Book Review: Definitive Guide To Drupal 7
Posted by News Fetcher on October 05 '11 at 01:45 PM
By samzenpus from Slashdot's read-all-about-it department:
Michael J. Ross writes "Most computer and web programming books are written entirely by a single author, while the remaining are written by more authors, typically with each one tackling several chapters. The latter approach can suffer from redundant material undetected by editors, and inconsistency in the writing style from one chapter to the next. Yet it offers the significant advantage that the subject matter of each chapter can be presented by an authority on that topic — who can focus on making that explication the best possible, without the burden of completing an entire book. That was one of my first thoughts (and hopes) when hefting the 1112 pages and 4.1 pounds of the Definitive Guide to Drupal 7." Read on for the rest of Michael's review. Definitive Guide to Drupal 7
author A cast of thousands.
pages 1112 pages
publisher Apress
reviewer Michael J. Ross
summary A wide-ranging exploration of the latest version of Drupal.
EU Sending a Probe To the Sun
By samzenpus from Slashdot's hot-science department:
First time accepted submitter Mindflux0 writes "The European Union is going forward with the proposed Solar Orbiter, a space probe designed to study the sun. The probe will orbit closer to the sun than any other man-made object at a sizzling 42 million km. It's planned to launch in 2017 for close to a billion euros."
After Six Days of Outages, BofA Claims It Hasn't Been Hacked
By samzenpus from Slashdot's it's-just-a-flesh-wound department:
Lucas123 writes "After six days of spotty service and outages with its online and mobile sites, Bank of America today said it has not been the victim of a denial of service attack, hacking or malware. Yet, the bank has set up a new homepage that it says will help customers navigate to the proper online service. Internet monitoring service Keynote said the outage is unprecedented in banking. 'I don't think we've seen as significant and as long an outage with any bank. And I've been with Keynote for 16 years now,' said Shawn White, vice president of operations for web monitoring service Keynote Systems. In the meantime, a BofA spokeswoman continued to divulge what might be happening, saying 'We're not going to get into the technical details. We're not going to comment on the technicalities of what we do.' Speculation among experts has been that the site is under attack."
US Scientists Invited To Russian Yeti Hunt
By samzenpus from Slashdot's bring-two-pairs-of-boots department:
First time accepted submitter Lindan9 writes "After an apparent increase of yeti sightings in the Kemerovo and Altai region of Siberia, a group of scientists from around the world are meeting to examine evidence possibly proving yeti existence. The scientists suspect there is a population of several dozen living in the area. The team hopes to spot a yeti or still living neanderthal man during their search of the area's mountains." I hope they find two pristine horns faster than I did.
Film Turns Windows Into Solar Panels
By samzenpus from Slashdot's peel-and-stick-power department:
itwbennett writes "At the Ceatec electronics conference in Japan this week, 3M is showing film that turns windows into solar panels. Although the product only generates about 20% of the electricity of a traditional solar panel, it will cost about half as much, is much easier to install, and takes up no additional space. 'An average person could go to the store, buy some of this, and then bring it home and install it themselves,' said Yasuhiro Aoyagi, a senior manager in the company's construction markets division."
Welcome Back Kernel.org
By samzenpus from Slashdot's look-who's-back department:
Hummdis writes "After more than a month of being offline due to a security breach at Kernel.org, they're back! While they were down, they took the time to 're-architect' the site for developers and users. A statement reads: 'As noted previously, kernel.org suffered a security breach. Because of this, we have taken the time to re-architect the site in order to improve our systems for developers and users of kernel.org. To this end, we would like all developers who previously had access to kernel.org who wish to continue to use it to host their git and static content, to follow the instructions here. Right now, www.kernel.org and git.kernel.org have been brought back online. All developer git trees have been removed from git.kernel.org and will be added back as the relevant developers regain access to the system. Thanks to all for your patience and understanding during our outage and please bear with us as we bring up the different kernel.org systems over the next few weeks. We will be writing up a report on the incident in the future.'"
