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Comment Re:defectivebydesign (Score 1) 971

by mindriot (#25165453) Attached to: How Close Were US Presidential Elections?

I have a friend who's in political PR, and he tells me that my dream of "corrections in the media should be given equal billing to the original misinformation" (i.e. if you splash falsehoods onto the front page in big letters, you can't post your apology on page 79 column 5) will never happen

At least in Germany, corrections are required to be given the same prominence as the original article, similar things apply in some (but by far not all) other European countries (see the PDF link on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_of_reply). The German ruling is still fairly recent (less than ten years old I think). It gives me great pleasure to at least occasionally see the big tabloids opening with a "WE WERE MAKING STUFF UP"-type headline...

United States

Googlestalking For Covert NSA Research Funding 150

Posted by Zonk from the because-what-else-are-you-going-to-do dept.
James Hardine writes "Wikileaks is reporting that the CIA has funded covert research on torture techniques, and that the NSA has pushed tens or hundreds of millions into academia through research grants using one particular grant code. Some researchers try to conceal the source of funding, yet commonality in the NSA grant code prefix makes all these attempts transparent. The primary NSA grant-code prefix is 'MDA904'. Googling for this grant code yields 39,000 references although some refer to non-academic contracts (scolar.google.com 2,300). The grants issue from light NSA cover, the "Maryland Procurement Office" or other fronts. From this one can see the broad sweep of academic research interests being driven by the NSA."
It's funny. Laugh.

Half of SCO's Accountants Quit 371

Posted by Zonk from the rats-know-when-to-leave-a-ship dept.
Groklaw Reader writes "Apparently, SCO's lawyers were working overtime last Sunday, because they wrote a quick plea to the bankruptcy court for permission to hire accounting temps. Why? Approximately half of SCO's finance department has resigned or been fired. Two who resigned had over ten years of experience each. One can only assume that they know what's about to happen to SCO."
Security

Storm Worm Evolves To Use Tor 182

Posted by CmdrTaco from the guess-who's-back dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Seems like the Storm botnet that was behind the last two waves of attacks is also responsible for this new kind of social-engineering based attacks, using spam to try and convince users of the necessity of using Tor for there communications. They 'kindly' provide a link to download a trojaned version of Tor. This blog entry has a link to the original post on or-talk mailing list which has some samples of the messages."
Microsoft

Sweden's Vote on OOXML Invalidated 232

Posted by Zonk from the that's-what-you-get-when-you-cheat dept.
Groklaw Reader writes "Just days after Microsoft's attempt to buy the Swedish vote on OOXML came to light, SIS declared its own vote invalid. The post at Groklaw references a ComputerWorld article with revelations from Microsoft: 'Microsoft Corp. admitted Wednesday that an employee at its Swedish subsidiary offered monetary compensation to partners for voting in favor of the Office Open XML document format's approval as an ISO standard. Microsoft said the offer, when discovered, was quickly retracted and that its Sweden managers voluntarily notified the SIS, the national standards body. "We had a situation where an employee sent a communication via e-mail that was inconsistent with our corporate policy," said Tom Robertson, general manager for interoperability and standards at Microsoft. "That communication had no impact on the final vote." ...'"
Microsoft

Submission + - Ballmer deflects rumoured Yahoo buy (itbusiness.ca)

Submitted by
Raver32
Raver32 writes: "Try as he might, not even veteran U.S. television interviewer Charlie Rose could get Microsoft Corp.'s CEO Steve Ballmer to disclose whether the company continues to mull an acquisition of Yahoo Inc. "If we were I wouldn't tell you, if I weren't I wouldn't tell you," Ballmer said earlier this week when asked point-blank by Rose in a joint interview with Cisco Systems Inc.'s CEO and Chairman John Chambers if Microsoft was currently in negotiations with Yahoo to merge. The two industry heavyweights appeared together in New York to discuss the collaboration between Microsoft and Cisco, which have begun to encroach on each other's territory in the areas of unified communications and network security infrastructure as well as products for the digital home. There was widespread speculation that Microsoft and Yahoo were talking about a possible deal earlier this year, speculation that was quieted by Microsoft's announcement it would buy digital media and marketing services firm aQuantive in May in a US$6 billion deal to boost its online advertising strategy. The deal, Microsoft's biggest to date, closed last week, and the possibility of the company purchasing Yahoo seemed a moot point."
Software

Submission + - Mobipocket web site down for a week now

Submitted by
hopkimi
hopkimi writes: "Ebook seller, mobipocket.com, has had a maintenance page up for a week now. They haven't given any details on what is keeping the site down. But it means more than not being able to purchase a new ebook. If you already bought a book from them, you might have trouble reading it. I bought a book and read about a third of it before the smartphone I was reading it on died. I got a replacement phone quickly, but when I reinstalled the Mobipocket reader on it and tried to copy the book over from my desktop, I got an error message. Apparently, their DRM scheme requires the client to reach the mobipocket.com site and verify that I have the rights to continue reading a book I purchased 2 weeks ago. Bottom line: I can't read the book until they get their site up. Pain in the arse."
Google

