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Submission + - How do you securely store private information for posterity?

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: In the event of my untimely demise, my wife and family will need access to all of my private data (email, phone, laptop password, SSN, etc) and financial accounts and passwords (banks, 401(k), mortgage, insurance, etc). What's the best way to securely store all that data knowing the data is somewhat volatile (e.g. password changes) and also that someone else who is not technically savvy will need to access the most up to date version of it?

Suggestions include a printed copy in a safe deposit box, an encrypted file, a secure server in the cloud, or maybe a commercial product? There are advantages and disadvantages to each approach and I'm curious about what other slashdotters think.

Submission + - Kim Dotcom vows Megaupload will return (bgr.com)

Submitted by zacharye
zacharye writes: From accused cybercriminal to Internet freedom fighter in a matter of months, dot-com entrepreneur Kim Dotcom has become a poster child for the fight against the perceived tyranny brought on by copyright laws. Dotcom has been in the news continuously since he was arrested in January as part of a sting that saw his file-sharing site Megaupload shuttered and its contents closely guarded by authorities. According to Dotcom, however, Megaupload users will have the last laugh...
Censorship

Submission + - Church of Scientology Enlisting Followers in Censorship (yahoo.com)

Submitted by DrEnter
DrEnter writes: Apparently, the recent very public divorce of Katie Holmes and devout believer Tom Cruise is reflecting negatively on the Church of Scientology. Adding to this are other recent issues causing problems for "church" leadership. In response, the "church" has decided to encourage its followers to censor online chatter and comments about the "church" and the divorce. This Yahoo blog post sums it up nicely. In short, they are encouraging members to complain about people posting negative comments about the "church" as violating the "Code of Conduct" in the posting venue. I can only imagine they are hoping these complaints will just be rubber-stamped and respected without investigation, but I think the campaign deserves a bit more attention.
The Almighty Buck

Submission + - Best Buy cuts 650 Geek Squad techies (startribune.com)

Submitted by tripleevenfall
tripleevenfall writes: Best Buy has cut approximately 650 jobs from its Geek Squad division, according to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. The cut represents about 4% of Geek Squad's total work force. The former consumer electronics giant said the workers primarily service televisions and appliances in consumers' homes.

Best Buy's performance has struggled to keep up with changes in consumer electronics, as the weight of its big-box format inhibits it from fending off competitive pressure of online retailers.
IT

Submission + - IT salaries and hiring are up - but just to 2008 levels (infoworld.com)

Submitted by
tsamsoniw
tsamsoniw writes: "A mid-year salary survey has a mix of good and bad news for IT professionals: The good news, hiring is slowly increasing as companies bring more IT operations back in house and salaries are creeping up a bit. But compensation (including benefits) are just now reaching 2008 levels — and hiring will remain soft, at least until the presidential election is over."
Censorship

Submission + - UAE blocks VoIP sites, 4Chan, and Facebook login page (networkworld.com)

Submitted by colinneagle
colinneagle writes: A group of hackers flying the Anonymous flag dumped a list of URLs allegedly blocked by the United Arab Emirates' Netfilter servers operated by the government's internet service providers. Most telling, as Anonymous pointed out, is the denial of access to websites relating to VoIP phone services.

In the page that links to the data, Anonymous speculates that the move to censor information about VoIP from UAE residents relates to the economic importance of the telecom industry in the area.

Indeed, 163 webpages containing the term "voip" were found in the list. Some examples include "just-voip.net," "vopieasy.info," and "voipblog.org."

Ironically, the homepage for notorious imageboard website 4Chan.org was blocked outright. 4Chan is known as the original home of and long-time community for Anonymous participants.

Also interestingly, the list included the URLs "dubai.facebook.com," "facebook.com/pages/LOCAL-NEWS-uae/" and "login.facebook.com." While the homepage of Facebook was not included in the list, the fact that it blocks the login page makes for an interesting twist on social networking access in the UAE. In total, 196 pages from the "facebook.com" domain were blocked.
Databases

Submission + - Documenting Network Devices 1

Submitted by LoudMusic
LoudMusic writes: One of the many tasks of a network administrator is documenting the network so that other members of the administration and support teams can find devices on the network. Currently my organization uses Excel spreadsheets to handle this, and it's invariably error ridden. We also save a new file with the date in the name each time an update is made.

