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Encryption

Submission + - An Interactive Graph of the CA Ecosystem

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Researchers of the International Computer Science Institute in Berkeley have created an interactive diagram that shows root-CAs, their intermediates, the relationships between them and how many certificates have been signed by them. The graph was generated by passively monitoring the Internet uplinks of a number of (mostly) edu sites for SSL connections and their certificate Information. Among other things the graph shows that one GoDaddy intermediate signed more than 74,000 certificates and that a German CA uses more than 200 sub-CAs for administrative reasons.
Power

Submission + - Solar Panels for Every Home?

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "David Crane and Robert F.Kennedy Jr. write in the NY Times that with residents of New Jersey and New York living through three major storms in the past 16 month and suffering sustained blackouts, we need to ask whether it is really sensible to power the 21st century by using an antiquated and vulnerable system of copper wires and wooden poles. Some have taken matters into their own hands, purchasing portable gas-powered generators to give themselves varying degrees of grid independence but these dirty, noisy and expensive devices have no value outside of a power failure and there is a better way to secure grid independence for our homes and businesses: electricity-producing photovoltaic panels installed on houses, warehouses and over parking lots wired so that they deliver power when the grid fails. "Solar panels have dropped in price by 80 percent in the past five years and can provide electricity at a cost that is at or below the current retail cost of grid power in 20 states, including many of the Northeast states," write Crane and Kennedy. "So why isn’t there more of a push for this clean, affordable, safe and inexhaustible source of electricity?" First, the investor-owned utilities that depend on the existing system for their profits have little economic interest in promoting a technology that empowers customers to generate their own power. Second, state regulatory agencies and local governments impose burdensome permitting and siting requirements that unnecessarily raise installation costs. While it can take as little as eight days to license and install a solar system on a house in Germany, in the United States, depending on your state, the average ranges from 120 to 180 days. "As we restore crucial infrastructure after the storm, let’s build an electricity delivery system that is more resilient, clean, democratic and reliable than the one that Sandy washed away," write the authors. "We have the technology. The economics makes sense. All we need is the political will.""
Businesses

Submission + - Musicians support piracy, think it more profitable than music biz (jester-records.com)

Submitted by
hessian
hessian writes: "The harsh reality is that too many prey on us – in a hostile environment – we have no other choice than to rise up.

We have no beef with "curious cats" who tune in on unauthorized channels, download torrents etc. Such undertakings serve a similar purpose to that of labels and distributors – from which we see such a minuscule yield anyway. Forget about it.

We encourage all conscientious music fans to buy their music direct from artists whenever that is possible, in the future. It will help more than you know."
NASA

Submission + - NASA Prepares Probes for Suicide Mission (nasa.gov)

Submitted by Press2ToContinue
Press2ToContinue writes: "Twin lunar-orbiting NASA spacecraft that have allowed scientists to learn more about the internal structure and composition of the moon are being prepared for their controlled descent and impact on a mountain near the moon's north pole at about 2:28 p.m. PST (5:28 p.m. EST) Monday, Dec. 17.

Ebb and Flow, the Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission probes, are being sent purposely into the lunar surface because their low orbit and low fuel levels preclude further scientific operations. The duo's successful prime and extended science missions generated the highest resolution gravity field map of any celestial body. The map will provide a better understanding of how Earth and other rocky planets in the solar system formed and evolved.

Both spacecraft will hit the surface at 3,760 mph (1.7 kilometers per second). No imagery of the impact is expected because the region will be in shadow at the time."

Observing the impacts could provide valuable feedback. For example, a spectrographic analysis of the impact dust cloud could reveal additional density and compositional element information for the lunar pole surfaces, so it is particularly Interesting that the probes will impact where they can't be observed from earth. This leads I, for one, to wonder if there is more to this than meets the press.
The Internet

Submission + - U.S. Refuses to Sign ITU Treaty Over Internet Provisions

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The United States said today that it will not sign an international telecommunications treaty thanks to the inclusion of Internet-related provisions. According to the BBC, the U.K. and Canada have also pledged not to sign the treaty in its current form, while delegates from Denmark, the Czech Republic, Sweden, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Costa Rica, and Kenya also have reservations.
Microsoft

Submission + - Secure boot: Microsoft shows up Linux (itwire.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: It's early days for secure boot, the new method that Microsoft is using to protect its desktop turf, but it would not be unfair to say that the company has succeeded in showing up the sharply fragmented nature of GNU/Linux.
Math

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: Replacing a TI-84 with software on a Linux box?

