Slashdot - Firehose

The Slashdot Firehose is a collaborative system designed to allow users to assist our editors in the story selection process. The hose contains submissions, RSS Feeds, journals and Slashdot stories, each color-coded along the color spectrum to indicate popularity. Red is hot, violet is not. Try tagging and voting on the entries below, and by using the 'feedback' menus. Please send comments to hose at cmdrtaco dot net but be forgiving of beta code!

Journal by

ozmanjusri

on Saturday May 17, @06:59AM

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is investigating an incident when Microsoft Vista Media Center computers blocked the recording of some NBC television shows.

When Vista Media Center users tried to record American Gladiator or Medium, a prompt informed them that the copyright holder prohibited recording. It seems that Vista has honoured NBC Universal's broadcast flag, despite a court ruling that software and hardware makers are not required to do so.

It remains to be seen whether this is an example of Vista being defective by design, or implementation.

• Nothing More

Submitted by

Gary

on Saturday May 17, @06:54AM

Gary writes "Blu-ray camcorders have arrived. Read the review of the Hitachi Blu-ray Mini-bd camcorder..."

http://gobluray.com/hitachi-dz-bd7haf-bluray-camcorder-review/8/

Submitted by

Anonymous Coward

on Saturday May 17, @06:37AM

An anonymous reader writes "I am a 27 year old programmer. I work for a medium sized company that has a few successful product line. I like working on the product that I am working on and am constantly working to make it better and am vocal about the way things should be done to improve the product. I also like working with my fellow engineers who are very professional and competent. Given all this, I should be a happy and content person.

But somehow, I feel exploited. I feel that the company(started by engineers) no longer cares for them. Few engineers that I have spoken to about, share my thoughts too. I feel that engineers are underpaid and are not given enough credit for the work they do.

So here is what I would like to hear from you guys:

1. Am I alone in feeling exploited?

2. If answer to 1. is "NO", then why are engineers not given their due?

3. Is it justified to blame the manager to because he is unable to voice the engineers opinion?

4. How do I overcome this feeling of exploitation?

When answering, it would be useful, if you can give your background."

Submitted by

Please Somebody Do Something

on Saturday May 17, @06:32AM

Please Somebody Do Something writes "From the SFGateFederal prosecutors turned to a novel interpretation of computer hacking law to indict a Missouri mother on charges connected to the suicide of a 13-year-old MySpace user.

If this is successfully prosecuted, the way we are allowed to conduct ourselves online will be in serious danger."

Submitted by

[solferino](https://web.archive.org/web/20080517042304/mailto:hazchem@gm[ ].com ['ail' in gap])

on Saturday May 17, @06:16AM

[solferino](https://web.archive.org/web/20080517042304/mailto:hazchem@gm[ ].com ['ail' in gap]) writes "TechCrunch is reporting that Condé Nast has acquired popular technology blog Ars Technica. The site will become part of Wired Digital (Wired.com, Reddit) which in turn is under CondéNet. The acquisition price will not be disclosed, but sources say it is in the $25 million range, which is what Condé Nast paid for Wired.com in 2006. No official word yet, but the rumor is confirmed by an entry on the Wired blog."

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/05/16/breaking-conde-nastwired-acquires-ars-technica/

Anonymous Coward writes "Discover the wild animal terrain aboard The Amazing Brain Train. First, Madeline the Monkey needs to collect all the fruit on the frozen pond."

http://pc-free-games.com/The-Amazing-Brain-Train.aspx

Submitted by

Froodle

on Saturday May 17, @05:53AM

Froodle writes "Free ebay ebooks and scams Find out how it's easy to grab any ebook or software for free. Join www.Froodle.net and see it for yourself."

http://www.froodle.net/forum

Posted by

ScuttleMonkey

on Saturday May 17, @05:36AM

from the now-that's-a-hotspot dept.

deglr6328 writes "The OMEGA EP laser at the University of Rochester's Laboratory for Laser Energetics was dedicated today at the Robert L. Sproull Center for Ultra High Intensity Laser Research. The new laser, which has been in design since ~2002 will, at 1 kilojoule per 1 picosecond pulse, be the highest energy petawatt scale laser ever created by far. For a fleeting fraction of a second, it will deliver a beam of infrared light at 1054 nm that is more powerful than the total energy consumption of all human activity on the planet, to a tiny spot the size of the head of a pin. Previous petawatt scale lasers such as the one created at Lawrence Livermore labs in the late 90's ( and dismantled in 1999) were capable of only several hundred joules per pulse. The new OMEGA EP laser will be able to manifest power densities sufficient to examine Unruh and Hawking radiation-like phenomena in the laboratory and will have the capability to directly produce nuclear reactions through ultra high electric field initiated photodisintegration."

