Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
Privacy

Submission + - Google Reader shares private data, ruins Christmas (slashdot.org)

Submitted by Felipe Hoffa
Felipe Hoffa writes: One week ago Google Reader's team decided showing your private data to all your GMail contacts. No need to opt-in, no way to opt-out. Complaints haven't been answered. Some users share their problems, including one family that won't be able to enjoy this Christmas due to this "feature". Will this start happening with all Google products?

You can check a summary of complaints or the whole thread.
Education

Submission + - OLPC a hit in remote Peruvian village (chicagotribune.com)

Submitted by
mrcgran
mrcgran writes: "Chicago Tribune is running a story about the effects of OLPC on a remote village in Peru: "Doubts about whether poor, rural children really can benefit from quirky little computers evaporate as quickly as the morning dew in this hilltop Andean village, where 50 primary school children got machines from the One Laptop Per Child project six months ago. At breakfast, they're already powering up the combination library/videocam/audio recorder/music maker/drawing kits. At night, they're dozing off in front of them — if they've managed to keep older siblings from waylaying the coveted machines. Peru made the single biggest order to date — more than 272,000 machines — in its quest to turn around a primary education system that the World Economic Forum recently ranked last among 131 countries surveyed." A detailed log has been kept and a youtube video is also available."
Space

Submission + - Palau looking into satellite power in next decade

Submitted by davidwr
davidwr writes: The island nation of Palau is looking into creating a satellite-to-ground power transmission system. The system will use low-orbit satellites to transmit power to a receiver in bursts, unlike some other plans which rely on geostationary satellites. The initial 1MW project is supposed to go online "as early as" 2012 for a cost of $0.8B. Time will tell if this is cost-effective compared to traditional solar or other sources of power.
Privacy

Submission + - Tens of Thousands of Adult Website Accounts Hacked (www.icwt.us) 3

Submitted by
Keith
Keith writes: "Tens of thousands — or maybe more — accounts to adult websites were recently declared compromised and apparently have been that way since sometime in October, 2007. The issue occurred when the NATS software used to track and manage sales and affiliate revenues was accessed by an intruder, who apparently discovered a list of admin passwords residing on an unsecured office server at Too Much Media, which makes and maintains NATS installations for adult companies. It would appear that Too Much Media knew of the exploit back in October, and rather than fixing the issue tried to bury it by threatening to sue anyone in the adult industry who talked about it."
Microsoft

Submission + - FSFE Supports Microsoft Antitrust Investigation (linuxelectrons.com)

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: "Microsoft should be required openly, fully and faithfully to implement free and open industry standards," is the message of a letter by the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) to European Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes. To help achieve this goal, FSFE offered its support for a possible antitrust investigation based on the complaint of Opera Software against Microsoft. The complaint was based on anti-competitive behaviour in the web browser market.

"Although Opera Software does not produce Free Software, we largely share their assessment and concerns regarding the present situation in the Internet browser market", FSFE president Georg Greve writes in the letter.
Networking

Submission + - Netgear introduces Linux based NAS devices (linuxdevices.com)

Submitted by drewmoney
drewmoney writes: A LinuxDevices.com article introduces several of Netgear's Linux based NAS devices. These come in a 1.5TB model, all the way up to a 4TB rackmount version. These are geared towards the professional home user, and small and medium businesses. Comes complete with the usual RAID features, file system access and a built in USB print server. All are controlled through a WebGUI and some even have SSH access.
Operating Systems

Submission + - Vulnerability Numerology: Defective by Design?

Submitted by rdmreader
rdmreader writes: RDM has a point by point disassembly of why the security vulnerability story George Ou of ZDnet regularly rehashes is wrong. Ou condemns Linux and Mac OS X by tallying up reported flaws and comparing them against Microsoft's. What he doesn't note is that his source, Secunia, only lists what vendors and researchers report, selectively includes or excludes component software seemingly at random, and backhandedly claimed its data is evidence of what it now tells journalists they shouldn't report. Is Secunia presenting slanted information with the expectation it will be misused, or is it just bad journalism at ZDnet?
Handhelds

