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NASA

Submission + - Lightning-made Waves in Earth's Atmosphere Leak In (nasa.gov)

Submitted by
TheNextCorner
TheNextCorner writes: "At any given moment about 2,000 thunderstorms roll over Earth, producing some 50 flashes of lightning every second. Each lightning burst creates electromagnetic waves that begin to circle around Earth captured between Earth's surface and a boundary about 60 miles up. Some of the waves – if they have just the right wavelength – combine, increasing in strength, to create a repeating atmospheric heartbeat known as Schumann resonance....

NASA's Vector Electric Field Instrument (VEFI) aboard the U.S. Air Force's Communications/Navigation Outage Forecast System (C/NOFS) satellite has detected Schumann resonance from space. This comes as a surprise, since current models of Schumann resonance predict these waves should be caged at lower altitude, between the ground and a layer of Earth's atmosphere called the ionosphere."
Facebook

Submission + - Facebook Settles FTC Charges Over Privacy (securityweek.com)

Submitted by wiredmikey
wiredmikey writes: According to the Federal Trade Commission, Facebook has agreed to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that it deceived consumers by telling them they could keep their information on Facebook private, and then repeatedly allowing it to be shared and made public. The proposed settlement requires Facebook to take several steps to make sure it lives up to its promises in the future, including giving consumers clear and prominent notice and obtaining consumers' express consent before their information is shared beyond the privacy settings they have established.

The proposed settlement bars Facebook from making further deceptive privacy claims, requires that the company get consumers' approval before it changes the way it shares their data, and requires that it obtain periodic assessments of its privacy practices by independent, third-party auditors for the next 20 years.
Science

Submission + - DNA Barcoding Technology is Advancing (fellowgeek.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: This week, more than 450 researchers and industry experts are set to meet at Australia’s University of Adelaide, for the fourth International Barcode of Life Conference. They will celebrate the innovations in DNA barcoding, and discuss some of the applications for the new technology.

DNA barcoding basically means identifying a species of animal, based on a sample of their DNA. A short genetic marker can be compared to the ever-growing Barcode of Life Database – a guide to more than 16,700 species – to identify a species within a few hours...
PHP

Submission + - Linux: 25 PHP Security Best Practices For Sys Admi (cyberciti.biz)

Submitted by
TheNextCorner
TheNextCorner writes: "PHP is an open-source server-side scripting language and it is a widely used. The Apache web server provides access to files and content via the HTTP OR HTTPS protocol. A misconfigured server-side scripting language can create all sorts of problems. So, PHP should be used with caution. Here are twenty-five php security best practices for sysadmins for configuring PHP securely."
AMD

Submission + - AMD retreating from competing with Intel (mercurynews.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: AMD spokesman Mike Silverman:

We will all need to let go of the old 'AMD versus Intel' mind-set, because it won't be about that anymore.
Mars

Submission + - Distant view of Curiosity rover (scientificamerican.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: From the blog: 'a view of NASA's Curiosity rover embarking on its 250 day trip to Mars that you may not have seen before. It's an extraordinary piece of time-lapse footage taken from Australia not long after launch from Cape Canaveral. It shows a glowing plume from the Centaur stage after a burn over the Indian Ocean — the Centaur rocket has propelled Curiosity first into a low-Earth orbit and then into an escape trajectory towards Mars'

Submission + - Flying Around The World In A Solar Powered Plane (motherboard.tv)

Submitted by HansonMB
HansonMB writes: It can’t be very hard for Bertrand Piccard to explain to his family why he wants to fly around the world with only sunlight for fuel. In the 1930s, his grandfather, Auguste Piccard, a physicist and inventor, applied his excitement and interest in ballooning to designing a high-flying balloon attached to a pressurized aluminum gondola. The first of its kind, Auguste’s flying machine completed a record-breaking climb more than 50,000 feet into the air, gathering valuable data about the Earth’s upper atmosphere along the way. Fitting that Bertrand, for what it’s worth, defeated the notorious Sir Richard Branson by becoming the first man to circumnavigate the globe in a balloon in 1999.
Medicine

