jogu - Slashdot User

US Air Force Buying Another 2,200 PS3s 144

Posted by Soulskill on Wednesday November 25, 2009 @05:02AM from the quick-who-knows-a-good-ps3-flight-sim dept.

bleedingpegasus sends word that the US Air Force will be grabbing up 2,200 new PlayStation 3 consoles for research into supercomputing. They already have a cluster made from 336 of the old-style (non-Slim) consoles, which they've used for a variety of purposes, including "processing multiple radar images into higher resolution composite images (known as synthetic aperture radar image formation), high-def video processing, and 'neuromorphic computing.'" According to the Justification Review Document (DOC), "Once the hardware configuration is implemented, software code will be developed in-house for cluster implementation utilizing a Linux-based operating software."

Microsoft to Issue Emergency Patch For File-Sharing Hole 348

Posted by timothy on Thursday October 23, 2008 @01:22PM from the safest-version-of-windows-ever dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft said late Wednesday that it plans to release a critical security update today to plug a security hole present in all supported versions of Windows. The company hasn't released any details about the patch yet, which is expected to be pushed out at 1 p.m. PT. Normally, Redmond issues security updates on Patch Tuesday, the second Tuesday of each month. The Washington Post's Security Fix blog notes that each of the three times in the past that Microsoft has departed from its patch cycle, it was to fix some really nasty vulnerability that criminals already were exploiting to break into Windows PCs." Reader filenavigator points out an article which describes the hole as an SMB vulnerability, and says it "allows anyone to access a Windows machine remotely without any user name or password. Any machine that exposes Windows file sharing is vulnerable." Update: 10/23 17:42 GMT by T : Reader AngryDad adds a link to Microsoft's more detailed memo.

Comment License enforcement (Score 5, Informative) 480

by jogu on Sunday June 22, 2008 @03:03PM (#23893089) Attached to: Enforcing the GPL On Software Companies?

As the parent says, only the copyright holder can actually take any legal action.

For busybox, you can see on http://busybox.net/license.html that:

"BusyBox's copyrights are enforced by the Software Freedom Law Center (you can contact them at gpl@busybox.net)"

This an effective process, but a slow one (expect it to take 6 months+ for any response on past experience).

For the linux kernel, lkml is perhaps an appropriate place.

FSF can't help, since they don't own any of the software.

You perhaps want to consider how you're wording your requests. If a polite (or impolite) request for source code has been refused, you might want to try a different track, pointing out that the hardware contains software that they have no valid license to distribute and is hence illegal, and would they like to discuss this further before you contact the copyright owner.

Under copyright law, there is absolutely no requirement for them to provide the source code. One possible legal conclusion is that they pay court decided damages to the copyright owners for illegal distribution to date, and cease further distribution. If they wish to continue distribution, it's likely that they're only available option is to open the source code, especially since their are often multiple copyright holders, especially in the linux kernel.

(Disclaimer, I'm not a lawyer, and some points will vary between jurisdictions.)

Submission + - Debian bug let hackers guess private SSL/SSH keys (gmane.org) 1

Submitted by SecurityBob on Tuesday May 13, 2008 @10:11AM

SecurityBob writes: Debian package maintainers tend to very often modify the source code of the package they are maintaining so that it better fits into the distribution itself. However, most of the time, there changes are not sent back to upstream for validation, which might cause some tension between upstream developers and Debian packagers. Today, a critical security advisory has been released : a Debian packager modified the source code of OpenSSL back in 2006 so as to remove the seeding of OpenSSL random number generator, which in turns makes cryptographical key material generated on a Debian system guessable. The solution ? Upgrade OpenSSL and re-generate all your SSH and SSL keys. This problem not only affects Debian, but also all its derivatives, such as Ubuntu.

MythTV 0.21 Released 68

Posted by kdawson on Saturday March 08, 2008 @08:48PM from the i-want-my-i-want-my-i-want-my dept.

kormoc writes "The new release has lots of new stuff, notably: autodiscovery (less manual configuration of new front-ends), storage groups (no need for LVM/etc), support for multiple recordings on one DVB/ATSC multiplex, a couple of new plugins, some new deinterlacing / video display options, and many, many other things. The release notes page in the wiki has the list of what's changed, but it's currently a couple thousand checkins out of date. Grab the release from the download section and please at least try to read the docs before asking questions. The binary packages should hopefully be updated to 0.21 soon."

Bookmark How to End Constipation with Home Remedies - Part 1 (blogspot.com)

by ultrasook on Saturday September 15, 2007 @04:37AM

Virtually Non-Stick Gum Created 96

Posted by Zonk on Saturday September 15, 2007 @03:34AM from the does-it-taste-any-good dept.

An anonymous reader writes "A new polymer has been developed by Professor Terence Cosgrove that allows for a non-sticky gum. In testing the gum was removed by weather while the competitor's gum was not removed 4 out of 5 times. The BBC reports: 'The company now needs to get its polymer accepted as a food product by passing EU health and safety tests. It can then go on sale. Professor Cosgrove says he is hopeful that the gum will pass them, and says the product could be on the market as early as next year, either as a Revolymer product or through a partnership with one of the major chewing gum manufacturers.'"

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