Submission + - Wearing a computer at work 1

Submitted by
Roland Piquepaille
Roland Piquepaille writes: "The European Union has funded an ambitious project related to wearable technology. This project, named WearIT@work will end in one year and was funded with 14.3 million euros of EU money, even if the total project cost is expected to exceed 23 million euros. For mobile workers, the goal is to replace traditional interfaces, such as screen, keyboard or computer unit, by speech control or gesture control, without modifying the applications. This wearable system is currently being tested in four different fields including aircraft maintenance, emergency response, car production and healthcare. But read more for additional references and pictures showing emergency rescuers and doctors using some of these wearable computers to ease their work."
Censorship

Submission + - Egyptian Blogger Silenced by YouTube

Submitted by
Frosty Piss
Frosty Piss writes: "A Egyptian human rights activist has been muzzled after YouTube and Yahoo! shut down accounts belonging to the award-winning blogger. Cairo-based Wael Abbas regularly writes and posts video about police brutality, torture and sexual harassment in Egypt. One of the videos — of an Egyptian bus driver being sodomized with a stick by a police officer — was used as evidence to convict two officers of brutality, a rare occurrence in a country where human-rights groups say torture is rampant. YouTube said the decision to remove Abbas' videos had nothing to do with the Egyptian government, but was rather an internal decision."
Government

Submission + - Swiss DMCA quietly adopted (boingboing.net)

Submitted by roady
roady writes: We have seen a lot of talk about the Canadian DMCA. But few know about the Swiss version recently adopted by law makers, not even the Swiss people. The government and media have been very quiet, probably to avoid a referendum. Indeed, Switzerland is a direct democracy and if 50'000 citizens sign a referendum, the whole country will have a chance to vote against the new copyright law. In this version of the DMCA, sharing a file on P2P networks will land you one year in jail, even though the law mandates a levy on blank media. The history of the law can be read here.
The Courts

Submission + - Oregon AG Seeks to investigate RIAA tactics

Submitted by
NewYorkCountryLawyer
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: "Turning the tables on the RIAA's attempt to subpoena information from the University of Oregon about the identities of the university students, the Attorney General has now filed additional papers requesting permission from the Court to conduct immediate discovery into the RIAA's 'data mining' techniques, such as the use of unlicensed investigators, the turning over of subpoenaed information to collection agencies, the obtaining of personal information from computers. The AG pointed out (pdf) that "Because Plaintiffs routinely obtain ex parte discovery in their John Doe infringement suits.....their factual assertions supporting their good cause argument are never challenged by an adverse party and their investigative methods remain free of scrutiny. They often settle their cases quickly before defendants obtain legal representation and begin to conduct discovery...... and have dropped cases, such as their case against Tanya Andersen, in which their methods and practices have been challenged through counterclaims...... While the University is not a party to the case, Plaintiffs' subpoena affects the university's rights and obligations. Plaintiffs may be spying on students who use the University's computer system and may be accessing much more than IP addresses." As one commentator succinctly put it, "They'll be going bananas in RIAA land" after reading this filing."
Books

Submission + - Book copies Wikipedia; Publisher aggressive on IP. (wikipedia.org) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Two pages of a book, Black Gold: The New Frontier in Oil for Investors, consist of a direct copy from the English Wikipedia article on the Khobar Towers Bombing. The book is published by John Wiley and Sons, the same publisher who, earlier this year, threatened a blogger with legal action over a clear case of fair use commentary.
User Journal

Journal Journal: Ask Slashdot: Any good OpenGL primer for the novice? 11

Journal by Marxist Hacker 42
It occurs to me that the one thing missing is a good kid's programming language- no good sound & graphics generating language like we had on early 1980s microcomputers. While I could teach my kid TI Basic using the Classic 99 TI/99-4A emulator, I'd much rather teach him something good. Anybody know of any good OpenGL For Dummies (type, not actual title) books?
Media

Submission + - Thousands of rubber ducks to finally end journey (dailymail.co.uk)

Submitted by
Bert de Jong
Bert de Jong writes: "From the I-WANT-one-of-those! dept. The Daily Mail writes to report that thousands of rubber ducks who have traveled the seas of the world since 1992 are about to end their journey. After escaping out of a container fallen off a Chinese freight ship in a storm, scientists have followed them which turned out to be an invaluable source of information for studying ocean currents. Now it seems inevitable though that they will finally land on the shores of South-West England. Expect to see high bids on E-Bay soon, and beware of phoney ones!"

Slashdot Top Deals

"A child is a person who can't understand why someone would give away a perfectly good kitten." -- Doug Larson

Close