US Military To Field Test "Throwable" Robots
Posted by News Fetcher on October 05 '11 at 11:45 AM
By samzenpus from Slashdot's toss-it-and-forget-it department:
cylonlover writes "Robots are a perfect tool to give soldiers in the field 'eyes' on a potentially hazardous situation without placing themselves in harm's way. With soldiers often operating in difficult terrain or entering buildings, the easiest way to get such robots into place is usually to throw them. Currently, many units use a small tactical robot called the Small Unmanned Ground Vehicle 320 which is equipped with video reconnaissance technology. However, this robot weighs a not very pack-friendly 32 pounds (14.5 kg), so the call has been put out for a lighter robot that is more easily transportable by dismounted units on the move and is able to be thrown into forward locations such as buildings and caves. To this end, the U.S. military is set to put three different types of lightweight, 'throwable' robots through a series of combat assessments in Afghanistan."
Samsung Seeking Ban of iPhone 4S in Europe
By samzenpus from Slashdot's no-4s-for-you department:
First time accepted submitter KingofSpades writes "Samsung has announced that they will try to stop the sale of Apple Inc.'s iPhone 4S in France and Italy. Samsung believes that Apple is 'severely violating' some of their patents. From the article: 'Samsung will file motions with courts in Paris and Milan seeking the ban, each citing two patent infringements on wireless telecommunications technology, the Suwon, South Korea- based company said in an e-mailed statement yesterday. Apple unveiled the iPhone 4S in Cupertino, California this week and aims to start sales later this month.'"
India Launches $35 Tablet
By samzenpus from Slashdot's price-drop department:
Many readers have submitted stories about a new $35 tablet computer released today in India. The Aakash (meaning sky) has been handed out to 500 students for an initial trial run, if successful a $60 commercial version will hit the shelves later this year. The Aakash computer runs Android 2.2 (Froyo), has a 7-inch touch screen, 256MB of RAM, 32GB expandable memory slot, two USB ports, and weighs in at only 350 grams.
Fedora 16, OpenSuse 12.1 Betas With Gnome 3.2
By timothy from Slashdot's despite-gripes-it-gets-better department:
Andy Smith writes "Fedora 16 beta and OpenSuse 12.1 beta have been released. For most users the major change in each distro is Gnome 3.2. Fedora also adopts the new Linux 3 kernel and the GRUB2 bootloader."
Facebook Confirms New Cookie-Tracking Issue
By timothy from Slashdot's issue-is-such-a-nice-bland-word department:
An anonymous reader writes "Facebook is once again setting its datr cookie via the Like button and other social plugins on third-party websites. The datr cookie can be used for tracking users whether you are logged in or logged out of the service. Facebook has confirmed this is indeed a bug, but says that it is limited in scope and that it will be fixed today. Talk about damage control."
Neal Stephenson On 'Innovation Starvation'
By timothy from Slashdot's hitler-did-a-lot-of-stuff department:
Geoffrey.landis writes "In an essay discussing the space program, author Neal Stephenson suggests that the decline of the space program 'might be symptomatic of a general failure of our society to get big things done.' He suggests that we may be suffering from innovation starvation: 'Innovation can't happen without accepting the risk that it might fail. The vast and radical innovations of the mid-20th century took place in a world that, in retrospect, looks insanely dangerous and unstable.'" Though the context is different, this reminds me of economist Tyler Cowen's premise that the U.S. has for decades been in a Great Stagnation.
Big Brother Calls 'Shotgun' In Illinois
By timothy from Slashdot's how-could-george-bush-do-such-a-thing department:
Reader kackle joins the army of free and accepted Slashdot submitters with this eyebrow-raising story: "I received a form letter from the Illinois State Toll Highway Authority saying that my first-generation 'IPASS' transponder needs to be replaced because the battery is old. I called them for clarification since the first-generation transponders obviously have user-replaceable batteries, and I wanted to keep this version because it beeps when a toll is paid. (This notifies drivers that their battery is still good, unlike the silent second-generation version, which informs them of a dead battery by sending a ticket in the mail.) The woman on the phone explained that they were replacing them just because the electronics are old. This uninformed answer made me research the device. I found that the manufacturer has recently filed a patent application for a new transponder that has a camera in it — a camera pointed inward at the occupants. How long before they make it illegal to cover that camera with tape?"
