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Windows

What's Keeping You On Windows? 1880

Posted by samzenpus from the old-slippers dept.
tearmeapart writes "It may be time again for another discussion/flamewar on the reasons why a lot of us are (still) using Microsoft. The last big discussion on Slashdot was close to 10 years ago, and a lot has changed since then: Windows XP and 7 have proven to be stable (and memories of Windows ME are mostly gone.) There are many more distributions for Linux, especially commercial options. Distributions like Ubuntu and CentOS have made GNU/Linux more friendly. Options for word processing, spreadsheets, etc. have grown. Apple and their products have changed considerably, though their philosophy hasn't. Microsoft Silverlight came and is on the way out. Wine and solutions like Transgaming have matured. So... why are a lot of us still using Windows? What would it take for us to switch?"
Power

Submission + - Power Companies Brace for Solar Storms

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Three large explosions from the Sun over the past few days have prompted US government scientists to caution users of satellite, telecommunications and electric equipment to prepare for possible disruptions over the next few days that could affect communications and global positioning system (GPS) satellites, leave thousands without power for weeks to months, and might even produce an aurora visible as far south as Minnesota and Wisconsin. "The concern is if the electric grid lost a number of transformers during a single storm, replacing them would be difficult and time-consuming," says Rich Lordan, senior technical executive for power delivery and utilization at the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI). The largest solar storm in recorded history was in 1859 when communications infrastructure was limited to telegraphs. Some telegraph operators reported electric shocks, papers caught fire, and the Northern Lights appeared as far south as Cuba and Hawaii. The first of the three solar explosions from the sun already passed the Earth on Thursday with little impact and the second is passing the Earth now and "seems to be stronger." "We'll have to see what happens over the next few days," says space weather scientist Joseph Kunches. "[The third storm] could exacerbate the disturbance in the Earth's magnetic field caused by the second (storm) or do nothing at all.""
Android

Are Third-Party Android Vendors Violating the GPL? 132

Posted by timothy from the checking-it-twice dept.
jfruhlinger writes "Google's refusal to not release Honeycomb source code is kosher because the code in question is released under the Apache license. But the kernel at the heart of Android is GPL'd, which means that code must be released. Google has actually been a good citizen in this regard — but many third-party Android vendors, not so much. While Asus has released their code, there are a host of companies that seem to have not done so, and Matthew Garrett is maintaining a list."
Software

Free DARPA Software Lets Gamers Hunt Submarines 213

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the why-pay-researchers dept.
coondoggie writes "If you have ever wanted to go torpedo-to-torpedo with a submariner, now is your chance. The crowdsource-minded folks at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency rolled out an online game that lets players try to catch elusive, quiet enemy submarines. According to DARPA the Sonalysts Combat Simulations Dangerous Waters software was written to simulate actual evasion techniques used by submarines, challenging each player to track them successfully."
HP

An Open Letter To PC Makers: Ditch Bloatware, Now! 609

Posted by Soulskill from the take-this-free-trial-and-shove-it dept.
MojoKid writes "This is the final straw, the last stand. This is the year that companies have to wise up and realize that they're destroying the experience of the very machines they are marketing so vigorously against their competitors. We're talking about bloatware, and it's an issue that we simply cannot remain silent on any longer. The term 'bloatware' generally refers to any additional software installed on a machine that is not a native part of the operating system. 'Bloatware' is usually provided by third-party software companies, and can range from security suites to unwanted Web browser toolbars. It's most problematic, as these programs generally attempt to boot up first thing, right as the OS is booting up, before the end-user ever has a chance to launch the program on their own accord. It's time for manufacturers to take note: consumers do not want bloatware. It's a royal pain from top to bottom, and moreover, it ruins your brand. When people think of HP and Dell, they immediately think of just how infuriating it is that their last 'new' PC took over one minute to boot up and become usable. To these companies: why are you saddling your machines with software that makes it less enjoyable to use? The solution seems pretty simple. If you still wish to include loads upon loads of third-party software, stick it all on a thumb drive and include it with every new machine. Problem solved."

Comment Chrome vs. Firefox+NoScript (Score 1) 140

by nlewis (#32128030) Attached to: Visually Demonstrating Chrome's Rendering Speed

I just checked Chrome out for the first time, and yes it does render pages quickly. But it's no faster (to my naked eye, at least) than Firefox with the NoScript extension running. And since Firefox+NoScript is also blocking scripts, Flash applets, etc. from running, it seems to me that it would be safer than Chrome anyway. YMMV, but I think I'll stick with my Firefox a bit longer.

Comment False positives...? (Score 2, Interesting) 75

by nlewis (#31881178) Attached to: Checking For GPL Compliance, When the Code Is Embedded

Are we to believe then that, unlike every single piece of virus-scanning software ever, this binary scanning utility will never encounter a false positive? What happens when it shows some product as containing OSS, but it doesn't?

And with that in mind, even if you *do* identify a product as containing OSS, how do you prove it without access to the source code? The company could simply claim it was a false positive (regardless of whether or not that happened to be true), and you would be left with the burden of proving the tool wasn't flawed.

Of course, there are also the false negatives...
Media

YouTube, Now In Text Mode! 102

Posted by CmdrTaco from the squeezing-the-pipes dept.
techmuse writes "YouTube has introduced a new, higher-resolution text mode for video. The new text mode is far more efficient than their previous high-end, high-definition offering, and should bring entirely new levels of realism to streaming web video!"

Comment ATAPI.SYS Infections (Score 5, Informative) 323

by nlewis (#31116200) Attached to: Rootkit May Be Behind Windows Blue Screen

I run a small computer repair shop, and we first started seeing this ATAPI.SYS virus a few weeks ago. When I would submit it to VirusTotal, it would always come back as clean on every single virus scanning engine - but I could tell it was infected. I even had a computer in here just yesterday which had the infected ATAPI.SYS file, yet it was not detected as such - even when the hard drive was mounted as a secondary drive in another system and scanned with several up-to-date antivirus programs.

The virus itself is actually quite a clever little beast. After infecting the file, it sets the file modification time back to the original date & time, which makes it hard to tell that it's been modified. Also, I've noticed that the byte counts between infected and non-infected versions of the file are almost always identical. But to do that, it appears to be injecting its code into the area normally used to store the file version information. The upshot is, if you check the file properties and there's no file version information (the Version tab under XP or the Details tab under Vista/Win7), there's a good chance the file is infected.

I have not had any computers come in to the shop with the BSOD mentioned in the articles yet, but I'm expecting them at any time...

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It is masked but always present. I don't know who built to it. It came before the first kernel.

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