==============================
Track & Manage Your Source Code and Digital Assets for FREE with Perforce
Discover how you can manage your source code and digital assets faster and
easier with Perforce. Perforce offers visual client interfaces for
Linux.com, Mac, Solairs,FreeBSD and Windows. Learn more and get a free two user download
http://sel.as-us.falkag.net
==============================
Slashdot Daily Newsletter
In this issue:
* Open Source Set-Top-Box Adds YouTube Support
* Military Running a Parallel Earth Simulator
* Winnipeg Demands Immobilizers on High-Risk Cars
* John Edwards on Open Source Voting Machines
* Team Claims Synthetic Life Feat
* Permit May Be Required For Public Photography in NYC
* Apple iPhone Dissected
* Power Consumption and the Future of Computing
* RIAA Wants Agreements to Stay Secret
* Recovering a Lost or Stolen Gadget
* Eben Moglen on the Global Software Industry Post-GPL3
* Fuzzing Toolkit For Web Server Testing
* 100x Faster Hard Drive In Lab
* Visualizing “Answer People” In Online Discussions
* Freeman Dyson On Open Source Biology
* Dell To Sell Advanced Server Cooling Systems
* Exxon’s Brute Squad Hacks the Yes Men
* AT&T Vs. Apple Store At the iPhone Launch
+—————————–
| Open Source Set-Top-Box Adds YouTube Support |
| from the for-all-of-your-wow-pvp-video
| posted by Zonk on Friday June 29, @20:35 (Television) |
| http://hardware.slashdot.org
+—————————–
mrspin writes “Media streaming boxes such as the AppleTV, XBox 360, PS3,
and products from Netgear do a varying job of bridging the gap between
the PC and television as well as, in some cases, delivering Internet
content directly into the living room. But all are closed systems. The
result of which is that users are left trying to hack these devices
[0]against the wishes of manufacturers or have to make-do with whatever
official features are implemented. Bucking this trend, [1]Neuros is
taking a wholly different approach, and has open-sourced the firmware for
its Neuros OSD media center, meaning that anybody is free to write
add-ons that extend the device’s functionality. This week the company
announced that thanks to the open-source community, the device now lets
users browse, search and view the entire YouTube catalog.”
Discuss this story at:
http://hardware.slashdot.org
Links:
0. http://www.last100.com/2007/05
1. http://www.last100.com/2007/06
+—————————–
| Military Running a Parallel Earth Simulator |
| from the in-that-reality-i’m-an-ardent
| posted by Zonk on Friday June 29, @22:22 (Supercomputing) |
| http://science.slashdot.org
+—————————–
Fantastic Lad writes “The US Department of Defense (DOD) may already be
creating a copy of you in an alternate reality. Putting supercomputers to
an innovative use, [0]the military is simulating our planet in an effort
to predict the outcome of different scenarios. They might run tests to
see how long ‘you’ can go without food or water, or how ‘you’ will
respond to televised propaganda. Billions of nodes are created in the
system, intended to reflect every man, woman, and child. ‘Called the
Sentient World Simulation (SWS), it will be a “synthetic mirror of the
real world with automated continuous calibration with respect to current
real-world information”, according to a concept paper for the project.
Simulex is the company developing these systems, and they list
pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly and defense contractor Lockheed Martin
among their private sector clients. The U.S. military is their biggest
customer, apparently now running the most complex version of the system.
[1]JFCOM-9 is now capable of running real-time simulations for up to 62
nations, including Iraq, Afghanistan, and China. The simulations gobble
up breaking news, census data, economic indicators, and climactic events
in the real world, along with proprietary information such as military
intelligence.”
