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Government

Submission + - SourceForge Removes Blanket Blocking (ow.ly)

Submitted by
ScuttleMonkey
ScuttleMonkey writes: "Recently there was much gnashing of teeth as SourceForge started programmatically blocking users in certain countries to comply with US export restrictions. Thankfully they didn't let it end there and have found a way to put the power back in the hands of the users. "Beginning now, every project admin can click on Develop -> Project Admin -> Project Settings to find a new section called Export Control. By default, we’ve ticked the more restrictive setting. If you conclude that your project is *not* subject to export regulations, or any other related prohibitions, you may now tick the other check mark and click Update. After that, all users will be able to download your project files as they did before last month’s change.""
The Military

Submission + - Military’s robotic pack mule lives for $32M (networkworld.com) 1

Submitted by coondoggie
coondoggie writes: What kind of robot will automatically follow a leader, carry 400 lbs of military gear, walk 20 miles in all manner of weather and go 24 hours without refueling? Well, we might soon find out as the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has awarded a $32 million contract to build its Legged Squad Support System (LS3) which uses sensors and a GPS to walk along with soldiers across all manner of terrain in any weather without pulling any muscles.
http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/56667
It's funny. Laugh.

Submission + - "Calvin and Hobbes" Creator Bill Watterson Looks (cleveland.com)

Submitted by
ScuttleMonkey
ScuttleMonkey writes: "With fifteen years separating us from the last appearance of "Calvin and Hobbes" on the comic pages, reclusive artist Bill Watterson gave a rare interview reminiscing about his legacy. "The only part I understand is what went into the creation of the strip. What readers take away from it is up to them. Once the strip is published, readers bring their own experiences to it, and the work takes on a life of its own. Everyone responds differently to different parts. I just tried to write honestly, and I tried to make this little world fun to look at, so people would take the time to read it. That was the full extent of my concern. You mix a bunch of ingredients, and once in a great while, chemistry happens. I can't explain why the strip caught on the way it did, and I don't think I could ever duplicate it. A lot of things have to go right all at once.""
It's funny. Laugh.

Submission + - Bleep Labs Brings You Arduino-based Nebulophone (engadget.com)

Submitted by
ScuttleMonkey
ScuttleMonkey writes: "Bleep Labs, the same people who brought you the Thingamagoop (and now Thingamagoop2!), have released a new fun gadget — the Arduino-based Nebulophone. "What do you get when you mash together an Arduino-based synth with a Stylophone-like keyboard? A month ago, even we wouldn't have known, but now that Handmade Music Austin has come and gone, we're happy to say that this beautiful concoction leads to the creation of a Nebulophone. Unfortunately, there's no video (yet) to showcase what this musical wonder can do, but we're told that it has 'adjustable waveforms, a light controlled analog filter, LFO and an arpeggiator that can be clocked over IR.'""
Google

Submission + - Google to Pay $500 For Bugs Found in Chromium (threatpost.com)

Submitted by Trailrunner7
Trailrunner7 writes: Google is starting a new program that will pay security researchers a $500 bounty for every security bug they find in Chromium, the open-source codebase behind the Google Chrome browser, as well as for bugs found in Chrome itself. The company said Thursday that the plan is both meant as a reward for researchers who have been contributing bugs to the project already, and as a way to encourage other researchers to find security flaws in Chromium. Google said it will pay a base bounty of $500 for most bugs contributed, but may raise the payment to $1337 for bugs that are "particularly severe or particularly clever." The program is modeled after one started some time ago by Mozilla, which also pays $500 bounties. Other organizations have been buying vulnerabilities privately for several years now, most notably the Zero Day Initiative from Tipping Point, and VeriSign's iDefense Labs unit. Those companies pay far more than $500 for vulnerabilities, and researchers say that private organizations, such as government agencies, routinely pay tens of thousands of dollars for critical remotely exploitable bugs in popular software.
Science

Submission + - New touchscreen technology like writing on paper (pcauthority.com.au)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A company claims it has the technology to make writing on touchscreens more like writing with pencil and paper, when the harder you press the thicker the line you produce. The technology uses a material called Quantum Tunnelling Composite (QTC), the resistance of which is extremely sensitive to pressure, unlike today's touchscreen phones, which might be fine for basic finger-pointing, but they are poor at gauging the pressure of the touch. The hope is that this will be useful in Asia for handwriting recognition, because Asian scripts use a lot of variation in line thickness. Interestingly, screens with a standard 2D touch matrix can get the extra measure of control using a narrow strip of QTC down the side. Something for future iterations of the iPad, perhaps?
Government

Submission + - SourceForge Clarifies Denial of Site Access (ow.ly)

Submitted by
ScuttleMonkey
ScuttleMonkey writes: "Recently there were some complaints from certain users outside the U.S. stating that they were no longer able to access SourceForge.net. SF.net (who shares a corporate overlord with Slashdot) has outlined the reasons for these bans and until someone with sufficient power to alter U.S. law or the lists governing who is allowed to access what data from where, there is unlikely to be a change in these bans. It is worth noting that SF.net is not alone in these difficulties as the same problems have been reported from other repositories like Google Code. "As one of the first companies to promote the adoption and distribution of free and open source software, and one that still puts open source at the center of its corporate ideals, restrictions on the free flow of information rub us the wrong way. However, in addition to participating in the open source community, we also live in the real world, and are governed by the laws of the country in which we are located. Our need to follow those laws supersedes any wishes we might have to make our community as inclusive as possible. The possible penalties for violating these restrictions include fines and imprisonment. Other hosting companies based in the US have similar legal and technical restrictions in place.""
Spam

