http://slashdot.org/firehose.pl News for nerds, stuff that matters en-us Copyright 1997-2009, Geeknet, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 2009-12-31T10:03:05+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/1142684/The-top-games-of-2009?from=rss The end of the year can always be depended upon to bring a flood of "game of the year" roundups. This year, Eurogamer seem to be kicking things off, with their readers' top 50 list and their editorial pick. These articles usually prove contentious, and no doubt there will be plenty of dissenting views this year. Of course, with the start of a new decade now upon us, now might be a good time to reflect on the best games of 2000-2009. RogueyWon 2009-12-31T09:40:09+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/1140572/Star-Trek-Synthehol-beta-goes-into-development?from=rss Researchers at the Imperial College London have announced development of an alcohol substitute that has many of the same properties as the Sythehol from the series Star Trek in that one will get a buzz from it but will not end up with a hangover. In addition you will have the option of getting immediately sober if you so desire it. Let's hope this is not the typical vaporware. It is not that I really want a drink of Synthehol but with its release I assume Romulan Ale won't be far behind. Ada_Rules 2009-12-26T17:00:35+00:00 //slashdot.org/submission/1139918/NetBIOS-Design-Allows-Traffic-Redirection?from=rss Security researchers at SkullSecurity released research demonstrating how the NetBIOS protocol allows trivial hijacking due to its design; they have demonstrated this attack in a tool called 'nbpoison' (in the package 'nbtool'). If a DNS lookup fails on Windows, the operating system will broadcast a NetBIOS lookup request that anybody can respond to. One vector of attack is against business workstations on an untrusted network, like a hotel; all DNS requests for internal resources can be redirected (Exchange, proxy, WPAD, etc). Other attack vectors are discussed here. Although similar attacks exist against DHCP, ARP, and many other LAN-based protocols, and we all know that untrusted systems on a LAN means game over, NetBIOS poisoning is much quieter and less likely to break other things. iago-vL 2009-12-24T16:51:41+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/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/1140600/How-to-teach-a-12-year-old-to-program?from=rss I've got a much younger brother who I'd like to teach how to program. When I was younger, you'd often start off with something like BASIC or Apple BASIC, maybe move on to Pascal, and eventually get to C and Java. Is something like Pascal still a dominant teaching language? I'd love to get low-level with him, and I firmly believe that C is the best language to eventually learn, but I'm not sure how to get him there. Can anyone recommend a language I can start to teach him that is simple enough to learn quickly, but powerful enough to do interesting things and lead him down a path towards C/C++? thelordx 2009-12-26T19:55:38+00:00 //slashdot.org/submission/1139980/Really-misleading-ads-from-broadband-providers?from=rss From the I-really-wish-they-asked-me-before-getting-into-that-contract department: Gizmodo has put together a good compilation of the — seemingly almost criminally — misleading (largely plain wrong) advertising from our favorite local monopolies. My personal favorite is from At&t which states you need 3 mbps to use social networking sites like facebook (an accurate but still absurd requirement might be a something to effect of needing a multiple core processor if you allow of the javascript & flash to run on said sites) Bourdain 2009-12-24T20:37:24+00:00 //slashdot.org/submission/1140332/Prevent-my-hosting-provider-from-rooting-my-server?from=rss I have a heavily-hit public server (web, mail, cvs/svn/git, dns, etc.) that runs a few dozen OSS project websites, as well as my own personal sites (gallery, blog, etc.). From time to time, the server has "unexpected" outages, which I've determined to be the result of hardware, network and other issues on behalf of the provider. I run a lot of monitoring and logging on the server-side, so I see and graph every single bit and byte in and out of the server and applications, so I know it's not the OS itself.When I file "WTF?" style support tickets to the provider through their web-based ticketing system, I often get the response of "Please provide us with the root password to your server so we can analyze your logs for the cause of the outage." Moments ago, there were 3 simultaneous outages, while I was logged into the server working on some projects. Server-side, everything was fine. They asked me for the root password, which I flatly denied (as I always do), and then they rooted the server anyway, bringing it down and poking around through my logs anyway. This is at least the third time they've done this without my approval or consent.Is it possible to create a minimal Linux boot that will allow me to reboot the server remotely, come back up with basic networking and ssh, and then from there, allow me to log in and mount the other application and data partitions under dm-crypt/loop-aes and friends?With sufficient memory and CPU, I could install VMware and run my entire system within a VM, and encrypt that. I could also use UML, and try to bury my data in there, but that's not encrypted. Ultimately, I'd like to have an encrypted system end-to-end, but if I do that, I can't reboot it remotely without entering the password at boot time. Since I'll be remote, that's a blocker for me.What does the Slashdot community have for ideas in this regard? What other technologies and options are at my disposal to try here (beyond litigation and jumping providers, both of which are on the short horizon ahead). hacker 