CmdrTaco - Slashdot User

Submission + - Car windows might become touchscreens (pcauthority.com.au) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 27, 2011 @12:29AM

An anonymous reader writes: As if we need more proof that touchscreens are all the rage, designers are dreaming up ways to put them in cars. In the video found here, a child gazes wistfully out the window at a dreary countryside. Fields roll by, a lake, cyclists, trees that have lost their leaves. The car stops, and the child starts "drawing" on the window. The article includes fascinating videos showing how touchscreens might infiltrate our lives in the future.

Feed Wired: Stunning New Planetary Nebulae Unveiled (wired.com)

From feed by feedfeeder on Tuesday July 26, 2011 @11:53AM

Submission + - Trade Of Google+1 "likes" : A Lucrative Business (itproportal.com)

Submitted by siliconbits on Tuesday July 26, 2011 @11:48AM

siliconbits writes: Selling Google+1 "likes" is gradually becoming a rather lucrative business, helped by cheap labour and ever-falling internet access worldwide; the trend is not unlike what we saw previously with Twitter & Digg during the days except that this has a more widespread implication for SEO and could turn the nascent social networking service into a massive headache for Google as many try to game the system. Google+1 selling sites like Googleplus1supply, buygoogleplus1 or Blackcatseo have cropped up during the last few months — amongst so many other websites — with the sole aim of selling Google+1 "likes" to publishers and businesses.

Submission + - Alternatives to Gmail (web and IMAP, paid) 2

Submitted by TheGratefulNet on Tuesday July 26, 2011 @11:00AM

TheGratefulNet writes: I want to cut the cord with google and the first step is to find a good email/ISP provider. With all the snooping going on (by governments and the data center raids that happen in the US), I'd like to find an *offshore* (maybe Europe?) provider who emphasizes 'freedom' aspects, such as end to end security, data encryption on local disks, keeping absolute minimal logs/purging them frequently; as well as having a decent enough set of spam filters that they actively maintain. I *want* to pay for the sevice since I don't want ads or to have to spend time blocking stuff. I'd like to support a right-thinking ISP; are there any left, out there? Help me find a trusted offshore ISP that will likely be around and who does not do DPI and other evil things. Any recommendations for well-behaved ISPs out there?

Submission + - MS suggests heating homes with "data furnaces" (extremetech.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 26, 2011 @08:21AM

An anonymous reader writes: With a temperature of around 40-50C (104-122F), the exhaust from a rack of cloud servers could be a very cost-effective way of heating your house, according to researchers from Microsoft and the University of Virginia. Dubbed the “Data Furnace,” these racks would be hot enough to completely replace the heating and hot water system in a house or office. Instead of building mega data centers, Data Furnaces would be micro data furnaces in residential areas, providing free heating and ultra-low-latency cloud services to nearby web surfers. Microsoft Research thinks that with remote sensor networks, encryption, and other safety measures, lack of physical security won't be an issue.

Submission + - Consumers Want iPhone 5, Sight Unseen (eweekeurope.co.uk)

Submitted by

judgecorp

on Tuesday July 26, 2011 @06:27AM

judgecorp writes: "Apple's iPhone 5 is not announced yet, but 35 percent of consumers say they will buy it, when it comes out, even though they know nothing about it.

The figure comes from an online survey of 3,000 US consumers by Experian’s PriceGrabber shopping website."

Submission + - Cast-off gadgets peek into new owners' lives (cnet.com)

Submitted by

Eric Smalley

on Monday July 25, 2011 @10:55AM

Eric Smalley writes: "For the project, dubbed Backtalk, researchers sent refurbished Netbooks to developing countries via nonprofit organizations. They set up the computers to record location and pictures, and send the data home to MIT--with their new owners' consent... The MIT team used the data to build visual narratives about the computers' new lives."

Submission + - Geeky volunteer work? 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 25, 2011 @10:53AM

An anonymous reader writes: I plan to be in-between jobs for 1-2 months later this year and use part of this time to do some volunteer work in Africa. My naive question: what to do and where to go? Is it possible to make good use of the skill-set of a typical geek? Any interesting projects worth supporting on-site?

