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

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×

Submission + - Creator of anti president website in Poland convicted and sentenced (rychlicki.net)

Submitted by gale the simple
gale the simple writes: Robert Frycz just got sentenced for making an anti president website.

It is a rather dark day for freedom of speech in Poland. Apparently, we are no longer allowed to say anything bad about our masters. And if we do, well, they have a way to silence us.

Here is a link to the offending site. Nothing truly crazy there compared to the general stuff found on the web. In fact, it is mild.

It is particurarly sad as Poland becomes more and more a banana republic of europe. Hell, just yesterday we had a judge who was caught saying that he is ready and waiting for instructions from PM regarding a well publicized case. Here is a link in Polish for a full transcript of the conversation
Censorship

Submission + - YouTube Refuses to Remove anti-Islamic Film Clip

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "BBC reports that Google officials have rejected the notion of removing a video that depicts the prophet as a fraud and philanderer and has been blamed for sparking violence at US embassies in Cairo and Benghazi on grounds it does not violate YouTube's policies, but restricted viewers in Egypt and Libya from loading it due to the special circumstances in the country. Google's response to the crisis highlighted the struggle faced by the company, and others like it, to balance free speech with legal and ethical concerns in an age when social media can impact world events. "This video – which is widely available on the Web – is clearly within our guidelines and so will stay on YouTube," Google said in a statement. "However, given the very difficult situation in Libya and Egypt, we have temporarily restricted access in both countries." Underscoring Google's quandary, some digital free expression groups have criticised YouTube for censoring the video. Eva Galperin of the Electronic Frontier Foundation says given Google' s strong track record of protecting free speech, she was surprised the company gave in to pressure to selectively block ithe video "It is extremely unusual for YouTube to block a video in any country without it being a violation of their terms of service or in response to a valid legal complaint," says Galperin. "I'm not sure they did the right thing.""
Security

Submission + - Is application virtualization a defense against exploits?

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Several solutions out there make it possible to create portable programs which are not allowed to modify the operating system, such as Sandboxie, Cameyo and ThinApp. They do so by intercepting the write requests and redirecting them to a predefined directory what makes changes to the system itself impossible (at least that's the claim). Now if you convert e.g. your favorite browser into such a package, would this work as a useful protection against browser/flash based exploits? Should you assume that the website you just visited tried to exploit your browser, all you would need to do is to delete the sandbox directory to get rid of the possible trojan/virus. This is obviously simpler than using an entire virtual machine for browsing the Internet, but does it provide a comparable protection?

Submission + - Towards a 50% Efficient Solar Cell

Submitted by necro81
necro81 writes: IEEE Spectrum magazine has a feature article describing DARPA-funded work towards developing a solar cell that's 50% efficient, for a finished module that's 40% efficient — suitable for charging a soldier's gadgets in the field. Conventional silicon and thin-film PV tech can hit cell efficiencies of upwards of 20%, with finished modules hovering in the teens. Triple-junction cells can top 40%, but are expensive to produce and not practical in most applications. Current work by the Very High Efficiency Solar Cell program uses optics (dichroic films) to concentrate incoming sunlight by 20-200x, and split it into constituent spectra, which fall on many small solar cells of different chemistries, each tuned to maximize the conversion of different wavelengths.
Android

Submission + - Research Shows Half of All Androids Contain Known Vulnerabilities (threatpost.com)

Submitted by Trailrunner7
Trailrunner7 writes: About half of all Android phones contain at least one vulnerability that could be used to take control of the device, according to new research. Duo Security, which launched a free vulnerability scanning app for Android this summer, said their preliminary data from users shows a huge number of the devices are vulnerable to at least one of the known Android flaws.

The X-Ray app from Duo scans Android devices for a set of known vulnerabilities in a variety of the Android releases. Many of them are flaws that attackers have used in the last few months. The main issue with Android security and patches is that each carrier is responsible for pushing out new versions of the operating system to its users and they all do it on random timelines. There's no set interval for updates and users don't have to upgrade, so there's a good chance that many users are running older, vulnerable versions of Android at any given time.
Science

Submission + - Nanotech In Sunscreen: What's The Harm? (redorbit.com)

Submitted by hlovy
hlovy writes: For more than a decade now, anti-technology organizations such as the ETC Group and Friends of the Earth have been warning against the possible hazards of nanoscale titanium dioxide and zinc oxide in sunscreen. This warning has come with absolutely no scientific proof. They made it up.

Submission + - Oldies But Goodies (ieee.org)

Submitted by ArmageddonLord
ArmageddonLord writes: "Tech enthusiasts live in the grip of reverse nostalgia, forever pining for 18 months hence. After all, another way to state Moore’s Law is “They don’t make them like they’re going to.” But there is a subset of electronics devices that were made better or cooler, once upon a time. And there’s a bustling retro-electronics subculture busy cataloging, chronicling, and collecting these old-school gems."
Red Hat Software

