Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
Piracy

Film Industry Hires Cyber Hitmen To Take Down Pirates 457

thelostagency writes "Girish Kumar, managing director of Aiplex Software says his company is being hired by the film industry to attack online pirates. He says if a provider did not do anything to remove the link or content hosted on its site, his company would launch what is known as a denial-of-service (DoS) attack on the offending computer server. From the article: 'Kumar said that at the moment most of the payment for his company's services came from the film industry in India. "We are tied up with more than 30 companies in Bollywood. They are the major production houses." As for Hollywood films, he said they, too, used his services.'"
NASA

NASA Preps Closest-Ever Sun Mission 111

coondoggie writes "NASA today said it had picked five experiments that will ride aboard one of its most ambitious space missions to explore the Sun. The Solar Probe, a car-sized spacecraft, is scheduled to launch no later than 2018 and will fly closer to the Sun's surface than any other probe, NASA stated. Ultimately the spacecraft's goals are to help scientists understand why the sun's outer atmosphere so much hotter than the sun's visible surface and what propels the solar wind that affects Earth and our solar system, NASA said."
Crime

Submission + - Wikileaks Founder Accused of Molestation

shaitand writes: News agencies are reporting that Julian Assange, the founder of wikileaks, is wanted by swedish authorities on charges of rape and molestation. He remains at large. CNN reports that he released a twitter stating that they were expecting dirty tricks and to expect more in time.
Businesses

ISPs Lie About Broadband "Up To" Speeds 547

Haffner writes "Ars Technica has an article detailing the difference between ISP advertised 'up to x Mbps' speeds and the actual speeds, in addition to some possible solutions. They find that on average, the advertised speeds were 'up to 6.7 Mbps' while the real median was 3 Mbps and the mean was 4 Mbps. This implies that ISPs were falsely advertising by at least 50%."
Space

Submission + - WISE Discovers 95 New Near-Earth Asteroids (discovery.com)

astroengine writes: "NASA's Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) has turned up 25,000 new asteroid discoveries, 95 of which are near-Earth objects (NEOs). This mission is as fascinating as it is frightening. Capable of spotting any cosmic object glowing in infrared wavelengths, WISE has become an expert asteroid hunter, seeing these interplanetary vagabonds, some of which get uncomfortably close to our planet."
Security

Miscreants Exploit Google-Outed Windows XP Zero-Day 497

CWmike writes "A compromised website is serving an exploit of the bug in Windows' Help and Support Center, identified by a Google engineer last week, to hijack PCs running Windows XP. Graham Cluley, a senior technology consultant at antivirus vendor Sophos, declined to identify the site, saying only that it was dedicated to open source software. 'It's a classic drive-by attack,' said Cluley. The tactic was one of two that Microsoft said last week were the likely attack avenues. (The other was convincing users to open malicious e-mail messages.) The vulnerability was disclosed last Thursday by Google security engineer Tavis Ormandy, who also posted proof-of-concept attack code. Ormandy defended his decision to reveal the flaw only five days after reporting it to Microsoft. Cluley called Ormandy's action 'utterly irresponsible,' and in a blog post asked, 'Tavis Ormandy — are you pleased with yourself?'"
Education

RFID Checks Student Attendance in Arizona 554

The student newspaper at UW-Madison is running a piece about the use of RFID to check lecture attendance at Northern Arizona University. One poster to an email discussion list suggested that getting around this system would be simple if "all one has to do is walk into a classroom with 10 RFID-enabled cards in their pocket." "The new system will use sensors to detect students' university identification cards when they enter classrooms, according to NAU spokesperson Tom Bauer. The data will be recorded and available for professors to examine. ... [The spokesman] added the sensors, paid for by federal stimulus money, initially would only be installed in large freshmen and sophomore classes with more than 50 students. NAU Student Body President Kathleen Templin said most students seem to be against the new system. She added students have started Facebook groups and petitions against the sensor system. ... One of the most popular Facebook groups ... has more than 1,400 members." What are the odds that the use of tracking RFID will expand over time on that campus?
Open Source

Open Source Developer Knighted 101

unixfan writes "Georg Greve, developer of Open Document Format and active FOSS developer, has received a knighthood in Germany for his work. From the article: 'Some weeks ago I received news that the embassy in Berne had unsuccessfully been trying to contact me under FSFE's old office address in Zurich. This was a bit odd and unexpected. So you can probably understand my surprise to be told by the embassy upon contacting them that on 18 December 2009 I had been awarded the Cross of Merit on ribbon (Verdienstkreuz am Bande) by the Federal Republic of Germany. As you might expect, my first reaction was one of disbelief. I was, in fact, rather shaken. You could also say shocked. Quick Wikipedia research revealed this to be part of the orders of knighthood, making this a Knight's Cross.'"
Earth

