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Spanish Extremadura Moving 40,000 Desktops To Linux Jan 24 2012 08:32:00	Slashdot
Spanish Extremadura Moving 40,000 Desktops To Linux jrepin writes with this quote from a post at the European Commission's JoinUp site: "The administration of Spain's autonomous region of Extremadura is moving to a complete open source desktop, replacing the current proprietary desktop platform, confirms the region's CIO, Teodomiro Cayetano López. The IT department started a project to install the Debian distribution on all 40,000 desktop PCs. 'The project is really advanced and we hope to start the deployment the next spring, finishing it i... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Pwn2Own 2012 Set To Reveal More Browser Vulnerabilities... Jan 24 2012 07:24:00	Slashdot
Pwn2Own 2012 Set To Reveal More Browser Vulnerabilities Than In the Past darthcamaro writes "In any given year, Slashdot always has stories about how a researcher hacked a browser in only a few minutes at the Pwn2own hacking challenge. This year the rules are a bit different, and instead of hackers winning for just one vulnerability, the rules allow for multiple vulnerabilities to be presented. The winner isn't the first one to hack a browser, but is the one that can hack the browser the most. 'In the past, due to the way the competition was architected, we had lots ... Read the full article on Slashdot »
US Judge Rules Defendant Can Be Forced To Decrypt Hard ... Jan 24 2012 05:19:00	Slashdot
US Judge Rules Defendant Can Be Forced To Decrypt Hard Drive A Commentor writes "Perhaps to balance the good news with the Supreme Court ruling on GPS, a judge in Colorado has ordered a defendant to decrypt her hard drive. The government doesn't have the capability to break the PGP encryption, and 'the Fifth Amendment is not implicated by requiring production of the unencrypted contents' of the defendant's computer." Read the full article on Slashdot »
Sun Blasts Another CME At Earth and Mars Jan 24 2012 04:22:00	Slashdot
Sun Blasts Another CME At Earth and Mars astroengine writes "On Friday, the sun hurled a coronal mass ejection (CME) at our planet that sparked a strong geomagnetic storm and beautiful aurorae at high latitudes. Late on Sunday (EST), the sun unleashed yet another Earth-bound CME after an M9 flare erupted over a particularly active sunspot region — the CME is expected to hit Earth on Tuesday and Mars on Wednesday. This series of flares and CMEs have ignited the strongest period of solar storms since 2005, according to an NOAA spac... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Hackers Manipulated Railway Computers, TSA Memo Says Jan 24 2012 03:10:00	Slashdot
Hackers Manipulated Railway Computers, TSA Memo Says An anonymous reader sends this excerpt from Nextgov: "Hackers, possibly from abroad, executed an attack on a Northwest rail company's computers that disrupted railway signals for two days in December, according to a government memo recapping outreach with the transportation sector during the emergency. ... While government and critical industry sectors have made strides in sharing threat intelligence, less attention has been paid to translating those analyses into usable information for the peop... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Huge Freshwater Bulge In Arctic Ocean Jan 24 2012 01:07:00	Slashdot
Huge Freshwater Bulge In Arctic Ocean New submitter turkeyfish writes "UK scientists are reporting today in the journal Nature Geoscience that a huge bulge of freshwater is forming in the Western Arctic Ocean caused by a large gyre of freshwater. The gyre appears to indicate that the ice is becoming thin enough over the Arctic Ocean that the wind is beginning to affect the motion of water under the ice. A sudden release of this water or its emergence to the surface will greatly accelerate the melting of the remaining polar oceanic i... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Alternative Android Market To House Banned Apps Jan 24 2012 00:22:00	Slashdot
Alternative Android Market To House Banned Apps sl4shd0rk writes "In contrast to the Apple's iron-fisted control over their App store, the Android Market is much more open. Google does, on occasion, remove apps it deems inappropriate, such as emulators, legally-questionable music services, tethering apps and one-click root apps. But if Koushik Dutta of CyanogenMod fame has his way, these heretic apps may have a home after all. Dutta plans an 'underground' Android Market complete with an approval process to weed out malicious applications; som... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Russia Talks Moon Base With NASA, ESA Jan 23 2012 23:39:00	Slashdot
Russia Talks Moon Base With NASA, ESA milbournosphere writes "Russia and NASA are reportedly in talks to create a base on the Moon. They're looking to create either a facility on the Moon itself or a permanent space station in orbit around the moon. 'We don't want man to just step on the Moon,' agency chief Vladimir Popovkin said in an interview with Vesti FM radio station. 'Today, we know enough about it. We know that there is water in its polar areas,' he added. 'We are now discussing how to begin [the Moon's] exploration with NAS... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Apple Nets 350K Textbook Downloads In 3 Days Jan 23 2012 22:57:00	Slashdot
Apple Nets 350K Textbook Downloads In 3 Days redletterdave writes "On Jan. 19, Apple introduced iBooks 2, its digital solution to the physical textbook. In the first three days of release, users have downloaded more than 350,000 e-textbooks from the new platform, and more than 90,000 users have downloaded the authoring tool to make those e-textbooks, called iBooks Author. It makes sense that Apple's iBooks 2 platform is taking off in such a short period of time; there is very little merit to the physical textbook, and the education industr... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Facebook, Twitter, and Myspace To Google: Don't Be Evil Jan 23 2012 22:14:00	Slashdot
Facebook, Twitter, and Myspace To Google: Don't Be Evil An anonymous reader writes "Over the weekend, Blake Ross, Facebook's product director and co-founder of Firefox, worked with Facebook engineers Tom Occhino and Marshall Roch to demonstrate how evil they think Google's newly launched Search plus Your World (SPYW) feature really is, and created a 'proof of concept' showing how it should really work. His team got some help from Twitter engineers and Myspace engineers, and consulted other social networks as well to really make sure the message hits ... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Professor Resigns From Stanford To Launch Online Educat... Jan 23 2012 21:30:00	Slashdot
Professor Resigns From Stanford To Launch Online Education Project mikejuk writes "Professor Sebastian Thrun has given up his Stanford position to start Udacity — an online educational venture. Udacity's first two free courses are Building a Search Engine and Programming a Robotic Car. In a moving speech at the Digital Life Design conference, he explained that after presenting the online AI course to thousands of students he could no longer teach at Stanford: 'Now that I saw the true power of education, there is no turning back. It's like a drug. I won't ... Read the full article on Slashdot »
The Behind-the-Scenes Campaign To Bring SOPA To Canada Jan 23 2012 20:49:00	Slashdot
The Behind-the-Scenes Campaign To Bring SOPA To Canada An anonymous reader writes "SOPA may be dead (for now) in the U.S., but lobby groups are likely to intensify their efforts to export SOPA-like rules to other countries. With the Canadian DMCA back on the legislative agenda at the end of the month, Canada will be a prime target for SOPA style rules. In fact, Michael Geist reports that the recording industry wants language to similar to that found in SOPA on blocking access to websites, new termination policies for subscribers, and an expanded SOP... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Star Wars Uncut Project Complete Jan 23 2012 20:06:00	Slashdot