Discuss this story at:
http://science.slashdot.org
Links:
0. http://www.theregister.com
1. http://www.jfcom.mil/about
+—————————–
| Winnipeg Demands Immobilizers on High-Risk Cars |
| from the tough-claims-agent dept. |
| posted by Zonk on Saturday June 30, @02:23 (Security) |
| http://it.slashdot.org/article
+—————————–
[0]mytrip writes with a Reuters article about a new, [1]unusual insurance
requirement for drivers in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Apparently Winnipeg is one
of the worst cities in Canada for auto thefts. New and ‘high-risk’ cars
will now be required to install an electronic immobilizers in order to
qualify for car insurance. “Chomiak said cars are stolen twice as often
in Winnipeg as in other Manitoba cities, while a 2005 report from
Statistics Canada said the city had a higher per-capita car theft rate
than larger cities like Vancouver, Montreal and Toronto. The province,
where cars are insured through Manitoba Public Insurance, will fork over
C$15 million ($14 million) so that owners without immobilizers can have
them installed.”
Discuss this story at:
http://it.slashdot.org/comment
Links:
0. http://www.mytrip.com/
1. http://www.reuters.com/article
+—————————–
| John Edwards on Open Source Voting Machines |
| from the let’s-get-an-interview-set-up dept. |
| posted by Zonk on Saturday June 30, @03:38 (Democrats) |
| http://politics.slashdot.org
+—————————–
goombah99 writes “John Edwards, the presidential candidate and lawyer, is
standing out from the pack by showing himself to be a bit tech savvy. In
2003 he was a guest host on Lawrence Lessig’s Blog, giving his [0]view on
the imbalance between property right protection and the good of public
access. As of this week he has become the first presidential candidate to
[1] support ‘open source code’ for election systems in addition to voter
verified paper records. He’s even [2]personally using Twitter.
‘Currently, software used in election systems remains the proprietary
property of vendors. This situation has created a continual problem when
anomalous results have been reported and independent experts are denied
the ability to review how the systems work. A growing body of critics
oppose this privatization of the voting system.’”
Discuss this story at:
http://politics.slashdot.org
Links:
0. http://www.lessig.org/blog
1. http://www.openvotingconsortiu
2. http://twitter.com/johnedwards
+—————————–
| Team Claims Synthetic Life Feat |
| from the it’s-alive-it’s-aliiiiiive dept. |
| posted by Zonk on Saturday June 30, @05:24 (Biotech) |
| http://science.slashdot.org
+—————————–
gertvs writes “According to the BBC scientists in the US have taken a
step towards [0]producing life from scratch in the laboratory by having
successfully transplanted an entire genome from one bacterium cell to
another. This technique could possibly lead to the creation of ‘designer’
microbes producing fuel or help cleaning toxic waste. ‘The ultimate plan
is to stitch together artificial chromosomes, proteins and other building
blocks with the aim of jumpstarting their designer microbe to life. But
Dr. [Craig] Venter concedes that this may be a long way away, but he says
he has taken an important key step towards that goal. His team,
essentially, snatched the body of another life-form and invaded it with a
new genetic code. This, he says, will be a key tool in testing the
artificial chromosomes - or DNA bundles - he plans to make. ‘”
Discuss this story at:
http://science.slashdot.org
Links:
0. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi
+—————————–
| Permit May Be Required For Public Photography in NYC |
| from the land-of-the-free dept. |
| posted by Zonk on Saturday June 30, @07:04 (Privacy) |
| http://yro.slashdot.org
+—————————–
G4Cube passed us a link to a New York Times article about a troubling
development in public photography rights. New York City is considering
[0]requiring a permit for photographers, film-makers, and even possibly
tourists who want to shoot imagery in the Big Apple. “New rules being
considered by the Mayor’s Office of Film, Theater and Broadcasting would
require any group of two or more people who want to use a camera in a
single public location for more than a half hour to get a city permit and
insurance. The same requirements would apply to any group of five or more
people who plan to use a tripod in a public location for more than 10
minutes, including the time it takes to set up the equipment. Julianne
Cho, assistant commissioner of the film office, said the rules were not
intended to apply to families on vacation or amateur filmmakers or
photographers. Nevertheless, the New York Civil Liberties Union says the
proposed rules, as strictly interpreted, could have that effect. The
group also warns that the rules set the stage for selective and perhaps
discriminatory enforcement by police.”
