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GNU is Not Unix

GNU Savannah Site Compromised 99

Trailrunner7 writes "A site belonging to the Savannah GNU free software archive was attacked recently, leading to a compromise of encrypted passwords and enabling the attackers to access restricted project material. The compromise was the result of a SQL injection attack against the savannah.gnu.org site within the last couple of days and the site is still offline now. A notice on the site says that the group has finished the process of restoring all of the data from a clean backup and bringing up access to some resources, but is still in the middle of adjusting its security settings."
The Media

WikiLeaks Will Unveil Major Bank Scandal 1018

Atmanman writes "When WikiLeaks announced it was releasing 251,287 US diplomatic cables, we all thought we knew what was meant by its earlier ominous words that, 'The coming months will see a new world, where global history is redefined.' It now appears the organization is sitting on a treasure trove of information so big that it has stopped taking submissions. Among data to be released are tens of thousands of documents from a major US banking firm and material from pharmaceutical companies, finance firms and energy companies."
Hardware Hacking

Combining Two Kinects To Make Better 3D Video 106

suraj.sun sends this quote from Engadget about improving the Kinect 3D video recordings we discussed recently: "[Oliver Kreylos is] blowing minds and demonstrating that two Kinects can be paired and their output meshed — one basically filling in the gaps of the other. He found that the two do create some interference, the dotted IR pattern of one causing some holes and blotches in the other, but when the two are combined they basically help each other out and the results are quite impressive."

Comment Re:Democrats loved the Pentagon Papers (Score 1) 833

You're not hearing about those because you don't speak the languages spoken in any of those countries.
Wikileaks is a primarily English website. It's no surprise that you'll hear more about the US leaks on English news networks.

Not to mention that in China, your family would be incarcerated if you pulled a stunt like this. Not so much in the US.

Are you counting on respect for human rights or on incompetence of the US government agencies in your last sentence? ...

Bug

Windows Patch Leaves Many XP Users With Blue Screens 658

CWmike writes "Tuesday's security updates from Microsoft have crippled Windows XP PCs with the notorious Blue Screen of Death, users have reported on the company's support forum. Complaints began early yesterday, and gained momentum throughout the day. 'I updated 11 Windows XP updates today and restarted my PC like it asked me to,' said a user identified as 'tansenroy' who kicked off a growing support thread: 'From then on, Windows cannot restart again! It is stopping at the blue screen with the following message: 'A problem has been detected and Windows has been shutdown to prevent damage to your computer.' Others joined in with similar reports. Several users posted solutions, but the one laid out by 'maxyimus' was marked by a Microsoft support engineer as the way out of the perpetual blue screens."
Image

Facebook Master Password Was "Chuck Norris" Screenshot-sm 319

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "A Facebook employee has given a tell-all interview with some very interesting things about Facebook's internals. Especially interesting are all the things relating to Facebook privacy. Basically, you don't have any. Nearly everything you've ever done on the site is recorded into a database. While they fire employees for snooping, more than a few have done it. There's an internal system to let them log into anyone's profile, though they have to be able to defend their reason for doing so. And they used to have a master password that could log into any Facebook profile: 'Chuck Norris.' Bruce Schneier might be jealous of that one."
Microsoft

Jeremy Allison Calls Microsoft Dangerous Elephant 306

oranghutan writes "At the annual Linux.conf.au event being held in Wellington, NZ, one of the lead developers for the Samba Team (and Google employee) Jeremy Allison described Microsoft as 'an elephant that needs to be turned to stop it trampling the open source community.' Allison has been an outspoken critic of the vendor since he quit Novell over a deal it did with Microsoft that he saw as dangerous to open source intentions. And now he has evolved his argument to incorporate new case studies to explain why Microsoft's use of patents and its general tactics on free software are harmful.
Bug

Are Complex Games Doomed To Have Buggy Releases? 362

An anonymous reader points out a recent article at Gamesradar discussing the frequency of major bugs and technical issues in freshly-released video games. While such issues are often fixed with updates, questions remain about the legality and ethics of rushing a game to launch. Quoting: "As angry as you may be about getting a buggy title, would you want the law to get involved? Meglena Kuneva, EU Consumer Affairs Commissioner, is putting forward legislation that would legally oblige digital game distributors to give refunds for games, putting games in the same category in consumer law as household appliances. ... This call to arms has been praised by tech expert Andy Tanenbaum, author of books like Operating Systems: Design and Implementation. 'I think the idea that commercial software be judged by the same standards as other commercial products is not so crazy,' he says. 'Cars, TVs, and telephones are all expected to work, and they are full of software. Why not standalone software? I think such legislation would put software makers under pressure to first make sure their software works, then worry about more bells and whistles.'"
Science

Submission + - Unusual phenomenon in the skyes of Norway (repubblica.it)

curious.corn writes: Hi there,

a beautiful, if a bit haunting, atmospheric phenomenon occurred this morning in Norway. Unlike the usual northern lights tapestry, it consisted of a transient white globe irradiating light rings. In a very short time these took a spiral form, acquiring a blue tint towards the center and growing to become the largest object in the sky, even surpassing the moon. According to witnesses, the spiral tracked across the sky leaving a bluish tail before collapsing and leaving behind a dark, "black hole".

Linky lands on an italian newspaper story (a fragment of which I have liberally translated) with further links to phonecam video of spiral formation and collapse and a splendid photo gallery (check out #4: beautiful spiraling pinch currents rushing out of the core traced by oxygen blue emission)

see yah!
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