Comment HBGary Presentation? (Score 1) 85
Wondering how Arron Barr's presentation on Social Network went... Though I might post as "Anonymous Coward", but don't feel like having my door kicked in by the Fed's today.
Satellite-Based Laser Hunts Woodpeckers From Space 53
University of Idaho scientists have figured out a more effective way to track woodpecker populations than following the incessant laughter. They're using a laser onboard NASA's Icesat spacecraft to determine where the birds might be living. From the article: "NASA's Icesat satellite was initially intended for measuring glacial surfaces at the Earth's poles but has proven to be quite effective in measuring vegetation also. The satellite's laser bounces off of forest canopies, tree trunks and the ground making important characteristics about the forest easily measurable. For example, forest density is determined by the relative amount of light returned versus that which is returned from the ground. Once ideal woodpecker locations are identified 'we actually conduct ground-based woodpecker surveys in these locations as well to verify it,' says team-member Patrick Adam."
Submission + - Righthaven Sues for Control of Drudge Report 1
Hugh Pickens writes: "The Las Vegas Review Journal reports that in its latest case, Righthaven is seeking relief from copyright infringement by the Drudge Report website and by the Drudge Archives website and asking for a preliminary and permanent injunction against infringement on a photo copyright, control of the Drudge Report website and statutory damages up to $150,000. In a lawsuit filed Wednesday, Righthaven complains about the use of Denver Post photograph of a Transportation Security Administration agent patting down an airline passenger. Drudge displayed an unauthorized reproduction of the photo on the Drudge Report website on Nov. 18, according to the civil complaint. Shawn Mangano, the attorney who filed the lawsuit on Righthaven's behalf, says it is the first time Righthaven has sued over use of a copyrighted illustration. Righthaven also takes issue with the fact that the Drudge Report has no DMCA takedown regime to respond to those who allege violations of copyright. "I assume it's going to be very seriously litigated," says Mangano, noting that Drudge has substantial financial resources."
Submission + - My GPL code has been... patented! 4
ttsiod writes: Back in 2001, I coded HeapCheck, a GPL library for Windows (inspired by ElectricFence) that detected invalid read/write accesses on any heap allocations at runtime — thus greatly helping my debugging sessions. I published it on my site, and got a few users who were kind enough to thank me — a Serbian programmer even sent me 250$ as a thank you (I still have his mails). After a few years, Microsoft included very similar technology in the operating system itself, calling it PageHeap. I had more or less forgotten these stuff, since for the last 7 years I've been coding for UNIX/Linux, where valgrind superseeded Efence/dmalloc/etc. Imagine my surprise, when yesterday, Googling for references to my site, I found out that the technology I implemented, of runtime detection of invalid heap accesses, has been patented in the States, and to add insult to injury, even mentions my site (via a non-working link to an old version of my page) in the patent references! After the necessary "WTFs" and "bloody hells" I thought this merrits (a) a Slashdotting, and (b) a set of honest questions: what should I do about this? I am not an American citizen, but the "inventors" of this technology (see their names in the top of the patent) have apparently succeeded in passing this ludicrous patent in the States. If my code doesn't count as prior art, Bruce Perens's Efence (which I clearly state my code was inspired from) is at least 12 years prior! Suggestions/cursing patent trolls most welcome.
Comment Re:erode Windows server how? (Score 1) 228
Actually, it's still 7 years - with an additional 3 years of "extended support" if you pay extra for it.
Submission + - TFETs as an alternative to MOSFTs in CMOS chips (idg.com.au)
angry tapir writes: "A number of chip manufacturers and European research institutions have banded together to figure out how redesign microprocessors so that they consume less energy when in use and leak less energy when in stand-by mode. Called Steeper, the three-year research project will explore an alternative design to the standard CMOS (complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor) designs used to build virtually all commercially available computer chips today. The new approach will use nanowire-based TFETs (tunnel field effect transistors), as an alternative to the MOSFTs (metal--oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors) used in CMOS chips."
