Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
Communications

Mysterious Radio Station UVB-76 Goes Offline 336

Posted by timothy from the fired-that-dj dept.
leathered writes "Tinfoil hatters around the world are abuzz that UVB-76, the Russian shortwave radio station that has been broadcasting its monotonous tone almost uninterrupted since 1982, has suddenly gone offline. Of course no one knows what the significance of this is, but best brush up on your drills just in case."
Windows

Submission + - Draconian DRM revealed in Windows 7 4

Submitted by
TechForensics
TechForensics writes: "A few days' testing of Windows 7 has already disclosed some draconian DRM, some unrelated to media files. A legitimate copy of Photoshop CS4 stopped functioning after we clobberred a nagging registration screen by replacing a .dll with a hacked version. That's not so much a surprise, but what WAS a surprise: Noting that Win7 allows programs like Photoshop to stealthily insert themselves in your firewall exception list. Further, that the OS is crippled towards allowing large software vendors to penetrate your machine. Even further, that that crippling is responsible for disabling of a program based on a modified .dll. Remote attestation, anyone? And then finding that the OS even after reboot has locked you out of your own Local Settings folder; has denied you permission to move or delete the modified DLL; and refuses to allow the replacement of the Local Settings folder after it is unlocked with Unlocker to move it to the Desktop for examination (where it also denies you entry to your own folder). Setting permissions to "allow everyone" was disabled! Re media files, the days of capturing an audio program on your PC are gone if the program originated on your PC. The inputs of your sound card are severely degraded in software if the card is also playing an audio program (tested here with Grooveshark). Under XP you could select "Stereo Mix" or similar under audio recording inputs and nicely capture any program then playing. Microsoft appears to be pandering to Big Music for its own reasons unrelated to consumer satisfaction. This may be the tip of the iceberg. Something *really nasty* is lurking under the surface of Win7. Being in bed with the RIAA is bad enough, but locking your own files away from you is a device so outrageous it may kill the OS for many persons. Many users will not want to experimenting with a second sound card or computer just to record from online sources, or boot up under a Linux that supports ntfs-3g just to control their files. (You never seem to know in Windows 7 when the "Access Denied" message is going to strike.) It is certainly beginning to be crystal clear why the coming WinFS will not be a good thing for userland, and a Very Good Thing for Microsoft and its partners."
Operating Systems

FreeBSD 7.1 Released 324

Posted by CmdrTaco from the for-the-1337-amongst-us dept.
Sol-Invictus writes "The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team is pleased to announce the availability of FreeBSD 7.1-RELEASE. This is the second release from the 7-STABLE branch which improves on the functionality of FreeBSD 7.0 and introduces some new features. Some of the highlights: The ULE scheduler is now the default in GENERIC kernels for amd64 and i386 architectures. The ULE scheduler significantly improves performance on multicore systems for many workloads. Support for using DTrace inside the kernel has been imported from OpenSolaris. DTrace is a comprehensive dynamic tracing framework. A new and much-improved NFS Lock Manager (NLM) client. Boot loader changes allow, among other things, booting from USB devices and booting from GPT-labeled devices. KDE updated to 3.5.10, GNOME updated to 2.22.3. DVD-sized media for the amd64 and i386 architectures."
Earth

New Font Uses Holes To Cut Ink Use 540

Posted by timothy from the more-you-take-away dept.
An anonymous reader writes "A Dutch company has taken an open source Sans Serif font and added holes to it to try and save on printer ink costs. The Ecofont is claimed to save up to 20 percent of ink costs, but it allegedly took the firm a while to perfect the ratio of the maximum number of holes possible without sacrificing readability."