Could Electron Counts Detect Major Earthquakes?
By timothy from Slashdot's hey-sparky department:
hcs_$reboot writes "According to a Japanese researcher, the electron count escalation high in the atmosphere could indicate that a major earthquake is going to happen within 30~40 minutes. That phenomenon was observed before three earthquakes since 2004. If confirmed, the earthquake detection system could save thousands of lives."
How Windows Get Infected With Malware
By timothy from Slashdot's sure-c'mon-in department:
Orome1 writes "Since Up to 85 % of all virus infections occur as a result of drive-by attacks automated via commercial exploit kits, CSIS has actively collected real time data from them for a period of three months. The purpose of their study is to reveal precisely how Microsoft Windows machines are infected with malware and which browsers, versions of Windows and third party software that are at risk. They monitored more than 50 different exploit kits on 44 unique servers / IP addresses. The statistical material covers all in all more than half a million user exposures out of which as many as 31.3 % were infected with the virus/malware due to missing security updates."
Dan Shechtman Wins Chemistry Nobel For Quasicrystals
By timothy from Slashdot's oh-it's-just-a-new-class-of-matter department:
Stirling Newberry writes with word that Dan Shechtman of Israel's Technion has won the Nobel prize in chemistry for his discovery of quasicrystals, and provides a short description of why quasicrystals are exciting:
< article continued at Slashdot >
Firefox Advises Users To Disable McAfee Plugin
By timothy from Slashdot's one-or-the-other department:
itwbennett writes "Mozilla is advising Firefox users to disable McAfee's ScriptScan software, saying that it could cause 'stability or security problems.' ScriptScan, which ships with McAfee's VirusScan antivirus program, is designed to keep Web surfer's safe by scanning for any malicious scripting code that might be running in the browser. But according to Mozilla it has an unintended side-effect: It can cause Firefox to crash... a lot."
Telecomix Releases 54GB of Syrian Censorship Logs
By timothy from Slashdot's like-cheese-logs-but-worse department:
pafein writes "Hacktivist cluster Telecomix released 54 gigabytes of Syrian censorship log data. The anonymized log data was collected from seven of 15 Bluecoat SG-9000 HTTP proxies used by Syrian government telco and ISP STE. Preliminary analysis revealed such keywords as proxy and Israel were blocked. And of course, much porn. The data set provides a unique look at Internet censorship from the inside. Internauts who enjoy regexes and charts are invited to help make a pretty infographic. Telecomix's #opsyria has been fighting censorship and facilitating communications [note: French language link] in Syria for the past few weeks, providing TOR, VPNs and technical advice and support via IRC. They've also been providing DNS service for The Pirate Bay."
Ask Slashdot: What To Do In SW:TOR For Just 3 Days?
By timothy from Slashdot's spread-wild-oats department:
rodrigoandrade writes "I've been invited to participate in the beta testing program for SW:TOR. However, EA's giving out 3-day passes to most testers. A few people are receiving passes for longer periods. Mine will be from Friday 5am through Monday 12am (CST) (i.e. Sunday evening). Since it's a frakking 10GB download (almost 2GB for video alone) I'll use for only 3 days, I'd like to make the most out of it. If you're an experienced beta tester, please post some tips travel-guide style on what I should do, quests I should take, places to visit, etc. TYIA. May the Force be with you!"
Robotic Arm With Home-Brewed, Open Source Voice Control
By timothy from Slashdot's pure-distilled-awesome department:
First time accepted submitter aonsquared writes "A couple of months ago I managed to scoop up a cheap (£30) robot arm with a USB interface from Maplin (I'm in the UK). Following a wrist injury which left me without the use of my right hand for 4 weeks, I decided to build it for a little hacking project. Using Linux, libusb and other freely available tools, I have enabled the robot arm to respond to my voice commands. I've posted a full tutorial and downloadable source code, as well as a demonstration video. Hopefully, open-source voice recognition as well as devices like the Kinect (which has spawned hundreds of different cool hacks) can someday revolutionise the way we interact with computers and machines."