http://slashdot.org/firehose.pl News for nerds, stuff that matters en-us Copyright 1997-2009, Geeknet, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 2010-01-02T23:03:05+00:00 Geeknet, Inc. help@slashdot.org Technology hourly 1 1970-01-01T00:00+00:00 http://a.fsdn.com/sd/topics/topicslashdot.gif http://slashdot.org/firehose.pl //slashdot.org/submission/1143030/Apple-Fails-to-Deliver-on-Boot-Camp-Promise?from=rss For those fans of Apple's Boot Camp package, it looks like you might be waiting on the next "end of year" to use Windows 7 on your shiny silver boxes. Back in October (2009, of course), Apple published a rather short, but rather affirmative, promise stating quite simply that, "Apple will support Microsoft Windows 7 (Home Premium, Professional, and Ultimate) with Boot Camp in Mac OS X Snow Leopard before the end of the year. This support will require a software update to Boot Camp." Needless to say that the support page has no updates regarding the new version. Maybe they're waiting for iSlate? SkydiverFL 2010-01-01T11:31:51+00:00 //slashdot.org/submission/1140902/Chinese-pirates-launch-Ubuntu-that-looks-like-XP?from=rss Just as the title suggests: Ylmf, famous for pirating Windows XP, have just released a version of Ubuntu that looks JUST like Windows XP. Really, really similar. Apparently because Microsoft were cracking down on the actual Windows XP pirating — though, I think they will still suffer for ripping off the GUI _exactly_. Anonymous Coward 2009-12-27T23:35:53+00:00 //slashdot.org/submission/1143418/INTERPOL-granted-full-immunity-in-the-US?from=rss Without any fanfare or notice in the media, President Obama has granted INTERPOL diplomatic immunity while conducting investigations on American soil. While INTERPOL has been allowed to operate in the US in the past, under an executive order by President Reagan, they've had to follow the same rules as the FBI, CIA, etc., while on American soil. This means, among other things, INTERPOL is immune to Freedom of Information Act requests and that INTERPOL agents cannot be punished for most any crimes they may commit. Hopefully the worst we'll see from this is INTERPOL agents ignoring their speeding tickets. ShakaUVM 2010-01-02T12:35:45+00:00 //slashdot.org/submission/1142590/Windows-ignores-microsoftcom-in-hosts-file?from=rss If you try to block microsoft.com in your hosts file, windows will just ignore the entry. On Vistas Windows Defender even steps in and tries to stop you from adding microsoft.com to the hosts file, but even if you ignore Defender microsoft.com will still work as if the entry wasn't there. Anonymous Coward 2009-12-31T06:09:00+00:00 //slashdot.org/submission/1140980/James-Camerons-Avatar-and-Neal-Stephenson?from=rss "The anti-technological aspect [in James Cameron's Avatar] is strange because the movie is among most technically sophisticated ever: it uses a crazy 2D and 3D camera, harnesses the most advanced computer animation techniques imaginable, and has apparently improved the state-of-the-art when it comes to cinema. But Avatar’s story argues that technology is bad. Humans destroyed their home world through environmental disaster and use military might to annihilate the locals and steal their resources." The question is two-fold: why have a technically sophisticated, anti-technical movie, and why are we drawn to it? Part of the answer lies in Neal Stephen's Turn On, Tune In, Veg Out. ThousandStars 2009-12-28T05:14:32+00:00 //slashdot.org/submission/1140776/German-Wikipedia-reaches-1M-article-milestone?from=rss The German Wikipedia, the second largest language edition behind the English Wikipedia just reached it's 1,000,000 article milestone. Combined with 3.1M English articles and 240 other language editions, this adds up to a total of 14 million Wikipedia articles.Interestingly, there is a request for deletion on the 1Mth article. German Wikipedia has been criticized for its rules on notability, which are stricter than on the English Wikipedia. Quality though, is often considered to be higher on the German Wikipedia. saibot834 2009-12-27T12:59:06+00:00 //slashdot.org/submission/1143272/Twitter-Bans-Obvious-Passwords?from=rss President Obama and CNN reporter Rick Sanchez were among dozens of Twitter accounts compromised in January, 2008 after hackers managed to crack their passwords, forcing Twitter to reevaluate