spongman writes "Microsoft's Senior Vice President, Developer Division, S. Somasegar has announced that Microsoft has acquired Teamprise from Sourcegear, LLC, and will be shipping it as part of the upcoming Visual Studio 2010 release. Teamprise is an Eclipse plugin (and related tools) for connecting to Team Foundation Server, Microsoft's source-control/project-management system. What's most interesting about this is not only that Microsoft has realized that heterogeneous development platforms are important to their developer customers, but the fact that Microsoft themselves will now be developing and shipping products based on those heterogeneous platforms, including 5 versions of Unix."

An anonymous reader writes "Security researchers at Foreground Security have found an issue with Adobe Flash. Any site that allows files to be uploaded could be vulnerable to this issue (whether they serve Flash or not!). Adobe has said that no easy fix exists and no patch is forthcoming. Adobe puts the responsibility on the website administrators themselves to fix this problem, but they themselves seem to be vulnerable to these problems. Every user with Flash installed is vulnerable to this new type of attack and — until IT administrators fix their sites — will continue to be."

StonyCreekBare writes "Lately I've been rethinking my personal security practices. Should my laptop be stolen, having Firefox 'fill in' passwords automatically for me when I go to my bank's site seems sub-optimal. Keeping passwords for all the varied sites on the computer in a plain-text file seems unwise as well. Keeping them in my brain is a prescription for disaster, as my brain is increasingly leaky. A paper notepad likewise has its disadvantages. I have looked at a number of password managers, password 'vaults' and so on. The number of tools out there is a bit overwhelming. Magic Password Generator add-in for Firefox seems competent, but it's tied to Firefox, and I have other places and applications where I want passwords. And I might be accessing my sites from other computers that don't have it installed. The ideal tool in my mind should be something that is independent of any application, browser, or computer; something that is easily carried, but which if lost poses no risk of compromise. What does the Slashdot crowd like in password tools?"

In another move sure to continue the certain doom looming over classic publications, Rupert Murdoch has elaborated on the direction he would take in an effort to monetize the content that his websites deliver by attempting to block much of Google's ability to scan and index his news sites. "Murdoch believes that search engines cannot legally use headlines and paragraphs of news stories as search results. 'There's a doctrine called "fair use," which we believe to be challenged in the courts and would bar it altogether,' Mr Murdoch told the TV channel. 'But we'll take that slowly.'"

An anonymous reader writes to wonder if the glory has gone out of IT. One blogger remembered his first impression upon entering a profession in IT that made it seem like the place to be, with a new shiny around every corner. What experiences have others had? Has a more pervasive technical culture forced our IT gurus into obsolescence?

An anonymous reader writes 'In the article entitled Apple vs. Microsoft — A Website Usability Study, Dmitry Fadeyev, co-founder of Pixelshell, compares Apple's and Microsoft's web sites from a usability perspective, and Apple is the winner. Scott Barnes, PM at Microsoft, agrees with him and suggests the problem is because various site sub-domains have different management.'

Death Metal writes "While everyone would like to work for a nice person who is always right, IT pros will prefer a jerk who is always right over a nice person who is always wrong. Wrong creates unnecessary work, impossible situations and major failures. Wrong is evil, and it must be defeated. Capacity for technical reasoning trumps all other professional factors, period."

saudadelinux writes "Last year, the Tolkien Trust, which administers JRR's estate, bellowed stentoriously, 'Youuuu shall not make The Hobbit!' and sued New Line Cinema for 'a reported $220m (£133m) in compensation, based on breach of contract and fraud.' New Line, chastened, has settled for an undisclosed sum of money. The Trust has given its blessing to New Line for Guillermo del Toro to film The Hobbit and for New Line to make other films based on Tolkien's work. Much rejoicing!"

coondoggie writes "Things don't look good for NASA when the report outlining its future begins: 'The US human spaceflight program appears to be on an unsustainable trajectory. [NASA] is perpetuating the perilous practice of pursuing goals that do not match allocated resources. Space operations are among the most complex and unforgiving pursuits ever undertaken by humans. It really is rocket science. Space operations become all the more difficult when means do not match aspirations.' Today the Augustine Commission handed to the White House the Review of US Human Space Flight Plans Committee summary report, after months of expert review and testimony. Many observers expected a bleak report, but ultimately the future of US manned space flight will hinge on how the report's conclusions are interpreted. Keep in mind too that NASA has spent almost $8 billion of a planned $40 billion to develop systems for a return to the Moon."

definate writes "Two teenage girls (aged 10 and 12) found themselves trapped/lost in a stormwater drain in Adelaide, South Australia. The interesting point of this article that makes it Slashdot worthy, is that although the teenage girls had mobile phones, instead of calling for help using 000 (Australia's 911 number), they decided to notify people through Facebook. My guess is it was something along the lines of 'Jane Doe is like totally trapped in a stormwater drain, really need help, OMG!'. Luckily a young friend of the girls was online at the time and was able to call the proper authorities."

cookiej writes "I just got the most recent version of the Madden franchise ('10) for the PS3. Can somebody explain to me why EA has separate networks for the different platforms, only allowing players to compete with people using the same console? Back in the day, there were large discrepancies between the consoles, but these days it seems like the Xbox and the PS3 are at least near the same level. After so many releases for this franchise, they've got to have a fairly standardized protocol for networking; it seems arbitrary not to let them compete. Or am I just missing something obvious? Is it just a matter of Xbox Live and the PlayStation Network not working together?"

Mike writes "Watermelons are more than just a tasty summer snack — researchers at the USDA have determined that the fruit constitutes a promising and economically viable source of biofuel. It turns out that the relatively high concentration of directly fermentable sugars in watermelon juice can be easily converted into ethanol. Rather than grow fields of the fruit for the purpose, the report suggests that farmers capitalize on the 20% of each annual watermelon crop that is left in the field because of surface blemishes or because they are misshapen."

zokuga writes "The US government recently approved an $18 million contract for Smartronix to build a website where taxpayers could easily track billions in federal stimulus money, as part of President Obama's promise to make government more transparent through the Internet. However, the contract, which was released only through repeated Freedom of Information Act requests, is itself heavily blacked out. ProPublica reports: 'After weeks of prodding by ProPublica and other organizations, the Government Services Agency released copies of the contract and related documents that are so heavily blacked out they are virtually worthless. In all, 25 pages of a 59-page technical proposal — the main document in the package — were redacted completely. Of the remaining pages, 14 had half or more of their content blacked out.' Sections that were heavily or entirely redacted dealt with subjects such as site navigation, user experience, and everything in the pricing table. The entire contract, in all its blacked-out glory, is here."

grrlscientist writes "Here is a short talk in which Joachim de Posada shares a landmark experiment on delayed gratification — and how it can predict future success. With priceless video of kids trying their hardest not to eat their marshmallow."

The Bad Astronomer writes about a new discovery by the Spitzer Space Telescope, which detected signs of an interplanetary smashup only 100 light-years from here, and only a few thousand years ago. There's a NASA-produced animation of the collision between a Mercury-sized planet and a moon-sized impactor. The collision's aftermath was detected by the presence of what are essentially glass shards in orbit around the star. Here's NASA's writeup.