Submission + - How dangerous is it to rely on MD5? (wordpress.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 25, 2011 @10:16AM

An anonymous reader writes: In the middle of the UK's "hackgate" scandal LulzSec banjaxed the web site for News International's "Sun" newspaper, the biggest seller in the UK market. They then claimed to have cracked passwords at the Sun encrypted using MD5 — an algorithm long known to be flawed. But are MD5's vulnerabilities really something to worry about? Some security experts put down fears about MD5 to hype — it can be cracked but the crack is of little practical use.

Submission + - Ubuntu 11.10 Down to 12-Second Boot (crn.com)

Submitted by deadeyefred on Monday July 25, 2011 @09:53AM

deadeyefred writes: Even though it's still only in alpha, it appears as though the forthcoming version of Ubuntu, version 11.10, will be much faster than earlier versions according to this story. It looks as if the switch from GDM to LightDM will have a significant impact as Ubuntu gets closer to "instant on" status.

Submission + - Scientists: Time Travel Impossible (discovery.com)

Submitted by smitty777 on Sunday July 24, 2011 @09:18PM

smitty777 writes: Dr. Du Shengwang of the University of Hong Kong has performed a study he claims proves that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, thus making time travel impossible. FTA, the team has "proved that a single photon, or unit of light, "obeys the traffic law of the universe."Einstein claimed that the speed of light was the traffic law of the universe or in simple language, nothing can travel faster than light," the university said on its website."

Submission + - NASA's Hubble Discovers Another Moon Around Pluto (nasa.gov)

Submitted by thebchuckster on Wednesday July 20, 2011 @10:24AM

thebchuckster writes: Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope discovered a fourth moon orbiting the icy dwarf planet Pluto. The tiny, new satellite – temporarily designated P4 — was uncovered in a Hubble survey searching for rings around the dwarf planet.

The new moon is the smallest discovered around Pluto. It has an estimated diameter of 8 to 21 miles (13 to 34 km). By comparison, Charon, Pluto's largest moon, is 648 miles (1,043 km) across, and the other moons, Nix and Hydra, are in the range of 20 to 70 miles in diameter (32 to 113 km).

Submission + - Is this a real Apple Store? (wordpress.com)

Submitted by

mask.of.sanity

on Wednesday July 20, 2011 @09:31AM

mask.of.sanity writes: "Or is it the greatest rip-off you've ever seen? It has "Apple Store" on the front. The blogger, a resident of Kunming, China where the store is located, says Apple does not use "Apple Store and believes that its a fake. Vote here."

Submission + - FBI Arrests 12 in 'Anonymous' Hackers Probe (computerworld.com) 1

Submitted by JohnBert on Wednesday July 20, 2011 @09:27AM

JohnBert writes: The FBI has reportedly arrested more than 12 people in what appears to be a nationwide crackdown against alleged members of the Anonymous hacking group. News of the arrests in California, New Jersey and Florida was reported today by Fox News and CBS News. Both stories were based on information from unnamed sources.

Spokesmen from the FBI's national office in Washington and from its field offices in San Francisco and New York confirmed to Computerworld that the agency had carried out law enforcement actions related to an ongoing cybercrime investigation. However they would neither confirm nor deny the arrests or name the group that was being investigated.

A spokespersons from the FBI's Washington office and its San Francisco field office hinted that a statement related to today's action would be released shortly.

Submission + - Google Now Alerts Users to Malware Infections (threatpost.com)

Submitted by Trailrunner7 on Wednesday July 20, 2011 @08:04AM

Trailrunner7 writes: Google is taking the unusual step of displaying a message at the top of its search results pages for some users, alerting them to the fact that their computers may be infected with malware. The action is the result of an investigation in which the search giant discovered that some malware-infected PCs were sending their search requests through one of a number of proxies.

The move by Google is an unprecedented one, and may mark the beginning of a shift in the way that the company and others--such as Microsoft, Yahoo and Facebook--that have massive presences on the Web and see enormous amounts of traffic deal with the issue of their users' security. Many ISPs in Europe and some in the United States have taken to actively warning their customers when they have an infection and some go so far as to prevent the offending machine from accessing the Internet until it's cleaned.

Google's move is slightly different, though, as the company is not taking any active measures to stop users from moving around the Web, but is just showing them a warning that calls attention to the fact that their PCs may be infested with malware. The company said that it hit upon the idea after discovering some unusual traffic during a maintenance window on one of its data centers.

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