its sign-up process and technologies. Now bloggers have discovered that Twitter has a list of banned passwords when new users sign up for the service which is embedded in the source code of the page itself. Banned terms include commonly chosen generic passwords, such as “123456”, “password” and “password1”, as well as car names (“porsche”, “ferrari”) and football teams (“Chelsea”, “arsenal”). Perhaps predictably for a website popular with technology fans, science fiction terms figure in the list too. “THX1138”, the title of the first feature film directed by George Lucas of Star Wars fame, is banned, as is “NCC1701” – the registry number of Star Trek’s starship Enterprise – and “trustno1”, which was Fox Mulder’s password in The X-Files. pickens 2010-01-02T05:05:08+00:00 //slashdot.org/submission/1141452/Court-Orders-Shutdown-of-H-1B-Critics-Websites?from=rss Computerworld reports that a NJ Superior Court Judge ordered hosting firms to shut down three Web sites that oppose the H-1B visa program and seeks information about the identity of anonymous posters. GoDaddy, Network Solutions, Comcast and DiscountASP.Net were ordered to disable ITgrunt.com, Endh1b.com, and Guestworkerfraud.com. Facebook Inc. was also ordered to disable ITgrunt's Facebook page. The judge's order was made in response to a libel lawsuit filed by Apex Technology Group Inc., which is citing its copyright ownership as it seeks the identity of the poster of a since-removed Apex employment agreement on Docstoc.com, which drew critical comments on U.S. and India websites. theodp 2009-12-29T01:38:35+00:00 //slashdot.org/submission/1141348/GSM-Decryption-Published?from=rss The NY Times reports that German encryption expert Karsten Nohl says that he has deciphered and published the 21-year-old GSM algorithm, the secret code used to encrypt most of the world's digital mobile phone calls, in what he called an attempt to expose weaknesses in the security system used by about 3.5 billion of the 4.3 billion wireless connections across the globe. Others have cracked the A5/1 encryption technology used in GSM before, but their results have remained secret. “This shows that existing GSM security is inadequate,” Nohl told about 600 people attending the Chaos Communication Congress. “We are trying to push operators to adopt better security measures for mobile phone calls.” The GSM Association, the industry group based in London that devised the algorithm and represents wireless operators, called Mr. Nohl’s efforts illegal and said they overstated the security threat to wireless calls. “This is theoretically possible but practically unlikely,” says Claire Cranton, a GSM spokeswoman, noting that no one else had broken the code since its adoption. “What he is doing would be illegal in Britain and the United States. To do this while supposedly being concerned about privacy is beyond me.” Simon Bransfield-Garth, the chief executive of Cellcrypt, says Nohl's efforts could put sophisticated mobile interception technology — limited to governments and intelligence agencies — within the reach of any reasonable well-funded criminal organization. “This will reduce the time to break a GSM call from weeks to hours,” Bransfield-Garth says. “We expect as this further develops it will be reduced to minutes.” pickens 2009-12-28T19:11:44+00:00 //slashdot.org/submission/1143452/The-Amiga-circa-2010-Dead-and-Loving-it?from=rss While many Amiga users have moved on to Linux, Mac OS X, and even, gasp shock, Microsoft Windows some of us don't want to give up so easily. There are two open source projects that are keeping the Amiga legacy alive even if Amiga Inc. seems to be deader than a doornail and not really doing much but selling old Classic Amiga games for new platforms.Like WINE there was a project to run AmigaOS 3.1 software for Linux and other platforms but it was made into an open source operating system named Amiga Research OS or AROS. It is best run inside an emulator and while it is not a modern OS as Linux it can be downloaded and run inside of Linux and the downloads section has more. While it is not ready for prime-time yet it is a promising OS that is being ported to many platforms and uses the user friendly Amiga GUI we Amiga users grew up with.OK maybe AROS is not modern enough for you, and you like Linux instead. Then you might like Anubis OS as it is