Discuss this story at:
http://yro.slashdot.org
+—————————–
| Apple iPhone Dissected |
| from the better-them-than-you dept. |
| posted by CowboyNeal on Saturday June 30, @08:27 (Handhelds) |
| http://hardware.slashdot.org
+—————————–
Conch writes “Only hours after the launch, the Apple [0]iPhone has been
dissected. The good folks at AnandTech violated one of the first iPhones
to still our curiosity about whats inside the aluminum shell. ‘Please
note that we’re doing this so you are not tempted to on your recent
$500/$600 expenditure, while it is quite possible to take apart using
easy to find tools we’d recommend against it as it will undoubtedly void
your warranty and will most likely mar up the beautiful gadget’s
exterior.’”
Discuss this story at:
http://hardware.slashdot.org
Links:
0. http://www.anandtech.com
+—————————–
| Power Consumption and the Future of Computing |
| from the saving-on-the-electricity-bill dept. |
| posted by CowboyNeal on Saturday June 30, @09:34 (Power) |
| http://hardware.slashdot.org
+—————————–
mrdirkdiggler writes “ArsTechnica’s Hannibal takes a look at how the
[0]power concerns that currently plague datacenters are shaping
next-generation computing technologies at the levels of the microchip,
the board-level interconnect, and the datacenter. In a nutshell,
engineers are now willing to take on a lot more hardware overhead in
their designs (thermal sensors, transistors that put components into
sleep states, buffers and filters at the ends of links, etc.) in order to
get maximum power efficiency. The article, which has lots of nice
graphics to illustrate the main points, mostly focuses on the specific
technologies that Intel has in the pipeline to address these issues.”
Discuss this story at:
http://hardware.slashdot.org
Links:
0. http://arstechnica.com/article
+—————————–
| RIAA Wants Agreements to Stay Secret |
| from the don’t-share-that-either dept. |
| posted by CowboyNeal on Saturday June 30, @10:21 (The Courts) |
| http://yro.slashdot.org
+—————————–
[0]NewYorkCountryLawyer writes “The RIAA is [1]opposing Ms. Lindor’s
[2]request for discovery into the agreements among the record company
competitors by which they have agreed to settle and prosecute their cases
together, by which she seeks to support her [3]Fourth Affirmative Defense
(pdf) alleging that ‘The plaintiffs, who are competitors, are a cartel
acting collusively in violation of the antitrust laws and of public
policy, by tying their copyrights to each other, collusively litigating
and settling all cases together, and by entering into an unlawful
agreement among themselves to prosecute and to dispose of all cases in
accordance with a uniform agreement, and through common lawyers, thus
overreaching the bounds and scope of whatever copyrights they might have.
…As such, they are guilty of misuse of their copyrights.’”
Discuss this story at:
http://yro.slashdot.org
Links:
0. http://recordingindustryvspeop
1. http://recordingindustryvspeop
2. http://recordingindustryvspeop
3. http://www.ilrweb.com/viewILRP
+—————————–
| Recovering a Lost or Stolen Gadget |
| from the devices-that-phone-home dept. |
| posted by CowboyNeal on Saturday June 30, @11:16 (Handhelds) |
| http://hardware.slashdot.org
+—————————–
gurps_npc writes “The explosion of portable electronic devices, can
really weigh you down. Carrying a pager, phone, iPod, camera, and game is
quite a lot. Worse, it gives you many more such things to misplace or get
stolen. This CNN story discusses some of the [0]retrieval services that
help you keep what belongs to you. I particularly like the first one,
about a new Singapore-based software that when you download it to your
phone, messages everyone in your phone’s database whenever a new chip
with a new phone number is installed in the phone. This makes it very
hard for someone to steal your phone as all your friends get their new
phone number.”