I'd like to move this to a more intelligent database system, but the driving force for keeping it in spreadsheets is the ability to take the document offline, edit it, then upload this new revision to the file server when we have a connection again. Our clients often don't have reliable internet connections, especially when we're tearing their network apart and rebuilding it.

The information we're currently documenting about an individual device are; device name, device model, description, IP address, MAC address, physical location, uplink switch & port, and VLAN.

What tools exist that would allow us to have multiple users make updates both online and offline simultaneously, and synchronize changes into both the online and offline copies?

Submission + - Cyberheist Victims Get Support from Court (krebsonsecurity.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: The U.S. Federal Court of Appeals for the First Circuit has reversed a decision from Aug. 2011, which held that Ocean Bank (now People’s United) was not at fault for a $588,000 cyberheist in 2009 against one of its customers — Sanford, Me. based Patco Construction Co. The appeals court sent specific aspects of the earlier decision back to the lower court for review, but it encouraged both parties to settle the matter out of court.

“In our view, Ocean Bank did substantially increase the risk of fraud by asking for security answers for every $1 transaction, particularly for customers like Patco which had frequent, regular and high dollar transfers,” the court observed. “Then, when it had warning that such fraud was likely occurring in a given transaction, Ocean Bank neither monitored that transaction nor provided notice to customers before allowing the transaction to be completed. Because it had the capacity to do all of those things, yet failed to do so, we cannot conclude that its security system was commercially reasonable.”
Communications

Submission + - Software-Defined Radio: The Apple I of Broadcast? (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by
benfrog
benfrog writes: "A company called Per Vices has introduced software-defined radio gear that Ars Technica is comparing to the Apple I. Why? Because software radio can broadcast and receive nearly any radio signal on nearly any frequency at the same time, and thus could "revolutionize wireless." The Per Vices Phi is one of the first devices aimed at the mass hobbyist market to take advantage of this technology."
Censorship

Submission + - Anonymous lists sites blocked in the UAE (pastehtml.com) 3

Submitted by another random user
another random user writes: A group of Anonymous-affiliated hackers claims to have gained access to the servers in charge of filtering Internet traffic in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

According to the hackers, they have identified a number of domain categories that are currently being blocked.

These include websites that host adult content, VPN providers and any other site that could help users bypass censorship mechanisms, social media networks and dating sites, and ones that promote other religious views than Islam.

The most “shocking” discovery, as described by the hackers, is the fact that many websites that offer Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) services are also on the list.

“A large part of UAE’s population is made of migrant workers and the telecom industry made a lot of profit by overcharging them for international phone calls. But with the raise of VOIP and internet communication they were afraid that this would take away their profits and thus went ahead to block VOIP,” they explained.

Comment DirecTV can already do this. (Score 1) 298

DirecTV already can (and occasionally does) do this with both their own and the TiVo-based DirecTV DVRs. I guess that would be prior art? Anyway, most of the time it seems like it is to prevent you from skipping a DirecTV ad, but I get the feeling they are mostly doing it to either field-test the technology or as a live demonstration of it for a potential customer. Incidentally, while I believe they *can* prevent both fast forwarding and skipping, so far they have only blocked using "30 second skip", not fast forwarding through the commercial.

Comment Comic versions of sci-fi (and other) classics (Score 1) 726

by DrEnter (#40390045) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Best Science-Fiction/Fantasy For Kids?
When I was that age, I found a bunch of "graphic novel" versions of various classics in my school library: Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, Charles Dickens, Robert Louis Stevenson, Alexander Dumas, etc. I devoured those books. It was my love of Verne and Wells that led to a lifetime of reading sci-fi. The ones I read, I believe, were the "Classics Illustrated" that were re-released by Pocket Books (this would've been in the mid-to-late 1970's). There is a web site for the originals, though: http://www.classicscentral.com/.

Comment It's not the packaging, it's the seal (Score 5, Informative) 398

by DrEnter (#40182399) Attached to: Worst Design Ever? Plastic Clamshell Packaging
I've had plenty of terrible times trying to get things out of plastic clamshells. I've also had no trouble at all... when they don't press seal the entire circumference of the package. If they just use a couple press locks (maybe with a touch of adhesive or a staple), these packages aren't bad at all. Why they insist on hermetically sealing them, though, that is baffling to me.

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