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Submission + - How Does the R&D Tax Credit Work?

Submitted by Kashell
Kashell writes: Slashdot,
I am a quality assurance engineer at a software development company. In my day job, I have to use an application to track every task that I do throughout every day. The application requires time, project, application, case numbers, place, and a whole array of dropdown menus, radio buttons, and checkboxes to mark each time I change tasks. Needless to say, doing this is annoying and can take anywhere from an hour to two hours out of my day. This is time I could spend making a better product for our clients.

After some research, it looks like this application was created for the QA department because of Internal Revenue Code 41 aka the Research & Experimentation Tax Credit. IANACPA, but for receiving the credit for software tester's wages, it appears that testers only need to track the time they spend testing new projects, not tracking every employee's every move. (Bug fixes do not quality for the tax credit.)

How do you track new projects for this tax credit? Is time estimated by a manager, do you have a simple time tracking application, or do you have a "big brother" tracker too?
Security

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: How Do I Fight Russian Site Cloners? 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: I used to run a small web design service--the domain for which, I allowed to expire after years of non-use. A few weeks ago, I noticed that my old site was back online at the old domain. The site-cloners are now using my old email addresses to gain access to old third-party web services accounts (invoicing tools, etc.) and are fraudulently billing my clients for years of services. I've contacted the Russian site host, PayPal, and the invoicing service. What more can I do? Can I fight back?
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."
Encryption

Parallel Algorithm Leads To Crypto Breakthrough 186

Posted by timothy from the how-about-cluster-some-ipads dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "Dr. Dobbs reports that a cracking algorithm using brute force methods can analyze the entire DES 56-bit keyspace with a throughput of over 280 billion keys per second, the highest-known benchmark speeds for 56-bit DES decryption and can accomplish a key recovery that would take years to perform on a PC, even with GPU acceleration, in less than three days using a single, hardware-accelerated server with a cluster of 176 FPGAs. The massively parallel algorithm iteratively decrypts fixed-size blocks of data to find keys that decrypt into ASCII numbers. Candidate keys that are found in this way can then be more thoroughly tested to determine which candidate key is correct." Update by timothy, 2010-01-29 19:05 GMT: Reader Stefan Baumgart writes to point out prior brute-force methods using reprogrammable chips, including Copacobana (PDF), have achieved even shorter cracking times for DES-56. See also this 2005 book review of Brute Force, about the EFF's distributed DES-breaking effort that succeeded in 1997 in cracking a DES-encrypted message.

Submission + - Target pharmacy begins scanning driver's licences 2

Submitted by Muad'Dave
Muad'Dave writes: This evening I picked up my regular prescriptions at my local Target pharmacy. As I was paying for them, the cashier asked to 'see my ID'. That was not typical, but I assumed she was going to verify the photo. Before I could stop her, she flipped it over without looking at the front and scanned the 2D barcode on the back. I asked her why she did that, and her answer was that the system 'required' it.

I went to the customer service desk and asked them why they thought they were entitled to scan my license. Their first answer was that it was a convenient way to validate my birthday, and that was all that was on the 2D barcode. When I mentioned that I know there's more data than that, she then said that it was a convenient way to verify that the ID was present. I mentioned that verifying the presence of an ID required more data than the DOB, and she agreed, contradicting her earlier statement that all they scanned was the DOB.

The is a Federal law addressing who can and cannot scan licenses, but it's so full of loopholes as to be useless.

Apparently I'm not the only one bothered by their attitude on privacy.

Have you been subjected to this invasion of your privacy by Target?
The Media

Submission + - NY Times to Charge for Online Content

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "New York Magazine reports that the NY Times appears close to announcing that the paper will begin charging for access to its website, according to people familiar with internal deliberations. After a year of debate inside the paper, the choice has been between a Wall Street Journal-type pay wall and the metered system in which readers can sample a certain number of free articles before being asked to subscribe. The Times seems to have settled on the metered system. The decision to go paid is monumental for the Times, and culminates a yearlong debate that grew contentious, people close to the talks say. Hanging over the deliberations is the fact that the Times’ last experience with pay walls, TimesSelect, was deeply unsatisfying and exposed a rift between Sulzberger and his roster of A-list columnists, particularly Tom Friedman and Maureen Dowd, who grew frustrated at their dramatic fall-off in online readership. The argument for remaining free was based on the belief that nytimes.com is growing into an English-language global newspaper of record, with a vast audience — 20 million unique readers — that would prove lucrative as web advertising matured. But with the painful declines in advertising brought on by last year's financial crisis, the argument that online advertising might never grow big enough to sustain the paper's high-cost, ambitious journalism — gained more weight."

Comment Re:Conspiracy? (Score 1) 521

by Bruce Perens (#29765203) Attached to: Doubts Raised About Legal Soundness of GPL2

would ever in their right mind touch anything released under it.