Discuss this story at:
http://hardware.slashdot.org
Links:
0. http://www.cnn.com/2007
+—————————–
| Eben Moglen on the Global Software Industry Post-GPL3 |
| from the before-and-after dept. |
| posted by CowboyNeal on Saturday June 30, @12:05 (GNU is Not Unix|
| http://slashdot.org/article.pl
+—————————–
[0]Dan Shearer writes “Three days before GPLv3 was released, Eben Moglen
delivered the annual lecture of The Scottish Society of Computers and Law
in Edinburgh, Scotland giving his thoughts on ‘The Global Software
Industry in Transformation: After GPLv3.’ The [1]text transcription,
[2]audio and [3]384kbit video are up at archive.org. Eben looks back at
the ‘legislative action’ achieved by the GPLv3 community over the last 18
months, and also from the 22nd century. A riveting presentation for all
present.”
Discuss this story at:
http://slashdot.org/comments
Links:
0. http://shearer.org/
1. http://www.archive.org/details
2. http://www.archive.org/details
3. http://www.archive.org/details
+—————————–
| Fuzzing Toolkit For Web Server Testing |
| from the cheese-it dept. |
| posted by kdawson on Saturday June 30, @13:06 (Security) |
| http://it.slashdot.org/article
+—————————–
[0]prostoalex writes “Dr. Dobb’s Journal runs an article discussing
[1]the tools necessary for fuzzing (testing a system by generating
[2]random input in order to cause program failure or crash). Quoting:
‘You are fuzzing a Web server’s capability to handle malformed POST data
and discover a potentially exploitable memory corruption condition when
the 50th test case you sent that crashes the service. You restart the Web
daemon and retransmit your last malicious payload, but nothing happens…
The issue must rely on some combination of inputs. Perhaps an earlier
packet put the Web server in a state that later allowed the 50th test to
trigger the memory corruption. We can’t tell without further analysis and
we can’t narrow the possibilities down without the capability of
replaying the entire test set in a methodical fashion.’”
Discuss this story at:
http://it.slashdot.org/comment
Links:
0. http://www.moskalyuk.com/blog
1. http://www.ddj.com/dept
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki
+—————————–
| 100x Faster Hard Drive In Lab |
| from the lasers-and-gadolinium dept. |
| posted by kdawson on Saturday June 30, @14:02 (Data Storage) |
| http://hardware.slashdot.org
+—————————–
[0]Gary lets us know about research out of the Netherlands that has
succeeded in [1]reading and writing a hard disk using polarized laser
light. The researchers claim this offers a 100-times speedup over
reading/writing using magnets. People have been trying for years to write
data using polarized light; the secret of the current work’s success lies
in its disk’s materials — gadolinium, iron, and cobalt. Working prototype
drives should be available within a decade.
Discuss this story at:
http://hardware.slashdot.org
Links:
0. mailto://garethm85 [Email address: //garethm85 #AT# gmail.com/ - replace #AT# with @ ]
1. http://sciencenow.sciencemag
+—————————–
| Visualizing “Answer People” In Online Discussions |
| from the gratuitously-helpful dept. |
| posted by kdawson on Saturday June 30, @14:57 (The Internet) |
| http://science.slashdot.org
+—————————–
[0]Marc Smith writes “‘Answer people,’ the folks who contribute much of
the value in the Internet, are a small minority of all online users.
According to a recent paper my co-authors and I have published in the
Journal of Social Structure, less than 2% of authors in Usenet newsgroups
are likely to be the helpful ‘answer person’ type — authors who reply to
many other people with brief replies. The paper [1]Visualizing the
Signatures of Social Roles in Online Discussion Groups contains social
network visualizations of the ties created when authors reply to one
another. These images highlight the difference between these helpful
folks and other types of contributors. The findings may apply to other
threaded discussions, maybe even here at Slashdot.”
