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Submission + - Is Apache OpenOffice finally on the way out? (apache.org)

Submitted by JImbob0i0
JImbob0i0 writes: After almost another year without a release and another major CVE leaving users vulnerable for that year the Chairman of the Project Management Committee has started public discussions on what it will entail to retire the project, following the Apache Board showing concern at the poor showing.

It's been a long battle which would have been avoided if Oracle had not been so petty. Did this behaviour actually help get momentum in the community underway though? What ifs are always hard to properly answer.

Hopefully this long drawn out death rattle will finally come to a close and the wounds with LibreOffice can heal with the last few contributors to AOO joining the rest of the community.

Submission + - A Docker Fork: Talk of a Split Is Now on the Table (thenewstack.io)

Submitted by joabj
joabj writes: Could a fork be in Docker's future? A number of container software vendors, loosely coalesced around Google's Kubernetes container orchestration engine, want to see the (open sourced) Docker code base standardized, so they can build more reliable third-party products (such as orchestration engines) around the virtualization technology. Docker says it is making advancements too quickly to be fully standardized, though, so Google, Red Hat and CoreOS, and other companies are mulling alternative ideas, such as forking the Docker code base.

Submission + - BBC [UK] gets go-ahead to detect iPlayer packets over encrypted Wi-Fi. (telegraph.co.uk)

Submitted by product_bucket
product_bucket writes: The BBC has been given permission to use a new technology to detect users of the iPlayer who do not hold a TV licence. Researchers at University College London have apparently developed a method to identify specially crafted packets over an encrypted Wi-Fi link without needing to break the underlying encryption itself. TV Licensing (the fee-collecting arm of the BBC) has said the practice is under regular scrutiny by independent regulators, but declined to elaborate on how the technique works.

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: Living on the command line? (networkworld.com)

Submitted by LichtSpektren
LichtSpektren writes: Last month, Bryan Lunduke of Network World began a public experiment where he tried to live 30 days without using X.org, i.e. using the command line exclusively. He ended up surrendering on day 10 because "attempting to use sites such as Google+, LinkedIn or Facebook—directly from terminal-based web browsers—is a truly painful experience. It can be made to work. Really. It can. But it’s just no fun at all." The series will probably come across as amusingly posh to people that spend most of their day in the terminal, but it is interesting note that Lunduke ends by saying that after the experiment, he now chooses to manage his music, notes, and instant messaging at the command line "because, I swear, it’s just such a nice experience."

I was just curious what things Slashdotters still do on the command line that's now commonplace to do with a GUI, such as watching YouTube videos. Skip the usual ones like vim/emacs, IRC, and just about anything a sysadmin does, since those are still widely done from the terminal and too obvious to mention. Is there anybody that uses Lynx for all web browsing, including this article? Are there any professional video/image/audio producers that do most of their work at the command line? Last year, Microsoft's April Fools' joke was MS-DOS for smartphones; is there anybody that seriously uses a terminal emulator to handle their text messages and calls?

Submission + - Do Gut Bacteria Rule Our Minds? (ucsf.edu)

Submitted by giorgioarmani
giorgioarmani writes: It sounds like science fiction, but it seems that bacteria within us – which greatly outnumber our own cells – may very well be affecting both our cravings and moods to get us to eat what they want, and often are driving us toward obesity.In an article published this week in the journal BioEssays, researchers from UC San Francisco, Arizona State University and University of New Mexico concluded from a review of the recent scientific literature that microbes influence human eating behavior and dietary choices to favor consumption of the particular nutrients they grow best on, rather than simply passively living off whatever nutrients we choose to send their way.

Submission + - ARM Holdings to be taken over by Japanese firm (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by Retron
Retron writes: One of the UK's leading tech companies, ARM Holdings, has been the subject of a hostile takeover bid from the Japanese firm Softbank. The bid values the shares at £17 each, a far higher price than the £11.88 they were worth at the close on Friday.

Chips using ARM technology are used in all sorts of gadgets and devices, from washing machines to iPads.

Submission + - Attacking Ransomware By Watching The Filesystem (phys.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Ransomware — what hackers use to encrypt your computer files and demand money in exchange for freeing those contents — is an exploding global problem with few solutions, but a team of University of Florida researchers says it has developed a way to stop it dead in its tracks.

The answer, they say, lies not in keeping it out of a computer but rather in confronting it once it's there and, counterintuitively, actually letting it lock up a few files before clamping down on it.

"Our system is more of an early-warning system. It doesn't prevent the ransomware from starting ... it prevents the ransomware from completing its task ... so you lose only a couple of pictures or a couple of documents rather than everything that's on your hard drive, and it relieves you of the burden of having to pay the ransom," said Nolen Scaife, a UF doctoral student and founding member of UF's Florida Institute for Cybersecurity Research.
Scaife is part of the team that has come up with the ransomware solution, which it calls CryptoDrop.
Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2016-07-e...

Submission + - Why Google Stores Billions of Lines of Code in a Single Repository (acm.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Google proves that distributed version control systems can't replace centralized ones. The centralized approach to source control has served Google well for more than 16 years, and today the vast majority of Google's software assets continues to be stored in a single, shared repository.

The Google codebase includes approximately one billion files and has a history of approximately 35 million commits spanning Google's entire 18-year existence. The repository contains 86TB of data, including approximately two billion lines of code in nine million unique source files.

Submission + - Judge rules No-Fly list unconstitutional

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: A federal judge ruled last week that the method by which the federal government places people on the no-fly list is inherently unconstitutional, and must either be changed, or cease.