Star Wars Uncut Project Complete An anonymous reader writes "In 2009 we discussed the Star Wars Uncut Project, a crowd-sourced effort to re-create the entirety of Episode IV as series of 15-second clips filmed and submitted by fans. Well, it's done at last, and CmdrTaco has written his review of the two-hour film. He says, 'A great number of shots demonstrate technology well beyond what was available when the original Star Wars was made. Other shots are stylishly animated in CG. Others are rotoscoped in mediums from chalk to pe... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Carl Malamud Answers: Goading the Government To Make Pu... Jan 23 2012 19:24:00	Slashdot
Carl Malamud Answers: Goading the Government To Make Public Data Public You asked Carl Malamud about his experiences and hopes in the gargantuan project he's undertaken to prod the U.S. government into scanning archived documents, and to make public access (rather than availability only through special dispensation) the default for newly created, timely government data. (Malamud points out that if you have comments on what the government should be focusing on preserving, and how they should go about it, the National Archives would like to read them.) Below find answ... Read the full article on Slashdot »
MediaFire CEO: We Don't Depend On Piracy Jan 23 2012 18:41:00	Slashdot
MediaFire CEO: We Don't Depend On Piracy New submitter libertyernie writes "Although FileSonic has disabled sharing and Uploaded.to has blocked access to the U.S., the CEO of Texas-based MediaFire is not concerned about government action against his company. 'We don't have a business built on copyright infringement,' says Derek Labian. 'Like many other cloud-based sharing services like Box.net and Dropbox, we're a legitimate business targeting professionals.'" Read the full article on Slashdot »
Supreme Court Rules Warrants Needed for GPS Monitoring Jan 23 2012 17:59:00	Slashdot
Supreme Court Rules Warrants Needed for GPS Monitoring gambit3 writes "The Supreme Court has issued its ruling in the case of Washington, D.C. nightclub owner Antoine Jones, saying police must get a search warrant before using GPS technology to track criminal suspects. A federal appeals court in Washington overturned his drug conspiracy conviction because police did not have a warrant when they installed a GPS device on his vehicle and then tracked his movements for a month." Read the full article on Slashdot »
Senator Rand Paul Detained By the TSA Jan 23 2012 17:19:00	Slashdot
Senator Rand Paul Detained By the TSA cervesaebraciator writes "Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) has been detained by the TSA in Tennessee for refusing a pat-down. Apparently an anomaly appeared when he received the full body scan. While he offered to undergo the body scan once more, he was informed that only a pat-down would be sufficient to clear him. He has since been detained and the story is developing." Read the full article on Slashdot »
Tales of IT Idiocy Jan 23 2012 16:56:00	Slashdot
Tales of IT Idiocy snydeq writes "IT fight club, dirty dev data, meatball sandwiches — InfoWorld offers nine more tales of brain fail beyond belief. 'You'd think we'd run out of them, but technology simply hasn't advanced enough to take boneheaded users out of the daily equation that is the IT admin's life. Whether it's clueless users, evil admins, or just completely bad luck, Mr. Murphy has the IT department pinned in his sights — and there's no escaping the heartache, headaches, hassles, and hilarity... Read the full article on Slashdot »
How Much LTE Spectrum Do Big Carriers Have? Jan 23 2012 16:36:00	Slashdot
How Much LTE Spectrum Do Big Carriers Have? alphadogg writes "The top U.S. carriers over the past year have stepped up their efforts to grab more spectrum for 4G wireless data services needed to accommodate a seemingly insatiable and exploding population of iPhone, iPad and other mobile device users. Here's a look at where Verizon, AT&T and others are at on the spectrum acquisition front and what they'll need in the future to deliver ubiquitous 4G service across the United States as mobile users seek to view and exchange more video an... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Outgoing CRTC Head Says Technology Is Eroding Canadian ... Jan 23 2012 15:55:00	Slashdot
Outgoing CRTC Head Says Technology Is Eroding Canadian Culture Patchw0rk F0g writes "Canada's outgoing CRTC head, Konrad von Finckenstein, has some choice words for his successor: Internet and wireless technology has disarmed federal regulators of their weapons to protect cultural identity. The retiring Finckenstein cites over-the-top broadcasting, new Internet technologies and (perhaps most importantly) the fact that the CRTC is antiquated and can't keep up with these emerging technologies as factors in the (still)-growing culture-loss of Canada to the U.S... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Russian Scientist Claims Signs of Life Spotted On Venus Jan 23 2012 15:16:00	Slashdot
Russian Scientist Claims Signs of Life Spotted On Venus flergum writes "Leonid Ksanfomaliti, an astronomer based at the Space Research Institute of Russia's Academy of Sciences, analyzed photographs taken by a Russian landing probe during 1982 and claims to have found signs of life. Ksanfomaliti says the Russian photographs depict objects resembling a 'disk,' a 'black flap' and a 'scorpion.'" Read the full article on Slashdot »
Nano-Scale Terahertz Antenna May Make Tricorders Real Jan 23 2012 14:36:00	Slashdot
Nano-Scale Terahertz Antenna May Make Tricorders Real MrSeb writes "Researchers from Imperial College London and A*STAR in Singapore have shown off a terahertz antenna that's just 100 nanometers across — about 30,000 times smaller than existing terahertz antennae — and two orders of magnitude stronger than other T-ray beam-forming techniques. T-rays are a lot like EHF (extremely high frequency), which is used by millimeter wave scanners in airports, medical imaging, and emerging wireless networking standards like WiGig — but stron... Read the full article on Slashdot »
The Coda Electric Car at the Detroit International Auto... Jan 23 2012 13:55:00	Slashdot
The Coda Electric Car at the Detroit International Auto Show (Video) Last week Timothy Lord looked at the Tesla Model S. He also took a quick look at the CODA electric car. Like Tesla, CODA is based in California. Like Tesla, CODA is building purely electric, "plug-in" cars. But unlike Tesla, CODA is making a bland but practical sedan that can go up to 150 miles on a charge and costs about $37,000. That's not exactly a Kia-competitive price, even though Tim says it looks kind of like a Kia. But it's 100% electric and costs less than a Tesla -- really, hardly more... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Google Updates Algorithm To Punish Websites With Excess... Jan 23 2012 13:11:00	Slashdot
Google Updates Algorithm To Punish Websites With Excessive Ads hypnosec writes "Google has decided to take punitive actions against those websites that flood the top of their web pages with ads due to which the visitors have to scroll down to finally view the relevant contents on the page. According to Google, this type of layouts annoys the users and thus the web search company will be penalizing those websites through search results. The company disclosed this on its blog. According to Google over the top ads is not good for user experience and thus such ... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Startup Combines CPU and DRAM Jan 23 2012 10:27:00	Slashdot
