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Comments: 181 + -   Can Ubuntu Save Online Banking? on Thursday March 25, @08:01PM

Posted by timothy on Thursday March 25, @08:01PM
from the make-that-virus-throw-an-error dept.
linuxbusiness
CWmike writes with a pointer to this ComputerWorld mention of an interesting application of Live CDs, courtesy of Florida-based regional bank CNL: "Recognizing that most consumers don't want to buy a separate computer for online banking, CNL is seriously considering making available free Ubuntu bootable 'live CD' discs in its branches and by mail. The discs would boot up Linux, run Firefox and be configured to go directly to CNL's Web site. 'Everything you need to do will be sandboxed within that CD,' [CNL CIO Jay McLaughlin] says. That should protect customers from increasingly common drive-by downloads and other vectors for malicious code that may infect and lurk on PCs, waiting to steal the user account names, passwords and challenge questions normally required to access online banking." (But what if someone slips in a stack of doctored disks?)
Read More... 181 comments story

Comments: 173 + -   Venezuela's Last Opposition TV Owner Arrested on Thursday March 25, @07:30PM

Posted by timothy on Thursday March 25, @07:30PM
from the or-in-this-case-on-air dept.
censorship
WrongSizeGlass writes "AP is reporting the owner of Venezuela's only remaining TV channel that takes a critical line against President Hugo Chavez was arrested Thursday. 'Guillermo Zuloaga, owner of Globovision, was arrested on a warrant for remarks that were deemed "offensive" to the president,' Attorney General Luisa Ortega said. This comes on the heels of last week's story titled Venezuela's Chavez To Limit Internet Freedom."
Read More... 173 comments story

Comments: 106 + -   How Do You Extend Your Wireless Connection? on Thursday March 25, @07:09PM

Posted by timothy on Thursday March 25, @07:09PM
from the high-quality-tin-can dept.
cellphones
ganjadude writes "So I am moving to a location where the cell signal is very poor (I don't get signal inside my house), and I have been looking at wireless extenders such as the ones that Sprint and Verizon have. I am brought down by the cost (Sprint charges monthly, Verizon $250 up front, AT&T.... well they are AT&T). Being that this is Slashdot, and a lot of us live in basements (I kid!), I assume that some of the crowd has had this issue in the past. What have you done, or what alternatives are available to someone in such a situation?"
Read More... 106 comments story

Comments: 121 + -   IE8, Safari, iPhone All Fall At Pwn2Own Contest on Thursday March 25, @06:27PM

Posted by timothy on Thursday March 25, @06:27PM
from the sucks-to-be-everyone dept.
security
SpuriousLogic writes "The annual Pwn2Own contest at CanSecWest is underway, and on the first day Web browsers fell to attack. Internet Explorer 8 and Firefox 3.6.2 on 64-bit Windows 7 and Safari on OS X all were forced to run exploit code. To add insult to injury, an iPhone was cracked and the SMS database lifted from it." Updated 22:40 GMT by timothy: CWmike adds this interesting bit: "The only researcher to three-peat at the Pwn2Own hacking contest said on Thursday that security is such a 'broken record' that he won't hand over 20 vulnerabilities he's found in Apple's, Adobe's and Microsoft's software. Instead Charlie Miller will show the vendors how to find the bugs themselves."
Read More... 121 comments story

Comments: 70 + -   International Longest Tweet Contest Seeks Entries on Thursday March 25, @05:43PM

Posted by timothy on Thursday March 25, @05:43PM
from the shannon-sighs dept.
humor
An anonymous reader writes "The 1st International Longest Tweet Contest is open for submissions until April 12. It looks to be a take-off of the famous Obfuscated C Contest. So far the record is 4.2 kilobits encoded per tweet, based on exploiting the fact that Twitter actually passes the full 31 bits of ISO 10646 (the international standard that Unicode is based on), not the roughly 20.08 bits/character of Unicode itself."
Read More... 70 comments story