Submission + - China Penetrated NSA's Classified Operating System 2
Pickens writes: "Seymour M. Hersh writes in the New Yorker that after an American EP-3E Aries II reconnaissance plane on an eavesdropping mission collided with a Chinese interceptor jet over the South China Sea in 2001 and landed at a Chinese F-8 fighter base on Hainan Island, the 24 member crew were unable to completely disable the plane’s equipment and software. The result? The Chinese kept the plane for three months and eventually reverse-engineered the plane’s NSA.-supplied operating system, estimated at between thirty and fifty million lines of computer code, giving China a road map for decrypting the Navy’s classified intelligence and operational data. “If the operating system was controlling what you’d expect on an intelligence aircraft, it would have a bunch of drivers to capture radar and telemetry,” says Whitfield Diffie, a pioneer in the field of encryption. “The plane was configured for what it wants to snoop, and the Chinese would want to know what we wanted to know about them—what we could intercept and they could not.” Despite initial skepticism, over the next few years the US intelligence community began to “read the tells” that China had gotten access to sensitive traffic and in early 2009, Admiral Timothy J. Keating, then the head of the Pacific Command, brought the issue to the new Obama Administration. "If China had reverse-engineered the EP-3E’s operating system, all such systems in the Navy would have to be replaced, at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars," writes Hersch. "After much discussion, several current and former officials said, this was done" prompting some black humor from US naval officers. “This is one hell of a way to go about getting a new operating system.”""
Submission + - Boeing: NASA software squeezes airline fuel use (networkworld.com)
coondoggie writes: NASA today said Boeing had adopted software the space agency developed to boost fuel savings. The software, known as Direct-To was developed at NASA's Ames Research Center and promises to let airlines to save fuel and reduce emissions by identifying flight route shortcuts that are acceptable to air traffic controllers.
Submission + - Italy seeks removal of 'defamatory' iPhone app (idg.com.au) 2
angry tapir writes: "Italy's tourism minister, Michela Brambilla, has instructed the official state lawyer to seek the removal from sale of a "defamatory" iPhone application and to take legal action against the app's maker. The "What Country" application, produced by Apalon, a division of MoveYourWeb, provides immediately recognizable national stereotypes to accompany users' tourist photos in a photographic album."
US Banks That Offer Transaction History? 359
wirelessdreamer writes "I use a bank in the US that will only allow me to download transaction history in CSV for the previous three months. I have a hard time remembering to pull my transaction history down every three months, and would gladly jump ship to another bank if there is one that lets me download, say three years' worth of transaction history as one of the standard services. Then I can import my data into MySQL and run some reports on it, which is all I'm looking for." What banks out there do the best job at providing users with simple, downloadable data?
Submission + - Wikileaks releases CIA document (wikileaks.org)
Somewhat Delirious writes: Wikileaks has just released a document from the CIA which expresses worries that the perception of the United States as an exporter of terrorism may lead to barriers to extrajudicial judicial activities of the American intelligence services abroad: "If the US were seen as an exporter of terrorism, foreign partners may be less willing to cooperate with the United States on extrajudicial activities, including detention, transfer, and interrogation of suspects in third party countries."
It also shows how the US forces other countries into bilateral agreements to insure immunity for US citizens from International Criminal Court prosecutions: "Foreign perception of the US as an “exporter of terrorism” also raises difficult legal issues
for the US, its foreign allies, and international institutions. To date, the US is not a signatory to the International Criminal Court (ICC) and instead, has pursued Bilateral Immunity Agreements (BIAs) with other countries to ensure immunity for US nationals from ICC prosecution. The US has threatened to terminate economic aid and withdraw military assistance with countries that do not accede to BIAs."
