Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
The Military

United States Begins Flying Stealth Bombers Over South Korea 567

skade88 writes "The New York Times is reporting that the United States has started flying B-2 stealth bomber runs over South Korea as a show of force to North Korea. The bombers flew 6,500 miles to bomb a South Korean island with mock explosives. Earlier this month the U.S. Military ran mock B-52 bombing runs over the same South Korean island. The U.S. military says it shows that it can execute precision bombing runs at will with little notice needed. The U.S. also reaffirmed their commitment to protecting its allies in the region. The North Koreans have been making threats to turn South Korea into a sea of fire. North Korea has also made threats claiming they will nuke the United States' mainland."
PC Games (Games)

PC Grand Theft Auto IV Features SecuROM DRM 531

arcticstoat writes "Game developer Rockstar has revealed that the forthcoming PC version of Grand Theft Auto IV will feature the controversial SecuROM 7 DRM system. Unlike some of EA's recent titles, such as Spore and Mass Effect, GTA IV won't limit the number of times that you can install the game, although SecuROM will be impossible to remove without leaving 'some traces' on your PC. Anyone hoping to avoid SecuROM by downloading the game form Steam will also be disappointed, as Rockstar says that all versions of the game will feature SecuROM, including digital versions online. On the plus side, Rockstar says that it's 'working with SecuROM to post information on our support pages regarding how to remove these inactive traces of the program for users who wish to do so.' Has Rockstar gotten a better balance between draconian DRM and fair copy protection here?"

Comment No surprise here (Score 1) 671

I have quit reading computer-related magazines after Polish edition of Amiga Mag went down. When I sometimes browse a PC magazines on a display I wonder how anyone can even try to read it. It's filled with ads, has poorly written articles that reads like adverts, lame "Ten Things About Whatever" and interviews with people who are unintresting but have ties and a CEO business cards.

When I want to get some opinions on new hardware I'd rather to browse Internet, it's quicker and there's more different stories. When I want computer related news or reviews, there's /., Ars.

So, they gave poor rating to cheap Linux computer. No story here. I wouldn't expect them rate it any different. No Vista, no cash for publishers.

Debian

Journal Journal: I thought I saw a problem with Ubuntu

The Ubuntu distribution is failing due to not enough high level maintainers.

The failures are amplified because it appears to me that Google has dropped human intervention in the indexing process for Ubuntu or Linux related queries.

And so the observation points right back to me, your typical anonymous user. What should I do, what can I do?

GUI

Submission + - Automatix Activly Dangerous to Ubuntu

exeme writes: Ubuntu developer Matthew Garrett has recently analysed famed Ubuntu illegal software installer Automatix and found it to be actively dangerous to Ubuntu desktop systems. In a detailed report which only took Garrett a couple of hours he found many serious, show-stopper bugs and concluded that Ubuntu could not officially support Automatix in its current state. Garrett also goes on to say that simple Debian packages could provide all of the functionality of Automatix without any of the problems it exhibits.
Education

Submission + - Indiana University Dumps Google for ChaCha

theodp writes: "Come Monday, no more Indiana University searches will be powered by computer-driven Google. Only by people-powered ChaCha. The move was announced by new IU President Michael McRobbie, who until recently sat on ChaCha's Board of Directors (5-29 SEC filing, PDF). IU will draft hundreds of librarians and IT employees to be ChaCha Guides for the university's websites, although a FAQ accompanying IU's press release tells librarians not to expect any checks for their efforts from ChaCha, which IU notes is backed by Amazon's Jeff Bezos and Compaq founder Rod Canion."
Media

Submission + - Enforced ad-watching coming to Flash video players

Dominare writes: The BBC is reporting that Adobe is releasing new player software which will allow websites that use their Flash video player (such as YouTube) e.g. to force viewers to watch ads before the video they selected will play. From TFA:

But the big seller for Adobe is the ability to include in Flash movies so-called digital rights management (DRM) — allowing copyright holders to require the viewing of adverts, or restrict copying. "Adobe has created the first way for media companies to release video content, secure in the knowledge that advertising goes with it," James McQuivey, an analyst at Forrester Research said.

This seems to have been timed to coincide with Microsoft's release of their own competitor, Silverlight, to Adobe's dominance of online video.
The Internet

Submission + - Apple, Opera, and Mozilla Push for HTML5

foo fighter writes: "The insular World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has been slumbering the past several years: HTML was last updated in 1999, XHTML was last updated in 2002, and no one is taking their largely incompatible work on "next-generation" XHTML or "modularized" XHTML seriously. Both HTML and XHTML are in sorry need of removing deprecated items while being updated to reflect the current practices of web and browser developers yet remaining compatible with legacy Recommendations. The much more open and transparent WHATWG formed in 2004 to address this problem and has been hard at work on developing a draft spec for HTML5 to update and replace legacy versions of both HTML and XHTML. The quality of this work has reached the point that Apple, Opera, and Mozilla have requested the adoption of HTML5 as the new "W3C Recommendation" for web development."
Books

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Dies At 84 380

At least twenty-two readers took the trouble to make sure we knew that Kurt Vonnegut has died at 84. From the Times obituary: "Kurt Vonnegut, whose dark comic talent and urgent moral vision in novels like 'Slaughterhouse-Five,' 'Cat's Cradle' and 'God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater' caught the temper of his times and the imagination of a generation, died last night in Manhattan... Mr. Vonnegut suffered irreversible brain injuries as a result of a fall several weeks ago, according to his wife, Jill Krementz." Reader SPK adds: "He will be remembered not only as a great writer, but also as a staunch civil libertarian (long-term member of the ACLU) and as a 'mainstream/literary' author who integrated science fiction concepts into his writing. So it goes."

Slashdot Top Deals

Regarding astral projection, Woody Allen once wrote, "This is not a bad way to travel, although there is usually a half-hour wait for luggage."

Working...