rb2297 - Slashdot User

OLED Film Could Provide Cheap Night Vision For Cars 120

Posted by timothy on Thursday April 29, 2010 @02:13PM from the want-sunglasses-like-this dept.

thecarchik writes "Night vision systems are already available in the higher-end luxury sedans from companies like Toyota, Volvo, BMW, and Mercedes-Benz. It's expensive technology that few drivers can afford, and at $4,000 for the system without a display, it's a pricey upgrade. That may all change soon, as DARPA-funded scientists have developed a cheap way to turn any infrared light into visible light with a thin film."

Comment FogBugz (Score 1) 428

by rb2297 on Wednesday December 16, 2009 @09:41PM (#30467758) Attached to: What Does Everyone Use For Task/Project Tracking?

Hi,

Having just gone through replacing our old bug tracker, Arctic, we choose to replace it with FogBugz. I looked at about every bug tracker out there, and for our needs FogBugz was the best fit. It has a Tracker, WIKI, and Forums built in and supports importing bugs/wikis from some of the more well known alternatives. It also has an XML based API which we have found very usefull and well documented. I would defiantly recommend checking them out, they have a free 45 day trial.

Submission + - Recommending a secure OS to the Dalai Lama

Submitted by

Jamyang (Greg Walton)

on Saturday April 18, 2009 @01:09PM

Jamyang (Greg Walton) writes: "I am editor of the Infowar Monitor and co-author of the recent report, Tracking Ghostnet. I have been asked by the Office of His Holiness, the Dalai Lama (OHHDL) and the Tibetan Government in Exile (TGIE) to offer some policy recommendations in light of the ongoing targeted malware attacks directed at the Tibetan community worldwide. Some of the recommendations are relatively straightforward. For example, I will suggest that OHHDL convene an international Board of Advisers, bringing together some of the brightest minds in computer and international security to advise the Tibetans, and that the new Tibetan university stands up a Certified Ethical Hacking course. However, one of the more controversial moves being actively debated by Tibetans on the Dharamsala IT Group [DITG] list, is a mass migration of the exile community (including the government) to Linux, particularly since all of the samples of targeted malware collected exploit vulnerabilities in Windows. I would be very interested to hear Slashdot readers opinions on this debated here. Allow me to play devil's advocate for a moment here: in the short term, moving to a platform that is perhaps less familiar to the attacker provides considerable relief, but it is essentially less difficult to write exploits for Mac OS/Linux than it is for Windows, given the many anti-exploitation mechanisms Microsoft has embedded in the last years, so in the long run, if the attackers want your data, the entire move is moot. People should choose a platform based on their productivity requirements instead of purely security. Furthermore, most of the web servers broken into during these attacks (to be used as command and control servers) were not Windows, but Linux. What do you think? (While I have the floor I'd also like to take this opportunity to plug two initiatives where Slashdot readers can directly help the Tibetan tech community, either through sharing your expertise or your cash! Firstly, one of the obstacles to migrating to Linux for a Tibetan speaker is the lack of decent Tibetan font — can you help? Secondly, Avaaz is raising funds for projects that will help End The Blackout in Tibet, including a proposal to support the deployment of Psiphon's circumvention network. Thanks, or in Tibetan, thuk.je.che!"

Comment Re:Devolution (Score 1) 195

by rb2297 on Tuesday March 24, 2009 @06:34PM (#27320541) Attached to: Chimps Have a Built-In GPS

You are posting on slashdot, therefore we all know you do not have any ex girlfriends.

iPhone App Causes Google To Shut Down SMS Service 420

Posted by kdawson on Sunday March 15, 2009 @05:35AM from the free-as-in-no-longer dept.

An anonymous reader writes "A few days ago, Inner Fence released a paid iPhone app called Infinite SMS, which let iPhone users employ Google's free SMS gateway to send SMS messages without paying their service providers. The resulting surge in traffic on Google's SMS gateway forced Google to block all third-party applications from using the free SMS feature — including Google's own GTalk client."

Navigate the Linux Kernel Like Google Maps 77

Posted by timothy on Thursday March 12, 2009 @06:26PM from the where's-my-house dept.

MakeLinux writes with a link to a cool interactive map of the kernel: "A picture is worth a thousand words. Just try it, and navigate the Linux kernel like Google Maps."

Marijuana Could Prevent Alzheimer's, New Study 807

Posted by timothy on Tuesday January 27, 2009 @10:36AM from the that's-just-like-your-opinion-man dept.

