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Moon

Neil Armstrong Gives Rare Interview 248

Posted by timothy from the describe-the-tang-mines-you-discovered dept.
pcritter writes "In a rare coup for accountants' association CPA Australia, CEO Alex Malley interviews Neil Armstrong, whose dad worked as an Auditor, bringing him back four decades to the pinnacle of the space race. Neil reveals, 'I thought we had a 90 per cent chance of getting back safely to Earth on that flight but only a 50-50 chance of making a landing on that first attempt.' The four-part video series is now posted on CPA Australia's website."
Advertising

Fox Sues Dish Over "Auto Hop" Ad-Skipping Feature 578

Posted by timothy from the just-think-of-all-the-buggywhip-makers'-widows dept.
therealobsideus writes "Dish recently announced Auto Hop, giving its customers with the Hopper DVR the ability to 'hop' past commercial break on recordings. In response, Fox has filed suit against Dish in U.S. District Court, seeking to block the technology." The L.A. Times has coverage, too. Fox claims that giving viewers the ability to skip commercials on recorded television shows demonstrates the "clear goal of violating copyrights and destroying the fundamental underpinnings of the broadcast television ecosystem."
Cloud

Why Open Compute Is a Win For Rackspace 46

Posted by timothy from the more-space dept.
1sockchuck writes "Cloud provider Rackspace is looking to the emerging open source hardware ecosystem to transform its data centers. The cloud provider spends $200 million a year on servers and storage, and sees the Open Compute Project as the key to reducing its costs on hardware design and operations. Rackspace is keen on the potential of the new Open Rack program, and its buying power is motivating HP and Dell to develop for the new standard — partly because Rackspace has also been talking with original design manufacturers like Quantra and Wistron. It's an early look at how open source hardware could have a virtuous impact on the server economy. 'I think the OEMs were not very interested (in Open Compute) initially,' said Rackspace COO Mark Roenigk. 'But in the last six months they have become really focused.'"
Privacy

FBI Quietly Forms Secretive Net-Surveillance Unit 130

Posted by timothy from the indefatigable-declan dept.
An anonymous reader writes with this snippet from CNET: "CNET has learned that the FBI has formed a Domestic Communications Assistance Center, which is tasked with developing new electronic surveillance technologies, including intercepting Internet, wireless, and VoIP communications. 'The big question for me is why there isn't more transparency about what's going on?' asks Jennifer Lynch, a staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil liberties group in San Francisco. 'We should know more about the program and what the FBI is doing. Which carriers they're working with — which carriers they're having problems with. They're doing the best they can to avoid being transparent.'"
Businesses

Mobile Workers Work Longer Hours 117

Posted by timothy from the but-the-commute-is-great dept.
Qedward writes "Last month it was reported on slashdot that a third of workers at a British telecoms company were 'more productive' working from home during a telecommuting experiment to prepare for the London 2012 Olympics. A more recent study reveals almost two-thirds of mobile employees say they are working 50+ and 60+ hour weeks, with most also working weekends. It also has security implications, with most mobile workers saying they will do anything to get an internet connection, including hijacking unsecure networks. The problem of needing a connection has also led to an increase in workers waking up through the night due to stress."
Crime

New Jersey Mayor and Son Arrested For Nuking Recall Website 180

Posted by timothy from the ah-new-jersey dept.
phaedrus5001 writes "The mayor of West New York, New Jersey was arrested by the FBI after he and his son illegally took down a website that was calling for the recall of mayor Felix Roque (the site is currently down). From the article: 'According to the account of FBI Special Agent Ignace Ertilus, Felix and Joseph Roque took a keen interest in the recall site as early as February. In an attempt to learn the identity of the person behind the site, the younger Roque set up an e-mail account under a fictitious name and contacted an address listed on the website. He offered some "very good leads" if the person would agree to meet him. When the requests were repeatedly rebuffed, Joseph Rogue allegedly tried another route. He pointed his browser to Google and typed the search strings "hacking a Go Daddy Site," "recallroque log-in," and "html hacking tutorial."'"
Moon

NASA To Future Lunar Explorers: Don't Mess With Our Moon Stuff 346

Posted by timothy from the why-didn't-you-bring-enough-for-the-entire-class? dept.
coondoggie writes "NASA today gently reminded any future Moon explorers that any relics of its Apollo missions or other U.S. lunar artifacts should be off limits and are considered historic sites. NASA issued the reminder in conjunction with the X Prize Foundation and its Google Lunar X Prize competition which will use NASA's Moon sites guidelines as it sifts through the 26 teams currently developing systems and spacecraft to land on the Moon."
Displays

Ask Slashdot: Hobbyist-Ready LCD Touch Panel For Embedded Projects? 142

Posted by timothy from the you-could-take-my-stack-of-dead-laptops dept.
michael_cain writes "I've been asked (by family, friends) to consider several small embedded controller projects. A good starting point for all of them would be a backlit LCD graphics module with touch screen pre-mounted in a plastic enclosure with enough room behind the display for a custom circuit board. 320-by-240 pixels, 3.5 to 4.5 inch diagonal measure, monochrome is sufficient (but color is always cool), easily driven by an AVR or PIC type microcontroller. And priced at a reasonable point for a hobbyist! Anyone seen anything like this?"
Businesses