Comment No pain, no gain... (Score 1) 669

by parrini (#26103051) Attached to: Long-Term Personal Data Storage?
More than one copy in separate geographic locations is important but media diversity also is. Suppose you buy 3 500Gb HDs from the same manufacturer just to discover they have the same defect. There is no way to have a catastrophe proof backup without putting a great deal of work in it. Disciplin, automation, location diversity, backup media renewal, media diversity, everything is important.
Space

Spider Missing After Trip To Space Station 507

Posted by CmdrTaco from the lost-in-space dept.
Garabito writes "A spider that had been sent to the International Space Station for a school science program was lost. Two arachnids were sent in order to know if spiders can survive and make webs in space, but now only one spider can be seen in the container. NASA isn't sure where the other spider could have gone. I, for one, welcome our new arachnid overlords."
Mozilla

Why Mozilla Is Committed To Using Gecko 632

Posted by Soulskill from the gecko,-not-geico dept.

Ars Technica has published an article about Mozilla's commitment to use the Gecko rendering engine instead of using Webkit, which was adopted by Apple and Google for use in the Safari and Chrome browsers. I have been using Chrome on my work PC and find many of its features compelling, and wonder how soon we will see its best innovations in Firefox. Why is Gecko worth keeping if it is outdated and bloated?
Security

Browser Extension Defeats Internet Eavesdropping 194

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the until-they-build-a-better-idiot dept.
Pickens writes to tell us that researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have created a simple system to help prevent man-in-the-middle attacks. Using a preset list of friendly sites called 'notaries,' the new 'Perspectives' system helps users to authenticate sites that require secure communications. Additionally this should help with the recently debated solution implemented by Firefox that has so many users frustrated and confused. "By independently querying the desired target site, the notaries can check whether each is receiving the same authentication information (a digital certificate), in response. If one or more notaries report authentication information that is different than that received by the browser or other notaries, a computer user would have reason to suspect that an attacker has compromised the connection."
United States

Barack Obama Wins Democratic Nomination 1788

Posted by CmdrTaco from the well-sorta-i-guess dept.
An anonymous reader was one of many who noted that Barack Obama has claimed the Democratic nomination having secured enough delegates and super-delegates to claim victory. Of course, technically this assumes that the supers all vote as they say they will and they are free to change their minds. So no doubt we'll continue to hear debate on this subject until either the convention or Hillary steps down.
Mozilla

Let Older Add-Ons Work With Firefox 3.0 164

Posted by kdawson from the not-for-the-faint-of-heart dept.
mask.of.sanity informs us of a hack that allows old add-ons to work with Firefox 3.0. Short form: in about:config, create a new boolean and set extensions.checkCompatibility to false. "The fix, which requires a little boolean creativity, great for anyone not afraid of taking risks. The idea is to stop Firefox checking its version history, allowing defunct extensions to work... [Those who do] get the fix working will have to remove the code from the prefs.js file once the stable Firefox comes out, but will enjoy their [favorite extensions] in the meantime."
Data Storage

Data Recovered From Space Shuttle Columbia HDD 274

Posted by timothy from the gary-sinise-was-not-involved dept.
WmHBlair writes "Data recovered from a 400MB Seagate hard drive carried on the Space Shuttle Columbia has been used to complete a physics experiment performed on the mission in space. The Johnson Space Center sent the recovered drive to Kroll Ontrack in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Considering the shape the drive was in (see picture in the linked article), it could indeed qualify for the 'most amazing disk data recovery ever.'" Update: 05/08 12:51 GMT by T : Reader lucas123 points out a piece at Computerworld with a series of photos of the recovered drive.
Operating Systems

Submission + - SCO loses - finally 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The one summary judgement that puts a stick into SCO's spokes has just come down. SCO doesn't own the Unix copyrights. With that one decision, a whole bunch of other decisions will fall like dominoes. As PJ says, "That's Aaaaall, Folks!".

Hot off the presses: Judge Dale Kimball has issued a 102-page ruling [PDF] on the numerous summary judgment motions in SCO v. Novell. Here is what matters most: [T]he court concludes that Novell is the owner of the UNIX and UnixWare Copyrights. That's Aaaaall, Folks! If anyone can please put this into text for us, that'd be simply great.
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=200708101 65237718#comments

Slashdot Top Deals

A LISP programmer knows the value of everything, but the cost of nothing. -- Alan Perlis

Close