Submitted by

Jay

on Saturday May 17, @05:07AM

Jay writes " Firefox 3 Release Candidate 1 is out now. If yours didn't auto-update, then get it while it's hot! The release came a bit early with Computer World noting "The appearance of Firefox Release Candidate 1 (RC1) came earlier than expected. As recently as last Saturday, Mozilla's chief engineer said that although the company had locked down RC1's code, it was planning to publicly launch the build in 'late May.'" "

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9086458&intsrc=news_ts_head

Submitted by

twickline

on Saturday May 17, @05:01AM

twickline writes "The recent advent of Mac OS X systems for Intel has been a welcome reward for those of us that need Windows compatibly. We are no longer saddled with the high cost overhead of CPU emulation as we are now free to use Windows software with very little performance hit thanks to the Wine project and its commercial counterpart CodeWeavers CrossOver. CrossOver provides the user with the ability to directly install their Windows applications as if they were a native OS X application, complete with a Dock Icon and Finder integration, however you should keep in mind not all applications are supported at this time."

http://wine-review.blogspot.com/2008/05/crossover-games-mac-version-700-review.html

Submitted by

68kmac

on Saturday May 17, @04:59AM

68kmac writes "I guess if you had a political agenda, you could make a much more interesting story out of an URL like http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/blog/kiddieporn

Yes, that's the official homepage of a certain Barrack Obama. No, it's not porn you'll find there, it's an attempt to trick you into downloading a trojan.

This URL (and others, on the same site) was used in spam posts that someone tried to leave on one of my websites. So what does a good web citizen do? Alert the webmaster, of course. Not for the first time, though, this has turned out to be more difficult than it should be. The only response I've got so far was — political spam, i.e. trying to get me to support Mr. Obama. Do these people even read the emails they get?

What do the Slashdot readers suggest to try to get through to someone in charge of a high-profile website?"

http://spam.tinyweb.net/article.php/barack-obama-hosting-trojans

Submitted by

Administrator

on Saturday May 17, @04:28AM

Administrator writes "There is a new battle brewing in Taiwan and this time it is Asus that is bringing out the big guns against its rival Gigabyte.

According to Gigabyte, Asus claims that its physical Energy Processing Unit, short EPU, can achieve power savings of about 80%, while Gigabyte said that number is closer to 59%. And, Gigabyte launched a widely publicized attack on Asus, alleging that the EPU is a pure marketing term and that Asus did not change the design, firmware or packaging of these motherboards

Asus responded saying that Gigabyte is lying and is now threatening to sue Gigabyte as well as websites "spreading" Gigabyte's claims."

http://www.tomsguide.com/us/motherboard-Gigabyte-Asus,news-1382.html

Submitted by

eedo_miz

on Saturday May 17, @04:00AM

eedo_miz writes "I'm trying to run a small project for social change -

'The little red circle',

(it's a firefox extension that adds little red circles next to company\product names that indicate how much the company complies with your values. (you select them at start, i.e. how much you care about, ecology, fair trade, human rights, etc. as well as the sources you trust (for rating the companies), greenpeace, amnesty,

..), the circles color range from green to red. ). I put up a project in sourceforge (there's a detailed description there, in the wiki), and a 'help wanted' ad, but am looking for a place that somehow merges programming skills and social change ideology (to post in).

The other question is if it's probable to get someone doing it free, out of ideology (as I hope to), or should I look for an NPO for support.

any suggestions? thoughts?"

Submitted by

jamiegau

on Saturday May 17, @03:48AM

jamiegau writes "Adobe release FlashPlayer 10 beta with 2 interesting new features. Writing files and P2P networking. This will allow any Flash capable device to become a portal like Itunes with little effort. This gives the technology Apple has kept to them selves do drive Itunes growth. Content Producers will be able to set up portals similar to Itunes for little money but with the same if not better capabilities (a secure P2P network)."

http://www.crafted.com.au/blog/2008/05/17/adobe-the-apple-killer/

Submitted by

Anonymous Coward

on Saturday May 17, @03:21AM

An anonymous reader writes "Within weeks of running many scientology adds for the new scientology channel, you tube has now begun removing and/or locking the acounts of anyone posting videos with views oposing that of scientologists. The internet community should be warned, it may no longer be safe to post anything to the website, as scientologist could then gain access to your personal information, and use this in one of their attacks. The church of sceintology has been known to attack people in the past, forcing them into suicide, bankrupcy, and in some cases, simply vanishing. This is not a joke, this is not a drill, you have been warned."

