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Crime

Submission + - Spy Drones Used to Hunt Down Christopher Dorner

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "The Express reports that as a task force of 125 officers continue their search for Christopher Dorner in the rugged terrain around Big Bear, it was revealed that Dorner has become the first human target for remotely-controlled airborne drones on US soil. “The thermal imaging cameras the drones use may be our only hope of finding him," says a senior police source. "On the ground, it’s like looking for a needle in a haystack.” The use of drones was confirmed by Customs and Border Patrol spokesman Ralph DeSio, who revealed agents have been prepared for Dorner to make a dash for the Mexican border since his rampage began. “This agency has been at the forefront of domestic use of drones by law enforcement.” Dorner, who was fired from the LAPD in 2008 for lying about a fellow officer he accused of misconduct, has vowed to wreak revenge by “killing officers and their families”. According to San Bernardino County Sheriff John McMahon: "To be honest, he could be anywhere right now. Torching his own vehicle could have been a diversion to throw us off track. Anything is possible with this man.”"
Privacy

Submission + - Flickr privacy bug changes some private photos to public (networkworld.com)

Submitted by colinneagle
colinneagle writes: Flickr has discovered a software bug that made some users' private photos public for as long as 20 days. As a precaution, Flickr set all public photos to private. The result is "bad" links across the web that cause the "currently unavailable" error message.

Ironically, Flickr less than a week ago released some tips for safer photo and privacy sharing settings, as part of Microsoft's Safer Internet Day. At the same time, the company was quietly restoring users' private photos that had been made public.

However, posts to Flickr user forums show that many continue to struggle get their public photos restored or even find out if anyone had seen their private photos.
Games

Submission + - Inside the Project Holodeck VR Game World, First Impressions (roadtovr.com)

Submitted by
Hesh
Hesh writes: "The space-pirates themed Project Holodeck game (http://www.ProjectHolodeck.com) out of USC is a VR game that is initially targeted for the Oculus Rift and will marry VR with a world so interactive and immersive that it feels like you can almost reach out and touch it. Ben Lang over at RoadToVR recently got a chance to sit down with the team and try it out and came out extremely impressed with how immersive the experience was: '...at one point I needed to set the Razer Hydra controllers down to adjust my helmet and I nearly tried to set them down on a virtual table next to me. There was no table in real life — had I not quickly realized what I was about to do, I would have dropped the controllers straight onto the floor below.'"
Medicine

Submission + - Scientists Use Gene Therapy to Cure Dogs of Type 1 Diabetes (gizmag.com)

Submitted by Zothecula
Zothecula writes: Researchers from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) have claimed a first by successfully using a single session of gene therapy to cure dogs of type 1 diabetes. The work has shown that it is possible to cure the disease in large animals with a minimally-invasive procedure – potentially leading the way to further developments in studies for human treatment of the disease.
Media

Submission + - Ballot-stuffing bot skews online polls, news reports (scmagazine.com.au)

Submitted by mask.of.sanity
mask.of.sanity writes: An Australian software dev has built a bot to automatically cast tens of thousands of votes through online polls run by the country's biggest news outlets.

It skewed subsequent media reports on the results which continued for months despite the engineer's efforts to warn reporters of the hoax.

He coupled his simple bash script with Tor that was made to change exit relays every 10 minutes, defeating measures to prevent repeat voting from one IP address.
Privacy

Submission + - EU Data Protection proposal taken word for word from US lobbyists (computerworlduk.com)

Submitted by Qedward
Qedward writes: Computerworld UK open enterprise blogger Glyn Moody looks at the proposed EU directive on Data Protection — and how some of the proposed amendments seem to be cut and pasted directly from the American Chamber of Commerce — that well-known European organisation...

You might ask, Glyn writes, who are these MEPs representing — some 500 million EU citizens that pay their salary or a bunch of extremely rich US companies intent on taking away our privacy?
Privacy

Submission + - Can you erase yourself from the internet? (pcpro.co.uk)

Submitted by
Barence
Barence writes: "Do you remember what you posted on that music forum in 2004? Or which services you tried for webmail before Gmail? We often forget online services, but they don't forget us. PC Pro has investigated whether it's possible to retrospectively wipe yourself from the internet. It discusses how difficult it is to get your data removed from Facebook, Google and other popular web services, as well as reputation management services that promise to bury unwanted internet content on your behalf."
Education

Submission + - Professors Reject Classroom Technology (informationweek.com)

Submitted by
CowboyRobot
CowboyRobot writes: "The January edition of Science, Technology & Human Values published an article titled, Technological Change and Professional Control in the Professoriate that details interviews with 42 faculty members at three research-intensive universities. The research concludes that faculty have little interest in the latest IT "solutions". "I went to [a course management software workshop] and came away with the idea that the greatest thing you could do with that is put your syllabus on the Web and that's an awful lot of technology to hand the students a piece of paper at the start of the semester and say keep track of it," said one. "What are the gains for students by bringing IT into the class? There isn't any. You could teach all of chemistry with a whiteboard. I really don't think you need IT or anything beyond a pencil and a paper," said another."
Security

Submission + - Two Jokers Social Engineer their way into the Superbowl (praetorianprefect.com)

Submitted by danielkennedy74
danielkennedy74 writes: Sneaking in near press/employee access points without going thru them, zigzagging through corridors, and once carrying a box so someone opens a door for them, two jokers from Savannah State University social engineer their way into Super Bowl XLVII for the most part simply by looking like they belong.
Programming

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: Making side-money as a programmer

Submitted by
earlzdotnet
earlzdotnet writes: "I've been programming for a few years now, have a full time job etc. I'm one of those lucky souls that actually enjoy programming, so I commonly work on my own open source projects on weekends. However, I wouldn't mind working on a short-term(ie, not more than 2 months) project every once in a while on weekends.

