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Submission + - How to Nurture a Computer Talented 8 Year Old 2

Submitted by Grampa
Grampa writes: My grandson is a seven going on 8 year old computer talent. Not only is he fascinated by the computer, but he already helped "fix" a computer issue in his second grade class. I have two questions I'd like the Slashdot community to help me answer: (1) How best to nurture his talent at such a young age? (2) How to protect him from stress injuries inherent in using the keyboard and mouse so much?
Privacy

Submission + - LMSD Response to Webcam Privacy Allegation (tekgoblin.com)

Submitted by tekgoblin
tekgoblin writes: The Lower Merion School District of Pennsylvania was recently accused of privacy invasion per this post. Now the school has released an official response to the allegations. According to the school, the security feature was installed in the laptops as an anti-theft device and was not intended to invade privacy. The software that was installed would take a photo of the person using the laptop after it was stolen to give to the authorities. Now this may be what it was intended for, but it seems that someone did’nt get the memo.

Read the press release below (Source: LMSD.org)
Security

Submission + - How Banker Trojans Steal Millions Every Day (threatpost.com) 1

Submitted by redsoxh8r
redsoxh8r writes: Banker trojans have become a serious problem, especially in South America and the U.S. Trojans like Zeus, URLZone and others are the tip of the iceberg. These toolkits are standard-issue weapons for criminals and state-sponsored hackers now. Just like Zeus, URLZone is also created using a toolkit (available in underground markets). What this means is that the buyer of this toolkit can then create customized malware or botnets with different CnCs and configurations but having all the flexibility and power of the original toolkit. Having such a tool kit in the hands of multiple criminal group paints a scary picture. It's simply not enough to eliminate a particular botnet and criminal group to solve this problem.
Security

Submission + - Twitter Hit By BZPharma LOL Phishing Attack (sophos.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Twitter users are being warned not to click on messages saying "lol, this is funny" as they can lead to their account details being stolen.

A widespread attack has hit Twitter this weekend, tricking users into logging into a fake Twitter page — and thus handing their account details over to hackers.

Messages include

Lol. this is me??
lol , this is funny.
ha ha, u look funny on here
Lol. this you??

followed by a link in the form of

http://example/ [dot] com/?rid=http://twitter.verify.bzpharma [dot] net/login

where 'example.com' can vary. Clicking on the link redirects users to the second-half of the link, where the fake login page is hosted.

In a video and blog entry, computer security firm Sophos is warning users that it is not just Twitter direct messages (DMs) that carry the poisoned links, but they are appearing on public profiles due to services such as GroupTweet which republish direct messages.

Sophos also reports that the site being used for the Twitter phishing has also been constructed to steal information from users of the Bebo social network.

Affected users are advised to change their passwords immediately.

Submission + - Android developer being sued by Cequint (threadabort.com) 2

Submitted by SpiceInvaders
SpiceInvaders writes: The developer of the City Caller ID application for Android is being sued by Ceguint. Apparently "they have a patent on displaying a city name with state on a LCD screen with a limited processor." Doesn't this cover practically every cordless phone? Wonder if their case goes away if you run the application on a core-i7 phone equipped with a OLED screen instead?
Software

Submission + - 6 of the Best Free Linux Disk Cloning Software (linuxlinks.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: One of the key responsibilities of a system administrator is to ensure the safety of an organisation's computer data. This is a critical task for any organisation, given that the loss of important data could have profound implications on its future prosperity.

There are a number of different strategies that a system administrator will need to use to ensure that data is preserved. For example, the person will need to maintain the computer system and/or network, by applying operating system updates and patches, by performing regular backups, and ensuring that the system is kept secure at all times. Disk cloning is a highly popular method of performing comprehensive backups of the operating system, installed software, and an organisation's data with the minimum of effort.

However, disk cloning software is not simply helpful for system backups. It has a wide range of other uses such as provisioning new computers in the workplace, restoring computers from a master image, and system recovery.

Read more

Submission + - When do call it quits with Linux? 4

Submitted by glebovitz
glebovitz writes: The world is going to flash. I am running Linux. The two worlds continue to collide. I can bear with the fact that I can't watch TV on Hulu or Movies on Amazon/VOD. But now I discover my favorite airline, JetBlue is using flash in their on line check in process and I can no longer print my boarding passes. For that, I have to borrow my wife's Macbook. I am against running WIndows 7 on my laptop. So what is left? Buy myself a Macbook? Most of my work these days is done in virtual machines, so VirtualBox and a Macbook is sounding better and better all the time. I don't think Adobe will ever get Flash on Linux right. At least I don't think they will never get the 64 bit version working.

Submission + - How to destroy your community (lwn.net)

Submitted by mkaehlcke
mkaehlcke writes: Josh Berkus is well known as a PostgreSQL hacker, but, as it happens, he also picked up some valuable experience during his stint at "The JLaboratory for the Destruction of Communities," otherwise known as Sun Microsystems. That experience has been distilled into a "patented ten-step method" on how to free a project of unwelcome community involvement.

