oztechmuse - Slashdot User

Submission + - Google's Myopic Vision of the Future (owni.eu)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 11, 2012 @10:34AM

An anonymous reader writes: Google's recent video about its Augmented Reality glasses depicts a somewhat disappointing and according to the parody videos, unrealistic, portrayal of the way this technology could be used in the future.

They are of course not the fist tech company to portray futuristic concept videos. Nokia has also released videos with AR glasses wearing Finns. And of course, so has Microsoft.

Tech companies are necessarily limited in the way they view the future. They are bound first of all to extending their current products or ideas and secondly to things that are potentially commercially relevant. If one wants to get a real sense of what is possible and really revolutionary, then science fiction is probably a better guide as it is not limited by what we currently think is possible.

Submission + - Most CS graduates would have failed Can You Crack (theconversation.edu.au)

Submitted by oztechmuse on Monday December 05, 2011 @11:29PM

oztechmuse writes: The posting of a solution to the canyoucrackit challenge run by UK secret service agency GCHQ has highlighted the difficulty in recruiting smart programmers with cyber security skills. Even though the solution ended up being at a moderate level of difficulty, most CS graduates would not have been able to follow the solution due to unfamiliarity with assembler and basic encodings.

The situation is exacerbated by the fact that real "hackers" are not eligible for recruitment in western countries even though they are probably the ones with the right skills.

At the same time, the industry for spy software is growing rapidly leading law enforcement agencies and secret services world wide to rely on private companies to do their development for them.

Submission + - UK GCHQ Spy Job Test Copied from Australian DSD Jo (psfk.com)

Submitted by oztechmuse on Saturday December 03, 2011 @09:06AM

oztechmuse writes: British intelligence agency GCHQ are recruiting people using a coding test on www.canyoucrackit.co.uk. Apart from the fact that you can google the solution to getting past the keyword stage, it looks like the whole idea was copied from a similar ad being run by the Australian Defence Signals Directorate (DSD). Somebody had already posted a solution to the DSD problem noting that you would have to be desperate to work at the DSD for the low salaries they paid.

I can only assume that both GCHQ and DSD are looking for people who can use Google and optimise a solution to a problem!

Submission + - Popcorn: Doing for video what the web did for text (theconversation.edu.au)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 22, 2011 @08:56PM

An anonymous reader writes: The recent release of a documentary One Millionth Tower that was produced using HTML5, Mozilla's Popcorn.js and WebGL is a turning point for video on the internet. Being able to mark up video easily will bring a new set of applications to the Internet. Popcorn.js is a great start and authoring tools like Popcorn Maker make it relatively easy to link video to Wikipedia, Twitter, Google Maps and other things. The combination of this with something like YouTube or Vimeo will be the killer app.

Even skateboarders are getting in on the act.

Submission + - How to fail at Social: Ask Google (theconversation.edu.au)

Submitted by oztechmuse on Saturday October 22, 2011 @06:07AM

oztechmuse writes: Most of Google's profits come from advertising and every technology they produce is aimed at furthering this. This has led analysts to suggest that Google may be a one-trick-pony. This is something that even Google employees seem to think with a blasting post on Google plus from Google employee Steve Yegge suggesting that Google is a Complete Failure. Google plus is not taking off in the way that Google would hope. All-in-all, Google is becoming a dull mega-corp that is unlikely to do anything revolutionary

Submission + - Apple's iPhone 4S' Siri is a game changer (theconversation.edu.au)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 16, 2011 @11:46PM

An anonymous reader writes: The recent release of the Apple iPhone 4S was met with some disappointment because it wasn’t the iPhone 5. Curiously, people seemed to be most disappointed that the shape of the phone hadn’t changed. What seemed to go completely unnoticed was a new feature that promises not only to revolutionise the way we interact with mobile phones but also with computers, tablets and potentially all other smart electronic devices.

The feature has also introduced a new word to our vocabulary: Siri

Siri needs to be used to be believed, and also to begin to understand why this has been described as a revolutionary change.

Featuring some serious AI, Siri also has a personality that will appeal especially to geeks, understanding more than one reference to Star Trek, HHG and 2001.

Submission + - OccupyWallStreet ? I'll be there, but on Twitter (theconversation.edu.au)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 18, 2011 @09:18PM

An anonymous reader writes: On Saturday, a few thousand protestors congregated in the Wall Street area of New York at the start of a protest dubbed #OccupyWallStreet.

Although the aim was to replicate the protests of Egypt’s Tahrir Square, it’s clear NYC is not Cairo.

What was similar, and possibly of more importance though, was the activism that accompanied the protest being played out on social media.

