sp1nz - Slashdot User

Comment Re:What happened to warrants? (Score 1) 400

by sp1nz on Thursday February 11, 2010 @03:24PM (#31103306) Attached to: Feds Push For Warrantless Cell Phone Tracking

Quite possibly they could use it for billing/roaming disputes... but I'd like to hear them justify keeping it longer than 6 months. Much past that time frame, and you get into lapdog territory.

Windows 7 Has Lots of "God Modes" 422

Posted by CmdrTaco on Thursday January 07, 2010 @12:00PM from the i-am-god-here dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Those intrigued by the 'GodMode' in Windows 7 may be interested to know that there are many other similar shortcuts hidden within the operating system — some going back to Vista or before. Steven Sinofsky, Windows division president, said several similar undocumented features provide direct access to all kinds of settings, from choosing a location to managing power settings to identifying biometric sensors." Update: 01/07 23:46 GMT by CT : Link updated to source.

Infinity Ward Fights Against Modern Warfare 2 Cheaters 203

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday December 01, 2009 @07:56AM from the be-careful-they-cheat dept.

Faithbleed writes "IW's Robert Bowling reports on his twitter account that Infinity Ward is giving 2,500 Modern Warfare 2 cheaters the boot. The news comes as the war between IW and MW2's fans rages over the decision to go with IWnet hosting instead of dedicated servers. Unhappy players were quick to come up with hacks that would allow their own servers and various other changes." Despite the dedicated-server complaints, Modern Warfare 2 has sold ridiculously well.

Achron — an RTS With Time Travel 141

Posted by Soulskill on Wednesday August 26, 2009 @01:25PM from the flux-capacitor-not-required dept.

An anonymous reader writes "As much as I'm looking forward to StarCraft 2, there's a new RTS gaming tech that has me even more enthused. The Escapist Magazine has posted interviews and footage of the upcoming 'meta-time strategy game' Achron, which was announced at GDC earlier this year. It's a multiplayer RTS where you can send things through time. The official site has some gameplay footage as well, and it looks like their tech is useful outside of gaming."

Second Swedish ISP Starts Scrubbing IP Addresses 92

Posted by timothy on Tuesday April 28, 2009 @09:29AM from the you-may-borrow-the-hashed-list-though dept.

Marzubus writes "Tele2, a popular Swedish ISP, has started to remove IP addresses from its logs. This is the second ISP in Sweden to adopt this new privacy protection strategy." We discussed not long ago when another ISP, Bahnhof, started doing the same. Perhaps this is the corporate equivalent of joining the Pirate Party.

Comment Less Ads Here. (Score 1) 131

by sp1nz on Thursday February 26, 2009 @09:41AM (#26997017) Attached to: Build Your Own SATA Hard Drive Switch

http://www.thesataswitch.com/ The author's actual site. Easier to read, and no annoying mouse-over ads.

Comment Booooooooo. (Score 1) 268

by sp1nz on Tuesday February 17, 2009 @11:50AM (#26887335) Attached to: Jet Pack Runs For Hours On Water

What a let down. That's like posting... "Man has discovered how to levitate! The crane this test subject is hanging from allows him to levitate for extended periods of time with minimal energy output." Whoever titled that needs a kick in the pants.

Comment Re:A DRM ban clause should be added as a constitut (Score 1) 1127

by sp1nz on Tuesday February 17, 2009 @09:04AM (#26885135) Attached to: Draconian DRM Revealed In Windows 7

Wow. Well said... and so sad.

Draconian DRM Revealed In Windows 7 1127

Posted by kdawson on Monday February 16, 2009 @10:18PM from the just-who-did-you-think-owns-your-machine dept.

TechForensics writes "A few days' testing of Windows 7 has already disclosed some draconian DRM, some of it unrelated to media files. A legitimate copy of Photoshop CS4 stopped functioning after we clobbered a nagging registration screen by replacing a DLL with a hacked version. With regard to media files, the days of capturing an audio program on your PC seem to be over (if the program originated on that 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). This may be the tip of the iceberg. Being in bed with the RIAA is bad enough, but locking your own files away from you is a tactic so outrageous it may kill the OS for many persons. Many users will not want to experiment 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." Read on for more details of this user's findings.

One Broken Router Takes Out Half the Internet? 412

Posted by kdawson on Monday February 16, 2009 @07:32PM from the brain-gone-punky dept.

