carusoj - Slashdot User

Submission + - Security guru calls Windows 8 picture password "Fi (networkworld.com) 1

Submitted by alphadogg on Thursday December 22, 2011 @05:48PM

alphadogg writes: The Windows 8 feature that logs users in if they touch certain points in a photo in the right order might be fun, but it's not very good security, according to the inventor of RSA's SecurID token. "It's cute," says Kenneth Weiss, who now runs a three-factor authentication business called Universal Secure Registry. "I don't think it's serious security." The major downside of the picture password is that drawing a finger across a photo on a touch screen is easy to video record from a distance — making it relatively easy to compromise, he says.

Submission + - How to get your kid into an elite comp-sci program (networkworld.com)

Submitted by alphadogg on Monday November 21, 2011 @09:39AM

alphadogg writes: With early applications to elite colleges at an all-time high, the nation's highest-rated undergraduate computer science programs are bracing for an uptick in applications between now and January. High school seniors are facing stiffer-than-ever competition when applying to the nation's top computer science programs this fall. But admissions officers and professors at elite tech schools can offer tips aimed at helping your child get accepted come spring.

Submission + - Oracle to pay US almost $200M to resolve false cla (networkworld.com)

Submitted by

coondoggie

on Thursday October 06, 2011 @05:46PM

coondoggie writes: "In what it says is the largest False Claims Act settlement it has ever collected, the US General Services Administration will get $199.5 million plus interest from Oracle for "failing to meet their contractual obligations.""

Submission + - After Six Days of Outages, BofA Claims It Hasn't B (computerworld.com)

Submitted by Lucas123 on Wednesday October 05, 2011 @03:59PM

Lucas123 writes: After six days of spotty service and outages with its online and mobile sites, Bank of America today said it has not been the victim of a denial of service attack, hacking or malware. Yet, the bank has set up a new homepage that it says will help customers navigate to the proper online service. Internet monitoring service Keynote said the outage is unprecedented in banking. 'I don't think we've seen as significant and as long an outage with any bank. And I've been with Keynote for 16 years now,' said Shawn White, vice president of operations for web monitoring service Keynote Systems. In the meantime, a BofA spokeswoman continued to devulge what might be happening, saying 'We're not going to get into the technical details. We're not going to comment on the technicalities of what we do.' Speculation among experts has been that the site is under attack.

Submission + - What Monty Python Teaches Us About Computing

Submitted by

Esther Schindler

on Monday April 18, 2011 @11:35AM

Esther Schindler writes: "Does the computer industry seem just a little too strange? Never fear: Monty Python encapsulated several nuggets of wisdom years ago that summarize exactly what is behind the sometimes-tawdry behavior of vendors, the open source community, and marketing departments."

Submission + - Neutrons could test Newton's gravity and string th (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by NotSanguine on Monday April 18, 2011 @11:27AM

NotSanguine writes: A pioneering technique using subatomic particles known as neutrons could give microscopic hints of extra dimensions or even dark matter, researchers say.

The idea rests on probing any minuscule variations in gravity as it acts on slow-moving neutrons in a tiny cavity.

A Nature Physics report outlines how neutrons were made to hop from one gravitational quantum state to another.

Submission + - Titan May Have Ocean (technologyreview.com)

Submitted by olsmeister on Monday April 18, 2011 @10:15AM

olsmeister writes: In the seven years Cassini has spent orbiting Saturn, the spacecraft has sent back mountains of data that has changed our view of the ringed planet and its moons. Saturn's largest moon, Titan, has been a particular focus of attention because of its dense, complex atmosphere, its weather and its lakes and oceans.

Now it looks as if Titan is even stranger still. The evidence comes from careful observations of Titan's orbit and rotation. This indicates that Titan has an orbit similar to our Moon's: it always presents the same face towards Saturn and its axis of rotation tilts by about 0.3 degrees.

Together, these data allow astronomers to work out Titan's moment of inertia and this throws up something interesting. The numbers indicate that Titan's moment of inertia can only be explained if it is a solid body that is denser near the surface than it is at its centre.

Comment "Utopia" comment reminds me of "Raising Arizona" (Score 1) 1277

by carusoj on Wednesday March 09, 2011 @10:41AM (#35429328) Attached to: Utah To Teach USA is a Republic, Not a Democracy

"I saw an old couple being visited by their children, and all their grandchildren too. The old couple weren't screwed up. And neither were their kids or their grandkids. And I don't know. You tell me. This whole dream, was it wishful thinking? Was I just fleeing reality like I know I'm liable to do? But me and Ed, we can be good too. And it seemed real. It seemed like us and it seemed like, well, our home. If not Arizona, then a land not too far away. Where all parents are strong and wise and capable and all children are happy and beloved. I don't know. Maybe it was Utah. "

Submission + - Ex-Microsoft CTO writes $625 cookbook (networkworld.com)

Submitted by

carusoj

on Wednesday March 09, 2011 @10:01AM

carusoj writes: "Nathan Myhrvold, Microsoft's first CTO, made his mark in the tech world. Now he's cemented his place in the world of cooking and food science with the publication of a groundbreaking six-volume, 2,438-page cookbook. Some of the techniques in Myhrvold's "Modernist Cuisine" are intimidating, to put it mildly, calling for such daunting ingredients as liquid nitrogen and equipment such as centrifuges and rotor-stator homogenizers. But Myhrvold and his co-authors insist that the majority of recipes can be made in a conventional home kitchen — with a few recommended, inexpensive extras such as a digital gram scale and water bath for sous vide cooking."