Startup Combines CPU and DRAM MojoKid writes "CPU design firm Venray Technology announced a new product design this week that it claims can deliver enormous performance benefits by combining CPU and DRAM on to a single piece of silicon. Venray's TOMI (Thread Optimized Multiprocessor) attempts to redefine the problem by building a very different type of microprocessor. The TOMI Borealis is built using the same transistor structures as conventional DRAM; the chip trades clock speed and performance for ultra-low low leakage. It... Read the full article on Slashdot »
CEOs of RIM Step Down Jan 23 2012 07:43:00	Slashdot
CEOs of RIM Step Down An anonymous reader writes "After two decades of leading the BlackBerry maker, Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balisillie are stepping down from their roles as Co-CEOs at Canada's Research In Motion Limited. Thorsten Heins will now lead RIM as it attempts to beat the likes of Apple and Google." Read the full article on Slashdot »
Filesonic Removes Ability To Share Files Jan 23 2012 05:00:00	Slashdot
Filesonic Removes Ability To Share Files Ihmhi writes "In the wake of the Megaupload takedown, Filesonic has elected to take preventative measures against a similar fate. The front page and all files now carry the following message: 'All sharing functionality on FileSonic is now disabled. Our service can only be used to upload and retrieve files that you have uploaded personally.' Whether or not this will actually deter the U.S. government from taking action remains to be seen." Read the full article on Slashdot »
NinjaVideo.net Founder Gets 14 Months Jan 23 2012 02:31:00	Slashdot
NinjaVideo.net Founder Gets 14 Months angry tapir writes "A Virginia judge has sentenced Matthew David Howard Smith, a founder of the NinjaVideo.net website, to 14 months in prison, the U.S. Department of Justice announced Friday. Smith was indicted along with four others late last year. The DOJ charged that they illegally provided copyright-protected movies and TV programs for download from the NinjaVideo.net website. The site operated from February 2008 until authorities shut it down in June 2010."Read more of this story at Sl... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Air Force Says Iran Didn't Down Drone Jan 23 2012 00:05:00	Slashdot
Air Force Says Iran Didn't Down Drone First time accepted submitter QQBoss writes "The Air Force is not saying what caused the RQ-170 UAV to crash in Iran, but that Iran's claim to have forced it down is erroneous. The drone didn't come down and land gently as Iran had suggested it did. At least Iran got a good photo op, though the more interesting question is what technology will they be able to glean from what they did capture." Read the full article on Slashdot »
Megaupload Drops Lawsuit Against Universal Music Jan 22 2012 22:39:00	Slashdot
Megaupload Drops Lawsuit Against Universal Music bs0d3 writes "Not so long ago, a legal video was taken down by repetitive DMCA requests to YouTube. In response, Megaupload filed a lawsuit against Universal Music. This past week, Megaupload was raided by US authorities and forced offline, which is costing Megaupload millions of dollars in damage. Today; while employees are in U.S. custody, Megaupload has mysteriously dropped their lawsuit against Universal Music." Read the full article on Slashdot »
White House Petition To Investigate Dodd For Bribery Jan 22 2012 21:18:00	Slashdot
White House Petition To Investigate Dodd For Bribery Walkingshark writes "Chris Dodd's recent statements complaining that congressmen who receive donations from the RIAA and MPAA should toe the line has spawned a firestorm of anger on the internet. Among the bits of fallout: a petition on the White Houses "We the People" site to investigate him, the RIAA, and the MPAA for bribery! This petition gained more than 5000 signatures in 24 hours and is still growing. When the petition reaches 25,000 signatures the White House is obligated to respond to i... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Banks Using Mobile Phone Usage To Gauge Credit Risk Jan 22 2012 19:52:00	Slashdot
Banks Using Mobile Phone Usage To Gauge Credit Risk Hugh Pickens writes "A new startup is revolutionizing the way financial service companies meet the needs of an estimated 2.7 billion people worldwide with a mobile phone but no access to formal financial services by developing sophisticated modeling software that can look at usage data from consumers' mobile phones and make predictions about credit risk. 'There's a vast market of consumers in countries like Brazil, China, India, and the Philippines who want access to financial services like cred... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Indonesian Man Faces Five Years For Atheist Facebook Post Jan 22 2012 18:35:00	Slashdot
Indonesian Man Faces Five Years For Atheist Facebook Post An anonymous reader writes "31-year-old Alexander Aan faces a maximum prison sentence of five years for posting 'God does not exist' on Facebook. The civil servant was attacked and beaten by an angry mob of dozens who entered his government office at the Dharmasraya Development Planning Board on Wednesday. The Indonesian man was taken into protective police custody Friday since he was afraid of further physical assault." Read the full article on Slashdot »
A Data Center That Looks Like a Mansion Jan 22 2012 17:17:00	Slashdot
A Data Center That Looks Like a Mansion 1sockchuck writes "A luxury homebuilder in Minnesota wants to build a data center that looks like a mansion, allowing the commercial building to fit into a residential neighborhood. The 'community-based data center' designed for FiberPop features a stone facade and sloped roof with dormers, along with an underground data hall." Read the full article on Slashdot »
International Organization To Assess Earth Defense From... Jan 22 2012 15:56:00	Slashdot
International Organization To Assess Earth Defense From Space Dangers arisvega writes in with a story about an international organization that is trying to come up with options to save the planet from a large asteroid or comet collision. "NEOShield is a new international project that will assess the threat posed by Near Earth Objects (NEO) and look at the best possible solutions for dealing with a big asteroid or comet on a collision (PDF) path with our planet. The effort is being led from the German space agency's (DLR) Institute of Planetary Research in Berlin, ... Read the full article on Slashdot »
International Orginization To Assess Earth Defense From... Jan 22 2012 15:56:00	Slashdot
International Orginization To Assess Earth Defense From Space Dangers arisvega writes in with a story about an international organization that is trying to come up with options to save the planet from a large asteroid or comet collision. "NEOShield is a new international project that will assess the threat posed by Near Earth Objects (NEO) and look at the best possible solutions for dealing with a big asteroid or comet on a collision (PDF) path with our planet. The effort is being led from the German space agency's (DLR) Institute of Planetary Research in Berlin, ... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Engineered Stomach Microbe Converts Seaweed Into Ethanol Jan 22 2012 14:32:00	Slashdot
Engineered Stomach Microbe Converts Seaweed Into Ethanol PolygamousRanchKid writes "Seaweed may well be an ideal plant to turn into biofuel. It grows in much of the two thirds of the planet that is underwater, so it wouldn't crowd out food crops the way corn for ethanol does. Because it draws its own nutrients and water from the sea, it requires no fertilizer or irrigation. Most importantly for would-be biofuel-makers, it contains no lignin—a strong strand of complex sugars that stiffens plant stalks and poses a big obstacle to turning land-base... Read the full article on Slashdot »
How the US Lost Out On iPhone Work Jan 22 2012 13:17:00	Slashdot