Submission + - Google to stick it to telcos, bid on 700MHz (arstechnica.com) 1

Submitted by Seppanen Style
Seppanen Style writes: The 700MHz spectrum auction looks like it's going to be heated. Google CEO Eric Schmidt has all but confirmed that Google will make a play for the spectrum that will be on offer next January. 'In effect, this could give Google control of the entire pipe between customers and Google servers, a move that could be very good for business strategy, even if the wireless network is not a major profit center. Companies never like to be at the mercy of other companies, and Google is no exception.' If Google ends up with a chunk of prime spectrum, the telcos could be the ones to blame. 'After former SBC chief Ed Whitacre announced that Google shouldn't be able to "use my pipes free," Google saw a potential threat to its existence from the network operators that lay between it and consumers. Whitacre's remarks are sometimes credited with igniting the public debate over network neutrality. Ironically for the telcos who can't be thrilled at the possibility of a bidding war with a cash factory like Google, one of their own may be to thank for the current situation.'
Printer

Submission + - Inkless printer embedded in digital camera coming (zink.com)

Submitted by david-wall
david-wall writes: Ink-less paper from Zink seems like a cool idea, but the limitations in the short-term may be the buzz killer. It remains to be seen. With all of the buzz about green technology, it seems strange that the first product to come out will be an ink-less digital camera (slated for fall 2007) printing on 2x3 paper. Why not an office printer so I can stop blowing through ink cartridges as I print my pictures as 8x10s? Bummer.

Too bad this demo video is so pixelated. Consumers on YouTube are producing higher quality videos. Regardless, this company has shown the potential of the technology. Five years from now, the printing scene could be entirely different.
The Almighty Buck

Submission + - Wallstreet Quant Funds Fail (washingtonpost.com)

Submitted by
eldavojohn
eldavojohn writes: "You may remember the article covering AI on Wallstreet but there's an interesting problem that came with the recent 387 point drop in the Dow Jones — too many quant funds were trying to take the same exit door at the wrong time. From the article, "Last week, Goldman Sachs said its Global Alpha quant fund had lost 27 percent of its value this year because its computers failed to anticipate what the firm called '25 percent standard deviation moves' or events so rare Goldman had seen them only twice before in the firm's history." Quant funds normally thrive on tiny deviations in the market for short term trades but evidently this past deviation was not only too much but unforeseen. Is this a case of something that's too good to be true (30% return) becoming so big that everyone's doing it and it is too good to be true?"
Security

Submission + - Fark/Fox Followup

Submitted by
Rick Romero
Rick Romero writes: "Slashdot discussed how Fox hacked Fark last week. Valleywag now has a followup with detailed log data that strongly implicates Darrell Phillips (new media manager at WHBQ Fox13, a News Corp.-owned TV station in Memphis, Tenn.) as the perp/cracker — his blog has gone dark.

Why this was done is still puzzling — stealing the Fark source code doesn't make any logical sense. Was he tring to figure out some way to generate more traffic to his new blog ... or maybe he was "just a pure idiot" as theorized by Fark?

Regardless, as a forensic sysadmin, I'm getting a kick out of all this discussion on this topic from people who don't know what they are talking about — what does Slashdot think?"
Media

Submission + - Paramount CTO discusses why they dumped Blu-Ray (pcworld.com)

Submitted by angus_rg
angus_rg writes: Alan Bell, executive vice president and chief technology officer for Paramount Pictures, discusses the reasons behind backing HD-DVD, none of which revolve around being paid to choose a side.
Space

Submission + - Voyager 2 30 years (nasa.gov)

Submitted by
Mick Ohrberg
Mick Ohrberg writes: "The Voyager 2 spacecraft (part of the ongoing Voyager Mission) today celebrates 30 years of faithful service, by far surpassing the 4 years that was its inteded lifespan. Voyager 2 is today 7.8 billion miles from the sun, placing it almost as far out as the heliopause. At the speed of light that's about 12 hours away, and it's clocking about 1 million miles per day. Voyager 1, launched a couple of weeks after Voyager 2, is at 9.7 billion miles from the sun the farthest man-made object. So when are we going to get around to sending up Voyager 6?"
NASA

Submission + - Frozen Smoke (AreoGel) New Miricle Substance (timesonline.co.uk) 1

Submitted by thejuggler
thejuggler writes: Scientists hail 'frozen smoke' as material that will change world. A MIRACLE material for the 21st century could protect your home against bomb blasts, mop up oil spillages and even help man to fly to Mars. Aerogel, one of the world's lightest solids, can withstand a direct blast of 1kg of dynamite and protect against heat from a blowtorch at more than 1,300C.

I had to keep checking to make sure I wasn't reading The Onion. It seems that this AeroGel can save "The World" by stopping global warming, saving whales and polar bears, eliminating our need for oil. Never has so much been said about something that isn't even there (or at least 99%) of isn't there.

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