Discuss this story at:
http://science.slashdot.org
Links:
0. mailto://masmith [Email address: //masmith #AT# microsoft.com/ - replace #AT# with @ ]
1. http://www.cmu.edu/joss
+—————————–
| Freeman Dyson On Open Source Biology |
| from the return-to-pre-darwinian-life dept. |
| posted by kdawson on Saturday June 30, @15:52 (Biotech) |
| http://science.slashdot.org
+—————————–
kripkenstein sends us an article by [0]Freeman Dyson in the NY Review of
Books, in which the eminent physicist and big thinker takes on the
[1]possible end to the Darwinian era of speciation that has endured 3
billion years on this planet. He discusses the history and future of
biology in terms that many in this community will find familiar: “[We can
speculate about] a golden age… when horizontal gene transfer was
universal and separate species did not yet exist. Life was then a
community of cells of various kinds, sharing their genetic information…
Evolution could be rapid… But then, one evil day, a cell resembling a
primitive bacterium happened to find itself one jump ahead of its
neighbors in efficiency. That cell, anticipating Bill Gates by three
billion years, separated itself from the community and refused to
share… [But] now, as Homo sapiens domesticates the new biotechnology,
we are reviving the ancient… practice of horizontal gene transfer,
moving genes easily from microbes to plants and animals, blurring the
boundaries between species. We are moving rapidly into the post-Darwinian
era, when… the rules of Open Source sharing will be extended from the
exchange of software to the exchange of genes. Then the evolution of life
will once again be communal, as it was in the good old days before
separate species and intellectual property were invented.”
Discuss this story at:
http://science.slashdot.org
Links:
0. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki
1. http://www.nybooks.com/article
+—————————–
| Dell To Sell Advanced Server Cooling Systems |
| from the series-of-tubes dept. |
| posted by kdawson on Saturday June 30, @16:45 (Power) |
| http://hardware.slashdot.org
+—————————–
Mitechsi writes “Dell has struck a deal with Emerson to sell [0]advanced
liquid cooling systems and services to data center owners. One type of
supplemental cooling technology is called the [1]Liebert XD. The XD
consists of refrigerant-filled pipes that snake around the server racks
in a data center. The liquid system cuts the cooling power load by about
30%–50% compared to other types of cooling systems.”
Discuss this story at:
http://hardware.slashdot.org
Links:
0. http://news.zdnet.com/2100
1. http://www.liebert.com/dynamic
+—————————–
| Exxon’s Brute Squad Hacks the Yes Men |
| from the can’t-take-a-joke dept. |
| posted by kdawson on Saturday June 30, @18:17 (Censorship) |
| http://yro.slashdot.org
+—————————–
tom_evil notes a story up on Infoshop.org about a parody site and the
lack of a sense of humor in a large multinational. “One day after the Yes
Men made a [0]joke announcement of ExxonMobil’s plans to turn billions of
climate-change victims into a brand-new fuel called Vivoleum, the Yes
Men’s upstream internet service provider [1]shut down Vivoleum.com and
cut off the Yes Men’s email service, in reaction to a complaint whose
source they will not identify. ‘Since parody is protected under US law,
Exxon must think that people seeing the site will think Vivoleum’s a real
Exxon product, not just a parody,’ said Yes Man Mike Bonanno. Exxon’s
policies do already contribute to [2]150,000 climate-change related
deaths each year,’ added Yes Man Andy Bichlbaum. ‘So maybe it really is
credible. What a resource!’”
Discuss this story at:
http://yro.slashdot.org
Links:
0. http://theyesmen.org/agribusin
1. http://www.infoshop.org/inews
2. http://www.washingtonpost.com
+—————————–
| AT&T Vs. Apple Store At the iPhone Launch |
| from the doctor-jeckyll-and-mister-who dept. |
| posted by kdawson on Saturday June 30, @19:47 (Communications) |
| http://apple.slashdot.org
+—————————–
[0]MBCook tips an article at Gizmodo that begins with a reader’s
experiences trying to buy an iPhone [1]yesterday at an AT&T store and an
Apple store. Many, but not all, of the comments on the post echo this
reader’s experience: Apple good, AT&T bad. “Day one revealed what all
Apple aficionados fear. That AT&T, through the depths of its
incompetence, could derail the iPhone.”
Discuss this story at:
http://apple.slashdot.org
Links:
0. http://www.foobarsoft.com/
1. http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/a
Copyright 1997-2006 OSTG. All rights reserved.
Popularity: 4% [?]
Listen to this podcast
Print This Post
Entries (RSS)