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Submitting a review for consideration is easy; please first read Slashdot's book review guidelines. Updated: 20051129 by hemos

Games: PS3 Launch Details Announced

Posted by Zonk on Monday May 08, @09:49PM
from the that's-a-lot-of-quarters dept.
Sony's conference offered up reassurance that a number of their titles will be playable at this year's E3. The controller will sense movement, allowing the player to move an onscreen avatar 'naturally'. They also released the system's launch details. The North American PS3 launch will occur on Nov. 17th, 2006. The 20GB HDD version will retail for $499, and the 60GB HDD version will go for $599. They promise 4 million launch units by December 31st.

BSD: Interview With the PC-BSD Team

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday May 08, @09:28PM
from the user-friendly-depends-so-much-on-the-user dept.
GeekyBodhi writes "FOSSEngineer.com has an interview with a couple of guys from the PC-BSD development team after the distro recently released their first stable version 1.0. PC-BSD is built on top of FreeBSD and aims to dumb down installation and daily usage, enabling a non-technical user to run it as his primary desktop. The guys talk about their pre-release journey, features unique to PC-BSD and why a minimal installation system is a good thing."

Ask Slashdot: Cutting Off an Over-Demanding End-User?

Posted by Cliff on Monday May 08, @08:55PM
from the gently-saying-"no" dept.
SpaceNeeded asks: "Numbers of you will probably recognize the start of the situation. Because I work with systems, I perform occasional builds. This occasionally crosses over to support (especially where it's my kit I'm asked to support). This isn't a problem, nor is it a problem when I get the occasional support query from someone I haven't supplied a system to, but who needs assistance. This is all well and good, but I've had pretty poor year personally. I've lost two relatives and a third is in a pretty bad way in hospital. An eleven year relationship ended a couple of months back, and I'm now having to perform _all_ the domestic tasks that used to be shared. Between these few things and my regular job I'm finding I have a whole lot less time to allow to support calls. What methods do you know of for gently cutting off someone, support-wise?"

Developers: Mainframe Programming to Make a Comeback?

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday May 08, @07:34PM
from the now-hiring-bofh dept.
ajw1976 writes to tell us that IBM has released a series of announcements today "introducing many new software tools, academic programs, and support for outside developers." The new releases are designed to help entice programmers and businesses back to the mainframe. From the article: "The announcements, according to analysts briefed on them in advance, signal a shift from defense to offense in the company's mainframe strategy. Last month, I.B.M. introduced a machine priced at $100,000, about half the previous starting price for its mainframes, which can run up to several million dollars. The announcement of the low-end mainframe was made in China, which I.B.M. regards as a promising market for the machines."

Hardware: Chip Power Breakthrough Reported by Startup

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday May 08, @06:29PM
from the processor-still-suit dept.
Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "The Wall Street Journal reports that a tiny Silicon Valley firm, Multigig, is proposing a novel way to synchronize the operations of computer chips, addressing power-consumption problems facing the semiconductor industry. From the article: 'John Wood, a British engineer who founded Multigig in 2000, devised an approach that involves sending electrical signals around square loop structures, said Haris Basit, Multigig's chief operating officer. The regular rotation works like the tick of a conventional clock, while most of the electrical power is recycled, he said. The technology can achieve 75% power savings over conventional clocking approaches, the company says.'"

IT: More Headaches from Vista Security

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday May 08, @05:22PM
from the bottle-of-pain-medication-shipped-with-every-sale dept.
Michael Cooney writes to tell us Windows Vista may have some serious headaches in store for corporate users with third-party authentication systems like VPNs. From the article: "ISVs say rewriting their code for the new architecture will produce headaches that will extend to their customers that have deployed strong authentication such as biometrics or tokens, enterprise single sign-on and a number of other systems integrated with the Windows authentication architecture."

Games: 40% of Adults Play Games 43 of 60 comments

Hardware: Day of the Robotic Tentacle

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday May 08, @04:16PM
from the of-course-they-will-do-a-sequel dept.
holy_calamity writes "New Scientist is reporting on a robotic tentacle developed thanks to funding from military agency DARPA. From the video it looks to have a lot of potential, I can almost feel it fastening around my ankle right now."

