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| MediaSentry Hired By People's Republic of China - 08/08/2008 01:59 AM |
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NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "MediaSentry, now called 'SafeNet,' the RIAA's illegal, unlicensed investigator of choice, has been hired by the Peoples Republic of China to provide DRM for the Olympics coverage. The PRC says it 'owns exclusive rights to the broadcast of all audio and video content via online and mobile distribution channels across Mainland China' and wants to protect it from 'piracy.' I wonder if the Chinese government is aware of MediaSentry's track record — i.e. all the good things it has accomplished so far for the Big 4 record companies." Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
| Ohio Sues Over Missing Electronic Votes - 08/08/2008 12:47 AM |
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dstates writes "The Columbus Post Dispatch reports that the State of Ohio is suing Premier Election Systems (previously known as Diebold over malfunctions in electronic voting machines. Election workers found that votes were 'dropped' in at least 11 counties when memory cards were uploaded to computer servers. The same voting machines are used nationwide. The company blames a conflict between their software and antivirus software for the problem and says that an advisory was issued on the subject. The Ohio lawsuit contends that the company made false representations and failed to live up to contractual obligations and seeks punitive damages." Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
| How To Sell a Video Game Idea? - 08/07/2008 11:52 PM |
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fobsta writes "Do any Slashdotters have experience of selling video game ideas? I'm an artist whose programmed a rough as nails demo and animated a trailer to explain my concept. Obviously I think it's fun, it shows promise and my friends think it's cool. Who should I pitch the idea to? Existing video games companies, venture capitalists, or what about those dentists that financed the Amiga? Are they still around? Having had a previous idea hijacked and received no reward for it whatsoever, how can I prevent this happening again?" Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
| McCain Campaign Offers Rewards For Turn-Key Comments - 08/07/2008 11:00 PM |
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According to a story at the Washington Post, John McCain's presidential campaign is offering more than moral suasion to fire people up for a McCain presidency; they're also offering ready-made snippets of rhetoric for interested supporters to supply under their own names in public comments to online news sources and forums. Such pre-written commentary by itself is neither new nor necessarily nefarious, but it seems a bit off-kilter that prolific commenters are eligible for rewards — not just campaign swag like hats and stickers, but higher-ticket items like a ride with McCain on his campaign bus. Probably a script could be whipped up to compare the canned suggestions on the site with "grassroots" comments on political news sites around the web. Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
| Windows XP Still Outselling Windows Vista - 08/07/2008 10:15 PM |
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nandemoari writes with an excerpt from an InfoPackets article that says "While Microsoft excitedly tries to sway public opinion by touting that Windows Vista License sales top 180 Million units, Hewlett-Packard (HP) was busy smacking Microsoft down — reportedly shipping PCs with a Vista Business license but with Windows XP pre-loaded in the majority of business computers sold since the June 30 Windows XP execution date established by Microsoft — casting a lot of doubt over how many copies of Vista have actually been sold." Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
| Large Hadron Collider Goes Live September 10th - 08/07/2008 09:26 PM |
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Naznarreb writes "CERN announced today that the first attempt to circulate a beam through the Large Hadron Collider will be on September 10th, 2008. You can read the press release here. They also announced the event will be webcast live. According to the release, they're just planning run a few tests laps, not smash any particles, so the world won't be ending quite yet." And despite that September 10th date, according to the BBC, "On 9 August, protons will be piped through LHC magnets for the first time." Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
| New Study Finds Low Interest In Blu-ray - 08/07/2008 08:37 PM |
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PHPNerd writes "A new consumer survey recently released chronicles the woes of the winner of the hi-definition format war: nobody wants it. While consumers were very happy to embrace the DVD standard when it came about because it brought a huge jump in quality over VHS, the pros of switching to Blu-ray are not as obvious. From the article: 'In contrast, while half of the respondents to our survey rated Blu-ray's quality as 'much better' than standard DVD, another 40% termed it only 'somewhat better,' and most are very satisfied with the performance of their current DVD players." Another reason cited was that a Blu-ray investment also dictates an HDTV purchase, something consumers are reluctant to do.'" Maybe it's also that line-doubling DVD players can be had for less than a hundred dollars. Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
| Why COBOL Could Come Back - 08/07/2008 07:46 PM |
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snydeq writes "Sure 'legacy systems archaeologist' ranks as one of the 7 dirtiest jobs in IT, but COBOL skills might see a scant revival in the wake of California's high-profile pay-cut debacle. After all, as Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister points out, new code may in fact be more expensive than old code. According to an IDC survey, code complexity is on the rise. And it's not the applications that are growing more complex, but the technologies themselves. 'Multicore processing, SOA, and Web 2.0 all contribute to rising software development costs,' which include $5 million to $22 million spent on fixing defects per company per year. Do the math, and California's proposed $177 million nine-year modernization project cost will double, McAllister writes. Perhaps numbers like those won't deter modernization efforts, but the estimated 90,000 coders still versed in COBOL may find themselves in high demand teaching new dogs old tricks." Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