Cleaner Air Could Speed Global Warming 344

Hugh Pickens writes "Scientists estimate that the US Clean Air Act has cut a major air pollutant, sulfate aerosols, by 30% to 50% since the 1980s, helping greatly reduce cases of asthma and other respiratory problems. But NPR reports that this good news may have a surprising downside: cleaner air might actually intensify global warming. One benefit of sulfates is that they've been helpfully blocking sunlight from striking the Earth for many decades, by brightening clouds and expanding their coverage. Researchers believe greenhouse gases such as CO2 have committed the Earth to an eventual warming of roughly 4 degrees Fahrenheit, a quarter of which the planet has already experienced. But thanks to cooling by aerosols starting in the 1940s, the planet has felt only a portion of that warming. And unlike CO2, which persists in the atmosphere for centuries, aerosols last in the air for a week at most, so cutting them would probably rapidly accelerate global warming. The author of 'Hack the Planet' says: 'As we take away that unexpectedly helpful cooling mask, we're going to be facing more global warming than we expected.'"

Comment Re:Don't blow shit up - problem solved (Score 0, Flamebait) 409

I could have told you that on 9/12.
In fact I did tell people that, saying going to war is not the solution,
but at the time people were thinking like animals. All they could see was "red" and revenge.

How very astute of you.

I'm sorry to say, but it's not possible to prove something's validity through the failure of your opposition. Yes, it's a start, but as the history of rulers and political systems of the 20th century can attest, it's also a good way to bring a bitter end to things: Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, and many others said "their ways don't work, follow me" and there was even more suffering than under the previous rule.

The reality is that there are many other ways in which those wars could have been fought - indeed, there are many ways which many people wanted to see those wars fought which never occurred. The actual people who were "thinking like animals" wanted to carpet bomb their countries and utterly destroy them. Between them and your irrationally passive approach, we came up with what we got.

As for the 9/11 bombers, people seem to forget that it was diversity and open-minded political correctness which brought them here. We've known since the 1970s that their type (affluent Arabic Muslim men) are the stereotype for Islamic terrorism, yet we continued to let them in.

It's more complex than just "better locks"; significantly more so. I and most sane people would agree that is a necessary first step, but it's one step of many.

Proactively ruling out retributive attacks against enemies is just as, if not more, foolish than throwing an inappropriate level of force at a problem. But just because that level of force is ineffective does not mean that force was not the solution you were looking for.

Comment Re:Yea but (Score 0, Insightful) 1204

i had excellent karma, then suggested that educators paying children cash to read books was a cowardly last ditch effort by teachers unable or unwilling to do their jobs.

i defended my position and was further moderated into karma:terrible land... makes me wonder if this moderation system is broken. there should be a limit to the negative potential per thread or even per story... otherwise, discussion on hot topic issues is too dangerous if you at all respect the "karma" variable.

anyways, in the late 90s i ran a few 1M+ daily sites and even then $10+ CPM was unheard of. i always used a 3rd party though, so maybe direct sales have higher rates, but i suspect it all evens out after you are done paying your sales team and lawyers and chasing advertisers down to pay their bills, etc...

Comment Re:wait, what? (Score 1) 446

'We've got to do some work about having them believe and feel that printing isn't a sort of environmental negative.'

But it is an environmental negative.

What's the confusion over? It often requires work to convince people of lies. The RIAA, coal, pharmecutical and other industries only make it -look- easy.

Advertising

Paper Manufacturer Launches "Print More" Campaign 446

innocent_white_lamb writes "Domtar, a major North American paper manufacturer, has launched an advertising campaign to encourage people to print more documents on paper. Domtar CEO John Williams opposes campaigns by other companies asking employees to be responsible with what they print. 'Young people really are not printers. When was the last time your children demanded a printer?' Mr. Williams said ... 'We've got to do some work about having them believe and feel that printing isn't a sort of environmental negative.' The industry expects that, absent this campaign, paper demand will decrease by 4% annually. Williams's comments did not go down well in some environmental circles."

Slashdot Top Deals

"Money is the root of all money." -- the moving finger

Working...