krazyjim - Slashdot User

First RIAA Case Victim Finally Speaks Out 204

Posted by Zonk on Saturday November 03, 2007 @05:23PM from the bad-couple-of-years dept.

An anonymous reader writes with a link to an article at P2P Net about the very first victim of the RIAA's file-sharing litigation sweep. The site gave Jammie Thomas the chance to explain in her own words what the last two years have been like. She recounts her experiances with subpoenas, Best Buy, and most of all, stress. Even after all this time, her case is still in legal limbo: "As for what's next, my attorney filed a motion to have the verdict thrown out or to have the judgment reduced based on the constitutionality of the judgment. This is not an appeal, this is a post trial motion. We are currently waiting for the plaintiffs to file their response to our motion. The judge will not make a decision on that motion until after the plaintiffs have filed. The timeline for appeals is we have 30 days after the judge decides all post trial motions before we file any appeals ... I do know personally I cannot allow my case to end this way, with this judgment. My case will be used as a sledgehammer by the RIAA to force other people caught in the RIAA's driftnets to settle, even if they are or are not guilty of illegally sharing music online."

The Real Problem With Alexa 372

Posted by CmdrTaco on Monday July 23, 2007 @12:00PM from the get-my-irk-on dept.

Alexa drives me nuts. It uses a broken methodology to measure the internet and is, for reasons unclear to anyone, regarded as somehow definitive simply because it allows you to compare two sites with a single simple number. Its sampling methodology is flawed and the numbers it produces are meaningless. And if you want to help me prove this, please install their toolbar. Of course since most of you are Slashdot readers, most of you won't and that only helps prove my point. Read on for what I mean by all of this, and why it matters.

Xbox Hypervisor Security Protection Hacked 232

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday February 28, 2007 @08:48PM from the they're-in dept.

ACTRAiSER writes "A recent Post on Bugtraq claims the hack of the Xbox 360 Security Protection Hypervisor. It includes sample code as well." From Bugtraq "We have discovered a vulnerability in the Xbox 360 hypervisor that allows privilege escalation into hypervisor mode. Together with a method to inject data into non-privileged memory areas, this vulnerability allows an attacker with physical access to an Xbox 360 to run arbitrary code such as alternative operating systems with full privileges and full hardware access."

67-Kilowatt Laser Unveiled 395

Posted by kdawson on Saturday February 24, 2007 @06:11PM from the very-big-sharks dept.

s31523 writes "Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California has announced they have working in the lab a Solid State Heat Capacity Laser that averages 67 kW. It is being developed for the military. The chief scientist Dr. Yamamoto is quoted: 'I know of no other solid state laser that has achieved 67 kW of average output power.' Although many lasers have peaked at higher capacities, getting the average sustained power to remain high is the tricky part. The article says that hitting the 100-kW level, at which point it would become interesting as a battlefield weapon, could be less than a year away."

Quantum Computer Demoed, Plays Sudoku 309

Posted by kdawson on Thursday February 15, 2007 @10:45AM from the more-qubits dept.

prostoalex writes "Canadian company D-Wave Systems is getting some technology press buzz after successfully demonstrating their quantum computer (discussed here earlier) that the company plans to rent out. Scientific American has a more technical description of how the quantum computer works, as well as possible areas of application: 'The quantum computer was given three problems to solve: searching for molecular structures that match a target molecule, creating a complicated seating plan, and filling in Sudoku puzzles.' Another attendee provides some videos from the demo." Anyone want to guess how long before "qubit" gets compressed to "quit" (as "bigit" became "bit" in the last century)?

Bacteria Harnessed As Micro-Robot Motors 68

Posted by kdawson on Saturday January 27, 2007 @09:31PM from the 15-microns-a-second dept.

ElectricBrian writes "Researchers have found a way to propel micro-capsules by attaching bacteria (S. marcescens, the type that makes your shower curtain moldy). Scientists at Carnegie Mellon University fixed the bacteria to the micro-capsules and then used chemicals to turn on and off their motion-producing flagella. Quoting: 'In the future, such hybrid swimming micro-robots could even be used to deliver drugs inside the liquid environments of the human body, such as the urinary tract, eyeball cavity, ear, and cerebrospinal fluid...'"

SCO Asks Court To Reconsider IBM's Dismissal 139

Posted by CowboyNeal on Saturday December 23, 2006 @11:39AM from the not-so-fast dept.

VE3OGG writes "The SCO Group — the litigation firm currently in dispute with, among many, IBM, over supposed copyright infringing code in Unix — has quietly asked the courts to reconsider IBM's request to toss the case out. SCO argued that the court's November decision was procedurally and substantially flawed and they say 'the rules of procedure do not support such a result under the circumstances of this case.' If allowed to reopen the case, the SCO Group argues, that new evidence would present itself through the deposition of several IBM programmers who had previously been interviewed."

John Dvorak On Vista's Launch 382

Posted by Zonk on Thursday November 30, 2006 @02:54PM from the he-said-lunch-not-launch dept.