a hybrid of AROS and Linux. Much like when Apple took NextOS (based on *BSD Unix and the MACH kernel) and Classic Mac OS to make Mac OS X, this project wants to take Linux and AROS and do the same thing.For those who want the classic Amiga there is UAE the Universal Amiga Emulator that needs kickstart ROMs and boot disk images to work. You can buy them from the Amiga Forever software and the emulator comes with all the files you need plus other goodies.For the classic Amiga 68K series it is recreated via the Minimig that uses SD cards instead of floppy disks. A must for retro computer hobbyists. AmigaOS 4.1 exists for PowerPC based SAM 440EP systems like the SAM 440Ep systems and parts sold here. I am not associated with Amiga Kit or Amiga Inc. or any Amiga company. I am just an Amiga user since 1985 and very much into retro computing.While the Amiga may seem dead, and it has been dead since 1994 when Commodore went out of business, the Amiga still exists in some form. The Amiga is dead and loving it, and the Anubis OS name is named after the Egyptian God of the Underworld, and when the Amiga repaired a floppy disk it renamed it as "Lazarus" the man Jesus raised from the dead. So the Amiga has a history of dying and coming back from the dead. It is the Kenny McCormick of computer systems and technology. Orion Blastar 2010-01-02T14:51:57+00:00 //slashdot.org/submission/1143074/NASA-Mars-rover-Spirit-has-survivability-option?from=rss As NASA celebrates its Mars rover Spirit’s sixth anniversary exploring the red planet it is hunting for a way to keep the machine, which is mired in a sand trap, alive to see a seventh year. On its Web site, the space agency this week noted there may indeed be such an option. That option would be spinning the wheels on the north side of Spirit, letting it dig in deeper in the Martian sand but at the same time improving the tilt of the rover’s solar panels toward the Sun.http://www.networkworld.com/news/2010/010110-layer8-nasa-mars-spirit-rover.html?hpg1=bn coondoggie 2010-01-01T14:55:47+00:00 //slashdot.org/submission/1140856/NY-Times-LA-Times-Call-for-Amazon-Tax-Collection?from=rss Recalling that CEO Jeff Bezos originally explored placing Amazon.com on an Indian Reservation near San Francisco to "have access to talent without all the tax consequences," the NY Times argues it's time to put an end to the e-tailer's 'entity isolation' tax-avoidance games. The LA Times chimes in, saying Amazon's claims that collecting sales tax constitute an undue burden are 'worth a horselaugh', noting that Amazon boasts it has no problem keeping track of millions of unique products. theodp 2009-12-27T19:19:55+00:00 //slashdot.org/submission/1142998/Nintendo-Shuts-Down-Fan-Made-Zelda-Movie?from=rss An independently filmed adaptation of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, called The Hero Of Time, has been taken offline by Nintendo as of the end of December. The film's producers write: "We came to an agreement with Nintendo earlier this month to stop distributing the film... We understand Nintendo’s right to protect its characters and trademarks and understand how in order to keep their property unspoiled by fan’s interpretation of the franchise, Nintendo needs to protect itself — even from fan-works with good intentions." Filming for the feature-length, non-profit film began in August 2004 and the movie was completed in 2008. It premiered in various theatres worldwide, including in New York and Los Angeles, and then became available online in the middle of December, before it was targeted by Nintendo's legal team. As both an avid Zelda fan and an appreciator of independent works, I was extremely disappointed in Nintendo's strong-arming of a noncommercial adaptation to the Game of the Year for 1999. Andorin 2010-01-01T10:02:47+00:00 //slashdot.org/submission/1142830/What-Would-Have-Entered-the-Public-Domain-Tomorrow?from=rss "Casino Royale, Marilyn Monroe’s Playboy cover, The Adventures of Augie March, the Golden Age of Science Fiction, Crick & Watson’s Nature article decoding the double helix, Disney’s Peter Pan, The Crucible"... "How ironic that Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, with its book burning firemen, was published in 1953 and would once have been entering the public domain on January 1, 2010. To quote James Boyle, "Bradbury’s firemen at least