How the US Lost Out On iPhone Work Hugh Pickens writes "Not long ago, Apple boasted that its products were made in America. Today, almost all of the 70 million iPhones, 30 million iPads and 59 million other products Apple sold last year are manufactured overseas. 'It isn't just that workers are cheaper abroad,' write Charles Duhig and Keith Bradsher. 'Rather, Apple's executives believe the vast scale of overseas factories as well as the flexibility, diligence and industrial skills of foreign workers have outpaced their American c... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Web Developer Sentenced To Death In Iran Jan 22 2012 10:22:00	Slashdot
Web Developer Sentenced To Death In Iran An anonymous reader points out the case of Saeed Malekpour, an Iranian-born permanent resident of Canada who worked as a web developer. In 2008, during a visit to Iran, Malekpour was arrested and detained by Iranian authorities on charges that he designed and moderated "adult content websites." In 2009, he was sentenced to death for "acting against the national security, insulting and desecrating the principles of Islam, and agitating the public mind." Malekpour wrote photo-uploading software, a... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Intel Relying On Ice Cream Sandwich For Tablet Push Jan 22 2012 07:18:00	Slashdot
Intel Relying On Ice Cream Sandwich For Tablet Push An anonymous reader writes "Intel thinks tablets live and die by their software, not their hardware. So as they get ready for a big push into the mobile device market, they're relying on Ice Cream Sandwich to provide competition with Apple's products. From the article: 'The company has largely watched from the sidelines as mobile device makers have used processors based on ARM's microarchitecture to power their products in recent years. This despite the fact that Intel actually predicted the ris... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Desura Linux Game Client Goes Open Source Jan 22 2012 05:44:00	Slashdot
Desura Linux Game Client Goes Open Source An anonymous reader writes "The Desura game distribution client for Windows and Linux and developed by ModDB is now open source software. The open source version of the client is called Desurium and is hosted on GitHub." Read the full article on Slashdot »
Chevy Volt Passes Safety Investigation Jan 22 2012 04:14:00	Slashdot
Chevy Volt Passes Safety Investigation An anonymous reader writes "A few months ago, reports of battery fires from crash-tested Chevy Volts caused the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to open an investigation into the type of batteries used in the Volt and other EVs. That investigation has now concluded, and the NHTSA says the cars are safe. 'The agency and General Motors Co. know of no fires in real-world crashes. GM and federal safety officials say they believe the fires were caused by coolant leaking from damaged pla... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Researchers Find Slew of Flaws In SCADA Hardware, Software Jan 22 2012 01:15:00	Slashdot
Researchers Find Slew of Flaws In SCADA Hardware, Software Trailrunner7 writes "At the S4 security conference this week, 'Project Basecamp,' a volunteer-led security audit of leading programmable logic controllers (PLCs), performed by a team of top researchers found that decrepit hardware, buggy software and pitiful or nonexistent security features make thousands of PLCs vulnerable to trivial attacks by external hackers that could cause PLC devices to crash or run malicious code. 'We were looking for a Firesheep moment in PLC security,' Peterson told th... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Jailbreak For A5 iOS Devices Released Jan 22 2012 00:12:00	Slashdot
Jailbreak For A5 iOS Devices Released tlhIngan writes "It certainly took long enough, but the untethered jailbreak for Apple's A5 based iOS devices (iPad 2, iPhone 4s) has been released (official site, struggling due to traffic). It's currently only available for OS X, though ports of it to Windows are forthcoming." Read the full article on Slashdot »
'Blind' Quantum Computing Proposed For the Cloud Jan 21 2012 23:08:00	Slashdot
'Blind' Quantum Computing Proposed For the Cloud judgecorp writes "Researchers at Vienna's Quantum Science and Technology Center have proposed that 'blind' quantum computing could be carried out securely in the cloud. When (if?) quantum computers are developed, they will be very fast, but not everyone will have them. Blind quantum computing will be useful, because it shows that users can encode 'qubits' and send them to a shared quantum computer to be worked on — without the quantum computer having any knowledge of what the data is (abst... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Dreamhost FTP/Shell Password Database Breached Jan 21 2012 21:59:00	Slashdot
Dreamhost FTP/Shell Password Database Breached New submitter Ccmods writes "Below is a snippet from an email Dreamhost sent to subscribers early Saturday morning, describing an intrusion into the database storing FTP and SSH usernames and passwords: 'We are writing to let you know that there may have been illegal and unauthorized access to some of your passwords at DreamHost today. Our security systems detected the potential breach this morning and we immediately took the defensive precaution of expiring and resetting all FTP/shell access pa... Read the full article on Slashdot »
'Electric Earth' Could Explain Planet's Rotation Jan 21 2012 20:53:00	Slashdot
'Electric Earth' Could Explain Planet's Rotation sciencehabit writes "When it comes to Earth's rotation, you might think geophysicists have pretty much everything figured out. Not quite. In order to explain some variations in the way our planet spins, Earth's mantle — the layer of hot, softened rock that lies between the crust and core — must conduct electricity, an ability that the mantle as we know it shouldn't have. Now, a new study (academic paper) finds that iron monoxide, which makes up 9% of the mantle, actually does conduct... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Megaupload Shutdown: Should RapidShare and Dropbox Worry? Jan 21 2012 19:51:00	Slashdot
Megaupload Shutdown: Should RapidShare and Dropbox Worry? An anonymous reader sends in an article discussing whether other commonly used file storage sites are in danger of being shut down now that Megaupload has been closed. Quoting: "In the wake of the crackdown on the file-sharing website Megaupload, sites offering free content-sharing, file linking and digital locker services, such as RapidShare, SoundCloud and Dropbox, could be next in the crosshair of anti-piracy authorities. ... RapidShare and MediaFire are two of the biggest services left after... Read the full article on Slashdot »
News Corp. Pays Out For Voicemail Hacking Victims Jan 21 2012 18:45:00	Slashdot
News Corp. Pays Out For Voicemail Hacking Victims New submitter SandmanWAIX sends this excerpt from ABC.net.au: "Rupert Murdoch's media empire has made huge payouts to 37 phone-hacking victims, including actor Jude Law, singer Danii Minogue, and former British deputy prime minister John Prescott, their lawyers said. ... The company has set up a multi-million-pound compensation scheme for victims of phone hacking in a bid to avoid further costly civil lawsuits. ... It has also made a payout of 2 million pounds to the family of murdered British s... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Google Kills More Services, Open Sources Sky Map Jan 21 2012 17:43:00	Slashdot
Google Kills More Services, Open Sources Sky Map alphadogg writes "Google is continuing to weed out its services and on Friday announced it will shut down Picnik, Google Message Continuity and Needlebase and make changes to some other services. Google acquired Seattle-based Picnik in 2010, saying it would integrate the photo editing service with its own Picasa. 'We're retiring the service on April 19, 2012, so the Picnik team can continue creating photo-editing magic across Google products,' Dave Girouard, vice president of product management ... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Y Combinator Wants To Kill Hollywood Jan 21 2012 16:42:00	Slashdot