An anonymous reader writes "John is at it again, this time with his take on the launch of Microsoft's Vista operating system. John covers the reality from a market perspective, looking at whether the release will affect PC sales, peripherals ... or even Microsoft." From the article: "While there is no way that Vista will be a flop, since all new computers will come with Vista pre-installed, there seems to be no excitement level at all. And there does not seem to be any compelling reason for people to upgrade to Vista. In fact, the observers I chat with who follow corporate licensing do not see any large installations of Windows-based computers upgrading anytime soon. The word I keep hearing is 'stagnation.' Industry manufacturers are not too thrilled either. One CEO who supplies a critical component for all computers says he sees a normal fourth quarter then nothing special in the first quarter for the segment. Dullsville."

Slashdot Posting Bug Infuriates Haggard Admins 262

Posted by CmdrTaco on Thursday November 09, 2006 @11:45AM from the this-is-never-good dept.

Last night we crossed over 16,777,216 comments in the database. The wise amongst you might note that this number is 2^24, or in MySQLese an unsigned mediumint. Unfortunately, like 5 years ago we changed our primary keys in the comment table to unsigned int (32 bits, or 4.1 billion) but neglected to change the index that handles parents. We're awesome! Fixing is a simple ALTER TABLE statement... but on a table that is 16 million rows long, our system will take 3+ hours to do it, during which time there can be no posting. So today, we're disabling threading and will enable it again later tonight. Sorry for the inconvenience. We shall flog ourselves appropriately. Update: 11/10 12:52 GMT by J : It's fixed.

Windows CE 6 Arrives Complete with Kernel Source 169

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Wednesday November 01, 2006 @03:34PM from the pay-no-attention-to-the-man-behind-the-curtain dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft has launched the sixth edition of their embedded OS Windows CE and this time has included the full source. From the article: 'Developers can now access shared source code for the Windows CE kernel -- as well as certain device drivers and application-level components -- directly from within the Windows Embedded CE 6.0 distribution package. To do this, they click on a function in the IDE that installs the shared source, and indicate their acceptance of the associated shared source license.'"

Comment Not fantastic - but it worked (Score 1) 529

by krazyjim on Sunday October 29, 2006 @08:07AM (#16630958) Attached to: Upgrading to Ubuntu Edgy Eft a "Nightmare"

I did have some trouble upgrading from Dapper (to which I upgraded from 5.10), the first time I ran the upgrade it choked out because a package hadn't been removed when it should (bad dependencies probably), at least it kept the 1.4GB of packages it downloaded first. A few overwritten config files later I ran apt-get update & apt-get upgrade a few times then bit the bullet and restarted, surprisingly the system booted (albeit without the new usplash due to an fsck being run on /). I was greeted by the login prompt, the theme had been changed back and my alarm clock user no longer automatically logged in after 100 seconds - due to the new gdm.conf the upgrade made. Having logged in I noticed my theme and icons had been changed which was a little intrusive, but everything seemed to run fine. Speedwise not much has changed (although Firefox 2 seems to be quite proficient at consuming memory when more than a few tabs are open), the quicker boot times advertised don't really show although my system does seem to shut down considerably faster now. I'm surprised I haven't been thrown back to textmode like I was when trying to go from 5.10, but I agree the process could be made better.

Root Exploit For NVIDIA Closed-Source Linux Driver 548

Posted by kdawson on Monday October 16, 2006 @05:18PM from the dangerous-blobs dept.

possible writes, "KernelTrap is reporting that the security research firm Rapid7 has published a working root exploit for a buffer overflow in NVIDIA's binary blob graphics driver for Linux. The NVIDIA drivers for FreeBSD and Solaris are also likely vulnerable. This will no doubt fuel the debate about whether binary blob drivers should be allowed in Linux." Rapid7's suggested action to mitigate this vulnerability: "Disable the binary blob driver and use the open-source 'nv' driver that is included by default with X."

Intel Pledges 80 Core Processor in 5 Years 439

Posted by Zonk on Tuesday September 26, 2006 @04:16PM from the thinking-of-the-gaming dept.

ZonkerWilliam writes "Intel has developed an 80 core processor with claims 'that can perform a trillion floating point operations per second.'" From the article: "CEO Paul Otellini held up a silicon wafer with the prototype chips before several thousand attendees at the Intel Developer Forum here on Tuesday. The chips are capable of exchanging data at a terabyte a second, Otellini said during a keynote speech. The company hopes to have these chips ready for commercial production within a five-year window."

Beyond DirectX 10 - A glance at DirectX 10.1 236

Posted by CmdrTaco on Sunday August 13, 2006 @07:58PM from the one-percent-more dept.

Hanners1979 writes "Although we still appear to be some way away from the release of Windows Vista, and with it DirectX 10, specifications for the first point release of the 3D graphics API, DirectX 10.1, have already been finalised and largely made public. Elite Bastards looks at what's new and what will be changing in this release, set to become available not all that long after DirectX 10 — There's more to it than you might imagine."

Network Card for Gamers - Uses Linux to Reduce Lag 410

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Tuesday August 08, 2006 @05:22PM from the slave-to-the-ping-number dept.

Cujo writes "The folks at GDHardare have an interview with Bigfoot Networks discussing the pending release of their Killer Network Card which is said to greatly reduce in-game latency. According to the Interview, this card uses a Linux-based subsystem to do its magic."

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