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Open Source

Submission + - Issue-wise crowdfunding for Open Source (freedomsponsors.com) 1

Submitted by casals
casals writes: Another crowdfunding site came up, this time using a bounty-based approach: it's called Freedom Sponsors (www.freedomsponsors.com). Individuals (developers) register and are paid to solve tasks — issues related to open-source projects. Seems a nice way to get paid for short-term projects and at the same time to speed up issue solving on open source projects (since there are already a lot of companies that already use open source libraries/frameworks).
Earth

Submission + - Mysterious Sprite Photographed by ISS Astronaut (discovery.com)

Submitted by
astroengine
astroengine writes: "A very rare and beautiful view of a red sprite has been photographed by Expedition 31 astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) hovering just above a bright flash of lightning in a thunderstorm over Myanmar. First documented in a photo in 1989, red sprites are very brief flashes of optical activity that are associated with powerful lightning discharges in storms — although the exact mechanisms that create them aren't yet known. But the orbiting outpost seems like the perfect vantage point to learn more about them!"

Comment Re:Who's this CowboyNeal? (Score 2) 148

by mat.power (#40617695) Attached to: CowboyNeal On <em>Dota 2</em>, Modern Games, and Software Development
Because the number of digits on your ID indicate how long you've been reading slashdot... I've read slashdot for many years now and only recently bothered to make an account. Perhaps you're correct and he was being facetious. It's equally possible that he really didn't know who CowboyNeal was and was genuinely curious. No need to be an elitist.
Security

Submission + - Dutch ISP discovers 140,000 customers with default password 1

Submitted by bs0d3
bs0d3 writes: In Holland, a major ISP known as KPN has found a major security flaw for their customers. It seems that all customers have had the same default password of 'welkom01'. Up to 140,000 customers had retained their default passwords. Once inside attackers could have found bank account and credit card numbers. KPN has since changed all the passwords of the 140,000 customers with weak passwords. They also do not believe anyone has actually been burglarized since discovering this weak spot in security.
Open Source

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: How to get old commercial software to be open-sourced?

Submitted by Optic7
Optic7 writes: Many gamers have probably dreamed about the idea of an old favorite game or other no longer supported or developed commercial software being converted to an open-source license so that it could be updated to add new features, support new hardware, other operating systems, etc. However, this type of change of license seems exceedingly rare, unless the copyright holder itself decides on its own that it would be beneficial. The only examples I could think of or was able to find in a brief internet search were Blender (3D animation software that had its source code bought from creditors after a crowd-funding campaign) and Warzone 2100 (Game that had its source code released after a successful petition). With those two examples of different strategies in mind, have any of you ever participated in any efforts of this kind, and what did you learn from it that may be useful to someone else attempting the same thing? Even if you have not participated, do you have any suggestions or ideas that may be useful to such an effort?
Data Storage

Submission + - Texas Set To Store Energy In Underground Salt Caverns (vaultelectricity.com)

Submitted by jmasterson
jmasterson writes: Getting electricity out of wind is like coaxing a stubborn mule down a trail. It moves at its own pace and stops and starts when it wants to. The challenge for grid operators is to integrate electricity produced by wind at irregular and unpredictable intervals into the grid which requires a close balance between electricity in and electricity out.

This is good news for electricity rates in Texas. Energy storage capability added to an electricity grid multiplies the capacity of the group without need to add new power plants. This will reduce the amount of new power generation capacity that will need to be built in the future.
Government

Submission + - Feds Look to Fight Leaks With 'Fog of Disinformation' (wired.com)

Submitted by skipkent
skipkent writes: Pentagon-funded researchers have come up with a new plan for busting leakers: Spot them by how they search, and then entice the secret-spillers with decoy documents that will give them away.

Computer scientists call it it “Fog Computing” — a play on today’s cloud computing craze. And in a recent paper for Darpa, the Pentagon’s premiere research arm, researchers say they’ve built “a prototype for automatically generating and distributing believable misinformation and then tracking access and attempted misuse of it. We call this ‘disinformation technology.’”
Microsoft

Submission + - Former Microsoft exec: Microsoft has 'become the thing they despised' (bgr.com) 2

Submitted by zacharye
zacharye writes: Microsoft has a long and storied history of leadership in the tech industry, and the company has driven innovation for decades. In recent years, however, Microsoft has fallen behind the times in several key industries; the company’s mobile position has deteriorated and left it with a low single-digit market share, and Microsoft won’t launch Windows RT, its response to Apple’s three-year-old iPad, until later this year...

Submission + - Journey to the Mantle of the Earth? (newscientist.com) 1

Submitted by Doofus
Doofus writes: New Scientist has an interesting story about a Japanese effort to reach the Earth's mantle. While some mantle material has been recovered from volcanoes, no pure mantle material has been obtained. (We have moon rocks, but nothing from a few km beneath our feet!) Accompanying the article is a gallery of previous attempts at drilling farther and farther into the Earth's crust.
Android

Submission + - Android botnet army spouting spam from Yahoo Mail app (networkworld.com)

Submitted by colinneagle
colinneagle writes: Analysis of spam samples suggests that a malicious application could be using Android devices to spread spam messages, in what Microsoft researcher Terry Zink has called "the next evolution in the cat-and-mouse game that is email security."

Zink believes the botnet was created by a malicious app most likely found in an insecure market. After analyzing the IP addresses that were stamped in the headers of the messages, a routine practice of Yahoo Mail, Zink found that the IPs connected to servers in Chile, Indonesia, Lebanon, Oman, Philippines, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, Ukraine, and Venezuela.

Because downloading a malicious app from the Android Market is highly unlikely, Zink says, the fact that the messages stem largely from developing countries where Android's app community has yet to establish an ecosystem indicates that the devices were infected by an illegitimate app downloaded elsewhere
Programming

Submission + - StackOverflow Man Remakes Net One Answer at a Time (wired.com)

Submitted by
MikeatWired
MikeatWired writes: "Jeff Atwood wants to make software developers better. No, scratch that. He wants to make the entire internet better. Atwood is the co-founder of StackExchange, a network of question-and-answer websites. StackExchange’s original site, StackOverflow, caters exclusively to developers. 'We have a reputation about being jerks about quality, but we want each page we put up to make the internet better, not worse,' Atwood tells Wired. 'Not even the same. Better.' But according to Atwood, StackOverflow’s goal isn’t just to have quality answers or help developers solve technical problems. 'A programmer’s job is to communicate with users to find out what people want,' he explains. 'We’re tricking developers into being better communicators.' By making developers better at the non-technical aspects of programming, Atwood hopes StackOverflow can make the internet better for everyone. At the very least, software developers — and so many others — are listening."

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