Y Combinator Wants To Kill Hollywood An anonymous reader writes "Y Combinator, a firm that invests in startups, has put out a call to kill Hollywood. In a post on their site, the firm said attempts at legislation similar to SOPA wouldn't stop until there is no industry left to protect. They now want to incubate ideas for new types of entertainment, so we can evolve the movie and television industries. Quoting: 'There will be several answers, ranging from new ways to produce and distribute shows, through new media (e.g. games) that ... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Study Analyzes Recent Grads' Unemployment By Major Jan 21 2012 15:38:00	Slashdot
Study Analyzes Recent Grads' Unemployment By Major Hugh Pickens writes "A new report from the Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce called 'Hard Times: College Majors, Unemployment and Earnings: Not All College Degrees Are Created Equal' analyzes unemployment by major. It shows that not enough students — and their families who are also taking on student loans — are asking what their college major is worth in the workforce. 'Too many students aren't sure what job they could get after four, five or even six years of studying... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Lawyer Demands Pacemaker Vendor Supply Source Code Jan 21 2012 14:33:00	Slashdot
Lawyer Demands Pacemaker Vendor Supply Source Code oztiks writes "Lawyer Karen Sandler's heart condition means she needs a pacemaker to ward off sudden death. Instead of trusting that the vendor will create a flawless platform for the device to operate, Sandler has demanded to see the device's source code. Sandler's reasoning brings into question the device's reliably, stability, and oddly enough, security." Read the full article on Slashdot »
Mozilla Offers Alternative To OpenID Jan 21 2012 13:31:00	Slashdot
Mozilla Offers Alternative To OpenID Orome1 writes "Mozilla has been working for a while now on a new browser-based system for identifying and authenticating users it calls BrowserID, but it's only this month that all of its sites have finally been outfitted with the technology. Mozilla aims for BrowserID to become a more secure alternative to OpenID, the decentralized authentication system offered to users of popular sites such as Google, Yahoo!, PayPal, MySpace and others." Read the full article on Slashdot »
Coming Soon: An Open-Source, Reverse-Engineered Mali GP... Jan 21 2012 12:01:00	Slashdot
Coming Soon: An Open-Source, Reverse-Engineered Mali GPU Driver An anonymous reader writes "Next month at FOSDEM there will be an announcement of a fully open-source and reverse-engineered ARM Mali graphics driver for Android / Linux. This driver, according to Phoronix, is said to support OpenGL ES and other functionality from reverse engineering the official ARM Linux driver. Will this mark a change for open-source graphics drivers on ARM, just as the Radeon did for x86 Linux?" Read the full article on Slashdot »
Project Bifrost: (Fission) Rockets of the Future? Jan 21 2012 09:32:00	Slashdot
Project Bifrost: (Fission) Rockets of the Future? astroengine writes "Researchers from Icarus Interstellar Inc. and General Propulsion Science have announced their intention to pursue the development of Nuclear Thermal Rockets and other fission-based space technologies. The aim? To revolutionize space travel, ultimately paving the way to the goal of sending a probe to another star." Read the full article on Slashdot »
Endoscopic Exam of Fukushima Reactor Jan 21 2012 05:36:00	Slashdot
Endoscopic Exam of Fukushima Reactor mdsolar writes with this excerpt from the Sydney Morning Herald: "Radiation-blurred images taken inside one of Japan's tsunami-hit nuclear reactors show steam, unidentified parts and rusty metal surfaces scarred by 10 months of exposure to heat and humidity. The photos — the first inside-look since the disaster — showed none of the reactor's melted fuel or its cooling water but confirmed stable temperatures and showed no major ruptures caused by the earthquake last March, said Junich... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Downloads of DoS Attack Tool LOIC Spike Jan 21 2012 02:41:00	Slashdot
Downloads of DoS Attack Tool LOIC Spike wiredmikey writes "As Anonymous initiated what it said will be the 'largest attack ever on government and music industry sites' in response to actions taken by the Justice Department against operators of file sharing site Megaupload.com, downloads of a popular DoS attack tool have spiked. While the Denial of Service tool known as the 'Low Orbit Ion Cannon' (LOIC) was developed by the 'good guys' to stress test websites, it has been a favorite tool of Anonymous to take its targets offline via den... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Is Facebook Becoming a Central Bank? Jan 21 2012 00:30:00	Slashdot
Is Facebook Becoming a Central Bank? wasimkadak sends this quote from an article at Forbes: "Facebook's 27-year-old founder, Mark Zuckerberg, isn't usually mentioned in the same breath as Ben Bernanke, the 58-year-old head of the Federal Reserve. But Facebook's early adventures in the money-creating business are going well enough that the central-bank comparison gets tempting. ... Initially, the Credits-based economy was confined to the virtual world’s trifles. Credits could be spent to buy imaginary gold bars for aficionados... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Adafruit's Open-source Wearable Platform, Flora Jan 20 2012 23:49:00	Slashdot
Adafruit's Open-source Wearable Platform, Flora ptorrone writes "Limor 'Ladyada' Fried's NYC based Open-source electronics studio, Adafruit, today announced their new open wearable platform called the FLORA (blog post & video). The FLORA is Arduino compatible as well as supporting a variety of sensors and add-on devices including: Bluetooth, GPS, 3-axis accelerometer, compass module, flex sensor, piezo, IR LED, push button, embroidered + capacitive keypad, OLED and more. The first round of hardware is in the hands of testers to create wea... Read the full article on Slashdot »
2011 Was the 9th Hottest Year On Record Jan 20 2012 23:10:00	Slashdot
2011 Was the 9th Hottest Year On Record The Bad Astronomer writes "Last year was the 9th hottest year out of the past 130, according to NASA and the NOAA. That's no coincidence: nine out of the ten hottest years on record have been since the year 2000. It's long past time to face facts: the Earth is getting hotter, and to deny it is an exercise in fantasy." Read the full article on Slashdot »
DoD Using Plant DNA To Combat Counterfeit Parts Jan 20 2012 22:49:00	Slashdot
DoD Using Plant DNA To Combat Counterfeit Parts smitty777 writes "Highlighting another unique way to use cutting edge DNA technology, the U.S. Department of Defense has a new weapon in its efforts to combat counterfeit parts: plant DNA. This article at Wired discusses how plant DNA can be used to make an almost unique code (1 in 1 trillion) for parts identification. A graphic shows some of the ways this could be done: bolts with DNA-marked coating, invisible bar codes, and fluorescing inks are some of the possible applications. In a similar b... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Book Review: OpenCL Programming Guide Jan 20 2012 22:28:00	Slashdot
Book Review: OpenCL Programming Guide asgard4 writes "In recent years GPUs have become powerful computing devices whose power is not only used to generate pretty graphics on screen but also to perform heavy computation jobs that were exclusively reserved for high performance super computers in the past. Considering the vast diversity and rapid development cycle of GPUs from different vendors, it is not surprising that the ecosystem of programming environments has flourished fairly quickly as well, with multiple vendors, such as NVID... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Microsoft Pushes For Gay Marriage In Washington State Jan 20 2012 21:47:00	Slashdot