They said that about GPL 2 as well. Now it's getting difficult to buy some kinds of devices without GPL code in them.

My experience with the Sony DHG-HDD250 has been educational. I have two of these DVRs. They have the Busybox license (I created busybox) in the user manual. The user is not permitted to set the time. It can only be set by TV-Guide-On-Screen's signal. I guess that setting the time would allow circumvention of some DRM information somewhere. I suspect they planned to send DRM info over the TV-Guide-On-Screen signal. Or they do.

So, when the digital TV cut-over happened, SONY had not updated the unit to get the digital TV-Guide-On-Screen signal. So, the unit was effectively a brick. You couldn't set the time, and there was no program guide.

Sony finally did an update, some weeks after the cut-over. But they were under no obligation to do so, as by then all the units were out of warranty. I'd spent about $1000 to buy the pair and for a while they were useless.

Next time I'm buying open hardware. And I am licensing new code under GPL3 and AGPL3.

Comment Re:Googles playbook (Score 1) 367

by yppiz (#26423061) Attached to: Companies Using MS Word "Out of Habit," Says Forrester

I switched from MS Office to OpenOffice, and then from OpenOffice to Google Docs.

I now use Google Docs for 99% of my word processing.

The main draw for me is that I can share docs with co-authors more easily via Google Docs than with email. Essentially, Google Docs is a Wiki with a decent editor GUI and sharing controls.

Comment Re:Converter coupons are already sold-out (Score 1) 589

by yppiz (#26381267) Attached to: Obama Recommends Delay In Digital TV Switch

Same here. I applied in January and got a note that they had run out of funding, and would notify me if any existing coupons expired. I doubt I'm going to receive the coupons before the changeover.

Which is OK with me, but it's also likely that, if I have to go without TV for a while, I'm going to switch over ever more to Youtube and the internet. If there are a lot of other people like this, it's going to really reduce the audience for broadcast TV.
Wireless Networking

Atheros Hardware Abstraction Layer Source Is Released 117

Posted by kdawson from the no-blobs-here dept.
chrb writes "With the recent discussion here on proprietary blobs in the Linux kernel, it's nice to see that today Sam Leffler has released the source for the Atheros Hardware Abstraction Layer under the ISC license, which is both GPL and BSD compatible. The Atheros chipset is used in many laptops, so this is another important step towards running a completely free distribution."
Cellphones

Linux Kernel Booting On the iPhone 115

Posted by Soulskill from the there's-no-iphone-in-team dept.
mhm was one of many readers to note that the Linux 2.6 kernel has been ported to the iPhone. "Planetbeing, one of the iPhone devteam members, has been working on porting Linux to the iPhone (along with a custom bootloader called OpeniBoot). Today they managed to boot the kernel! Video showing the boot process has been posted. Instructions and binaries are available on the project blog."
Privacy

ACLU Creates Map of US "Constitution-Free Zone" 979

Posted by kdawson from the stay-well-inland dept.
trackpick points out a recent ACLU initiative to publicize a recent expansion of authority claimed by the Border Patrol to stop and search individuals up to 100 miles from any US border. They have created a map of what they call the US Constitution-Free Zone. "Using data provided by the US Census Bureau, the ACLU has determined that nearly 2/3 of the entire US population (197.4 million people) live within 100 miles of the US land and coastal borders. The government is assuming extraordinary powers to stop and search individuals within this zone. This is not just about the border: This 'Constitution-Free Zone' includes most of the nation's largest metropolitan areas.'"
Biotech

Patient "Roused From Coma" By a Magnetic Therapy 123

Posted by timothy from the this-is-why-pole-reversal's-a-good-thing dept.
missb writes "Could the gentle currents from a fluctuating magnetic field be used to reverse the effects of traumatic brain injury? New Scientist reports on a patient in the US who was in a coma-like state, but can now speak very simple words after being given transcranial magnetic stimulation. This is the first time TMS has been used as a therapy to try and rouse a patient out of a coma."

Neal Stephenson Returns with "Anathem" 248

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the hoping-for-a-hit-not-a-miss dept.
Lev Grossman writes to tell us that Neal Stephenson, author of greats like Snow Crash and Cryptonomicon, has another novel due for release in September. The catalogue copy gives us a small glimpse at what may be in store: "Since childhood, Raz has lived behind the walls of a 3,400-year-old monastery, a sanctuary for scientists, philosophers, and mathematicians--sealed off from the illiterate, irrational, unpredictable 'saecular' world that is plagued by recurring cycles of booms and busts, world wars and climate change. Until the day that a higher power, driven by fear, decides that only these cloistered scholars have the abilities to avert an impending catastrophe. And, one by one, Raz and his cohorts are summoned forth without warning into the Unknown."

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