By 9:30 pm EST, #OccupyWallStreet had nearly 71,000 tweets with 18,000 contributors and approximately 105 million views.

This activity on global social media was not matched by traditional media. Apart from a few exceptions, such outlets have so far chosen not to cover the protest.

The question has been raised as to why there should have been so much interest by organisers and others on Twitter about the involvement of mainstream media.

But this type of coverage is more likely to come, as it is increasingly does for events such as these, from bloggers, independent media sites and social media – principally Twitter.

Submission + - From Comodo to TurkGuvenligi: Hackers on the rise (owni.eu)

Submitted by oztechmuse on Tuesday September 13, 2011 @08:43AM

oztechmuse writes: Two recent hacking incidents have highlighted the increasing fragility of the Internet’s core infrastructure and serve as a stark reminder that security on the Internet is somewhat illusory. The weaknesses have been known about for some time but the motivation to implement solutions has not had enough momentum to spur everyone to action.

With the weaknesses in the Certificate Authorities and DNS highlighted by these recent hacks it is clear that something needs to be done.

Staying secure on the Internet can certainly be helped by awareness and good security practice, but at the end of the day, security is down to the good fortune that you weren’t in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Submission + - Anonymous 16. Is the FBI payback misdirected? (theconversation.edu.au)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 05, 2011 @05:32AM

An anonymous reader writes: 16 people have been charged for Operation Payback, specifically the DDoS attack on PayPal. Even Deputy Assistant FBI Director Steven Chabinski has admitted that "There has not been a large-scale trend toward using hacking to actually destroy websites" and that the DDoS attacks are more of a nuisance. But an example needs to be made. One of the accused is Mercedes Haefer who is not technical and possibly only was charged for her participation on an Anonymous IRC channel. Contrasted against this are the actions of Lamaline_5mg a 16 year old french hacker to published the personal details of 100 BART police officers. The FBI seems to be going after the easy catches to set examples — but is this justice and will it only serve to inflame Anonymous further?

Submission + - Tipping a black hat to the DefCon hackers (theconversation.edu.au)

Submitted by

deneefau

on Sunday August 07, 2011 @11:04PM

deneefau writes: "Las Vegas has a long association with people on the fringe of society but even Hunter S. Thompson’s characters Raoul Duke and his drug-soaked Samoan lawyer would have found visitors to the DefCon hacker conference at the extreme edge of these fringes."

Submission + - Is Google+ a cathedral or bazaar social network? (theconversation.edu.au)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 01, 2011 @05:43AM

An anonymous reader writes: With its recent mass suspension of accounts, Google has highlighted its desire to create a social network that is very different to the way many (including those whose accounts were suspended) would want to see it. The metaphor of the Cathedral and the Bazaar used for software development can be applied to the 2 types of social networks being proposed by Google on the one hand and the pseudonym supporters on the other. Google's Cathedral model emphasises order and control whilst the bazaar model supports users who can be anonymous, have multiple identities, interact with anyone they please, and remain unobserved.

Submission + - Is Google+ building a cathedral or a bazaar? (theconversation.edu.au)

Submitted by

HoneyPablo

on Sunday July 31, 2011 @11:02PM

HoneyPablo writes: "The phrase “The Cathedral and the Bazaar” was coined by American computer programmer Eric S. Raymond to distinguish two different approaches to the development of software.

In many ways, what we are seeing with Google’s birthing pains of its new social network of Google+ is the tension between Google wanting Google+ to be the Cathedral and a vocal section that would be happier to see it operate more as the Bazaar."

Submission + - FoxNews hack, not really Twitter's fault (theconversation.edu.au)

Submitted by oztechmuse on Wednesday July 13, 2011 @10:53AM

oztechmuse writes: On July 4, a hacker took control of one of the Twitter accounts of US broadcaster FoxNews.com and sent out several tweets announcing President Obama had been shot. The hacking of a news organisation and the tastelessness of the messages sent has brought into question the perceived lack of security of Twitter. This has led several security analysts to suggest Twitter is lagging behind other services in robust security options such as Google's 2-stage verification. However, Schneier and others have argued that 2-stage verification doesn't protect against phishing — the probable reason FoxNews got hacked. So would it really help if Twitter implemented more security measures?

Submission + - 10 reasons why Google+ will never be Facebook (theconversation.edu.au)

Submitted by oztechmuse on Wednesday June 29, 2011 @09:25PM

oztechmuse writes: Google is hoping that they will finally get it right in social networking with Google+ and stop Facebook from its growing dominance. This article gives 10 reasons why Google+ will never be Facebook. These reasons include the name (sounds like a programming language), the difficult challenge of building the social network, usability in categorising friends into Circles and finally because there will never be a movie made about Google+

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