It also shows how the US forces other countries into bilateral agreements to insure immunity for US citizens from International Criminal Court prosecutions: "Foreign perception of the US as an “exporter of terrorism” also raises difficult legal issues
for the US, its foreign allies, and international institutions. To date, the US is not a signatory to the International Criminal Court (ICC) and instead, has pursued Bilateral Immunity Agreements (BIAs) with other countries to ensure immunity for US nationals from ICC prosecution. The US has threatened to terminate economic aid and withdraw military assistance with countries that do not accede to BIAs."
Quantum Physics For Everybody 145
fiziko writes in with a self-described "blatant self-promotion" of a worthwhile service for those wishing to go beyond Khan Academy physics: namely Bureau 42's Summer School. "As those who subscribe to the 'Sci-Fi News' slashbox may know, Bureau 42 has launched its first Summer School. This year we're doing a nine-part series (every Monday in July and August) taking readers from high school physics to graduate level physics, with no particular mathematical background required. Follow the link for part 1."
Submission + - SC Primary - First probable voting machine fraud? (fivethirtyeight.com)
SeattleGameboy writes: South Carolina sure knows how to pick'em. Alvin Greene is a broke, unemployed guy facing a felony obscenity charge. Oh, he is also the brand new Democrat Senate nominee from South Carolina. Tom Schaller at FiveThirtyEight.com does a detailed analysis of how a guys like this wins a primary race and much of the signs point to voting machine fraud "Those three are Darlington, Horry and Marlboro, and there are two others, Bamberg and Fairfield, with zero residual GOP votes (i.e., the total number of GOP voters in the county is identical to number cast in the GOP gubernatorial), which McDonald informs me is very, very rare."
Techdirt.com points out (http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100609/1616099761.shtml) that South Carolina uses ES&S voting machines which have had strings of problems before and has no audit trail.
Is this the first documented case of voting fraud via voting machines?
Techdirt.com points out (http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100609/1616099761.shtml) that South Carolina uses ES&S voting machines which have had strings of problems before and has no audit trail.
Is this the first documented case of voting fraud via voting machines?
Submission + - How can I capture a switch event on a USB port? 4
wilderbeest writes: My 90-year old neighbour is very much into clocks, and maintains our local church clock here in North Woochester, UK. As it's quite a way up the spire and he isn't getting any younger, he would like to monitor the accuracy of the clockwork using his computer from home.
I've come up with the following solution: An Alix 2d3 with a Huawei E220 3G modem attached to it, and Zeroshell installed on the Alix. That all works well, Zeroshell connects to my VPN and I can place the thing in the church spire as they have electricity up there. We also installed a micro switch on a part of the clock that rotates once every 5 minutes, and we get a switch on / off from that micro switch.
Now comes the hard part: I need some sort of component that I can plug into the USB port of my Alix 2d3 and connect it to the micro switch so can capture the event, timestamp it and write it to a remote database.
Any ideas? Can I use something like a USB mouse and mod it?
I've come up with the following solution: An Alix 2d3 with a Huawei E220 3G modem attached to it, and Zeroshell installed on the Alix. That all works well, Zeroshell connects to my VPN and I can place the thing in the church spire as they have electricity up there. We also installed a micro switch on a part of the clock that rotates once every 5 minutes, and we get a switch on / off from that micro switch.
Now comes the hard part: I need some sort of component that I can plug into the USB port of my Alix 2d3 and connect it to the micro switch so can capture the event, timestamp it and write it to a remote database.
Any ideas? Can I use something like a USB mouse and mod it?
Submission + - Goodbye, freshmeat, we're going to miss you (devx.com)
Roblimo writes: Geek.net, the parent company of SourceForge.net, Slashdot.org, ThinkGeek.com, Geek.com, freshmeat.net, and ohloh.net, has told employees that it will be closing freshmeat.net and ohloh.net. This information has not yet been released to the public, but we've heard it from more than one Geek.net employee. The company also reportedly laid off 25% of its staff this week. After the story was posted at devx.com, a Geek.net Vice President emailed this response to its author: 'If you're asking whether or not the sites are for sale, the answer is no. However, we are looking to create better ways for our community to interact with the information on these sites, likely through SourceForge.'
