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Cloud

Submission + - Google Drops Cloud Lawsuit Against US Gov't (itworld.com)

Submitted by
jfruhlinger
jfruhlinger writes: "A year ago, Google sued the U.S. government because the government's request for proposals for a cloud project mandated Microsoft Office; Google felt, for obvious reasons, that this was discriminatory. Google has now withdrawn the suit, claiming that the Feds promised to update their policies to allow Google to compete. The only problem is that the government claims it did no such thing."
Security

Submission + - Former TSA Agent Admits to Aiding Drug Dealer (foxnews.com)

Submitted by mrquagmire
mrquagmire writes: A former federal security officer has admitted helping a man accused of running a drug ring evade security and smuggle money through the Buffalo Niagara Airport.
Minnetta Walker was arrested in March. She admitted Friday in federal court helping the man get around airport security scanners, The Buffalo News reported.
As a behavioral detection officer, Walker was trained to observe and analyze human behavior and had unrestricted access to the airport and its security stations. Sometimes, she'd direct travelers she appeared to know, including Frank, away from security lines where body image scanners or pat-downs might detect large sums of cash, and escort them to their gates so they wouldn't be pulled aside for random inspections, authorities said. She'd also alert travelers to the presence of undercover law enforcement officers, authorities said.
OS X

Submission + - Apple Acknowledges Mac Defender Existence (net-security.org)

Submitted by Orome1
Orome1 writes: It took a while for Apple to react properly to the onslaught of Mac Defender and similar fake AV aimed at Mac users, but they finally did it. Only days after the revelation of internal Apple documents that instructed AppleCare and Apple store employees not to acknowledge the existence of Mac Defender and not to offer help in removing it from infected computers when asked by the users, the company has posted a support document that explains the situation and offers advice on how to avoid installing this malware and how to remove it.

Submission + - Adobe Releases Flash to HTML 5 Converter (ibtimes.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Adobe has released its Flash to HTML 5 conversion tool, codenamed "Wallaby." Wallaby is an application to convert Adobe Flash Professional CS5 files (.FLA) to HTML5 and its primary design goals were to get the best quality and performance on browsers within iOS devices like iPhone and iPad.
IT

Submission + - A letter on behalf of the world's PC fixers (pcpro.co.uk)

Submitted by
Barence
Barence writes: "PC Pro's Steve Cassidy has written a letter on behalf of all the put-upon techies who've ever been called by a friend to fix their PC. His bile is directed at a friend who put a DVD bought on holiday into their laptop, and then wondered what went wrong.

"Once you stuck that DVD in there and started saying 'yes, OK' to every resulting dialog box, you sank the whole thing," Cassidy writes. "It doesn’t take 10 minutes to sort that out; it requires a complete machine reload to properly guarantee the infection is history."

"No, there is no neat and handy way I’ve been keeping secret that allows you to retain your extensive collection of stolen software licences loaded on that laptop. I do disaster recovery, not disaster participation.""
Science

Submission + - $30 GPS jamer - jams your life (newscientist.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A simple $30 GPS jamer made in china can ruin your day. Not just affecting your car navigation — ATM machines, cell phone towers, plane, boat, train navigation systems all depend upon GPS signals that are easily blocked. These devices fail badly — with no redundancy. These jamers can be used to defeat vehicle tracking products — but end up causing a moving cloud of chaos. Next wave of anti-GPS devices include GPS spoofers to trick or confuse nearby devices — scary.
Science

Secrets of a Memory Champion 290

Posted by samzenpus from the never-forget dept.
Hugh Pickens writes writes "We've all heard of people who claim to have 'photographic memories.' Now Joshua Foer writes in the NY Times magazine (reg. may be required) that a 'skilled memory' can be acquired and proves it by explaining how he trained his brain to became a world-class memory athlete winning first place in the speed cards competition last year at the USA Memory Championship by memorizing a deck of cards in one minute forty seconds. According to Foer, memory training is a lost art that dates from antiquity. 'Today we have books, photographs, computers and an entire superstructure of external devices to help us store our memories outside our brains, but it wasn't so long ago that culture depended on individual memories,' writes Foer. 'It was considered a form of character-building, a way of developing the cardinal virtue of prudence and, by extension, ethics.' Foer says that the secret to supermemory is a system of training and discipline that works by creating 'memory palaces' on the fly filled with lavish images, painting a scene in the mind so unlike any other it cannot be forgotten. 'Photographic memory is a detestable myth. Doesn't exist. In fact, my memory is quite average,' concludes Ed Cooke who recently invented a code that allows him to convert every number from 0 to 999,999,999 into a unique image that he can then deposit in a memory palace. 'What you have to understand is that even average memories are remarkably powerful if used properly.'"