2009-12-26T03:47:06+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/1139780/All-GPLed-Code-Removed-from-MonoDevelop?from=rss A few days ago, Miguel de Icaza wrote on his blog that the whole MonoDevelop is now "free" of GPL-licensed code. "MonoDevelop code is now LGPLv2 and MIT X11 licensed. We have removed all of the GPL code, allowing addins to use Apache, MS-PL code as well as allowing proprietary add-ins to be used with MonoDevelop (like RemObject;s Oxygene)." A move that may be seen as quite controversial. rysiek 2009-12-24T11:29:29+00:00 //slashdot.org/submission/1140278/Soviet-Scientist-Turns-Foxes-Into-Puppies?from=rss In the 1950s, Soviet scientist Dmitri Belyaev set out to breed a tamer fox that would be easier for their handlers in the Russian fur industry to work with. Much to the scientist's shock, changes no one had expected emerged after just 10 generations. The foxes began behaving playfully, were smaller in size, and even changed color — much like dogs. gamebittk 2009-12-25T18:32:20+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/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/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/1139978/Testing-network-changes-when-no-test-labs-exist?from=rss The ugly truth is that many network guys secretly work on production equipment all the time, or test things on production networks when they face impossible deadlines. Management often expects us to get a job done but refuse to provide funds for expensive lab equipment, test circuits and for reasonable time to get testing done before moving equipment or configs into production. How do most of you handle such situations, and what recommendation do you have for creating a network test lab on the cheap, especially when core network devices are vendor-centric, like Cisco? vvaduva 2009-12-24T20:08:44+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/1140010/Software-fraudster-fooled-CIA-into-terror-alert?from=rss The Register, citing this Playboy article, reports that a Nevada man named Dennis Montgomery was able in 2003 to connive his way into a position of respectabilty at the CIA on the basis of his company's claimed ability, using software, to "detect and decrypt 'barcodes' in broadcasts by Al Jazeera, the Qatari news station." Montgomery was CTO of Reno-based eTreppid Technologies, which produced bucketloads of data purported to represent "geographic coordinates and flight numbers." All of which, it seems, were hokum, finally debunked in cooperation with a branch of the French intelligence service — but not, says the article, before the fabricated information, chalked up to "credible sources," was used as justification to ground some international flights, and even evacuate New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. timothy 2009-12-25T00:11:53+00:00 //slashdot.org/submission/1142466/Scientists-Postulate-Extinct-Hominid-with-150-IQ?from=rss Neuroscientists Gary Lynch and Richard Granger have an interesting article in Discover Magazine about the Boskops, an extinct hominid that had big eyes, child-like faces, and forebrains roughly 50% larger than modern man indicating they may have had an average intelligence of around 150, making them geniuses among Homo sapiens. The combination of a large cranium and immature face would look decidedly unusual to modern eyes, but not entirely unfamiliar. Such faces peer out from the covers of countless science fiction books and are often attached to “alien abductors” in movies. "Back there in the past, ten thousand years ago. The man of the future, with the big brain, the small teeth. He lived in Africa," wrote naturalist Loren Eiseley. "His brain was bigger than your brain” The history of evolutionary studies has been dogged by the almost irresistible idea that evolution leads to greater complexity, to animals that are more advanced than their predecessor, yet the existence of the Boskops argues otherwise — that humans with big brains, and perhaps great intelligence, occupied a substantial piece of southern Africa in the not very distant past, and that they eventually gave way to smaller-brained, possibly less advanced Homo sapiens—that is, ourselves. "With 30 percent larger brains than ours now, we can readily calculate that a population with a mean brain size of 1,750 cc would be expected to have an average IQ of 149," write Lynch and Granger. But why did they go extinct? "Maybe all that thoughtfulness was of no particular survival value in 10,000 BC. Lacking the external hard drive of a literate society, the Boskops were unable to exploit the vast potential locked up in their expanded cortex," write Lynch and Granger. "They were born just a few millennia too soon." pickens 2009-12-30T22:34:52+00:00 //slashdot.org/submission/1141918/Nokia-claims-Apple-violated-additional-patents?from=rss The Associated Press is reporting that: "Nokia is broadening its legal fight with Apple , saying almost all of the company's products violate its patents, not just the iPhone.Nokia Corp. said Tuesday that it has filed a complaint against Apple Inc. with the U.S. International Trade Commission. The Finnish phone maker says Apple's iPhone, iPods and computers all violate its intellectual property rights." Anonymous Coward 2009-12-29T21:06:13+00:00 //slashdot.org/submission/1140878/Whats-Happened-In-Mobile-Over-The-Past-Ten-Years?from=rss recombu.com has an article examining what's happened in mobile over the past ten years, including BlackBerry launching its first smart phone in 2002, Motorola launching the Razr in 2004 and Apple launching the iPhone in 2007. As a commenter points out, the first camera phone (Sharp J-SH04), which was released in 2000, featured a 110,000-pixel (0.11MP) CMOS image sensor, and a 256-colour (8 bit) display. "How things have come along!" Ten years is a relatively short amount of time and things have indeed "come along" so one can only imagine what the next ten years hold. andylim 2009-12-27T21:23:23+00:00