Developers: Vendor Pays OSS Developers for Enterprise Support

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday May 08, @03:11PM
from the hard-niche-to-fill dept.
Anonymous Coward writes "eWeek is reporting that a company called OpenLogic is paying qualified experts in the open-source community to provide enterprise support for projects they are intimately familiar with. OpenLogic calls its new initiative its Expert Community program."

Hardware: Cox May replace its own DVRs with TiVos

Posted by Hemos on Monday May 08, @02:02PM
from the eat-a-box dept.
Controlio writes "According to a posting by user BrettStah on the TiVo Community Forums, Cox Cable is currently circulating a survey to gauge customer's interest in TiVo services. From the survey, 'While Cox currently offers its own DVR service, the Cox DVR may soon be powered by TiVo, and include the features that TiVo owners have come to expect. If Cox were to offer digital cable service with a TiVo branded DVR for about the same price as you are currently paying for satellite service each month, how likely would you be to switch from satellite TV to Cox cable that featured this TiVo branded DVR service?'"

Games: The Hidden Gems of E3 39 of 54 comments

IT: Vim 7 Released

Posted by Hemos on Monday May 08, @12:58PM
from the time-to-get-your-upgrade-on dept.
houseofmore writes "After many years of development, Bram Moolenaar, creator of Vim, today announced version 7 of the widely used editor. New features included spell checking in up to 50 languages, intelligent completion, tab pages, extended undo branches and much more. Downloads available here for Unix, Windows, Mac and more."

Games: The Public's First Look at Wii

Posted by Zonk on Monday May 08, @12:31PM
from the it's-named-what-now dept.
isaacklinger writes "Time Magazine reports how it feels to play with the Wii. Overall it's a very enthusiastic review." From the Gamespot coverage: "Grossman traveled to Nintendo's headquarters in Kyoto, Japan, and was shown the Wii by legendary game designer Shigeru Miyamoto. The reporter was especially impressed with the Wii's controller. 'It's part laser pointer and part motion sensor, so it knows where you're aiming it, when and how fast you move it and how far it is from the TV screen ... There's a strong whiff of voodoo about it.'" Update: 05/08 16:50 GMT by Z : Ran into a registration screen when I tried for the original article, but eldavojohn had more luck than I. The original Time article is available for reading.

Games: Jack Thompson Weighs in on Oblivion

Posted by Zonk on Monday May 08, @11:59AM
from the zonk-smash dept.
Robotron23 writes "Jack Thompson has commenced his attack on The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion by seeking appearances on several talk shows. A press release announcing his availability speaks of Take Two not having 'learned its lesson' over the Hot Coffee scandal, before continuing to detail the issues surrounding Oblivion's re-rating, in particular regarding nudity - concluding that the game content will spawn 'an even worse disaster' than occurred during Hot Coffee."

Hardware: Intel Names Upcoming Chips

Posted by Hemos on Monday May 08, @11:31AM
from the duo-squared1 dept.
Phooey42 writes "USA Today is reporting that Intel has finally announced names for their new set of desktop and notebook processor lines, previously dubbed Conroe and Merom. The new chips for both the desktop and laptop lines will be dubbed "Core 2 Duo", whereas their new "premium processor" for high end desktop users will be called the "Core 2 Extreme". Knowing Intel, who would have ever thought that the successor to the Core Duo would be the Core 2 Duo!?"

IT: What Happened to Blue Security

Posted by Hemos on Monday May 08, @10:51AM
from the bad-news-for-anti-spam dept.
shadowknot writes "Blue Security has published a detailed account of the attack on their servers perpetrated by spammer "PharmaMaster". The attack included a DDoS attack on the Blue Security operational system and a Black Hole filtering attack on the Blue Security website. From the article: "The first attack was to block worldwide access to Blue Security's corporate website (www.bluesecurity.com) by tampering with the Internet backbone using a technique called "Blackhole Filtering". The Second attack was a DDoS attack on Blue Security's operational system."

Microkernel: The Comeback?

