spinochet - Slashdot User

Submission + - Plagiarism at arXiv (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by jmakov on Wednesday August 29, 2007 @07:44AM

jmakov writes: "They provided a PDF of the Journal of High Energy Physics article, marked up to reveal the source of much of the text. It contains material from at least a dozen different peer-reviewed works; the original material seems limited to a majority of the abstract and a limited number of mathematical derivations that rephrase equations published elsewhere." Some other urls: http://www.arsmathematica.net/archives/2007/08/22/ plagiarism-at-arxiv/, http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=59 0

Submission + - FBI's Unknown Eavesdropping Network ..

Submitted by

rs232

on Wednesday August 29, 2007 @07:41AM

rs232 writes: ""Building off the design mandates of CALEA, the FBI has quietly built a sophisticated, point-and-click surveillance system that performs instant wiretaps on almost any communications device"

http://www.wired.com/politics/security/news/2007/0 8/wiretap"

Submission + - Light pulses crack security codes within seconds (tgdaily.com)

Submitted by jmakov on Wednesday August 29, 2007 @07:33AM

jmakov writes: University of Michigan scientists have discovered a breakthrough way to utilize light in cryptography. The new technique can crack even complex codes in a matter of seconds. Scientists believe this technique offers much advancement over current solutions and could serve to foil national and personal security threats if employed.

Submission + - Rep. Berman Doing Mafiaa Bidding (As Usual) (variety.com)

Submitted by

Panaqqa

on Wednesday August 29, 2007 @07:29AM

Panaqqa writes: "Howard Berman, the Representative from Disney, is once again trying to turn ISPs into part of the RIAA/MPAA's extortion and shakedown juggernaut by requiring them to pass along threatening letters to subscribers that use P2P. This is quite alarming, coming as it does from the head of the house Intellectual Property Committee. Many P2P lawsuits are based on very flimsy evidence, such as an IP address alone. One can only hope that more defendants have positive outcomes such as winning back their attorney's fees."

Submission + - Irregularities reported in OOXML ISO process (europa.eu)

Submitted by Basile Schaeli on Wednesday August 29, 2007 @06:05AM

Basile Schaeli writes: Irregularities are being reported in national standardisation bodies of several EU member states that are deciding how to vote on OOXML. Participants found issues in the voting process in Norway, Germany, Switzerland, Italy and the Netherlands.

Submission + - Apple Has No Strategy and Never Did

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 27, 2007 @06:19AM

An anonymous reader writes: The former Apple employee writes: "Granted some absolutely stellar products got created, but all the grand plans that people come up with trying to figure out Apple's strategy are just interesting reading and have little to do with what really happens. Apple does not do strategy. They do products, and the products might create a semblance of strategy but that is it." http://viewfromthemountain.typepad.com/applepeels/

Submission + - GPL violoation. One man War? (sourceforge.net)

Submitted by

JCWDenton

on Monday August 27, 2007 @05:58AM

JCWDenton writes: "How can one man enforce his GPL-ed code?
From the writer of Media Player Classic:
Recently I've notified about these two products that they use code from the guliverkli project, one of them is free but closed source and not GPLed player (KMPlayer, http://www.kmplayer.com/), while the other is a fully commercial product (http://www.vx30.com/). There are boundled dshow filters, string, toolbars, dialogs, command line switches, etc..., which can be verified easily by just running the applications and taking a look, or a bit harder by analysing the memory dump. Since I have no better idea about what to do now (I got no reply to the email I sent to kmplayer's developer, it would probably be the same with vx30's too...), I'm posting this as a news here. The developements are going slow anyway because of my job and life, but these cases won't inspire me either.
What would your next step be, or how would you assist this developer in need?"

Submission + - Why Do Linux Users Often Ignore FAQ Documentation? (madpenguin.org)

Submitted by techie on Monday August 27, 2007 @04:59AM

techie writes: MadPenguin.org has a new story up asking why Linux beginners often ignore FAQ documentation to solve their problems instead of relying on forums and community feedback? The story says, "One distribution that comes to mind when thinking about great documentation is Ubuntu. Anything you need to know, from NDISWrapper to utilizing restricted codecs, is listed in their documentation project. Unfortunately, it remains intimidating to many new users. Not the information so much, rather the reminder that they are essentially starting over. On the flip side, documentation is documentation, period. As long as it is there, accurate and readable, we are satisfied. And sadly, this is what has led to so many unneeded forums postings for new Linux users. Since they feel overwhelmed, they end up on various forums, asking the wrong questions and often times, getting the wrong answers.