New Music Boss, Worse Than Old Music Boss 567

Posted by timothy from the ok-but-it-all-beats-laying-brick-in-ancient-egypt dept.
frank_adrian314159 writes "David Lowery, musician (Cracker, Camper Van Beethoven), producer (Sparklehorse, Counting Crows), recording engineer (Archers of Loaf, Lamb of God), and geek (programmer, packet radio operator, ex-CBOT quant) talks about the economics of the music business and how the 'old boss' — the record labels — have been replaced by the new boss — file downloading services, song streaming, and commercial online music stores. His take? Although the old boss was often unfair to artists, artists are making even less money under the new boss. Backed with fairly persuasive data, he shows that, under the new distribution model, artists — even small independent ones — are exposed to more risk while making less money. In addition, the old boss was investing in the creation of new music, while the new boss doesn't. This article is lengthy, but worth the attention of anyone interested in the future of music or music distribution."
Security

Yahoo Includes Private Key In Source File For Axis Chrome Extension 85

Posted by timothy from the open-source-rocks dept.
Trailrunner7 writes "Yahoo on Wednesday launched a new browser called Axis and researchers immediately discovered that the company had mistakenly included its private signing key in the source file, a serious error that would allow an attacker to create a malicious, signed extension for a browser that the browser will then treat as authentic. The mistake was discovered on Wednesday, soon after Yahoo had launched Axis, which is both a standalone browser for mobile devices as well as an extension for Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Internet Explorer. ... Within hours of the Axis launch, a writer and hacker named Nik Cubrilovic had noticed that the source file for the Axis Chrome extension included the private PGP key that Yahoo used to sign the file. That key is what the Chrome browser would look for in order to ensure that the extension is legitimate and authentic, and so it should never be disclosed publicly."
Security

US State Department Hacks Al-Qaeda Websites In Yemen 245

Posted by samzenpus from the hearts-and-minds dept.
shuttah writes "In the growing Al-Qaeda activity in Yemen, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton revealed today that 'cyber experts' had recently hacked into web sites being used by an Al-Qaeda affiliate, substituting the group's anti-American rhetoric with information about civilians killed in terrorist strikes. Also this week, a statement from the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs revealed the presence an Al-Qaeda video calling for 'Electronic Jihad.'"
The Internet

Sales of Unused IPv4 Addresses Gaining Steam 329

Posted by samzenpus from the get-em-before-they're-gone dept.
netbuzz writes "A growing number of U.S. carriers and enterprises are hedging their bets on IPv6 by purchasing blocks of unused IPv4 addresses through official channels or behind-the-scenes deals. There is certainly no shortage of stock, as these address brokers have blocks available that range from 65,000 to more than a million IPv4 addresses. And it's not just large companies and institutions benefiting, as one attorney who's involved in the market says he represents a woman who came into possession of a block of IPv4 address in the early '90s and now, 'She's in her 70s, and she's going to have a windfall.''"
Security

Moxie Marlinspike Proposes New TACK Extension To TLS For Key Pinning 55

Posted by samzenpus from the protect-ya-neck dept.
Trailrunner7 writes "Two independent researchers are proposing an extension for TLS to provide greater trust in certificate authorities, which have become a weak link in the entire public key infrastructure after some big breaches involving fraudulent SSL certificates. TACK, short for Trust Assertions for Certificate Keys, is a dynamically activated public key framework that enables a TLS server to assert the authenticity of its public key. According to an IETF draft submitted by researchers Moxie Marlinspike and Trevor Perrin, a TACK key is used to sign the public key from the TLS server's certificate. Clients can 'pin' a hostname to the TACK key, based on a user's visitation habits, without requiring sites modify their existing certificate chains or limiting a site's ability to deploy or change certificate chains at any time. If the user later encounters a fraudulent certificate on a "pinned" site, the browser will reject the session and send a warning to the user. 'Since TACK pins are based on TACK keys (instead of CA keys), trust in CAs is not required. Additionally, the TACK key may be used to revoke previous TACK signatures (or even itself) in order to handle the compromise of TLS or TACK private keys,' according to the draft."
Medicine

Supreme Court Orders Do-Over On Key Software Patents 167

Posted by samzenpus from the no-trade-backs dept.
Fluffeh writes "It seems that the U.S. Supreme Court has an itch it just can't scratch. A patent granted to the Ultramercial company covers the concept of allowing users to watch a pre-roll advertisement as an alternative to paying for premium content and the company is demanding fees from the likes of Hulu and YouTube. Another company called WildTangent, however, is challenging Ultramercial's 'invention' as merely an abstract idea not eligible for patent protection. Add to this a recent ruling by the Supreme Court restricting patents — albeit on medical diagnostic techniques — and you get into a bit of a pickle. The Supreme Court is now sending the Ultramercial case back to the lower courts for another round, which doesn't mean that the court disagrees with the original ruling, but rather that it thinks it is a patent case that is relevant to the situation and they want to re-examine it under this new light."

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