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Comment Misdirection and dilution (Score 0) 197

About once a year I send an email to my paranoid friends which includes a few buzz phrases.

Dear Spooks,

It is once again time for me to provide you with an update on nefarious activities on the Wild Wild Web.

While you are clandestinely surveilling me through your prism of delusion, why not take a moment and stand back and ask your self; is what you are really doing protecting liberty or slow chiselling it away.

Have a good.

Submission + - Don't like a patent? Help kIll it.

Submitted by Camael
Camael writes: When Joel Spolsky spotted an undeserving Microsoft patent application, he didn't just let it be granted — He killed a in just a few minutes. In short, he found prior art and submitted it, and the USPTO examiner rejected the patent because of it. From TFA :- "Micah showed me a document from the USPTO confirming that they had rejected the patent application, and the rejection relied very heavily on the document I found. This was, in fact, the first 'confirmed kill' of Ask Patents, and it was really surprisingly easy. I didn't have to do the hard work of studying everything in the patent application and carefully proving that it was all prior art: the examiner did that for me." This is all under the umbrella of Ask Patents'.

Submission + - Android 4.3 Firmware Release on Galaxy S4 Google Edition (fliqolet.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Android 4.3 firmware has been pre-released on Google edition of Galaxy S4. A developer at the xda-developers forum mentioned about this leak. He created a file for custom recovery of the system dump. The build number of the OS is JWR66B and its has some updated features such as improved battery performance, wireless charging when the device is off.

Submission + - All pornography in the United Kingdom to be censored by default (bbc.co.uk) 2

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Arguing that pornography is "corroding childhood", British Prime Minister David Cameron is to announce that UK Internet Service Providers must filter all online pornography unless users decide to opt-in to receiving it. In addition, pornography depicting rape will be outlawed, and a database of "banned child porn images" will be constructed to identify anyone viewing these images. Cameron also wants search engines to pop up warning messages when people appear to be searching for prohibited content. He concludes, "This is, quite simply, about how we protect our children and their innocence."

This is not an April Fool.

Submission + - Why agile development failed for Universal Credit (computerweekly.com)

Submitted by nerdyalien
nerdyalien writes: Agile software development is at the heart of the coalition government's plan to reform public sector IT. Universal Credit, the government's £2bn flagship welfare reform programme, was meant to prove it worked on major projects. But the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has ceased all agile software development on Universal Credit. Did the DWP ditch agile because it was not up to the job? Or was the DWP not up to agile?

Agile development experts say the problem was with the DWP. Universal Credit failed on agile, they say, because it was never really agile in the first place. A former principal agile consultant on Universal Credit, who asked not to be named, said the programme got off on the wrong foot. "The fundamental problem was procurement," he said. "Our hands were tied because of procurement. If you don't set up the contract properly, you are on a hiding to nothing." Universal Credit could never have been agile, he said, because of the way the DWP let £1.12bn of contracts with the programme's major suppliers, including HP, Accenture, Capgemini and IBM. "We were effectively on a waterfall project, because it was a waterfall contract," he said.

Submission + - After pledging 'spirit of openness,' MIT blocks release of Swartz's Files

Submitted by v3rgEz
v3rgEz writes: MIT, which once pledged “a spirit of openness” when it came to an investigation of the charges against and suicide of Internet activist Aaron Swartz, has now reportedly moved to delay the release of his Secret Service files pending university review.

Courts had just ruled that the files must be processed and released as a result of successful litigation by Wired editor Kevin Poulson. MIT released a statement saying the delays were necessary to protect its employee and its network security.

Submission + - MI5 hiring industrial espionage IT support staff 2

Submitted by AmiMoJo
AmiMoJo writes: A recent job posting by MI5 seeks to recruit "Data Exploitation Specialists". The core of the role is described as "provid[ing] tactical solutions and operational support to business users of information exploitation systems." In other words, industrial espionage. This open admission comes at a time when the UK and its partners are accusing China of the same thing. Pot, kettle, black?