Submitted by
yanom
yanom writes: "I'm currently a high school student using my TI-84 for mathematics courses. It has all the functionality I need (except CAS), but saying that the hardware is dated is putting it nicely. Waiting 4-5 seconds for a simple function to be graphed on it's 96x64 screen just makes me want to hurl it at the wall. Recently, I've begun to notice the absurdity of doing my math homework on a 70's era microchip when I have an i7 machine with Linux within arm's reach. I've begun looking for software packages that could supposedly replace the graphing calculator's functionality, including Xcas and Maxima, but both lack what I consider basic calculator functionality — xcas can't create a table of values for a function, and maxima can't use degrees, only radians. So, does anyone know of a good software package to replace my graphing calculator (and maybe provide CAS to boot)?"
Networking

Submission + - Seattle to get gigabit fiber to the home and business (seattle.gov)

Submitted by symbolset
symbolset writes: Enthusiasm about Google's Kansas City fiber project is overwhelming. But in the Emerald City, the government doesn't want to wait. They have been stringing fiber throughout the city for years, and today announced a deal with company Gigabit Squared and the University of Washington to serve fiber to 55,000 Seattle homes and businesses with speeds up to a gigabit. The city will lease out the unused fiber, but will not have ownership in the provider nor a relationship with the end customers. The service rollout is planned to complete in 2014. It is the first of 6 planned university area network projects currently planned by Gigabit Squared.

Is this the way for all of us to get our fiber faster? Have the city run the fiber and lease it out?
Australia

Submission + - Australian Prime Minister's spoof "apocalypse" speech goes viral in China (dailylife.com.au)

Submitted by
brindafella
brindafella writes: "Australian Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, recorded a spoof speech about the Mayan calendar apocalypse several days ago, for radio station "Triple J". Gillard said in part, "Whether the final blow comes from flesh eating zombies, demonic hell beasts or from the total triumph of K-pop, if you know one thing about me it is this: I will always fight for you to the very end."

The speech has been picked up in China on Sina Weibo (China's Twitter) and has achieved well over 23,000 repeats, without anyone picking up the irony.

This is just days after another Australian radio station, 2Day FM, created an international sensation with a prank (spoof) call to the hospital in London where Princess Catherine was undergoing treatment, and a nurse killed herself following the revelation of the prank."

Submission + - Canadian Invisibility Cloak Gets Pentagon Backing (huffingtonpost.ca)

Submitted by Press2ToContinue
Press2ToContinue writes: We've seen many variations of invisibility cloaks recently, visible light and otherwise. However, this one is most like the Harry-Potter version, and is of enough interest to the Pentagon to receive their funding.

"Maple Ridge, B.C.-based Hyperstealth Biotechnology has developed "Quantum Stealth," a type of camouflage that bends light around the wearer or an object to create the illusion of invisibility.

President and CEO Guy Cramer likened the new technology to Harry Potter's invisibility cloak during a recent CNN appearance, and described its ability to easily and effectively hide a soldier in different environments."

Hokey slideshow here (the pictures are reported to be non-photoshopped): http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2012/12/11/quantum-stealth-invisibility-hyperstealth_n_2277394.html#slide=1868711

Obligatory cliche CNN coverage here: http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/us/2012/12/04/tsr-lawrence-invisble-camo-technology.cnn
Movies

Submission + - Best way to index home movies? 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: I am in the process of digitizing several hours worth of home video stretching 15+ years. I plan on giving the final result on a flash drive to my family as a Christmas present. I am deciding how to best organize the videos and will most likely just have subdirectories by the year.

Ideally, I am envisioning an interactive program where you could simply select the person or year you would like to see and every clip with that description will be brought up to be played in a queue. This would of course require me to input that information somewhere in the program but I don't mind as long as it improves the user experience. Are there any interactive video programs that might fulfill a role at least similar to this?
Japan

Submission + - Japan police offers first-ever reward for wanted hacker (networkworld.com)