Silent Stephus writes "I work for a smallish hosting provider, and this morning we experienced a networking event with one of our upstreams. What is interesting about this, is it's being caused by a mis-configured router in Europe — and it appears to be affecting a significant portion of the transit providers across the Internet. In other words, a single mis-configured router is apparently able to cause a DOS for a huge chunk of the Net. And people don't believe me when I tell them all this new-fangled technology is held together by duct-tape and baling wire!"

Nuclear Subs 'Collide In Ocean' 622

Posted by CmdrTaco on Monday February 16, 2009 @10:58AM from the that's-gonna-look-bad-on-the-resume dept.

Jantastic noted a BBC report saying "A Royal Navy nuclear submarine was involved in a collision with a French nuclear sub in the middle of the Atlantic. It is understood HMS Vanguard and Le Triomphant were badly damaged in the crash earlier this month. Despite being equipped with sonar, it seems neither vessel spotted the other, the BBC's Caroline Wyatt said."

Windows Vista Service Pack 2 Expected Tomorrow 149

Posted by timothy on Wednesday December 03, 2008 @03:27PM from the tomorrow's-tomorrow's-yesterday dept.

arcticstoat writes "After dishing out a few copies of the beta of Windows Vista Service Pack 2 to select customers in October, Microsoft has now decided to let the general public get their hands on the beta of the service pack, starting from tomorrow. The beta of the service pack will be made available via Microsoft's Customer Preview Program on 4 December, and it includes all the updates since Service Pack 1, as well as a few other bits and pieces. Most notably, Microsoft says that Service Pack 2 'improves performance for Wi-Fi connection after resuming from sleep mode,' and adds the Bluetooth 2.1 Feature Pack, ID strings for VIA's Nano CPU and support for the exFAT file system for large flash devices."

The Science of the Lightsaber 197

Posted by samzenpus on Monday November 17, 2008 @12:08PM from the the-force dept.

Smartcowboy writes "Chances are that you have seen a lightsaber at one time or another, whether on the evening news or down at the local cantina. Therefore you know that a lightsaber is an amazing and versatile device that is able to cut through nearly anything in a matter of milliseconds. Have you ever wondered how these remarkable weapons work? Where does the energy come from, and how are they able to contain that energy in a rod-like column of glowing power? In this article, you will have a chance to look inside a lightsaber and discover the source of its incredible characteristics." I was sure the blade was made from the focused hate and disappointment of the last three movies.

Science's Alternative To an Intelligent Creator 683

Posted by kdawson on Monday November 17, 2008 @09:07AM from the theory-of-anything dept.

Hugh Pickens writes "Discover magazine has an interesting article on the multiverse theory — a synthesis of string theory and the anthropic principle that explains why our universe seems perfectly tailored for life without invoking an intelligent creator. Our universe may be but one of perhaps infinitely many universes in an inconceivably vast multiverse. While most of those universes are barren, some, like ours, have conditions suitable for life. The idea that the universe was made just for us — known as the anthropic principle — debuted in 1973 when Brandon Carter proposed that a purely random assortment of laws would have left the universe dead and dark, and that life limits the values that physical constants can have. The anthropic principle languished on the fringes of science for years, but in 2000, new theoretical work threatened to unravel string theory when researchers calculated that the basic equations of string theory have an astronomical number of different possible solutions, perhaps as many as 101,000, with each solution representing a unique way to describe the universe. The latest iteration of string theory provides a natural explanation for the anthropic principle. If there are vast numbers of other universes, all with different properties, at least one of them ought to have the right combination of conditions to bring forth stars, planets, and living things." So far xkcd is simulating just one single universe.

Press Favored Obama Throughout Campaign 1601

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday November 10, 2008 @09:29AM from the kudos-for-owning-up-to-it dept.

narcberry writes "After complaints of one-sided reporting, the Washington Post checked their own articles and agreed. Obama was clearly favored, throughout his campaign, in terms of more favorable articles, less criticism, better page real-estate, more pictures, and total disregard for problems such as his drug use. 'Stories and photos about Obama in the news pages outnumbered those devoted to McCain. Reporters, photographers and editors found the candidacy of Obama, the first African American major-party nominee, more newsworthy and historic. Journalists love the new; McCain, 25 years older than Obama, was already well known and had more scars from his longer career in politics. The number of Obama stories since Nov. 11 was 946, compared with McCain's 786. Both had hard-fought primary campaigns, but Obama's battle with Hillary Rodham Clinton was longer, and the numbers reflect that. McCain clinched the GOP nomination on March 4, three months before Obama won his. From June 4 to Election Day, the tally was Obama, 626 stories, and McCain, 584. Obama was on the front page 176 times, McCain, 144 times; 41 stories featured both.'"

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