Submission + - MIT computer program makes TCP twice as fast (mit.edu)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: MIT is claiming they can make the Internet faster if we let computers redesign TCP/IP instead of coding it by hand. They used machine learning to design a version of TCP that's twice the speed and causes half the delay, even with modern bufferbloated networks. They also claim it's more "fair." The researchers have put up a lengthy FAQ and source code where they admit they don't know why the system works, only that it goes faster than normal TCP. On the same day that MIT went to court to stop Aaron Swartz's documents from being published, the school is devoting its main website to an animated GIF about faster TCP.

Submission + - Noted Sci Fi Author banned from Facebook for joke about chiggers (imgur.com) 2

Submitted by sv_libertarian
sv_libertarian writes: Military science fiction author, Michael Z Williamson, has become a victim of Facebook's incomprehensible censorship tools. While pages calling for the death of various people, and openly espousing racism remain up, MZW has twice now been handed 12 hour posting bans over judicious use of the word "chigger", which refers to a blood sucking creature much akin to a Congressman, but much more irritating. Apparently this has set off all sorts of alarms in their censorship software. I wonder how many people who aren't well published authors with a large fan base get sucked up in this crap? Linked images are of course screenshots describing the offending posts and bans.

Submission + - How One Drunk Driver Sent My Company To The Cloud

Submitted by snydeq
snydeq writes: Andrew Oliver offers further proof that drunk driving and on-site servers don't mix. Oliver, who had earlier announced a New Year's resolution to go all-in on cloud services, had that business strategy expedited when a drunk driver, fleeing a hit-and-run, drove his SUV directly into the beauty shop next door to his company's main offices. 'Our servers were down for eight hours, and various services were intermittent for at least 12 hours. Had things been worse, we could have lost everything. Like our customers, we needed HA and DR. Moreover, we thought, maybe our critical services like email, our website, and Jira should be in a real data center. This made going all-cloud a top priority for us rather than "when we get to it.",' Oliver writes, detailing his company's resultant hurry-up migration plan to 100 percent cloud services.

Comment Automated Testers are Developer (Score 1) 220

by Martin Spamer (#43646755) Attached to: A Case For a Software Testing Undergrad Major

Perhaps because they have been or already are developers. Any good developer is already a tester, engaged in Test Driven Development, using xUnit family of tools, running their tests continuously with CI.

If he's on the ball he's using Behaviour Driven Development to script complex scenarios that function as both his development and test harness.

He's testing his Web Services integration with tools like SOAPUI + Groovy from Smartbear from the article and using it to do dynamic mocking for both the client and server.

He's targeting the end system, using tools like WebDriver to execute his test scripts using all the major Browers, IE, Firefox, Chrome, Opera and Safari.

If he's doing all that and running his tests from the cloud to load and performance test the SUT; he might just have the technical skills to match a typical automated test engineer.

Anybody that thinks testers today are just using the Application is frankly cross ignorant of what is happening to automate the test specialism.

Test automation is the undiscovered country for developers that have done it all before a dozen times.

Submission + - UK benefits claimants forced to use Microsoft Windows XP and IE6 (theinquirer.net)

Submitted by carlypage3
carlypage3 writes: Benefits claimants in the UK are being forced to use Microsoft's now obsolete Windows XP and Internet Explorer 6 software. The Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) states that its online forms are not compatible with Internet Explorer 7, 8, 9 and 10, Safari, Google Chrome or Firefox. As if that wasn't unnerving enough, the Gov.UK website says that users cannot submit claims using Mac OS X or Linux operating systems, either.

Submission + - Commercial Firefox trojan condemed by Mozilla Foundation (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by Martin S.
Martin S. writes: The BBC is reporting about Commercial Firefox trojan by the The Mozilla Foundation who have accused UK software group Gamma International of falsely associating one of its products with the Firefox name; after the citizenlab.org published the For Their Eyes Only: The Commercialization of Digital Spying a couple of days ago. Schneier has more to add.about FinSpy/FinFisher

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