I've looked at freelancing before and I could probably make more money by working at McDonald's on weekends than that. I've also looked into making web sites for small businesses, but it requires a bit too much commitment and support for me, especially since I'm terrible at graphics design. I've had my hand at trying to write reusable components to sell to other programmers, but that was pretty pointless(made one $20 sale). I've seen teaching suggested, but I'm self-taught and probably not experienced enough to responsibly teach people

Are there any other options to make a bit of cash as a programmer? Is programming just one of those things that requires complete dedication or what?"
The Internet

Submission + - Open Spectrum Does Not Mean Free Internet (networkcomputing.com)

Submitted by
CowboyRobot
CowboyRobot writes: "FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski recently proposed making RF spectrum publicly available, and many in the media (including the Washington Post) have been mistakenly conflating open access to wifi signal with free Internet access; anyone can put up a wireless access point but that doesn't give them access to the Internet. The proposal will probably mean more attempts at providing free Internet access to specific neighborhoods or municipalities, but as Larry Seltzer at NetworkComputing points out, these programs also usually forget that access to signal is not the same as access to the Internet. After getting the funding to wire a city, these isn't money left to pay for the actual bandwidth usage."
Microsoft

Submission + - Australian Govt forces Apple, Adobe, Microsoft to explain price hikes (delimiter.com.au)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Live outside the US? Tired of paying huge local price markups on technology products from vendors such as Apple, Microsoft and Adobe? Well, rest easy, the Australian Government is on the case. After months of stonewalling from the vendors, today the Australian Parliament issued subpoenas compelling the three vendors to appear in public and take questions regarding their price hikes on technology products sold in Australia. Finally, we may have some answers for why Adobe, for example, charges up to $1,400 more for the full version of Creative Suite 6 when sold outside the US.
Privacy

Submission + - Raytheon's Riot program mines social network data for intelligence agencies (guardian.co.uk)

Submitted by Shipud
Shipud writes: Raytheon has secretly developed software capable of tracking people's movements and predicting future behaviour by mining data from social networking websites according to this story from The Guardian.

An "extreme-scale analytics" system created by Raytheon, the world's fifth largest defence contractor, can gather vast amounts of information about people from websites including Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare.

Raytheon says it has not sold the software – named Riot, or Rapid Information Overlay Technology – to any clients. But the company has acknowledged the technology was shared with US government and industry as part of a joint research and development effort, in 2010, to help build a national security system capable of analysing "trillions of entities" from cyberspace.

The power of Riot to harness popular websites for surveillance offers a rare insight into controversial techniques that have attracted interest from intelligence and national security agencies, at the same time prompting civil liberties and online privacy concerns.
Yahoo!

Submission + - Widespead Email Compromise by Yahoo (YahooXtra) in New Zealand (nzherald.co.nz)

Submitted by Bitsy Boffin
Bitsy Boffin writes: Xtra, the largest ISP in New Zealand, which outsources email provision to Yahoo, has in the last two days been subject of a widespread email compromise, causing potentially thousands of accounts to send SPAM messages to every address in their webmail address books.

Discussion at Geekzone centers around this potentially being a continuation of the Yahoo XSS exploit.

While Telecom NZ, the owners of Xtra internet service provider indicate that the problem was "resolved", reports of SPAM from it's members continue unabated.

Telecom NZ are advising those affected to change their passwords.
Education

Submission + - Should Techies Trump Latinos in Immigration Reform?

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: In an open letter on TechCrunch, Vivek Wadhwa calls on Congressman Luis Gutierrez to lift his 'hold on Silicon Valley' and stop tying immigration reform for highly-skilled STEM immigrants to the plight of undocumented immigrants. So, why should the STEM set get first dibs? 'The issues of high-skilled and undocumented immigrants are both equally important,' says Wadhwa, but 'the difference is that the skilled workers have mobility and are in great demand all over the world. They are getting frustrated and are leaving in droves.' Commenting on Gutierrez's voting record, Wadhwa adds, 'I would have voted for visas for 50,000 smart foreign students graduating with STEM degrees from U.S. universities over bringing in 55,000 randomly selected high-school graduates from abroad. The STEM graduates would have created jobs and boosted our economy. The lottery winners will come to the U.S. with high hopes, but will face certain unemployment and misery because of our weak economy.' So, should Gutierrez cede to Wadhwa's techies-before-Latinos proposal, or would this be an example of the paradox of virtuous meritocracy undermining equality of opportunity?

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