Submission + - Geekiest marriage proposals ever (networkworld.com)

Submitted by carusoj on Tuesday February 08, 2011 @11:16PM

carusoj writes: Just in time for Valentine's Day, here's a collection of marriage proposals done in true geek fashion — from hacked video games, to an iPhone app, to CmdrTaco's own 2002 proposal here on Slashdot.

Submission + - Ballmer says 90% of Chinese users steal software (networkworld.com)

Submitted by jbrodkin on Friday January 21, 2011 @02:18PM

jbrodkin writes: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer used the official state visit of Chinese President Hu Jintao as an opportunity to complaint that 90% of Microsoft software users in China didn't pay for the products. The comments were part of a discussion with Barack Obama and the Chinese president about intellectual property protection. According to a White House transcript, Obama said in a press conference that "we were just in a meeting with business leaders, and Steve Ballmer of Microsoft pointed out that their estimate is that only 1 customer in every 10 of their products is actually paying for it in China." Obama didn't detail any specific measures the U.S. and China would take to help Microsoft and other vendors fighting software piracy. "The Chinese government has, to its credit, taken steps to better enforce intellectual property," Obama said. "We've got further agreement as a consequence of this state visit. And I think President Hu would acknowledge that more needs to be done." Microsoft did not say how it calculated the statistic that 90% of Chinese users aren't paying for Microsoft software.

Submission + - Is retaliation the answer to cyber attacks? (networkworld.com)

Submitted by coondoggie on Friday January 21, 2011 @11:50AM

coondoggie writes: Should revenge assaults be just another security tool large IT shops use to counter cyber attacks? It's a controversial idea, and the law generally frowns on cyber attacks in general, but at the Black Hat DC conference last week, some speakers took up the issue of whether and how organizations should counterattack against adversaries clearly using attack tools to break into and subvert corporate data security.

Submission + - NVIDIA's New Flagship GeForce GTX 580 Tested (hothardware.com)

Submitted by

MojoKid

on Tuesday November 09, 2010 @10:12AM

MojoKid writes: "Even before NVIDIA's GF100 GPU-based GeForce GTX 480 officially arrived, there were a myriad of reports claiming the cards would be hot, loud, and consume a lot of power. Of course, NVIDIA knew that well before the first card ever hit store shelves, so the company got to work on a revision of the GPU and card itself that would attempt to address these concerns. Today the company has launched the GeForce GTX 580 and as its name suggests, it's a next-gen product, but the GF110 GPU powering the card is largely unchanged from the GF100 in terms of its features. However, refinements have been made to the design and manufacturing of the chip, along with its cooling solution and PCB. In short, the GeForce GTX 580 turned out to be the fastest, single-GPU on the market currently. It can put up in-game benchmark scores between 30% and 50% faster than AMD's current flagship single-GPU, the Radeon HD 5870. Take synthetic tests like Unigine into account and the GTX 580 can be up to twice as fast."

Submission + - AMD's New Radeon HD 6870 and 6850 Cards Debut (hothardware.com)

Submitted by

MojoKid

on Thursday October 21, 2010 @10:52PM

MojoKid writes: "AMD has officially launched their new Radeon HD 6800 series of graphics cards and the company has managed to drive cost and power consumption out of the product, while increasing performance efficiencies in the architecture. The Radeon HD 6870 and Radeon HD 6850 are new midrange cards that offer similar performance to previous generation high-end offerings, but at significantly lower price points and with an enhanced tessellation engine for better support of next generation DX11 game engines. The cards compete well with NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 470 and 460 products, besting them in some scenarios but trailing in others. Word is AMD is readying their flagship high-end Radeon 6900 family for release in Q4 as well."

Facebook and the "Social Graph" 200

Posted by CmdrTaco on Thursday April 22, 2010 @10:46AM from the enough-with-the-farmville dept.

itwbennett writes "Peter Smith is blogging about day 1 of the Facebook F8 conference and Mark Zuckerberg's vision for Facebook, which, as it turns out, is somewhat confusing: 'Zuckerberg clearly sees Facebook as a service. Facebook Connect (the name) is going away and being replaced by the Facebook Platform. "Share on Facebook" buttons are being replaced with "Like on Facebook" buttons. And Comcast is now called Xfinity. ... What does it all mean to the end user? There's a new API to fetch data from Facebook more easily, which sounds great, if only I could figure out why I'd want to do that. The overall tone of the keynote was that Facebook was serious business and they were going to build the Social Graph, a vast network of connections between people and the things they like. Zuckerberg was a man with a mission.'"

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