set fire to their own culture out of deep ideological commitment, vile though it may have been. We have set fire to our cultural record for no reason; even if we had wanted retrospectively to enrich the tiny number of beneficiaries whose work keeps commercial value beyond 56 years, we could have done so without these effects. The ironies are almost too painful to contemplate." Anonymous Coward 2009-12-31T19:15:09+00:00 //slashdot.org/submission/1141340/Italy-may-censor-torrent-sites?from=rss Following a PirateBay block more than a year ago, Italy continues its attempts to censor torrent sites. The Italian Supreme Court has ruled that copyright holders can now force ISPs to block BitTorrent sites, even if they are hosted outside Italy. The torrent sites which "hold" copyrighted materials are accused of taking part in criminal activity. It seems, someone should enlighten Italian jurists about technology. Anonymous Coward 2009-12-28T18:54:45+00:00 //slashdot.org/submission/1143162/Irelands-Blasphemy-law-comes-in-to-effect?from=rss As of January 1, it is a crime in Ireland to commit Blasphemy. The law was changed in July 2009 to fill a gap in the Irish Constitution, which states that it is a crime but does not define what it is, an omission highlighted in a Supreme Court decision in 1999. A July story in the Irish Independent described the situation in more detail. The story has also been covered in The Guardian (UK) today.To mark the occasion, Atheist Ireland published a list of 25 blasphemous quotations on the blasphemy.ie website, from such controversial figures as Bjork, Frank Zappa, Richard Dawkins, Randy Newman, and Pope Benedict XVI. (The last-mentioned was quoting a 14th Century Byzantine Emperor, but that's no excuse.) stereoroid 2010-01-01T19:59:22+00:00 //slashdot.org/submission/1140898/GNU-Emacs-switches-from-CVS-to-Bazaar?from=rss GNU Emacs, one of the oldest continuously developed free software projects around, has switched from CVS to Bazaar. Emacs's first first recorded version-control commits date from August, 1985. Eight years later, in 1993, it moved to CVS. Sixteen years later, it is switching to Bazaar, its first time in a decentralized version control system. If this pattern holds, GNU Emacs will be in Bazaar for at least thirty-two years... kfogel 2009-12-27T23:17:29+00:00 //slashdot.org/submission/1142914/Microsoft-Says-Goodbye-GUI-Hello-MUI?from=rss On New Year's Eve, the USPTO revealed that Microsoft is seeking patents for controlling a computer by simply flexing a muscle. Microsoft proposes using Electromyography (EMG) sensors and a wired or wireless human-computer interface to interact with computing systems and attached devices via electrical signals generated by specific movement of the user's muscles. 'It is important to consider mechanisms for acquiring human input that may not necessarily require direct manipulation of a physical implement,' explained the inventors. 'For example, drivers attempting to query their vehicle navigation systems may find it advantageous to be able to do so without removing their hands from the steering wheel, and a person in a meeting may want to unobtrusively communicate with someone outside. Also, since physical computer input devices have been shown to be prone to collecting microbial contamination in sterile environments, techniques that alleviate the need for these implements could be useful in surgical and cleanroom settings.' Any suggestions for how to Ctrl-Alt-Del with a Muscle User Interface (MUI)? theodp 2010-01-01T02:24:53+00:00 //slashdot.org/submission/1141228/A-weighty-comic-xkcd-on-gravity-wells?from=rss xkcd's comic for today is a wonderful description of the solar system in terms of gravity wells. Don't miss it! It does raise a couple of questions: how accurate are the numbers (can we trust our comics in this day and age)? should this be incorporated into K-12 schooling? And what's with those Titanics: it seems like like they are singing a Frank Sinatra lyric with their lungs full of helium? Will.Woodhull 2009-12-28T15:25:02+00:00 //slashdot.org/submission/1141890/OnLive-One-Step-Closer?from=rss It looks like OnLive, the remote gaming system that steams HD video over the Internet, is one step closer to becoming reality, according to an article on DSL Reports in response to a presentation by Founder & CEO Steve Perlman at