Comments: 259 + -   Dell To Leave China For India on Thursday March 25, @05:00PM

Posted by timothy on Thursday March 25, @05:00PM
from the in-these-troubled-economic-times dept.
government
halfEvilTech writes "India's Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, told the Indian press that Dell chairman Michael Dell assured him that Dell was moving $25 billion in factories from China to India. Original motives were cited for environmental concerns. But later details come up as to dell wanting a 'safer environment conductive to enterprise.'"
Read More... 259 comments story

Comments: 214 + -   90% of the Universe Found Hiding In Plain View on Thursday March 25, @04:20PM

Posted by timothy on Thursday March 25, @04:20PM
from the that-tricky-universe dept.
space
The Bad Astronomer writes "As much as 90% of previously hidden galaxies in the distant Universe have been found by astronomers using the Very Large Telescope in Chile. Previous surveys had looked for distant (10 billion light years away) galaxies by searching in a wavelength of ultraviolet light emitted by hydrogen atoms — distant young galaxies should be blasting out this light, but very few were detected. The problem is that the ultraviolet light never gets out of the galaxies, so we never see them. In this new study, astronomers searched a different wavelength emitted by hydrogen, and voila, ten times as many galaxies could be seen, meaning 90% of them had been missed before."
Read More... 214 comments story

Comments: 145 + -   Netflix Streaming Arrives For the Wii on Thursday March 25, @03:59PM

Posted by Soulskill on Thursday March 25, @03:59PM
from the hopping-on-the-bandwagon dept.
movies
Grant,thompson writes "As announced in January and mentioned here on Slashdot, Netflix is sending out discs today to enable streaming on the Nintendo Wii. 'Netflix has sent out emails to customers who pre-ordered the Wii's instant streaming disc, indicating that the disc will arrive in mailboxes tomorrow, and that the service will likely start within the next day.'"
Read More... 145 comments story

Comments: 344 + -   BC Prof Suggests Young Children Need Less Formal Math, Not More on Thursday March 25, @03:37PM

Posted by timothy on Thursday March 25, @03:37PM
from the all-in-favor-say-pi dept.
education
DesScorp writes "Professor Peter Gray, a developmental psychologist and researcher at Boston College, recounts an experiment done in New Hampshire schools in 1929, where math was completely taken out of the curriculum of the poorest schools from the area until the sixth grade. The results were surprising; with just one year of math under their belts, the poor students did as well or better than students from better schools by the end of the sixth grade year, despite the fact that the better schools had math in their curriculum all throughout elementary school. Professor Gray thinks children are not mentally wired for the kind of formal math instruction that is taught in schools, and that we'd be better served by putting off the teaching of theory until the seventh grade. He scoffs at the notion that if children are failing with current levels of math instructions then we should double down and make them do more math in school."
Read More... 344 comments story

Comments: 202 + -   Balloon and Duct Tape Deliver Great Space Photos on Thursday March 25, @02:55PM

Posted by CmdrTaco on Thursday March 25, @02:55PM
from the i-can-see-my-house-from-here dept.
hardhack
krou writes "With a budget of £500, Robert Harrison used cheap parts, a weather balloon, some duct tape, a digital camera, and a GPS device to capture some great photos of the earth from space that resulted in NASA calling him to find out how he had done it. 'A guy phoned up who worked for Nasa who was interested in how we took the pictures," said Mr Harrison. 'He wanted to know how the hell we did it. He thought we used a rocket. They said it would have cost them millions of dollars.' The details of his balloon are as follows: he used 'an ordinary Canon camera mounted on a weather balloon', 'free software' that 'reprogrammed the camera to wake up every five minutes and take eight photographs and a video before switching off for a rest.' He also ensured the camera was 'wrapped in loft insulation' to make sure it could operate at the cold temperatures. The GPS device allowed him to pinpoint the balloon's location, and retrieve the camera when it fell down to earth attached to a small parachute."
Read More... 202 comments story
 
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