Submission + - Yummier chocolate on the way! (gizmag.com)

Submitted by cylonlover
cylonlover writes: If DNA sequencing never held much relevance for you, consider the benefits likely to flow from the recent sequencing and assembly of the chocolate tree genome. The Theobroma cacao plant is generally regarded as producing the world's finest chocolate, but is particularly vulnerable to disease and not particularly productive, and is hence shunned by risk averse growers. It is hoped the research will not only lead to hardier trees by altering the genes, but will also enable the percentages of cocoa butter, flavonoids, antioxidants, terpenoids and hormones to be regulated. The end result is likely to be smoother, more flavorsome, better smelling and even healthier chocolate. Now that's progress!
Education

Why Teach Programming With BASIC? 709

Posted by timothy from the because-of-the-great-name dept.
chromatic writes "To answer the perennial question 'How can we teach kids how to program?', we created a web-based programming environment. As we began to write lessons and examples, we surprised ourselves. Modern languages may be powerful and useful for writing real programs, but BASIC and Logo are great languages for demonstrating the joy of programming."

Submission + - Flash Player 'Square' Adds Native 64bit Support

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Adobe Flash Player 'Square' is a preview release that enables native 64-bit support on Linux, Mac OS, and Windows operating systems, as well as enhanced support for Microsoft Internet Explorer 9 beta. We have made this preview available so that users can test existing content and new platforms for compatibility and stability."
Science

Why the First Cowboy To Draw Always Gets Shot 398

Posted by timothy from the more-guns-less-crime dept.
cremeglace writes "Have you ever noticed that the first cowboy to draw his gun in a Hollywood Western is invariably the one to get shot? Nobel-winning physicist Niels Bohr did, once arranging mock duels to test the validity of this cinematic curiosity. Researchers have now confirmed that people indeed move faster if they are reacting, rather than acting first."
Image

The Art of Scalability Screenshot-sm 63

Posted by samzenpus from the read-all-about-it dept.
Martijn de Boer writes "Creating high performance growing networks is really a special skill managers and network architects should possess to be ready for the future. The Art of Scalability is a book written for these kinds of functions, and prepares you for the present and the imminent future. Scalability is achieved by principles that work on many levels within enterprises, whether it's processes, organizational structure or setting up your project, this book covers it all." Read on for the rest of Martijn's review.
Perl

Submission + - The Perl 6 Advent Calendar

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Larry Wall wasn't joking when he said that Perl 6 would be ready by Christmas, perhaps not this Christmas but that hasn't stopped a group of people (including head Rakudo developers Patrick Michaud and Jonathan Worthington) from putting together an Advent Calendar, featuring one cool Perl 6 feature everyday until Christmas. Topics currently covered include how to get and build Rakudo (the most actively developed and progressed implementation of Perl 6) and the new Metaoperators. For those wondering when Perl 6 will be finished; Rakudo will be having it's official 'production release' (dubbed Rakudo Star) April 2010.

Comment Parchive: Parity Archive Volume Set (Score 5, Interesting) 257

by khundeck (#30322938) Attached to: One Way To Save Digital Archives From File Corruption
Parchive: Parity Archive Volume Set

It basically allows you to create an archive that's selectively larger, but contains an amount of parity such that you can have XX% corruption and still 'unzip.'

"The original idea behind this project was to provide a tool to apply the data-recovery capability concepts of RAID-like systems to the posting and recovery of multi-part archives on Usenet. We accomplished that goal." [http://parchive.sourceforge.net/]

KPH

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