Products expected to be subject to the system are those equipped with secret coding, such as [a] contactless smart card system developed by Sony Corp., digital copiers, and computer servers. The Chinese government said it needs the source code to prevent computer viruses taking advantage of software vulnerabilities and to shut out hackers. However, this explanation is unlikely to satisfy concerns that disclosed information might be handed from the Chinese government to Chinese companies. There also are fears that Chinese intelligence services could exploit such confidential information by making it easier to break codes used in... digital devices."
"Iron Man" Release Brings Down Paramount's Servers 283
secmartin writes "Shortly after the release of Iron Man on Blu-ray on October 1, people started complaining of defective discs; the problem turned out to be that all the Blu-ray players downloading additional content brought down Paramount's BD-Live servers, causing delays while loading the disc. Which really makes you wonder what will happen when they decide to shut down this service in a couple of years."
CERN Launches Huge LHC Computing Grid 46
RaaVi writes "Yesterday CERN launched the largest computing grid in the world, which is destined to analyze the data coming from the world's biggest particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider. The computing grid consists of more than 140 computer centers from around the world working together to handle the expected 10-15 petabytes of data the LHC will generate each year."
The Worldwide LHC Computing Grid will initially handle data for up to 7,000 scientists around the world. Though the LHC itself is down for some lengthy repairs, an event called GridFest was held yesterday to commemorate the occasion. The LCG will run alongside the LHC@Home volunteer project.
Comment Re:How is this news? (Score 5, Insightful) 525
Vista's security chain works as designed and intended, preventing from you to inject an untrusted bootloader into the bootstrap. Isn't that what we -want- from our security systems? This isnt' a case of "Microsoft" holding our data hostage, this is a case of our own security policies WORKING.
If I were to be running Linux, with equivalent protection, I'd be right pissed if it could be trivially rootkitted/bypassed by swapping in a malicious bootloader.
If the attacker can install a bootloader, that means you were rooted and your precious data can be grabbed from the memory of the program that happens to be using it.
If the bootloader is installed while the OS is not running, that means you do not have adequate physical security.
Ivy League Computer Science Curricula Exposed 312
Doug Treadwell writes "Many people have wondered what the difference is between the Computer Science education given in the average public university versus one given in an Ivy League university (or a top level public university). There have also been discussions here on Slashdot about whether any Computer Science curriculum gives students the knowledge they need for the working world. As a computer science student both questions are very important to me, so I decided to answer them for myself and build a website to share what I found. I was able to find the required reading for hundreds of courses at Stanford, Princeton, Carnegie Mellon, and Berkeley; along with some other institutions. This should also help answer some of those 'What should I read?' questions."
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