Submission + - Twin Peaks v Red Hat - got them by the balls! (groklaw.net)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: When we were little we were taught to always look both ways before crossing the street. The same lesson should be learned by companies that make software but choose to assert their patent(s) against others. Any time you make a claim of patent infringement and you are a producer you face the possibility of counterclaims unrelated to your patents, and those claims are not limited to patent infringement claims. This is a lesson now being learned by Twin Peaks Software in what may be the most important GPL enforcement action to date. Twin Peaks, having sued Red Hat and Red Hat subsidiary Gluster for patent infringement, now faces a counterclaim for copyright infringement for including critical GPL code in its products while failing to comply with the GPL. If Red Hat is successful on that claim and obtains a permanent injunction, which it is requesting, Twin Peaks could be out of business.
Businesses

Submission + - Census report doesn't capture extent of poverty (cbsnews.com)

Submitted by
Curseyoukhan
Curseyoukhan writes: "The Census Dept. report on poverty uses the same income threshold to determine if a person or household is impoverished that has been in use since 1964. ... While the Census report did show a 1.7 percent decline in income between 2010 and 2011 for most working- and middle-class earners, it did not include several another telling fact: The decline in income came despite an enormous increase in worker productivity. According to the Department of Labor, in the last 10 years worker productivity in non-farm, manufacturing and business jobs has increased an average of 2.59 percent each year, or nearly 26 percent total. Yet median income has fallen over that same period. In 2011, U.S. median income was $50,100 — that's the lowest level since 1996."
IOS

Submission + - Will Apple's Tacky Software-Design Philosophy Cause A Revolt? (fastcodesign.com)

Submitted by pbarker3
pbarker3 writes: What’s skeuomorphism? If you’ve ever used an Apple product, you’ve experienced digital skeuomorphic design: calendars with faux leather-stitching, bookshelves with wood veneers, fake glass and paper and brushed chrome. Skeuomorphism is a catch-all term for when objects retain ornamental elements of past, derivative iterations--elements that are no longer necessary to the current objects’ functions. Skeuomorphism has seeped into all areas of UI design, especially in Apple’s software, where text documents, for example, are made to look like yellow legal pads."

Do we still these visual metaphors complete with details like wood grain and leather stitching in every facet of the OS?
Medicine

Submission + - A Sleeping Pill Helps Patients In Deep Coma To Wake Up (news24.com)

Submitted by
glazou
glazou writes: "South-African news web site News24 reports that Stilnox, a sleeping drug containing zolpidem (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zolpidem ) helped a young south-african man wake up from a deep 7-years long coma (http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/Lazarus-pill-gives-Eastern-Cape-man-a-miracle-20120909 ). This is apparently not the first time this happens, with several similar cases reported in South Africa and the UK (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/10/lazarus-drug-brings-ayanda-nqinana-back-to-living_n_1871374.html ). Doctors are still perplex about how zolpidem helps here, but isn't it the closest we can get from a miracle?"
News

Submission + - Link between H1N1 and Flu Vaccines confirmed in 5 studies, recreated in ferrets. (vancouversun.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A Vancouver researcher's findings help strengthen the evidence that the "Flu Shot" is linked to the H1N1 virus. 5 separate studies confirmed initial findings which noted the link, but were dismissed as a "Canadian problem" when other studies claimed different results in their findings. Now the link has been demonstrated as the study has been recreated in ferrets, which casts serious doubt on the claim that the initial studies were flawed.
Hardware

Submission + - Journalist goes undercover making the iPhone 5 at Foxconn (geek.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The news feeds will be filled with talk of the iPhone today, and most of it is probably going to be positive. However, the Chinese new agency Shanghai Evening Post has posted a pretty scathing review of the working conditions at Foxconn, and in particular the iPhone 5 production line.

The agency managed to get one of its reporters a job working undercover in a Foxconn factory where the iPhone 5 is being manufactured for Apple. He spent 10 days there and then wrote up the entire experience to demonstrate just how bad it is for the thousands of workers Foxconn employs.

In summary, the dorms are infested with cockroaches, smell of sweat and foam, and only offer dirty sheets. Facilities are mostly free, but rundown and in need of serious attention. Working conditions are just as bad. Loud machinery and the smell of plastic fills the air while the journalist had to accurately place (within 5mm) one oil dot on an iPhone 5 every 3 seconds for 10 hours. Rinse and repeat. Add to that the 7-day intensive training and 70 penalties that can be incurred compared to the mere 13 rewards that can be earned, and you have a very stressful environment.
Science

Submission + - Cell structure gives African fruit its iridescent hue (nature.com)

Submitted by
ananyo
ananyo writes: "A spectacular African fruit is more intensely coloured than any previously known biological substance. The fruit's metallic blue hue is produced not by a pigment, but by specialized structures in its cells, scientists have discovered.
The researchers found that cells in the fruit of Pollia condensata had walls made of tightly coiled cellulose strands that reflect light. Slightly different spacings between the strands in each cell reflect light of different wavelengths, producing an iridescent blue colouring (abstract).
Such 'structural colour' is known in animals: peacock feathers, beetle carapaces and the wings of some butterflies are all iridescent, but they use different structures and materials to achieve the effect. It is the first demonstration of structural color in a fruit.
Similar cellulose structures could be used to provide non-toxic replacements for colourants in the food industry or paper manufacturing. Though the most immediate applications might be in anti-counterfeiting and anti-forgery because cellulose structures embedded in paper would be hard to copy."

Slashdot Top Deals

If you would know the value of money, go try to borrow some. -- Ben Franklin

Close