Columbia University. hysma 2009-12-29T19:49:37+00:00 //slashdot.org/submission/1141700/Is-OpenOfficeorg-a-Threat-Microsoft-Thinks-So?from=rss Most people regard OpenOffice.org as a distant runner-up to Microsoft Office, and certainly not a serious rival. Microsoft seems to feel otherwise judging by a new job ad on its site for a "Linux and Open Office Compete Lead". According to this, competing with *both* GNU/Linux and OpenOffice.org is "one of the biggest issues that is top of mind" for no less a person than Steve Ballmer. Interestingly, a key part of this position is "engaging with Open Source communities and organizations" — which suggests that Microsoft's new-found eagerness to "engage" with open source has nothing to do with a real desire to reach a pacific accommodation with free software, but is simply a way for it to fight against it from close up, and armed with inside knowledge. Glyn Moody 2009-12-29T12:00:05+00:00 //slashdot.org/submission/1141876/Photovoltaic-Eye-Implant-Gives-Sight-to-the-Blind?from=rss Researchers at Stanford University recently announced that they have developed a new artificial retina implant that uses photovoltaic power and could help the blind see. The problem with previous implants was that there was no way send power to the chip in order to process light and data inside the eye, so the new device uses miniature photovoltaic cells to provide power the chip as well as to transmit data through the eye to the brain. The new device has great promise to help people afflicted by the loss of photoreceptor cells by using the power of the sun. MikeChino 2009-12-29T18:58:35+00:00 //slashdot.org/submission/1142902/Indiana-Joins-Battle-Against-Invasive-Carp?from=rss The Chicago Sun-Times reports that Indiana has joined the battle that Michigan has taken to the US Supreme Court against invasive Asian carp to force Illinois to immediately close the O'Brien Lock and Dam in the Calumet-Sag Channel and the Chicago Controlling Works in the Illinois River, a stopgap measure aimed at keeping the fish out of the great lakes. The 100-pound fish have voracious appetites and rapid reproduction rates that could ravage native lake species and experts fear that the invasive carp, which have been traveling up the Mississippi and Illinois rivers for decades, will devastate the $7 billion Great Lakes fisheries. The carp were imported to the Mississippi River basin by catfish farmers in the 1970's to remove algae and suspended matter out of their ponds. During large floods in the early 1990s, many of the catfish farm ponds overflowed their banks, and the Asian carp were released into local waterways. "This is not political grandstanding or some kind of publicity stunt," says Noah Hall, a professor at Wayne State University Law School in Detroit. "This is a very solid case." The lawsuit follows tests last month that show the carp may have crossed an electric fish barrier that pulses DC current into the water on the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal meant to halt their advance, putting them within 6 miles of Lake Michigan. "The actions of Illinois and federal authorities have not been enough to assure us the Lakes are safe," says Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox. "That's why the waterways must be shut down until we are assured that Michigan will be protected." pickens 2010-01-01T01:18:32+00:00 //slashdot.org/submission/1143192/Lava-Tube-Found-Maybe-Ideal-Spot-for-Lunar-Base?from=rss A Lava Tube has been found on the moon that could serve as an ideal structure to host a lunar base or colony. The tube is estimated by a paper in the American Geophysical Union as being over 200 feet wide and close to 300 feet deep. Such a tube provides protection from the severe lunar temperature swings, solar radiation and other hazards of space. What are we waiting for? Camel Pilot 2010-01-01T22:12:29+00:00 //slashdot.org/submission/1142984/Ten-Most-Ridiculous-Uses-of-Stimulus-Funds?from=rss Verum Serum lists the ten most ridiculous uses of stimulus funds among which are: a $9.3 million to fund the design and development of a coordinated colony of robotic bees, a $712,883 research grant to develop oemachine-generated humor, and a $427,824 grant to design better video games for senior citizens based on their unique oegame-play needs. Anonymous Coward 2010-01-01T09:27:12+00:00