Submission + - What's So Precious About Bad Software?

Submitted by

mektronik

on Monday August 27, 2007 @01:02AM

mektronik writes: "An article in Enterprise Networking Planet (http://www.enterprisenetworkingplanet.com/netos/a rticle.php/3696296) is discussing the tactic of closed source projects hiding poorly written and poorly designed software behind the shill cries of "Trade Sekkrets" et. al."

Submission + - England's Database Of Children COmes Under Fire (timesonline.co.uk)

Submitted by

Mike

on Monday August 27, 2007 @12:34AM

Mike writes: "A comprehensive database of every single child in England is slated to go live next year amid growing doubts as to the system's security and safety. Possible misuse by unauthorized users is only one concern. Ian Brown, a computer security research fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute, summed it up nicely: "When you have got more than 300,000 people accessing this database, it's just very difficult to stop the sale of information." With an estimated 330,000 "vetted users" and over 11 million children listed, can there be any doubt that this database will be a virtual magnet for pedophiles, spammers, and scammers?"

Submission + - Google Proxy Hacking: 3rd Party Site Deletions (seofaststart.com)

Submitted by

cheekygeek

on Thursday August 23, 2007 @08:47AM

cheekygeek writes: "After sitting on this information for over a year (with no fix from Google) this guy is releasing the information publicly in the hopes that it will force Google to act to fix it. He says: "In June of 2006, while working to resolve some indexing issues for a client, I discovered a bug in Google's algorithm that allowed 3rd parties to literally hack a web page out of Google's index and search results. I notified a contact at Google soon after, once I managed to confirm that what we thought we were seeing was really happening. The problem still exists today...""

Submission + - iPhone Frustrates Forensics Experts (wired.com)

Submitted by

Thyamine

on Thursday August 23, 2007 @08:25AM

Thyamine writes: "There's a story on Wired talking about the potential difficulties in retrieving evidence from the iPhone, which makes sense as it's 'new' and the experts aren't familiar with it yet. Then they go on to talk about how OS X is a closed system, and that the iPhone is evil. As opposed to what? Windows? Which is of course completely open? While I'm new to my own Mac, my understanding is that underneath it's a *nix. Are these 'experts' just making excuses for why they don't want to learn non-Windows systems, or are there truly fundamental problems with retrieving forensic data from Apple hardware/software? (Yay for privacy if it's true!)"

Submission + - MidnightBSD 0.1 released, Founder Interviewed (midnightbsd.org)

Submitted by on Thursday August 23, 2007 @04:25AM

An anonymous reader writes: From the website:

MidnightBSD is a desktop operating system for x86 compatible (including Pentium® and Athlon(TM)), and soon amd64 compatible (including Opteron(TM), Athlon(TM)64, and EM64T) architectures. It was originally based on FreeBSD 6.1 Beta. The goal of the project is to create a BSD with ease of use and simplicity in mind.

They released the first version earlier this month. The founder was interviewed on bsdtalk. He compared the system with PC-BSD and DesktopBSD, and had some thoughts about FreeBSD.

Anyone heard of this guy?

Submission + - FTC: Private Sector Use of SSNs

Submitted by nysguy on Monday August 06, 2007 @10:12AM

nysguy writes: The US Federal Trade Commission is seeking comments regarding private sector use of SSNs (https://secure.commentworks.com/ftc-SSNPrivateSec tor/). "The Commission invites interested parties to comment on the various uses of SSNs by the private sector as well as the necessity of those uses and alternatives available."

Submission + - Time-travel in a light vortex (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by

MattB2

on Monday August 06, 2007 @10:02AM

MattB2 writes: " From BBC Website:
'First, Dr Mallett has to prove the concept. And that's complex too. But it works something like this: we know that massive objects, such as stars and planets, can bend both space and time. Dr Mallett and others believe that light too, because of its inherent energy, can also bend what's called the space/time continuum.

"What you would see would be a cylinder in which you would have laser beams that would be intersecting in such a way that they would create this huge light tunnel. So if you imagine a tunnel, with this vortex of light circulating around in it."

"I don't think he's a crackpot. He may be wrong; he may be misguided. But there's nothing scientifically dishonourable in being wrong or misguided," says Dr Whitehouse'"

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