A collection of stories tagged 'solution' from Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/ Copyright 2006 RoomforMilk.com. RoomforMilk is not affiliated with Slashdot.org. Sat, 22 Nov 2008 06:27:41 EST Meeting in Minneapolis this week, the Internet engineering community is debating whether to aggressively fashion and apply fixes for the so-called Kaminsky bug in the DNS discovered this summer, or to simply let its threat stand as motivation for all to move with greater speed toward DNSSEC, which is considered the best long-term security solution. Problem with the latter approach is that DNSSEC has been in the works for a decade already, no one is confident it will be universally embraced, and the Kaminsky flaw is causing real problems today.Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/26295 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/M9hTjV7ziuw/article.pl Thu, 20 Nov 2008 17:05:01 EST A hardened operating system used in the B1B bomber and other military aircraft has now been released commercially, after receiving the highest security rating by a National Security Agency-run certification program. Green Hills Software's Integrity-178B operating system was certified as EAL6+, which means that it can defend against well-funded and sophisticated attackers." The company is not saying how much the OS would cost a potential customer: "The system and its associated integration and consulting services are custom solutions." Both Windows and Linux are EAL 4+ certified, which means they can defend against "inadvertent and casual" security breach attempts.Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/26239 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/ohcTf28ReGY/article.pl Tue, 18 Nov 2008 18:05:06 EST Today, I was playing with the thought again to purchase an AIX workstation one day when I can afford them, and I was surprised to see that IBM is going to give its IntelliStation POWER Series workstations the boot in January '09. A black day for AIX on the desktop. I really wonder what's the problem there, warehouse costs? IBM has a history of burying its best stuff (like OS/2 for instance). Some years ago, I enjoyed hacking away on an RS/6000 workstation running AIX 4.2, and it was a pure joy. Not only the kernel, but also the admin tools, like smit and smitty. Their blade-centric solution uses Windows as a client for workstation application. This truly sounds like IBM wants AIX only for servers anymore. I'm not amused. Although, eXceed on Windows with an XDCMP server running on AIX might also be a viable solution ... whatever. But it can't beat a native POWER box sitting on your desk, that's for sure."Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/26230 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/hBuipLa5DPE/article.pl Tue, 18 Nov 2008 12:05:05 EST Discover magazine has an interesting article on the multiverse theory — a synthesis of string theory and the anthropic principle that explains why our universe seems perfectly tailored for life without invoking an intelligent creator. Our universe may be but one of perhaps infinitely many universes in an inconceivably vast multiverse. While most of those universes are barren, some, like ours, have conditions suitable for life. The idea that the universe was made just for us — known as the anthropic principle — debuted in 1973 when Brandon Carter proposed that a purely random assortment of laws would have left the universe dead and dark, and that life limits the values that physical constants can have. The anthropic principle languished on the fringes of science for years, but in 2000, new theoretical work threatened to unravel string theory when researchers calculated that the basic equations of string theory have an astronomical number of different possible solutions, perhaps as many as 101,000, with each solution representing a unique way to describe the universe. The latest iteration of string theory provides a natural explanation for the anthropic principle. If there are vast numbers of other universes, all with different properties, at least one of them ought to have the right combination of conditions to bring forth stars, planets, and living things."Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/26206 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/uTc-nyJVfCo/article.pl Mon, 17 Nov 2008 09:05:02 EST Phoronix is reporting on a new Linux driver nVidia is about to release that brings PureVideo features to Linux. This video API will reportedly be in nVidia's 180 series driver for Linux, Solaris, and *BSD. PureVideo has been around for several nVidia product generations, but it's the first time they're bringing this feature to these non-Windows operating systems to provide an improved multimedia experience. This new API is named VDPAU, and is described as: 'The Video Decode and Presentation API for Unix (VDPAU) provides a complete solution for decoding, post-processing, compositing, and displaying compressed or uncompressed video streams. These video streams may be combined (composited) with bitmap content, to implement OSDs and other application user interfaces.'"Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/26168 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/OB1zBrprSEk/article.pl Fri, 14 Nov 2008 19:05:01 EST George Washington University has today released a three-volume history of NSA activities during the Cold War (major highlights). Written by agency historian Thomas R. Johnson, the 1,000-page report, 'Cryptology During the Cold War, 1945-1989,' details some of the agency's successes and failures, its conflict with other intelligence agencies, and the questionable legal ground on which early American cryptologists worked. The report remained classified for years, until Johnson mentioned it to Matthew Aid, an intelligence historian, at an intelligence conference. Two years later, an abstract and the three current volumes of the report are now available (PDF) from GWU and the National Security Archive. Aid, author of the forthcoming history 'The Secret Sentry: The Top Secret History of the National Security Agency,' says Johnson's study shows 'refreshing openness and honesty, acknowledging both the NSA's impressive successes and abject failures during the Cold War.' A fourth volume remains classified. Johnson says in an audio interview: 'If you are performing an operation that violates a statute like FISA, it's going to come out. It always comes out.'" And reader sampas zooms in on a section in Document 6 about the growth of NSA's IT: their first Cray purchase in 1976, the growth of circuits between facilities, and internal feuds over centralized IT development vs. programmers-in-departments. "A young systems engineer named [redacted] was urging NSA to look at some technology that had been developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). In 1969 DARPA had developed a computer internetting system called ARPANET... NSA quickly adopted the DARPA solution. The project was called platform."Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/26163 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/HkpZWnlHkdI/article.pl Fri, 14 Nov 2008 14:05:01 EST An anonymous reader points out a story on the Irish Times that says "the Irish government is looking for ways to combat 'cyber-bullying' after data indicated that a significant percentage of young children are subjected to this kind of abuse via their mobile phone and popular social network accounts. The industry has been asked to come up with solutions for this problem and a government office is due to publish a guide on the issue in the near future. Surely this is a problem faced by children in all developed countries these days." Add "for the children" to the list of reasons to track the Web-site habits of mobile web users in Ireland.Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/26154 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/0qX9RPiJxh4/article.pl Fri, 14 Nov 2008 06:05:02 EST IBM, in partnership with International Broadband Electric Communications, appears to be bringing back powerline broadband back from the dead. This time, the idea is to build out in rural areas not currently serviced by broadband, and isn't for competing with other broadband solutions. From the article: "Their strategy is to sign up electric cooperatives that provide power to sparsely populated areas across the eastern United States. Rather than compete toe-to-toe with large, entrenched cable or DSL providers, IBEC is looking for customers that have been largely left out of the shift to high-speed Internet.""Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/26121 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/-lRgLw12UgA/article.pl Wed, 12 Nov 2008 21:05:46 EST Politics breeds cynicism; politicians seem to pander to contradictory focus groups to get elected, then break their promises to everyone. Mass mailings and faxings overwhelm their staffs, and who knows if you can tell your representatives what you really think? Experienced techie and political consultant Silona Bonewald (creator of the Transparent Federal Budget) believes that simple software solutions can fix these problems and more. O'Reilly News recently discussed with her how social software can improve democracy and leadership."Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/26058 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/MzbddTMipzg/article.pl Sun, 09 Nov 2008 09:05:03 EST A startup named Mgestyk Technologies claims that they have an affordable solution for 'Minority Report'-like PC control. They have released a video in which they use hand gestures to play games like Halo and Guitar Hero, as well as perform 'multi-touch' interactions for applications like Google Earth. Engadget and Gizmodo discuss the potential of the technology but point out that the system has visible lag when used for gaming. Will camera-based interfaces ever meet the low-latency demands of gaming? For how much longer will we still be using keyboards, mice and joysticks?"Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/26038 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/piY-nLu5_uw/article.pl Fri, 07 Nov 2008 20:05:09 EST IBM and Sun joined at the 2008 OpenOffice.org conference in Beijing to announce the ODF Toolkit Union. The ODF Toolkit project will be independent of the development at OpenOffice.org, and will operate under the liberal Apache license. It goes from small tools that simplify using ODF in the software development process to large ODF Java and .NET libraries that can be used within other projects. 'The future of accessing and distributing software is here today,' said Michael Bemmer, senior director of Collaboration Engineering at Sun. 'It is no longer an acceptable business practice to have silos of office document data stored in proprietary formats. The industry has moved forward and is replacing the silos with business content, such as on-premise business applications, software solutions offered over the Internet and applications supported by mobile devices that are critical in Service Oriented Architectures.' Will this help ODF to make inroads in the business world after the successes on the desktops of users at home?"Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/26037 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/LJFJ3L9_t_E/article.pl Fri, 07 Nov 2008 20:05:05 EST Researchers, oddly enough from the National Autonomous University of Mexico, have found a way to make diamond films using tequila. They were originally testing methods of creating the films with organic solutions like acetone when it was noticed the ideal ratios of water and ethanol turned out to be about 80 proof, or 40% alcohol. '"To dissipate any doubts, one morning on the way to the lab I bought a pocket-size bottle of cheap white tequila and we did some tests," Apátiga said. "We were in doubt over whether the great amount of chemicals present in tequila, other than water and ethanol, would contaminate or obstruct the process, it turned out to be not so. The results were amazing, same as with the ethanol and water compound, we obtained almost spherical shaped diamonds of nanometric size. There is no doubt; tequila has the exact proportion of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen atoms necessary to form diamonds."'"Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/26034 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/unMp1CRkzZE/article.pl Fri, 07 Nov 2008 18:05:06 EST I'm looking to integrate some highly critical solutions into what would essentially be a remote, moving datacenter. No operators will be allowed at the site, and we may be able to have a high-speed INMARSAT data link. As a backup, we're planning to have multiple redundant low-speed Iridium data links. Essentially, we're looking to be able to power up/down and reboot some computers, and be able to start/stop some programs. We're willing to write the terminal interfaces necessary for our programs, and possibly do the remote desktop thing with some of our 3rd-party programs. But what is out there that would give us this type of access, work robustly over a high-latency, low-bandwidth stream, and would be tolerant to intermittent network outages? Please hold the pick 2 of the 3 jokes, I know they're contradictory goals; I'm looking for a compromise here! These boxes would regrettably nearly all be running Windows (with some VxWorks). Does anyone out there remember those days, and have any solutions that they preferred?" Read on for a few more details of this reader's requirements.Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/25968 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/gdzPNyotm4s/article.pl Tue, 04 Nov 2008 17:05:12 EST CNet is reporting that Netflix has opened up its "Watch Instantly" feature to Mac users (here is Netflix's blog entry). They accomplished this by using Microsoft's Silverlight technology on both platforms, abandoning the Windows Media Player solution that had been employed in the first, Windows-only, version. Silverlight's DRM capabilities meet Netflix's needs, apparently. Netflix warns that this is beta software. Mac users can opt in here, then watch instantly with Safari or Firefox 2+, with the Silverlight plugin in place. Movie selection is somewhat limited.Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/25940 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/nrsIi8pDjiY/article.pl Mon, 03 Nov 2008 05:05:01 EST David Gerard passes along a posting on Google's official blog announcing that they have extended the three-nines SLA for the Premier Edition of Google Apps from Gmail alone to also cover the Calendar, Docs, Sites, and Google Talk services. 99.9% uptime translates to 45 minutes a month of downtime, and the blog post puts this in context with Gmail's historical reliability, which has been between three and four times as good over the last year (10-15 min./mo.). It also claims, based on research by an outside group, that Gmail's historical reliability beats that of in-house hosted solutions such as Groupwise and Exchange, on average. Reader Ian Lamont adds an article in The Standard that digs down into the details of the SLA, revealing for instance that outages of less than 10 minutes aren't counted against the monthly 45 minutes.Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/25936 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/H8DL9NPAkkc/article.pl Sun, 02 Nov 2008 21:05:03 EST I work for a company with 30+ locations across North America. Some offices have hundreds of employees; some only a dozen. We're looking for a secure, multi-platform IM client we could implement across the organization. One group is pushing for Microsoft's solution, but it has a number of drawbacks (including cost). What other options are out there, and what has worked well in similar situations? Security is a big concern for the company."Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/25899 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/JivDBxr6hdg/article.pl Fri, 31 Oct 2008 17:05:01 EDT coondoggie sends this excerpt from NetworkWorld: "The US Army Research Office and the National Security Agency (NSA) are together looking for some answers to their quantum physics questions. ... The Army said quantum algorithms that are developed should focus on constructive solutions [PDF] for specific tasks, and on general methodologies for expressing and analyzing algorithms tailored to specific problems — though they didn't say what those specific tasks were ... 'Investigators should presuppose the existence of a fully functional quantum computer and consider what algorithmic tasks are particularly well suited to such a machine. A necessary component of this research will be to compare the efficiency of the quantum algorithm to the best existing classical algorithm for the same problem.'"Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/25832 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/jjf6emAgNKI/article.pl Wed, 29 Oct 2008 02:05:04 EDT The Tribler BitTorrent client, a project run by researchers from several European universities and Harvard, is the first to incorporate decentralized search capabilities. With Tribler, users can now find .torrent files that are hosted among other peers, instead of on a centralized site such as The Pirate Bay or Mininova. The Tribler developers have found a way to make their client work, without having to rely on BitTorrent sites. Although others have tried to come up with similar solutions, such as the Cubit plugin for Vuze, Tribler is the first to understand that with decentralized BitTorrent search, there also has to be a way to moderate these decentralized torrents in order to avoid a flood of spam."Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/25823 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/HreXpchZq6s/article.pl Tue, 28 Oct 2008 15:05:07 EDT AlexGr writes to tell us that Microsoft apparently has plans to embrace a little known messaging standard called AMQP (Advanced Message Queuing Protocol). Red Hat, a founding member of the AMQP working group, was very excited about the news and wrote to welcome Microsoft to the party. "Suffice it is to say that AMQP is to high-value, reliable business messaging what SMTP is to e-mail. The proprietary message oriented middleware (MOM) products on the market today like IBM's MQ or Tibco's Rendezvous fulfill the same function as AMQP. But they operate exclusively in single-vendor fashion and utterly fail to interoperate with each other. They are also — perhaps not by coincidence — burdensomely expensive. As a result their use is mostly limited to wealthy organizations such as Wall Street banks (at least the ones who are still in business) that need to exchange huge volumes of business messages very reliably and very quickly. But AMQP's supporters feel the market for such reliable messaging could be much larger if a less expensive and truly open solution became available."Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/25806 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/PjWLgmKgrgk/article.pl Mon, 27 Oct 2008 19:05:01 EDT Does anyone have an idea for a good solution for using a game console (Xbox 360, PS3, etc.) with a laptop and / or external monitor? I am planning to set up each of my developers at the office with a shiny new Xbox 360, surround headphones, and Gold memberships. The only catch is that I have to do it 'gracefully.' I would be grateful for any input on the technical setup and politics (how to get it in and how to work through the politics)." Read on for further details on the situation.Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/25767 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/suUWw-9JbTc/article.pl Sat, 25 Oct 2008 15:05:08 EDT An open-source digital rights management (DRM) scheme says it's ready to supplant Apple and Microsoft as the world's leading copy protection solution. Marlin, which is backed by companies such as Sony and Samsung, has just announced a new partner program that aims to drive the DRM system into more consumer devices. "It works in a way that doesn't hold consumers hostage," Talal Shamoon told PC Pro. "It allows you to protect and share content in the home, in a way that people own the content, not the devices." When asked about the biggest problem of DRM — that customers hate it — he argued that "the biggest problem with DRM is people have implemented it badly. Make DRM invisible and people will use it.""Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/25723 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/6danDI17qCM/article.pl Thu, 23 Oct 2008 12:05:01 EDT What is 10' tall, has six hydraulic legs, and is powered by the wind and solar panels? The prototype pod house built by art collective N55 in Copenhagen, Denmark. With the help of MIT, N55 built the pod over a two-year period at a cost of £30,000. Designers say it provides a solution to the problem of rising water levels as the house can simply walk away from floods. One of the designers says, "This house is not just for travellers but also for anyone interested in a more general way of nomadic living." It won't be long now until the Japanese make Howl's Moving Castle.Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/25720 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/IZQ6bsrq9KY/article.pl Thu, 23 Oct 2008 05:05:05 EDT As early as 1965, when Al Gore was a freshman in college, a panel of distinguished environmental scientists warned President Lyndon B. Johnson that CO2 emissions from fossil fuels might cause 'marked changes in climate' that 'could be deleterious.' Yet the scientists did not so much as mention the possibility of reducing emissions. Instead they considered one idea: 'spreading very small reflective particles' over about five million square miles of ocean, so as to bounce about 1 percent more sunlight back to space — 'a wacky geoengineering solution.' In the decades since, geoengineering ideas never died, but they did get pushed to the fringe — they were widely perceived by scientists and environmentalists alike as silly and even immoral attempts to avoid addressing the root of the problem of global warming. Three recent developments have brought them back into the mainstream." We've discussed some pretty strange ideas in the geoengineering line over the last few years.Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/25701 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/iWa54-vScXs/article.pl Wed, 22 Oct 2008 09:05:06 EDT Did you know that Microsoft has ethical guidelines? It's good to know that 'Microsoft did not make any payments to foreign government officials' while lobbying for OOXML, and that 'Microsoft conducts its business in compliance with laws designed to promote fair competition' every time they suppressed competitors. In their Corporate Citizenship section, they discuss how the customer-focused approach creates products that work well with those of competitors and open-source solutions. So all the reverse-engineering by Samba and OpenOffice.org developers wasn't really necessary."Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/25516 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/Kb1D-Yvp6Fs/article.pl Tue, 14 Oct 2008 06:05:00 EDT A recent NY Times article discusses links between personal music players and hearing loss. This is not anything new; personally, I have hearing loss from listening to my Sony Walkman cassette player many years ago. However, given the widespread use of the personal music players, I see people using earbuds everywhere; is there a technical solution to the potential danger?"Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/25514 http://rss.slashdot.org:80/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/OhO3Dof2n70/article.pl Tue, 14 Oct 2008 02:06:32 EDT