If you are a corporate developer, you're likely to realize early on that free software development communities are a pain. They'll mess up your marketing schemes by, for example, taking the software into countries where you have no presence and no plans. They'll interfere with product roadmaps with unexpected innovation, adding features which you had not planned for the next few years — or, worse, features which were planned for a proprietary version. Free software communities are never satisfied; they are always trying to improve things. They tend to redefine partner and customer relationships, confusing your sales people beyond any help. And they bug you all the time: sending email, expecting you to attend conferences, and so on. Fortunately, there are ways to get rid of this community menace. All that's needed are the following ten steps.
Databases

Submission + - Databases for social networks review (techworld.com)

Submitted by superapecommando
superapecommando writes: Everyone loves social networks these days. Homeland security wants to track which terrorists know one another. Laundry companies want to know your friends so that they can get you to pass along the good word about the new starch.
At the heart of these problems and dozens of other ideas springing from the forehead of marketing directors everywhere are graph databases. (Computer scientists use the word "graph" to describe collections of objects and the links among them.) Using graph databases instead of traditional relational databases to store social network-type data structures can yield faster answers to important questions, such as what kind of doughnut your friend's friend's friend prefers, or whether someone from your "Labor Day" DVD was in a movie with someone who was in a movie with Kevin Bacon.
I looked at three databases, both graph and relational, that are geared toward social networks: Neo4j, Cassandra, and FluidDB. All three are relatively young but hold promise in helping organisations connect the dots among their user base.
The Internet

Submission + - Turn you mobile phone into a secured Wifi hotspot

Submitted by
mobileworker
mobileworker writes: "Who has never looked with envy at those people surfing the web on their laptop, from the gate of an airport or while travelling on board of a train?

Who has never been discouraged to purchase a 30mns Internet credit for €15 from the only local provider available at an airport lounge or at a hotel?

As for my part, I’ve experienced both situations during one of the 140 Paris-Vienna flights I took for the past two years (17,5 tonnes of CO2 I know I’m so ashamed). But I’ve never been so desperate to subscribe to an additional mobile contract for 12 or 24 month and get one of those “cool” broadband Internet access USB dongles you connect to your PC or Mac and which puts the world at your finger tips while on the move

The main reason? Those mobile broadband packages cost (between €29 and €39/month). And since I already had a very convenient mobile contract with my mobile phone provider which features, among others, unlimited download allowance*, it was not worth having to pay for exactly the same thing (500MB) under a different shaped device (a USB dongle).

To that point, I just needed to figure out a way to properly “spend” those 500MB I was given every month. Most symbian devices, such as Nokia, Sony-Ericsson and Motorola, come with a software full of nice features to install on your laptop. One of those features (supposedly) allows you to connect your laptop to your mobile through a cable or a Bluetooth connection. But in most cases the result does not meet with the expectation of surfing the web at a high speed (in the best case you managed to properly configure your phone). Surfing the web, in that case, is slow and painful.

JoikuSpot Light is a free symbian software that turns any mobile phone with a wifi connection, to a 3G WLAN HotSpot. You can thus connect your laptop or any other WLAN device to the web from anywhere using your mobile phone and enjoy 3G speed surfing!

In terms of download and upload speed, you can manage to peek at a very decent average of 850 kbps in downloads (I eventually managed to reach 1259 kbps!) and 85 kbps in uploads (peeked at 98 kbps during my speed tests on speedtest.net), which is not bad at all considering the fact that a regular home broadband Internet takes you at 2572 kbps (download) and 391 kbps (upload). So with JoikuSpot you’ll be able to listen to streaming music on Spotify, Deezer or Jiwa and enjoy from the best of youtube and dailymotion while on the move!

Once you’ll have this free software installed on your mobile, you won’t think twice when you’ll have to spend the week-end visiting your parents-in-law who live in a remote Internet-free location in the country you’ll still be able, to some extend, to hide in the bathroom and make your pain public on twitter or facebook.

- end -

*which is actually not: phone service providers say “unlimited” for a 500MB download allowance literally “unlimited”, as an adjective, means that something is not restricted or limited or seems to have no boundaries; infinite. Maybe this will be unlimited for M. Jones who only uses the Push email feature of his phone or his happy to surf the web for hours and burn his eyes on his tiny phone screen but not for me. One more thing: Many “broadband-hungry” applications, such as “Radio Internet” will only be able to run on a wifi hotspot (mobile providers just want to make sure that you won’t be able to use more than 30MB, at most, of your 500MB).

In his study “Predicts 2009: Enterprise Infrastructures Look to Provide 'Anywhere' Access” Gartner analysts predict that by 2010, 90% of global wireless operators will cease to offer unlimited mobile data plans. This is mainly linked to the fact that networks are already hitting high capacity with increased customer demand, which affects the network availability and speed that users get on 3G. Data services on PCs and phones are already slowing down, and carriers cannot regularly provide the speeds that they advertise. Also, through 2010, 20% of 3G operators will be capacity-constrained, which will limit wireless network capability."
HP

Submission + - HP And Apple - Looming Tablet Price War (eweekeurope.co.uk)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: HP is reportedly looking to undercut the price of the Apple iPad with its upcoming tablet PC, triggering speculation of a price war in the burgeoning tablet PC segment.
Hewlett-Packard may tweak the pricing of its upcoming tablet PC in order to carry the fight to the Apple iPad, according to a new report in The Wall Street Journal.
Advertising

Submission + - Typos could be earning google $500m a year (newscientist.com)

Submitted by holy_calamity
holy_calamity writes: New Scientist reports on an analysis by Harvard researchers that suggests Google rakes in half a billion dollars annually from advertising that appears on typosquatting domains. They estimate that 60 per cent of typosquatting pages use Google ads, but the advertising giant declined to discuss whether it should be working with such pages.

Submission + - Winter global warming (sfgate.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The last few months have been cruel and wintry for global-warming true believers. The long storm began in November, when a leak of e-mails from Britain's University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit revealed that key global-warming scientists tried to stifle dissent, politicize peer-review, which led to revelations that the researchers had dumped much of the raw data used to bolster the alarmist argument.

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