Microsoft Pushes For Gay Marriage In Washington State New submitter plsenjy writes "An article in the Atlantic outlines how Microsoft Corp. has submitted its support for a Washington State provision allowing gay couples to marry. Citing the company's inability to compete for top talent in the face of discrimination, Microsoft joins other firms such as Nike and Vulcan to effectively change moral policy from the top-down." Read the full article on Slashdot »
See the Tesla S at the Detroit International Auto Show ... Jan 20 2012 21:04:00	Slashdot
See the Tesla S at the Detroit International Auto Show (Video) The weather in Detroit was frightful and Slashdot editor Timothy Lord was nine hours away. No problem! He loaded his camcorder and a bunch of other stuff in his car and drove to Detroit for the 2012 International Auto Show. In today's video he looks at the Tesla Model S. Next week we'll have more video highlights of the auto show for you, so stay tuned... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Sunspot Tosses Plasma Cloud Toward Earth Jan 20 2012 20:36:00	Slashdot
Sunspot Tosses Plasma Cloud Toward Earth parallel_prankster writes "The Washington Post reports that a huge sunspot unleashed a blob of charged plasma Thursday that space weather watchers predict will blast past the Earth on Sunday. Satellite operators and power companies are keeping a close eye on the incoming cloud, which could distort the Earth's magnetic field and disrupt radio communications, especially at higher latitudes. The huge blob of charged gas spotted by NASA satellites is speeding toward Earth at more than 2 million mph.... Read the full article on Slashdot »
SOPA Goes Back To the Drawing Board, PIPA Postponed Jan 20 2012 20:15:00	Slashdot
SOPA Goes Back To the Drawing Board, PIPA Postponed New submitter rivin2e writes "SOPA has been sent back to the drawing board. 'The move came shortly after the Senate postponed a key vote on the companion PIPA bill scheduled for next week and amid calls for consensus before Congress moves forward on any legislation to address the problem of foreign piracy websites,' as written by the Los Angeles Times today. Hopefully the next draft of this bill will create a better foundation to stop piracy and not just assert control over the internet." Suppor... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Shady Methods From Online Reputation Managers Jan 20 2012 19:32:00	Slashdot
Shady Methods From Online Reputation Managers Velcroman1 writes "Worried about your online reputation? Let the Online Reputation Management buyer beware: The company that helps protect your reputation may have its own issues. Consider the case of Darren Meade, who in 2010 was working as interim CEO at a California company. In an effort to address a number of negative comments about both himself and his company online, his company hired Rexxfield, an ORM, also based in California. But Meade said he became concerned about the relationship wit... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Mutant Flu Researchers Declare a Time Out Jan 20 2012 18:50:00	Slashdot
Mutant Flu Researchers Declare a Time Out New submitter scibri writes "Researchers working on highly pathogenic H5N1 avian influenza have said they will stop work on the virus for 60 days, to allow them to explain the importance of their work to politicians and the public. Quoting: 'Despite the positive public-health benefits these studies sought to provide, a perceived fear that the ferret-transmissible H5 HA viruses may escape from the laboratories has generated intense public debate in the media on the benefits and potential harm of ... Read the full article on Slashdot »
What Happens To Your Files When a Cloud Service Shuts D... Jan 20 2012 18:07:00	Slashdot
What Happens To Your Files When a Cloud Service Shuts Down? MrSeb writes "Megaupload's shutdown poses an interesting question: What happens to all the files that were stored on the servers? XDA-Developers, for example, has more than 200,000 links to Megaupload — and this morning, they're all broken, with very little hope of them returning. What happens if a similar service, like Dropbox, gets shut down — either through bankruptcy, or federal take-down? Will you be given a chance to download your files, or helped to migrate them to another sim... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Former Dell Execs Involved In Massive Insider Trading P... Jan 20 2012 17:25:00	Slashdot
Former Dell Execs Involved In Massive Insider Trading Probe DMandPenfold writes "Two former Dell employees, including a former investor relations manager, were part of a $62 million record-breaking insider trading scam, involving the company's shares as well as Nvidia stock, according to the FBI. The news comes as the U.S. authorities step up their pursuit of inside traders. Two months ago, Galleon hedge fund founder Raj Rajaratnam was sentenced to 11 years in jail for his role in a scam involving AMD, IBM and 3Com stock. Yesterday, Sandeep Goyal, an emp... Read the full article on Slashdot »
VGA and DVI Ports To Be Phased Out Over Next 5 Years Jan 20 2012 16:41:00	Slashdot
VGA and DVI Ports To Be Phased Out Over Next 5 Years angry tapir writes "Legacy VGA and DVI display ports are likely to be phased out in PCs over the next five years, according to a study by NPD In-Stat. Intel and Advanced Micro Devices are ending chipset support for VGA by 2015. The VGA interface was originally introduced in 1986 and DVI was introduced in 1999." Read the full article on Slashdot »
DARPA + Makers + School = the Future of Innovation Jan 20 2012 15:59:00	Slashdot
DARPA + Makers + School = the Future of Innovation PerlJedi writes "The future of innovation in America is the Maker movement. A new project being announced on the Makezine blog aims to bring low cost innovation and alternative manufacturing processes to schools in hopes of turbo-charging the next generation of inventors in the U.S. From the announcement: 'The new Makerspace program, developed by Dale Dougherty of MAKE and Dr. Saul Griffith of Otherlab, will integrate online tools for design and collaboration with low-cost options for physical w... Read the full article on Slashdot »
DOJ Investigates Google, Apple, and Others For 'No Poac... Jan 20 2012 15:16:00	Slashdot
DOJ Investigates Google, Apple, and Others For 'No Poaching' Agreement CSHARP123 writes "The Department of Justice launched an investigation into the 'No Poaching' agreement between Apple and Google in 2010, but details of the case were only made public for the first time yesterday. TechCrunch was the first to sift through the documents, and has uncovered some ostensibly incriminating evidence against not only Google and Apple, but Pixar, Lucasfilm, Adobe, Intel, and Intuit, as well. According to the filings from the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of... Read the full article on Slashdot »
The Problem With Personalized Medicine Jan 20 2012 14:32:00	Slashdot
The Problem With Personalized Medicine gManZboy writes "Talk of individually tailored medical treatment isn't pie in the sky. This approach eventually will help us address risk factors even before a disease can invade our cells, and detect preclinical disease before it gets out of hand. What role will medical informatics play in this brave new world? Hint: Little data projects may be as important as big data projects such as gene sequencing. At a recent symposium on personalized medicine, Ezekiel J. Emanuel, MD, chairman of the Depar... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Police Investigate Offensive Wi-Fi Network Name Jan 20 2012 13:50:00	Slashdot
