Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror

Comment Re:they only send 100 notices this first time (Score 1) 302

I've been a customer for five years, and have never suffered from the alleged traffic shaping you mention. I've always been able to use my line to the max, doing BitTorrent, newsgroup, and link encryption, among others.

The only time my traffic was severely affected was after a tempest, when my line would only synchronize to 100 kbps for a few days, before they made some kind of repair.

Comment Re:More details needed in story summary (Score 1) 141

> Despite the numerous slashdot articles and buzz about it, I'm seeing scant actual details.

That's probably because you're not getting your news at the right place. Here's the detailed technical analysis released last week:

http://www.symantec.com/content/en/us/enterprise/media/security_response/whitepapers/w32_stuxnet_dossier.pdf

It's quite an impressive read.

Comment Re:You're half right (Score 1) 978

Bullshit. I've lost 26 pounds last year over the course of 7 months, and have not regained them in the 12 months since I reached my chosen weight (and I see no reason this should change). I now oscillate by 2 pounds around my chosen weight, depending on whether I'm indulging in some rich tasty food for a couple of days, or make a slight effort to go back to my chosen weight.

Losing 26 pounds wasn't that hard by the way (thankfully). I reduced or stopped the obvious bad habits (soda and pastry at noon every day, too rich breakfast, too many restaurants), monitored my weight (the most important part), did some light exercice (to ensure the few muscles I had would not disappear during the diet), and that's it. I was helped by the fact that I had quite a lot of work to do at the same time, so I could concentrate on it and forget the slight hunger I sometimes felt.

You should read The Hacker's Diet.

Comment Re:Security issues with Google Chrome? (Score 1) 459

And unless Google *forces* updates to the plugin, security patches will never be applied

As far as I know, most if not all Google desktop apps use an auto-updater that does its job in utter silence (to the fury of control freaks, of course). This is definitely the case for Google Chrome, Google Talk, and Google Gears (which is a browser plugin).

Comment Re:Not surprising (Score 1) 582

Your comment is hard to understand. Apparently, from three persons you know, two were great problem solvers, one became an engineer, the other did medicine. The third one was not a great problem solver, and you won't tell what became of him. Weird.

My anecdotal evidence is that one of my friends is a great problem solver (and tinkerer), and is a dentist. Several of his dentist friends are good problem solvers. I believe he's a better problem solver than me, and I'm an engineer. Several of my engineer coworkers are not that good at problem solving, but can cram quite a lot.

PC Games (Games)

StarCraft II Beta Signups Open 123

motang writes "StarCraftWire reports that Blizzard has started taking beta sign-ups for StarCraft II. Quoting: 'Interested parties must simply visit their Battle.net profile page, choose to opt-in for the beta, and re-submit their current system specs by way of a small downloadable piece of software.' Blizzard's Chris Sigaty said in an interview, 'As with previous betas for our real-time strategy games, the StarCraft II beta test will be multiplayer only, and players will have access to all three races — terrans, protoss, and zerg — and all of their units. We'll include a selection of multiplayer maps, but they won't necessarily include all of the maps that will be in the final version of the game. We're making some great progress on the single-player campaign, but we don't plan to do a public beta since we want to keep the story under wraps until the game's out.'"
Networking

EU Rejects Law To Cut Pirates Off From Their ISP 210

MJackson writes "Europe has rejected plans to allow ISPs to disconnect users suspected of involvement with illegal file-sharing. In its final vote, the European Parliament chose to retain amendment 46 (138) of the new Telecoms Package by a majority of 407 to 57. Amendment 46 states that restrictions to the fundamental rights and freedoms of Internet users can only be put in place after a decision by judicial authorities. However, network neutrality remains unprotected."
The Media

News Corp Will Charge For Newspaper Websites 453

suraj.sun writes "Rupert Murdoch says having free newspaper websites is a 'flawed' business model. Rupert Murdoch expects to start charging for access to News Corporation's newspaper websites within a year as he strives to fix a 'malfunctioning' business model. Encouraged by booming online subscription revenues at the Wall Street Journal, the billionaire media mogul last night said that papers were going through an 'epochal' debate over whether to charge. 'That it is possible to charge for content on the web is obvious from the Wall Street Journal's experience,' he said."
Windows

Windows 7 "Not Much Faster" Than Vista 821

PLSQL Guy writes "Tests of the Windows 7 Release Candidate in a PC World Test Center found that while Windows 7 was slightly faster on our WorldBench 6 suite, the differences may be barely noticeable to users. The PCs tested were slightly faster when running Windows 7, but in no case was the overall improvement greater than 5 percent, considered to be a threshold for when an actual performance change is noticeable to the average user. One of the major complaints about Windows Vista was the fact that it was consistently slower than Windows XP. If Windows 7 can't significantly improve that situation, what chance does it have to convince people to move away from Windows XP?"
First Person Shooters (Games)

Duke Nukem For Never 565

PLSQL Guy writes "Duke Nukem Forever developer 3D Realms is shutting down, according to Shacknews. They cite 'a reliable source close to the company,' who said the developer is finished and employees have already been let go. It looks like all of the Duke Nukem Forever jokes are turning into reality; DNF might turn out to be the ultimate vaporware after all." 3D Realms' webmaster, Joe Siegler, confirmed the closing, saying that he didn't know about it even a day beforehand. Apogee and Deep Silver, who are working on a different set of Duke Nukem games (referred to as the Duke Nukem Trilogy) say they are not affected by the problems at 3D Realms.
The Internet

Phony Wikipedia Entry Used By Worldwide Press 391

Hugh Pickens writes "A quote attributed to French composer Maurice Jarre was posted on wikipedia shortly after his death in March and later appeared in obituaries in mainstream media. 'One could say my life itself has been one long soundtrack. Music was my life, music brought me to life, and music is how I will be remembered long after I leave this life. When I die there will be a final waltz playing in my head, that only I can hear,' Jarre was quoted as saying. However, these words were not uttered by the Oscar-winning composer but written by Shane Fitzgerald, a final-year undergraduate student, who said he wanted to show how journalists use the internet as a primary source for their stories. Fitzgerald posted the quote on Wikipedia late at night after news of Jarre's death broke. 'I saw it on breaking news and thought if I was going to do something I should do it quickly. I knew journalists wouldn't be looking at it until the morning,' The quote had no referenced sources and was therefore taken down by moderators of Wikipedia within minutes. However, Fitzgerald put it back up a few more times until it was finally left up on the site for more than 24 hours. While he was wary about the ethical implications of using someone's death as a social experiment, he had carefully generated the quote so as not to distort or taint Jarre's life, he said. 'I didn't expect it to go that far. I expected it to be in blogs and sites, but on mainstream quality papers? I was very surprised.'"

Slashdot Top Deals

We all like praise, but a hike in our pay is the best kind of ways.

Working...