Submitted by alphadogg
alphadogg writes: Japanese police are looking for an individual who can code in C#, uses a "Syberian Post Office" to make anonymous posts online, and knows how to surf the web without leaving any digital tracks — and they're willing to pay. It is the first time that Japan's National Police Agency has offered a monetary reward for a wanted hacker, or put so much technical detail into one of its wanted postings. The NPA will pay up to $36,000, the maximum allowed under its reward system. The case is an embarrassing one for the police, in which earlier this year 4 individuals were wrongly arrested after their PCs were hacked and used to post messages on public bulletin boards. The messages included warnings of plans for mass killings at an elementary school posted to a city website.
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft Investigating IE Mouse Tracking Flaw, Says Users Not Affected Yet

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: News broke on Wednesday of a new Internet Explorer vulnerability that allows an attacker to track your mouse cursor anywhere on the screen, even if the browser isn’t being actively used. On Thursday, Microsoft confirmed it is looking into the issue and denied reports that the flaw is already being exploited. “We are currently investigating this issue, but to date there are no reports of active exploits or customers that have been adversely affected,” a Microsoft spokesperson told TNW. “We will provide additional information as it becomes available and will take the appropriate action to protect our customers.”
Linux

Submission + - What a Year for Linux (linux.com)

Submitted by
JClo
JClo writes: "The Linux Foundation releases year in review video today. Highlights include Torvalds' Millennium Tech Prize, Raspberry Pi, Android, Red Hat $1B, and more. Missing: Linus flipping the bird."
Iphone

Submission + - Apple iPhone Infringes On Sony, Nokia Patents (infoworld.com)

Submitted by snydeq
snydeq writes: A federal jury in Delaware has found Apple's iPhone infringes on three patents held by MobileMedia, a patent-holding company formed by Sony, Nokia and MPEG LA, InfoWorld reports. The jury found that the iPhone directly infringed U.S. patent 6,070,068, which was issued to Sony and covers a method for controlling the connecting state of a call, U.S. patent 6,253,075, which covers call rejection, and U.S. patent 6,427,078, which covers a data processing device. MobileMedia has garnered the unflattering descriptor "patent troll" from some observers. The company, which was formed in 2010, holds some 300 patents in all.
Government

Submission + - And the Noose Tightens (dropbox.com)

Submitted by
interval1066
interval1066 writes: "In a breathtaking new move by (another) little-known national security agency, the personal information of all US citizens will be available for casual perusal. The "National Counterterrorism Center" (I've never heard of this org) may now "examine the government files of U.S. citizens for possible criminal behavior, even if there is no reason to suspect them." This is different from past bureaucratic practice (never mind due process) in that a government agency not in the list of agencies approved to to certain things without due process may completely bypass due process and STORE (for up to 5 years) these records, the org doesn't need a warrant, or have any kind of over-site of any kind. They will be sifting through these records looking for "counter-insurgency activity", supposedly with an eye to prevention. If this doesn't wake you up and chill you to your very bone, not too sure there is anything that will anyway.
The story is behind a pay wall that I have access too so I copied the web page from the WSJ and put it in my public drop box folder."
The Military

Submission + - Iron Dome: Behind the hoopla, a familiar story of missile-defense hype (thebulletin.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Many journalists believed the hype because they saw fireballs in the sky. The 2nd to the last paragraph of this article explains why the fireballs don't necessarily mean success: "In a recent conversation, MIT professor and missile defense expert Ted Postol suggested one approach for such investigation: the examination of video footage of Iron Dome intercepts. The Iron Dome's interceptor employs a blast fragmentation warhead. During an intercept attempt, the shrapnel from the explosion of the interceptor is supposed to hit the threat rocket and blow up its warhead. Each of these explosions creates a spherical fireball that is visible in a video shot. The fireballs could be seen as elongated, rather than spherical or in some cases as two distinct spheres; they could also overlap, distorting their spherical shapes. But, Postol says, if the video showed a single fireball sphere, it would most likely be an indication of a failed intercept." Jury seems to be still out on this.
Google

Submission + - Google Loses Santa to Bing (technet.com)

Submitted by Sebolains
Sebolains writes: Unlike previous years, NORAD (the North American Aerospace Defense Command) has decided to use Bing maps to track Santa's journey as he goes around the world delivering presents. Starting Christmas eve, one will be able to go to the official NORAD Santa tracking site (http://www.noradsanta.org/) and use Bing maps to see where Santa is delivering presents at that time. In previous years, NORAD has always gone for Google maps to track Saint Nick. The reason for this switch were not disclosed, but since nearly 25 million people are expected to use this tool come this Christmas, this will definitely benefit Bing in the ongoing competition for online map applications.

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