Submission + - Researchers Claim "Effectively Perfect" Spam Block (newscientist.com)

Submitted by
ScuttleMonkey
ScuttleMonkey writes: "A team of computer scientists from the International Computer Science Institute in Berkeley, CA are claiming to have found an "effectively perfect" method for blocking spam. The new system deciphers the templates a botnet is using to create spam and then teachers filters what to look for. "The system [] works by exploiting a trick that spammers use to defeat email filters. As spam is churned out, subtle changes are typically incorporated into the messages to confound spam filters. Each message is generated from a template that specifies the message content and how it should be varied. The team reasoned that analysing such messages could reveal the template that created them. And since the spam template describes the entire range of the emails a bot will send, possessing it might provide a watertight method of blocking spam from that bot.""
Mozilla

Submission + - Mozilla Tries New "Lorentz" Dev Model (developer.com)

Submitted by
ScuttleMonkey
ScuttleMonkey writes: "With the recent release of Firefox 3.6, Mozilla has also decided to try out a new development model dubbed "Lorentz." A blend of both Agile and more traditional "waterfall" development models, the new methodology aims to deliver new features much more quickly while still maintaining backwards compatibility, security, and overall quality. Only time will tell if this is effective, or just another management fad. "If the new approach sounds familiar, that's because Unix and Linux development has attempted similar kinds of release variations for iterating new features while maintaining backwards compatibility. HP-UX, for example, is currently on its HP-UX 11iv3 release, which receives updates several times a year that add incremental new functionality. The Linux 2.6.x kernel gets new releases approximately every three months, which include new features as well.""
Space

Submission + - 15 Year Old Student Discovers New Pulsar (nrao.edu) 1

Submitted by
ScuttleMonkey
ScuttleMonkey writes: "For the second time in as many years a student has made a discovery while participating in the Pulsar Search Collaboratory (PSC), a joint program between the National Radio Astronomy Observatory and West Virginia University designed to get students and teachers involved in analyzing data from the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope (GBT). This time it was high school sophomore Shay Bloxton who discovered a brand new pulsar. "For Bloxton, the pulsar discovery may be only her first in a scientific career. "Participating in the PSC has definitely encouraged me to pursue my dream of being an astrophysicist," she said, adding that she hopes to attend West Virginia University to study astrophysics. Late last year, another West Virginia student, from South Harrison High School, Lucas Bolyard, discovered a pulsar-like object called a rotating radio transient. His discovery also came through participation in the PSC.""
The Military

Submission + - New Brain Scans Can Spot PTSD (wewqeqweqweqweqewqweqwe.net)

Submitted by
ScuttleMonkey
ScuttleMonkey writes: "Neuroscientists think they may have found a scientific method to identify post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) using a brain imaging method call magnetoencephalography (MEG). In the test study the scientists studied 74 vets with PTSD and 250 civilians without and were able to spot the PTSD sufferers with 90% accuracy. "MEG machines are a fast, sensitive and accurate way to measure electric activity in the brain. Whereas CT scans and MRIs record brain signals every few seconds, MEGs can do it by the millisecond, catching biomarkers and brain activity that the other tests inevitably miss. The study could be a breakthrough for the military, who’ve been scrambling to address a surge in post-traumatic symptoms among newly returning vets. Right now, troops are evaluated by mental health experts, but diagnosis is a crap-shoot: symptoms can take years to show up, and vary from person to person, even among those exposed to the same traumas. The Pentagon’s already been pushing for more objective, systematized diagnosis tools, like portable at-home sleep monitors and genetic testing to detect PTSD vulnerability. They’ve even launched a program to create stress-mitigating pharmaceuticals.""
Government

Submission + - US Blocking Costa Rican Sugar Trade to Force IP La (asdfasfasdfasdf.org)

Submitted by
ScuttleMonkey
ScuttleMonkey writes: "For the last couple of days news has been trickling in about how the U.S. is trying to ram IP laws down Costa Rica's throat by blocking their access to the US sugar market. Techdirt has a good summary of the various commentaries and a related scoop in the Bahamas where the U.S. is also applying IP pressure. "The first is in Costa Rica, which is included in the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA). Yet like with other free trade agreements that the US has agreed to elsewhere, this one includes draconian intellectual property law requirements. I still cannot understand why intellectual monopoly protectionism — the exact opposite of "free trade" — gets included in free trade agreements. At least in Costa Rica, a lot of people started protesting these rules, pointing out that it would be harmful for the economy, for education and for healthcare. So the Costa Rican government has not moved forward with such laws. How has the US responded? It's blocking access to the US market of Costa Rican sugar until Costa Rica approves new copyright laws.""
Operating Systems

Submission + - Ubuntu 10.04 Alpha 2 and Early Fedora 13Benchmarks (phoronix.com)

Submitted by
ScuttleMonkey
ScuttleMonkey writes: "Given that early benchmarks of the Lucid Lynx were less than encouraging, Phoronix decided to take the latest alpha out for a spin and has set it side-by-side with an early look at Fedora 13. "Overall, there are both good and bad performance improvements for Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Alpha 2 in relation to Ubuntu 9.10. Most of the negative regressions are attributed to the EXT4 file-system losing some of its performance charm. With using a pre-alpha snapshot of Fedora 13 and the benchmark results just being provided for reference purposes, we will hold off on looking into greater detail at this next Red Hat Linux update until it matures.""

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