Police Investigate Offensive Wi-Fi Network Name An anonymous reader writes "Police in Teaneck, New Jersey, with apparently too much time on their hands, are investigating an offensive wireless network name. Although the police didn't reveal the name, the New York Daily News reports that it was anti-Semitic and racist in nature. The incident is being investigated as a possible 'bias crime.' It's definitely not what proper people do, but a 'bias crime?'" Read the full article on Slashdot »
What To Do With a 1,000 Foot Wrecked Cruise Ship? Jan 20 2012 13:07:00	Slashdot
What To Do With a 1,000 Foot Wrecked Cruise Ship? Hugh Pickens writes "What do you do with a 1,000-foot wreck that's full of fuel and half-submerged on a rocky ledge in the middle of an Italian marine sanctuary? Remove it. Very carefully. Stuck on a rocky shoal off the Tuscan island of Giglio, leaving the wreck where it is probably isn't an option but removing a massive ship that's run hard aground and incurred major damage to the hull involves logistical and environmental issues that are just as large. First there's the fuel. A half a million ... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Walmart Holds Invention Contest Jan 20 2012 10:22:00	Slashdot
Walmart Holds Invention Contest An anonymous reader writes "Walmart is holding the inventor's equivalent to 'American Idol' calling for product submissions that will be offered for sale in Walmart stores. Feel that the back scratcher you received a patent for hasn't garnered the attention it deserves? This could be your big chance at fame and fortune." Read the full article on Slashdot »
Faster-Than-Fast Fourier Transform Jan 20 2012 09:51:00	Slashdot
Faster-Than-Fast Fourier Transform First time accepted submitter CanEHdian writes "MIT news reports on research done resulting in a Faster-than-fast Fourier Transform algorithm. 'At the Association for Computing Machinery's Symposium on Discrete Algorithms (SODA) this week, a group of MIT researchers will present a new algorithm that, in a large range of practically important cases, improves on the fast Fourier transform. Under some circumstances, the improvement can be dramatic — a tenfold increase in speed. The new algori... Read the full article on Slashdot »
EU To Sign ACTA Later This Month Jan 20 2012 07:29:00	Slashdot
EU To Sign ACTA Later This Month rysiek writes "At a meeting of Polish Government officials with Polish NGOs and business representatives it was confirmed that the European Union is poised to sign the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement as soon as January 26th. But all is not lost. The Treaty still needs to be ratified by the Euro Parliament and member states individually. The ratification vote is important, as it is an either-or vote — if not ratified there, ACTA gets rejected in its entirety. The Ministry of Administrat... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Launch Your Own Nanosatellite Into Space Jan 20 2012 04:41:00	Slashdot
Launch Your Own Nanosatellite Into Space First time accepted submitter Rozine writes "Ever wanted to launch your own satellite into space? Thanks to a project at the Cornell Space Science Lab, now you can. In the words of the grad student leading the project, Zac Manchester, 'What better way of showing off your uber-geek credentials than having your own spacecraft?' Zac hopes that by shrinking the size of each spacecraft and using advancements in computer and solar cell technology, satellites can follow the path of the personal compute... Read the full article on Slashdot »
The Headaches of Cross-Platform Mobile Development Jan 20 2012 02:18:00	Slashdot
The Headaches of Cross-Platform Mobile Development snydeq writes "Increased emphasis on distinctive smartphone UIs means even more headaches for cross-platform mobile developers, writes Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister, especially as users continue to favor native over Web-based apps on mobile devices. 'Google and Microsoft are both placing renewed emphasis on their platforms' user experience. That means not just increased competition among smartphone and tablet platforms, but also new challenges for mobile application developers. ... The more ... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Post-9/11 DOJ Tech Project Dying After 10 Years? Jan 20 2012 00:52:00	Slashdot
Post-9/11 DOJ Tech Project Dying After 10 Years? gManZboy writes "A secure, interoperable radio network that the Department of Justice has been working on for more than a decade and that has cost the agency $356 million may be headed for failure, according to a new report by the agency's inspector general. Called for in the wake of 9/11, the Integrated Wireless Network (IWS) project has already been repeatedly scaled back. Today, the Department of Justice continues to rely on several separate land mobile radio systems, some of which are unreli... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Man Charged With Stealing Code From Federal Reserve Bank Jan 20 2012 00:07:00	Slashdot
Man Charged With Stealing Code From Federal Reserve Bank wiredmikey writes "A Chinese computer programmer was arrested by U.S. authorities in New York on Wednesday, on charges that he stole proprietary source code while working on a project at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The man arrested, Bo Zhang of New York, worked as a contract employee developing a specific portion of the GWA's (Government-Wide Accounting and Reporting Program) source code at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York where the code is maintained. The complaint alleges that in... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Do Data Center Audits Mean Anything? Jan 19 2012 23:26:00	Slashdot
Do Data Center Audits Mean Anything? 1sockchuck writes "Data center service providers often tout certifications such as SAS 70, SSAE 16 and SOC 2 as evidence that they meet lofty operational standards. But some of these certifications are based on self-defined standards, and the entire situation is confusing and frustrating to customers, according to one critic, who says data center shoppers are poorly served by the jumble of acronyms and standards. Do these certifications matter when users are seeking data center space? Should the... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Anonymous Takes Down DOJ, RIAA, MPA and Universal Music Jan 19 2012 22:45:00	Slashdot
Anonymous Takes Down DOJ, RIAA, MPA and Universal Music First time accepted submitter EW87 writes "Shortly after a federal raid today brought down the file sharing service Megaupload, hackers aligned with the online collective Anonymous have shut down sites for the Department of Justice, Universal Music Group and the RIAA. 'It was in retaliation for Megaupload, as was the concurrent attack on Justice.org,' Anonymous operative Barrett Brown tells RT on Thursday afternoon." Read the full article on Slashdot »
US Losing R&D Dominance To Asia? Jan 19 2012 22:02:00	Slashdot
US Losing R&D Dominance To Asia? bednarz writes "U.S. companies are locating more of their R&D operations overseas, and Asian countries are rapidly increasing investments in their own science and technology economies, the National Science Board said in a report released this week. The number of overseas researchers employed by U.S. multinationals nearly doubled from 138,000 in 2004 to 267,000 in 2009, for example. On the education front, the U.S. accounts for just 4% of undergraduate engineering degrees awarded globally, co... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Megaupload.com Shut Down, Founder Charged With Piracy Jan 19 2012 21:23:00	Slashdot
Megaupload.com Shut Down, Founder Charged With Piracy zacharye writes "Federal prosecutors in Virginia have shut down notorious file-sharing site Megaupload.com and charged the service's founder with violating piracy laws. The Associated Press broke the story on Thursday, reporting that the indictment accuses Megaupload.com's owner with costing copyright holders including record labels and movie studios more than $500 million in lost revenue." Read the full article on Slashdot »