Posted by Hemos on Monday May 08, @10:07AM
from the time-to-hash-this-out-all-again dept.
bariswheel writes "In a paper co-authored by the Microkernel Maestro Andrew Tanenbaum, the fragility of modern kernels are addressed: "Current operating systems have two characteristics that make them unreliable and insecure: They are huge and they have very poor fault isolation. The Linux kernel has more than 2.5 million lines of code; the Windows XP kernel is more than twice as large." Consider this analogy: "Modern ships have multiple compartments within the hull; if one compartment springs a leak, only that one is flooded, not the entire hull. Current operating systems are like ships before compartmentalization was invented: Every leak can sink the ship." Clearly one argument here is security and reliability has surpassed performance in terms of priorities. Let's see if our good friend Linus chimes in here; hopefully we'll have ourselves another friendly conversation."

2006 Nebula Awards

Posted by Hemos on Monday May 08, @09:35AM
from the in-the-news-today dept.
Embedded Geek writes "Locus is reporting on the winners of the 2006 Nebula Awards (as determined by voting by fellow SF authors). Joe Haldeman picked up the Novel award for Camouflage while Kelly Link took home both the Novella ("Magic for Beginners") and Novelette ("The Faery Handbag"). Off the printed page, Joss Whedon beat out Battlestar Galactica with his script for Serenity. You can check out the final ballot here or look at past winners here."

Hardware: SGI Files Chapter 11 Bankruptcy

Posted by Hemos on Monday May 08, @08:53AM
from the yet-again dept.
audi100quattro writes "The WSJ has a story about SGI filing for bankruptcy, but the SGI Investor's Relation page doesn't say anything." Nothing else really known at this point, but this is not unexpected.

IT: Mother of Internet Speaks Out

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday May 08, @08:25AM
from the now-that's-a-big-baby dept.
Anonymous Coward writes to tell us that Radia Perlman, sometimes called the "Mother of the Internet" for her invention of the spanning tree algorithm used by bridges and switches, recently gave a very candid interview with NetworkWorld. From the interview: "The taste of whoever is in the funding agencies tends to cause everyone to look at the same stuff at the same time. Often technologies get hot then go away. There was active networking for a while, which always mystified me and has now died. In security the money is behind digital rights management, which I think ultimately is a bad thing -- not that we need to preserve the right to pirate music, but because the solutions are things that don't solve the real problems in terms of security."

Apple: Apple vs Apple -- Judgment Day

Posted by Hemos on Monday May 08, @07:59AM
from the two-man-enter-one-man-leave dept.
DaphneDiane writes "According to the Times Online Apple Computer successfully defended themselves vs the suit brought by Apple Corps." If you are looking for background on the case we had talked about it earlier. I'm just relieved that the battle of two bazillion dollar companies turned out well. Phew. And, of course, Apple Corp has filed an appeal already.

Linux: What Can Mandriva Linux 2006 Mean for Home Users?

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday May 08, @05:32AM
from the just-get-their-feet-wet dept.
sitor writes "What can Mandriva Linux 2006 mean for home users? is an article giving an extensive explanation about the pro's and con's of using a linux distribution such as Mandriva Linux 2006. It was written with people in mind that are in doubt whether linux might be something for them or not. It aims to inform them in a neutral way, understandable to newbies. Next time you have someone asking you questions about Linux not knowing whether they should try, you can just direct them to this article."

IT: Computer Security, The Next 50 Years

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday May 08, @02:17AM
from the just-don't-forget-physical-security dept.
bariswheel writes "Alan Cox, fellow at Red Hat Linux, gives a short-and-sweet talk at the European OSCON on the The Next 50 Years of Computer Security. Implementations of modularity, Trusted Computing hardware, 'separation of secrets,' and overcoming the challenge of users not reading dialog boxes, will be crucial milestones as we head on to the future. He states: "As security improves, we need to keep building things which are usable, which are turned on by default, which means understanding users is the target for the next 50 years. You don't buy a car with optional bumpers. You can have a steering wheel fitted if you like, but it comes with a spike by default." All of this has to be shipped in a way that doesn't stop the user from doing things."

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