Posted by

ScuttleMonkey

on Saturday May 17, @03:21AM

from the criminally-insane-working-for-the-government dept.

DesScorp writes "Popular Science has a piece on some outrageous ideas for weapons; some came to fruition, and other's didn't. And while some of the weapons (atom bombs, chemical weapons, bats with bombs strapped to them that seek out homes and buildings at night) are truly frightening, some of them are also kind of silly, such as the Gay Bomb, and the Frisbee bomb that was labeled the 'Modular Disc-Wing Urban Cruise Munition.'"

Submitted by

Brad

on Saturday May 17, @02:29AM

Brad writes "Last year Bell Canada began using voice authentication to verify their customers identities as an alternative to asking them for personal information, such as their account number or address. The customer simply says, "At Bell, my voice is my password" and the system lets them in. This has gone well for them since it was implemented and they've claimed that it's impossible to fool the system. But the Phone Losers of America have recently discovered that voice authentication is vulnerable by placing a simple call to the customer and tricking them into saying the required words to construct the voice verification sentence. You now no longer need any personal information about a customer of Bell to access their accounts. And once you're into the account, you can ask for any information from the account, you can make changes to the services and you can go over the toll records.

This link will take you to a podcast that explains the hack in detail, where you can hear the system being tricked from beginning to end."

http://www.phonelosers.org/pla-radio-episode-17-voice-authentication/

Submitted by

thefickler

on Saturday May 17, @02:14AM

thefickler writes "The long delayed, but always expected, announcement that Windows XP will be available on the XO laptops, has finally been made. From next month Windows XP will be available on the XO as part of a pilot program in emerging markets. Apparently it happened after Bill Gates put the hard word on Microsoft's chief research and strategy officer to do deal with Negroponte."

http://tech.blorge.com/Structure:%20/2008/05/16/microsoft-joins-olpc-windows-xp-to-be-available-on-xo-laptops/

There simply is NOT enough terrorist activity or threat to warrant this kind of constitutional stomping authority.

Agree and futhermore...

Submitted by

Khyber

on Saturday May 17, @01:57AM

Khyber writes "A new breakthrough in surgical scalpel technology has come forth from Peak Surgical. The Peak Plasma Blade is a low-power device that creates a pulsed plasma charge at it's tip, easily allowing the plastic material to slice through most any tissue, living or dead, in wet or dry environments. This results in far less tissue damage — such as tissue burning — than other electrical surgical implements, and has effectively reduced bleeding around 60% on its own."

http://www.peaksurgical.com/

Posted by

ScuttleMonkey

on Saturday May 17, @01:37AM

from the turn-off-the-paved-road dept.

alphadogg writes to tell us that the NSF is researching chain letters and how they travel. The results aren't quite what one might expect, showing a pattern of more selective and circuitous travel. "One surprising finding was that messages often took meandering routes between people who knew each other, often through as many as 100 intermediaries. Many email users also received copies from multiple social groups. The researchers concluded that because messages come from many directions, there's ample opportunity for the messages to be edited along the way."

Submitted by

schliz

on Saturday May 17, @01:30AM

schliz writes "Microsoft reached an agreement to make available its Windows operating system software for the One Laptop Per Child Foundation's XO Laptop, the company said on Thursday.

Microsoft said it plans to start trials of Windows on the low-cost laptop in key emerging markets as early as June. Customers will be able to choose to run the computer on either a Windows or a Linux operating system."

http://itnews.com.au/News/76241,windows-to-run-on-one-laptop-per-child-computer.aspx

Submitted by

schliz

on Saturday May 17, @01:25AM

schliz writes "Microsoft chairman Bill Gates this week took the wraps off Touch Wall, a 6ft x 4ft prototype screen based on Microsoft's Surface multi-touch technology.

Gates told attendees at the company's CEO Summit 2008 that affordable touch screens will adorn surfaces in homes and offices in the future. The Touch Wall differs from long established electromagnetic-based whiteboards in that it detects hand or stylus movements using a camera beneath the screen"

http://itnews.com.au/News/76244,gates-builds-out-touch-wall-vision.aspx

Submitted by

schliz

on Saturday May 17, @01:19AM

schliz writes "Scientists at Carnegie Mellon University have developed a device that lets a standard digital camera take pictures with a resolution of 1-gigapixel (1,000-megapixels). The Gigapan is a robotic arm that takes multiple pictures of the same scene and blends them into a single image. The resulting picture can be expanded to show incredible detail."

http://itnews.com.au/News/76243,boffins-take-gigapixel-photos-using-ordinary-camera.aspx