Chickan writes "'A puff a day might keep Alzheimer's away, according to marijuana research by professor Gary Wenk and associate professor Yannic Marchalant of the Ohio State Department of Psychology. Wenk's studies show that a low dosage in the morning of a certain canavanoid, a component in marijuana, reversed memory loss in older rats' brains. In his study, an experimental group of old rats received a dosage, and a control group of rats did not. The old rats that received the drugs performed better on memory tests, and the drug slowed and prevented brain cell death.' My fine university's dollars at work!" Maybe it works even better in combination with brain-preserving sips of coffee.

PlayStation Home Beta Opens to the Public 206

Posted by Soulskill on Friday December 12, 2008 @09:12PM from the where-are-the-rocket-launchers dept.

Yesterday Sony launched the open beta for PlayStation Home, the virtual world designed for PlayStation Network community members. Eurogamer has an in-depth look at the features of Home. They point out some glaring weaknesses, such as a poor communication system, a flawed business model, and the inability to form groups without entering games, something the recently revamped Xbox interface does better. "It's not alienating, it's easy to identify with, and the socialising and advertising are entirely in context. But you're left pondering the inevitable question: why would you want to spend any time here?" Home's debut to the public saw a few typical launch-day problems, but Sony was quick to address them and get things back on track. Gizmodo has some screenshots and basic information available.

Oracle Adds Data-integrity Code To Linux Kernel 53

Posted by timothy on Thursday December 11, 2008 @04:10PM from the put-your-trust-in-larry dept.

jazir1979 writes "ZDNet is reporting that Oracle has added code to the Linux kernel for ensuring data integrity. The code has been developed in partnership with Emulex and was recently accepted into the 2.6.27 kernel release." According to the article, "The code adds metadata to data at rest or in transit, to monitor whether that data has been corrupted. It helps make sure that I/O operations are valid by looking at that metadata — which acts as verification information — exchanged during data transmissions."

Comment Kturtle (Score 1) 962

by rb2297 on Wednesday December 10, 2008 @10:48PM (#26069705) Attached to: Best Introduction To Programming For Bright 11-14-Year-Olds?

Kturtle or one of the other available apps that allows you to program in Turtle Graphics. I learned Turtle Graphics on our 8086 when I was 8, it was a good introduction to programming and it was fun for me as a kid as I got to see quick results, by running the program as your write the different steps...

Bell Canada Ordered To Justify Traffic-Shaping Practices 140

Posted by CmdrTaco on Monday June 23, 2008 @10:54AM from the nice-shape-ya-got-there dept.

somecanuckchick writes "The Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) has ordered Bell Canada to justify its traffic-shaping practices. The Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission on Thursday told the company it has until June 23 to make public data that was marked confidential in a May 29 filing. Bell had said it needed to keep quiet the information, which details the level of internet traffic and possible congestion on its network, for competitive reasons."

Multiple Security Holes In Ruby 1.8, 1.9 148

Posted by kdawson on Monday June 23, 2008 @08:07AM from the that-ain't-good dept.

ruphus13 notes a six-pack of serious vulnerabilities discovered in Ruby by a member of Apple's security team, Drew Yao. Patches are linked from the ruby-lang.org advisory. "With the following vulnerabilities, an attacker can lead to denial of service condition or execute arbitrary code... These vulnerabilities are likely to crop up in just about any average ruby web application. And by 'crop up' I mean 'crop up exploitable from trivial user-specified parameters.' It's not hard to begin imagining cases where Ruby/Rails programmers use code similar to the samples above to routinely handle user input."

Wii Update 3.3 Defeats Twilight Hack, Freeloader 125

Posted by timothy on Wednesday June 18, 2008 @03:51PM from the wii-wii-wii-all-the-way-home dept.

Richter X writes "The newest update to the Nintendo Wii's Menu, version 3.3, contains code specifically designed to find and kill the popular Twilight Hack used by homebrewers to play unauthorized code on the Wii. The update also prevents the Freeloader software used to play imported games on the Wii. However, it does not seem to affect the Homebrew Channel in Wiis that already have it installed. The updated code is currently being researched in order to find what code has been changed. So far it has been confirmed that Nintendo included specific instructions to target the Twilight Hack. Work is also being done to update the Twilight Hack in order to bypass this new code."

KDE 4.0 Beta 1 Released 249

Posted by Zonk on Thursday August 02, 2007 @05:06PM from the and-they-are-just-giving-it-away-this-time dept.

dbhost writes "Along with this morning's cup of coffee and log reviews, I discovered that the KDE team is moving forward with a long awaited beta release of KDE 4.0 beta release of KDE 4.0. The most interesting item I found in the notes is that the file manager in KDE is being separated from Konqueror into a component called Dolphin. Also, according to the announcement, konsole has been treated to a number of improvements such as split view, and history highlighting."

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