Specifically, U.S. District Judge Anna Brown said the process doesn’t give Americans on the list an effective way to challenge their inclusion. The Oregonian reports: “In a 65-page opinion issued Tuesday Brown ordered the government to come up with a new way for the 13 plaintiffs to contest their inclusion on the list that prohibits them from flying in or through U.S. airspace. The government must provide notice to the plaintiffs that they are on the roster and give the reasons for their inclusion, Brown wrote. She also ordered that the government allow the plaintiffs to submit evidence to refute the government’s suspicions.

“The decision marks a big win for the plaintiffs, all U.S. citizens or permanent residents, and the American Civil Liberties Union, which argued the case on their behalf. The plaintiffs have all been denied boarding due to their placement on the list, they argue, despite never having been charged with a terrorism-related offense.”

Submission + - C++17 Committee Draft Approved

Submitted by lefticus
lefticus writes: The upcoming C++17 standard has reached Committee Draft stage, having been voted on in the standards committee meeting in Oulu, Finland this Saturday. This makes C++17 now feature complete, with many new interesting features such as if initializers and structured bindings having been voted in at this meeting.

An interview with the C++ committee chair, Herb Sutter, about the status of C++17 has also been posted.

Submission + - Bugs in OpenJDK project

Submitted by El_programmer
El_programmer writes: Nowadays a lot of projects are opening their source code and letting those who are interested in the development of it edit the code. OpenJDK is no exception, programmers PVS-Studio have found a lot of interesting errors that are worth paying attention to.

OpenJDK (Open Java Development Kit) — a project for the creation and implementation of Java (Java SE) platform, which is now free and open source. The project was started in 2006, by the Sun company. The project uses multiple languages- C, C++, and Java. We are interested in the source code written in C and C++. Let's take the 9th version of OpenJDK. The code of this implementation of Java platform is available at the Mercurial repository.

During verification, the analyzer found different errors in the project including: copy-paste, bugs in the operation precedence, errors in logical expressions and in pointer handling and other bugs, which are described in detail in this article.

It's always amusing to check a project which is used and maintained by a large number of people. The better and more accurate the code is, the more safely and effectively the program will work. Those bugs we found, are another proof of the usefulness of an analyzer, as it allows the detection of such errors which would otherwise be hard to detect doing simple code review.

Submission + - Student sues police for fine after refusing Breathalyzer

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: A Michigan high school student who was fined when she refused to take a Breathalyzer test — even though she was only a passenger in the vehicle — has filed a federal lawsuit claiming her constitutional right to be free from unreasonable searches was violated.

The law violates Guthrie’s Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches, her Detroit lawyer told NBC News. “Her rights were violated when she was forced to submit to Breathalyzer to prove her innocence,” attorney Mike Rataj said. “That is not how the criminal justice system works. This is a girl who has never been in trouble before and has no criminal history.”

It can be argued that a driver has made a deal with the state, which provides roads and regulates their safe use, and must submit. She however was merely a passenger, and thus any search of her body really does require a warrant, as per the Bill of Rights.

Submission + - Court bans smart meter blueprints from public, requester sued amid terror fears (theregister.co.uk)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Phil Mocek, the sysadmin-activist at the center of a bizarre legal battle over a smart meter network in Seattle, Washington, says he never expected a simple records request to turn into a lawsuit.

"We all assume these meters simply monitor the amount of energy usage in the home," Mocek explained. "But they monitor it in real time in ways that other meters did not." When he asked Seattle City Light, a public power utility, to provide details on the designs and rollout of its smart power meter grid, he was simply hoping to find out what security safeguards the city and hardware providers Landis+Gyr and Sensus USA planned to use.

This, says Mocek, is where things started to get real odd.

After an email exchange with Seattle City Light officials, he obtained a mix of unredacted and redacted documents by the city, which he uploaded to the web – only to be told that the smart meter suppliers objected to the release of the information on the grounds that the unredacted documents would disclose their trade secrets and open the public to terrorist attacks on their infrastructure. Landis+Gyr and Sensus promptly sued the city, Mocek and Muckrock, and filed for an injunction: ultimately, the suppliers wanted the documents taken down, and the unredacted copies banned from public view.

On Thursday, a temporary restraining order was granted by the King County Superior Court in Washington – and Muckrock founder Michael Morisy confirmed the unredacted documents have been taken down pending the outcome of the case.

Submission + - ESA and Tim Peake to rent out room on ISS on AirBnB

Submitted by RockDoctor
RockDoctor writes: After their successful deployment of the inflatable broom cupboard on the International Space Station, the ESA and Tim Peake are planning to rent it out on AirBnB.

https://twitter.com/esa/status/736848338708992000

No comment on when the road there will be improved — it's unsurfaced (and un-foundationed) for the last 100+ km — but the parking for your vehicles could easily be described as "spacy". Driving up there — particularly in a convertible car — is literally breathtaking. You'll feel all the pressures lifting from you.

I'm writing like an advertising agent. I'd better commit sepukku with an IBM mechanical keyboard.

Submission + - HP 12c, Thirty-Five Years of The Calculator that Never Dies

Submitted by dkatana
dkatana writes: Two revolutionary computer products were born in 1981: the IBM PC, that brought computing to the masses, now a museum piece, and the HP 12c, a financial calculator that has been one of the most successful products of our generation.

The HP 12c was designed by a team led by Dennis Harms, a former Iowa farm boy, under orders of Bill Hewlett. Now, thirty-five years later, it is still selling in its original form and is used by over 100 million people worldwide.

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