Submission + - Alternative medice attemps to chill critics (discovermagazine.com)

Submitted by Asmodae
Asmodae writes: Taking a page from Babs is one Stanislaw Burzynski. He runs an alternative cancer treatment called "antineoplaston therapy" and charges thousands of dollars for the privilege. From the article: Dr. Steve Novella, who certainly is an expert both in medicine and the misuses thereof, has some choice words about Burzynski and his ideas. So does David Calquhoun, a British pharmacologist. So does — at great length and detail — Dr. David Gorski, and so does the website Quackometer (and again here as well) and so does the Cancer Research UK Science blog.

This well debunked therapy has been blogged about by a high-schooler named Rhys Morgan, in a critical fashion and has received letters threatening to sue from Burzynski's clinic. As have a few other critics.

Submission + - Book Review: OpenGL 4.0 Shading Language Cookbook (packtpub.com)

Submitted by
Tommer
Tommer writes: "Hi ... the last time I wrote a book review, it was called a book report. Let me know if you have any suggestions, I would be happy to revise or add anything important that I have left out.

-- cut --

OpenGL 4.0 Shading Language Cookbook
"Over 60 highly focused, practical recipes to maximize your use of the OpenGL Shading Language"
by David Wolff

Packt Publishing
ISBN 978-1-849514-76-7
340 page PDF + example code ZIP

http://www.packtpub.com/opengl-4-0-shading-language-cookbook/book

The OpenGL Shading Language (GLSL) is evolving rapidly in tandem with
GPU hardware. Briefly, a shader is a compiled program which runs on
the massively-parallel GPU as part of the render process to determine
the colour of a pixel, the position of a vertex, or in GLSL 4.0,
pretty much anything. Older versions of OpenGL provided fixed shading,
lighting, and geometry-transformation functions. I was interested to
learn that these methods are deprecated in favour of ubiquitous GLSL.

OpenGL 4.0 Shading Language Cookbook (I'll call it "the Cookbook")
aims to get experienced OpenGL programmers up to speed using GLSL 4.0
to implement common rendering techniques, from those previously
provided by the fixed-function pipeline to more advanced variants
never before possible without CPU intervention.

To this end, the Cookbook is well-organized. The first chapter
"Getting Started with GLSL 4.0" covers the prerequisite libraries used
in the examples, how to pass data to a shader, and how to compile
C/C++ programs to use shaders. The second chapter "The Basics of GLSL
Shaders" covers simple "hello world" shaders. After that, it's
possible to skip forward into the remaining chapters to find the
recipe you're after:
        3: Lighting, Shading Effects, and Optimizations
        4: Using Textures
        5: Image Processing and Screen Space Techniques
        6: Using Geometry and Tessellation Shaders
        7: Shadows
        8: Using Noise in Shaders
        9: Animation and Particles

GPU hardware is evolving so quickly that my nVidia GeForce 9600M GT
doesn't even support OpenGL 4.0, so I couldn't test any of the sample
code. However, I had no trouble compiling the programs in the first
chapter with my old Ubuntu 10.10 system and a bit of fudging of OpenGL
4.0 constants. I was willing to presume that the code actually works
given the right GPU and produces output like the figures. All code
examples are available for download, and use qmake and the Qt OpenGL
bindings. Alternative libraries are mentioned where relevant, but I
found SDL conspicuous by its absence since it's more lightweight and
focused than the do-all Qt set.

The Cookbook organizes each recipe into 5 sections:
        Getting Ready — ingredients list
        How to do it ... — specific steps and example code
        How it works ... — explanation of the code
        There's more ... — variations on the example
        See also — links to related sections
This arrangement makes it very easy to flip to an example and find the
level of detail you need.

