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Transportation

Digital Dashboard Device Detects Driver Drowsiness 117

Posted by timothy from the string-between-ceiling-and-nostril dept.
Pickens writes "Science Daily Headlines reports that researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Media Technology have developed a self-contained, dashboard-mounted assistant system that tracks a driver's eye movements and issues a warning before the driver has an opportunity to nod off to sleep. 'What we have developed is a small modular system with its own hardware and programs on board, so that the line of vision is computed directly within the camera itself,' says Professor Husar. 'Since the Eyetracker is fitted with at least two cameras that record images stereoscopically — meaning in three dimensions — the system can easily identify the spatial position of the pupil and the line of vision.' The cameras, which can be installed in any model of car, evaluate up to 200 images per second to identify the line of vision. If the camera modules detect that the eye is closed for longer than a user-defined interval, it sounds an alarm. The Eyetracker also has applications in computer games where players could look around themselves without requiring a joystick to change their viewing direction, and in marketing and advertising, where researchers could determine which parts of a poster or advertising spot receive longer attention from their viewers."
Education

New Bill Proposes Open Source Requirement for Publicly Funded Books 317

Posted by timothy from the return-to-the-commonwealth dept.
fsufitch writes "On September 30th, the 'Open College Textbook Act of 2009' was introduced to the Senate and referred to committee. The bill proposes that all educational materials published or produced using federal funds need to be published under open licenses. The reasoning behind it takes into account the changing way information is distributed because of the Internet, the high price of college and textbooks, and the dangerously low college graduation rates in the US. Will a bill such as this endanger publishing companies in the same way Internet journalism endangers traditional journalism?"
Security

New NSA-Approved Encryption Standard May Contain Backdoor 322

Posted by Zonk from the find-out-by-knocking dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "Bruce Schneier has a story on Wired about the new official standard for random-number generators the NIST released this year that will likely be followed by software and hardware developers around the world. There are four different approved techniques (pdf), called DRBGs, or 'Deterministic Random Bit Generators' based on existing cryptographic primitives. One is based on hash functions, one on HMAC, one on block ciphers and one on elliptic curves. The generator based on elliptic curves called Dual_EC_DRBG has been championed by the NSA and contains a weakness that can only be described as a backdoor. In a presentation at the CRYPTO 2007 conference (pdf) in August, Dan Shumow and Niels Ferguson showed that there are constants in the standard used to define the algorithm's elliptic curve that have a relationship with a second, secret set of numbers that can act as a kind of skeleton key. If you know the secret numbers, you can completely break any instantiation of Dual_EC_DRBG."
Role Playing (Games)

Gods and Heroes Canceled 29

Posted by Zonk from the nothing-is-perpetual dept.
WarCry was one of the first with the news that Perpetual Entertainment's years-in-the-making MMOG Gods and Heroes is now canceled. The title was due out in August, and was pushed back after changes to the animation system were put into place. Now on 'indefinite hold', it appears a game just weeks or months away from release will never see commercial production. From the article: "Our source tells us that the majority of the Gods and Heroes development team has been let go as part of the move, which comes only a few weeks after they had downsized and pushed back the release date. The Star Trek Online team, those who worked on the Perpetual Platform (which was recently licensed to BioWare) and a small number of people from the Gods and Heroes team will be remain with the company." For a great deal more usefully cynical commentary, F13 (as always) has us covered.
Handhelds

Man Claims iPod Set His Pants Aflame 270

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the lighter-and-gasoline-in-his-pocket-had-nothing-to-do-with-it dept.
alphadogg writes to mention that an Atlanta man is claiming an iPod Nano actually caught fire in his pants creating flames that lasted 15 seconds and reached up as far as his chest. Apple hasn't responded to the claims yet other than sending him a packet to return the iPod.
Microsoft

Why Does Everyone Hate Microsoft? 1540

Posted by Cliff from the don't-hold-back dept.
MrSplog asks: "I'm doing a short project on Microsoft and its impact on society. A considerable part of this project has been looking into people's perceptions of Microsoft and the heavily negative bias of that perception. Since Slashdot is one of the world's forefront leaders on Microsoft hatred, I wanted to know: just why do you hate Microsoft? Please be as descriptive and as thorough as you like. Counter arguments and positive comments are also appreciated."
Censorship

Submission + - Wal-Mart asked to drop Christian video game

Submitted by doug141
doug141 writes: Liberal and progressive Christian groups say a new computer game in which players must either convert or kill non-Christians is the wrong gift to give this holiday season and that Wal-Mart, a major video game retailer, should yank it off its shelves.

Players can choose to join the Antichrist's team, but of course they can never win on [his] side. The enemy team includes fictional rock stars and folks with Muslim-sounding names, while the righteous include gospel singers, missionaries, healers and medics.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2 006/12/12/MNG8TMU1KQ1.DTL
The Courts

SCO Having a Hard Time In Court 120

Posted by Zonk from the buy-a-helmet dept.
jamienk writes "The beginning of the end is in sight. SCO has been reprimanded for the second day in a row by a second judge in their campaign against Linux. Basically, Judge Wells ruled that SCO's vague claims of IP infringement will not be allowed to be heard in court, since it was all clearly a poor attempt at avoiding showing any evidence. Next, SCO will face compelling counterclaims against it by IBM." From the article: "At issue was whether SCO would be allowed to sneak in new allegations and evidence in its experts' reports that it failed to put on the table openly in its Final Disclosures, in effect, as IBM described it, reinventing its case at the eleventh hour. The answer today was no, it won't be allowed to do that. IBM had asked for this relief: 'Insofar as SCO's proposed expert reports exceed the Final Disclosures, they should be stricken.' More details will be arriving in a while, but assuming the early reports are accurate, we may assume that this is what the Judge has ordered." This is a follow-up to a story we discussed yesterday.
Slashdot.org

Journal Journal: Editing story submissions

Journal by nqz
It'd be nice if we were able to edit story submissions, especially if one forgot to include relevant quotes from the article in the body of the submission.
User Journal

Journal Journal: Xbox 360 for one of my Slashdot friends 3

Journal by Work Account

Hi all.

I have an extra Xbox 360 Core system that I would rather sell to one of my Slashdot friends than some random dude on an auction site.

Email your best offer in the $700 range to me at upstandingpatriot@yahoo.com

I also request that whoever gets it from me sends a pic back of you or your kid playing it so I get some joy out of the hours I stood waiting in line in the cold while sick :)

Comment How can you think about this NOW?! (Score -1, Offtopic) 370

by Work Account (#14071403) Attached to: Is Wi-Fi Ruining College?
Get your priorities straight people!

We may use cell phone traffic to monitor auto traffic!

Clearly we need another post about it!

So in case you missed it the last four times...

http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/19/14 3247&tid=158&tid=215&tid=193
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/19/07 45248&tid=126&tid=215&tid=158
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/ 01/159241&tid=193
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/10/16/076217 &tid=215&tid=126

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"Text processing has made it possible to right-justify any idea, even one which cannot be justified on any other grounds." -- J. Finnegan, USC.

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