Genes About a Quarter of the Secret To Staying Smart Jan 19 2012 20:42:00	Slashdot
Genes About a Quarter of the Secret To Staying Smart ananyo writes "A Scottish intelligence study that began 80 years ago has borne new fruit. Researchers have tracked down the study's surviving participants — who joined the study when they were 11 years old — to estimate the role that our genes have in maintaining intelligence through to old age. After conducting fresh intelligence tests on the surviving participants, the researchers tested the DNA samples they had collected for the presence of more than half a million common genetic ... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Pentagon To Crowdsource Weapons Software Testing Jan 19 2012 20:00:00	Slashdot
Pentagon To Crowdsource Weapons Software Testing An anonymous reader writes "The Pentagon plans to fork over $32 million to develop 'fun to play' computer games that can refine the way weapons systems are tested to ensure they are free from software errors and security bugs, according to a Defense Department solicitation. The goal is to create puzzles that are "intuitively understandable by ordinary people" and could be solved on laptops, smartphones, tablets and consoles. The games' solutions will be collected into a database and used to impr... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Sir Tim Berners-Lee Speaks Out On SOPA Jan 19 2012 19:18:00	Slashdot
Sir Tim Berners-Lee Speaks Out On SOPA natecochrane writes "Father of the web Sir Tim Berners-Lee called for Americans to protest SOPA and PIPA, laws he says violate human rights and are unfit for a democratic country. Sir Tim's condemnation came on the day an editorial in Australia's leading broadsheet newspapers pointed out that although the laws ostensibly applied to U.S. interests they could overreach to impact those in other countries." Read the full article on Slashdot »
A Planet Literally Boils Under the Heat of Its Star Jan 19 2012 18:36:00	Slashdot
A Planet Literally Boils Under the Heat of Its Star The Bad Astronomer writes "Astronomers have found what appears to be a planet so hot it's literally vaporizing, boiling away from the heat of its star. KIC 12557548b was found using the transit method, periodically blocking some light from its star as it orbits around. But the amount of light blocked changes every transit. Given it's less than a million miles from the surface of the star, astronomers interpret this (PDF) as the planet itself turning to vapor, and the expanding cloud of rock-lade... Read the full article on Slashdot »
NYPD Developing Portable Body Scanner For Detecting Guns Jan 19 2012 17:56:00	Slashdot
NYPD Developing Portable Body Scanner For Detecting Guns Zothecula writes "You have to feel sorry for the police officers who are required to frisk people for guns or knives — after all, if someone who doesn't want to be arrested is carrying a lethal weapon, the last thing most of us would want to do is get close enough to that person to touch them. That's why the New York Police Department teamed up with the United States Department of Defense three years ago, and began developing a portable scanner that can remotely detect the presence of a gu... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Teens Share Passwords As a Form of Intimacy Jan 19 2012 17:14:00	Slashdot
Teens Share Passwords As a Form of Intimacy nonprofiteer writes "The New York Times claims that the hot new trend among teenagers in love is to share passwords to their email and Facebook accounts, as the ultimate form of trust. According to Pew, 33% of teens surveyed say they do this. One expert says the pressure to share passwords is akin to the pressure to have sex. Forbes says don't do it! 'There is something pure and romantic about the idea of sharing everything, and having no secrets from one another. But it's romantic the same way ... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Apple Unveils Software To Reinvent the Textbook Jan 19 2012 16:34:00	Slashdot
Apple Unveils Software To Reinvent the Textbook redletterdave writes "At the Guggenheim Museum in New York, Apple announced on Thursday it would update its iBooks platform to include textbook capabilities and also added a new platform called iBooks Author, which lets anyone easily create and publish their own e-books. Apple's senior VP of marketing, Phil Schiller, introduced iBooks 2, which has a new textbook experience for the iPad. The books themselves display larger images, and searching content is made significantly easier: all users need... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Symantec Admits Its Networks Were Hacked in 2006 Jan 19 2012 15:51:00	Slashdot
Symantec Admits Its Networks Were Hacked in 2006 Orome1 writes "After having first claimed that the source code leaked by Indian hacking group Dharmaraja was not stolen through a breach of its networks, but possibly by compromising the networks of a third-party entity, Symantec backpedalled and announced that the code seems to have exfiltrated during a 2006 breach of its systems. Symantec spokesman Cris Paden has confirmed that unknown hackers have managed to get their hands on the source code to the following Symantec solutions: Norton Antivi... Read the full article on Slashdot »
LightSquared Says GPS Tests Were Rigged Jan 19 2012 15:14:00	Slashdot
LightSquared Says GPS Tests Were Rigged itwbennett writes "Would-be cellular carrier LightSquared claims that the company's LTE network was set up to fail in GPS interference tests. 'Makers of GPS (Global Positioning System) equipment put old and incomplete GPS receivers in the test so the results would show interference, under the cover of non-disclosure agreements that prevented the public and third parties from analyzing the process,' LightSquared executives said on a conference call with reporters Wednesday morning."Read more ... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Visual Studio Gets Achievements, Badges, Leaderboards Jan 19 2012 14:30:00	Slashdot
Visual Studio Gets Achievements, Badges, Leaderboards bonch writes "Microsoft has introduced a gamification plugin for Visual Studio that lets users win achievements and badges as they compete on leaderboards by writing code. The full list of achievements includes gems like 'Go To Hell' for using goto, and 'Potty Mouth' for using five different curses in one file. This is another example of Gamification, one of the latest trends to hit social media." Read the full article on Slashdot »
Kodak Files For Bankruptcy Protection Jan 19 2012 13:48:00	Slashdot
Kodak Files For Bankruptcy Protection Snirt writes "Following up on a story previously discussed here, it now appears Eastman Kodak, the company that invented the hand-held camera, has filed for bankruptcy protection. The move, according to Kodak's news release, gives the company time to reorganize itself without facing its creditors, and Kodak said it would mean business as normal for customers. The company has recently moved away from cameras, focusing on making printers to stem falling profits."Read more of this story at Slas... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Town Turns Off the Lights To See the Stars Jan 19 2012 13:05:00	Slashdot
Town Turns Off the Lights To See the Stars Hugh Pickens writes "Stargazing skies all over the world are disappearing, as the sky above New York City is Class 9 on the Bortle ranking and American suburban skies are typically Class 5, 6, or 7. But some places are making an effort to preserve their skywatching heritage as Exmoor National Park was granted International Dark-Sky Reserve status in November and people in the Exmoor town of Dulverton were challenged to switch off their lights as part of the BBC's Stargazing Live, demonstrating t... Read the full article on Slashdot »

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