The code sections are mercifully brief, showing only the parts
relevant to the GLSL features being covered. The code download
includes all of these examples filled into the framework described in
the second chapter, so you can focus on reading the important stuff
but still see how it runs in context. The "See also" links aren't
hyperlinked in the PDF, but it's no big deal — most of the time this
references the previous or next section!

I'm interested in textures, so I gave chapter 4 a closer read. The
progression of examples was quite logical, covering basic texturing,
using textures for surface and lighting effects, and finally rendering
to textures. Techniques found in earlier chapters were referenced in
the "See also" sections, so I never felt lost. The requisite matrix
mathematics were covered enough to jog my memory, but not enough to
enlighten a neophyte, which is fine for a book of this level.

OpenGL 4.0 Shading Language Cookbook offers essential information for
OpenGL programmers entering the world of GLSL. Despite not being able
to run the examples, I feel like I'm ready to dive in to GLSL 4.0 once
I replace my antique GPU."
Firefox

Submission + - Firefox 11 Set to Vibrate (internetnews.com)

Submitted by darthcamaro
darthcamaro writes: Mozilla has been working on revamping Firefox for Android for months and has recently landed some interesting new mobile features that will debut in Firefox 11. The new features include Battery, SMS and Vibrator APIs.
That's right, Firefox will one day soon vibrate to notify you of a new event/message.
Government

Submission + - Senate Bill Allows Indefinite Imprisonment of Amer (blogcritics.org) 1

Submitted by Kraftwerk
Kraftwerk writes: With little public warning Democrat leaders in the Senate are attempting to rush through a National Defense Authorization Act (S. 1867) which includes controversial provisions which could open the door to authorizing the military to detain United States Citizens within the US and hold them indefinitely without charge or trial. They could even potentially face military justice instead of trial in a civilian court, with no regard for their Constitutionally protected rights.

Read more: http://blogcritics.org/politics/article/defense-bill-includes-authorization-for-indefinite/#ixzz1f72Bc2O4

You can see the live stream at http://www.c-span.org/Live-Video/C-SPAN2/
Security

Submission + - 7 Stupid Security Tricks (hp.com)

Submitted by
Esther Schindler
Esther Schindler writes: "Some of these dumb security problems are review, some you forgot, some you might need painkillers for. Wallow in these security breaches and similar madness. As Tom Henderson wrote:

The tone I set is designed to make you mad. That’s intentional; I want you to act on your anger by either smugly saying “It’s done!” or by admitting that you’re going to work on it. Now.

How many of these Stupid Security Tricks are going on in your shop?"
Security

Submission + - Behind the Government's Rules of Cyber War (securityweek.com)

Submitted by wiredmikey
wiredmikey writes: The evolution of cyber-attacks has challenged the way military and intelligence professionals define the rules of war. Deciding when malware becomes a weapon of war that warrants a response in the physical world – for example, a missile – has become a necessary part of the discussion of military doctrine.

The Pentagon recently outlined its working definition of what constitutes cyber-war and when subsequent military strikes against physical targets may be justified as result.

The main issue is attribution of cyber attacks. The Department of Defense is working to develop new ways to trace the physical source of an attack and the capability to identify an attacker using behavior-based algorithms. “..if a country is going to fire a missile at someone, it better be sure it has the right target,” said one expert.

A widely held misconception in the U.S. government is our offensive capabilities provide defensive advantage by identifying attacker toolkits and methods in foreign networks prior to them hitting our networks.

So when do malware and cyber attacks become a weapon or act of war that warrant a real-world military response?
Patents

Submission + - EU - Software Ideas Can't be Copyrighted (reuters.com)

Submitted by
bhagwad
bhagwad writes: "The EU continues to ooze common sense as a court insists that software functions themselves cannot be copyrighted. Drawing a box or moving cursor are examples. To quote: "If it were accepted that a functionality of a computer program can be protected as such, that would amount to making it possible to monopolize ideas, to the detriment of technological progress and industrial development,""

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