| DNS Flaw Hits More Than Just the Web - 08/07/2008 06:59 PM |
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gringer writes "Dan Kaminsky presented at the Black Hat conference in Las Vegas on Wednesday, and said that the DNS vulnerability he discovered is much more dangerous than most have appreciated. Besides hijacking web browsers, hackers might attack email services and spam filters, FTP, Rsync, BitTorrent, Telnet, SSH, as well as SSL services. Ultimately it's not a question of which systems can be attacked by exploiting the flaw, but rather which ones cannot. Then again, it could just be hype. For more information, see Kaminsky's power point presentation." Update: 08/07 19:48 GMT by T : There's also an animation of the progress of the patch. Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
| IT Repair Installs Webcam Spying Software - 08/07/2008 05:59 PM |
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Vapon writes "A lady noticed her computer was running slower after she had brought her computer in to be repaired. She took the computer to a second repair shop where they found that one of the problems was that her webcam would turn on whenever it detected her around and was taking photos and uploading it to a website. The repair technician that installed the software has done this to at least 10 women and has photos of at least one undressing." Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
| Ask Literacy Bridge Founder About Charity, Education, and the "Talking Book" - 08/07/2008 05:05 PM |
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Literacy Bridge is a public charity working towards the goal of creating tools for knowledge sharing and literacy learning. More specifically, they have been working on producing a $5 "talking book" device that can both help improve literacy and provide a steady flow of important information while the education is taking place. Unlike many in the "wouldn't-it-be-nice" category, Literacy Bridge already has working silicon, shaped plastic, and actual presence in their target country, Ghana. Literacy Bridge has no paid employees, but several who volunteer their time to make this idea a reality. Cliff Schmidt, founder and executive director of Literacy Bridge, would like to answer any questions you have about the charity, the mission, or the technology. Prior to Literacy Bridge, 'Cliff ran a successful open source software consulting business for clients throughout Europe, the Middle East, and North America, specializing in intellectual property issues, nonprofit governance, privacy policies, and community development. He also served many nonprofit organizations, such as The Apache Software Foundation, the Eclipse Foundation, the OpenSEA Alliance, and the Free Software Foundation' in addition to working as a industry standards rep for Microsoft. Click through to see the Google TechTalk given by Cliff earlier this year. The usual Slashdot interview rules apply — so ask all the questions you'd like, but please confine yourself to one per post. Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
| ISS Gets New Recycling Gear, Ready for Larger Crew - 08/07/2008 04:16 PM |
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TnGoastiiaiu submitted a space.com story that expands on coverage we've had earlier about improvements being made to the ISS to increase crew capacity. He writes "ISS gets new recycling gear that transforms human waste to drinking water. Some of the water will be used to get Oxygene, too. This way it will soon be possible to host more crew members. " Also, someone needs to smack the webmaster over there for putting a background texture behind the text. It's pretty unreadable along the left hand side of the screen. Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
| Apple Sued For Turning Workers Into Slaves - 08/07/2008 03:21 PM |
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SwiftyNifty writes "Apple employees are putting together a class action lawsuit for not receiving overtime pay. A Lawsuit filed Monday in California seeks class action status alleging that Apple denied technical staffers required overtime pay and meal compensation in violation of state law. Filed in the US District Court for Southern California, the complaint claims that many Apple employees are routinely subjected to working conditions resembling indentured servitude, or 'modern day slaves,' for lack of better words." Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
| SpaceX Launch Failure Due To Timing Problem - 08/07/2008 02:37 PM |
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FleaPlus writes "Private orbital spaceflight company SpaceX recently announced that last weekend's Falcon 1 rocket launch failure was caused by a collision between the first and second stage of their rocket. This was due to a timing problem, when their brand-new engine design produced residual thrust for 1.5 seconds longer than expected; they're currently working to fix the problem and launch again, perhaps as early as next month. In a recent interview with Wired, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk remarked on their efforts: "Optimism, pessimism, f-ck that; we're going to make it happen. As God is my bloody witness, I'm hell-bent on making it work."" Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
| Chipped Passport Cloned In Minutes - 08/07/2008 01:57 PM |
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Death Metal Maniac writes "New microchip passports designed to be foolproof against identity theft failed the test when a researcher was able to manipulate one in minutes. The cloned passports were accepted as genuine by the computer software recommended for use at international airports. According to the article: 'A computer researcher cloned the chips on two British passports and implanted digital images of Osama bin Laden and a suicide bomber. The altered chips were then passed as genuine by passport reader software used by the UN agency that sets standards for e-passports.'" Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
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