Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×

Submission + - How Elon Musk Approaches IT at Tesla (wsj.com)

Submitted by onehitwonder
onehitwonder writes: In short, they build it themselves. When Tesla Motors needed to improve the back-end software that runs its business, CEO Elon Musk decided not to upgrade the company's SAP system. Instead, he told his CIO, Jay Vijayan, to have the IT organization build a new back-end system, according to The Wall Street Journal. The company's team of 25 software engineers developed the new system in about four months, and it provided the company with speed and agility at a time when it was experiencing costly delivery delays on its all-electric Model S.

Submission + - Joe Montana: A Most Unlikely Investor in Open Source (bloomberg.com)

Submitted by onehitwonder
onehitwonder writes: Legendary San Francisco 49ers quarterback Joe Montana, who won four superbowl rings, is hoping to score in another Bay Area pastime--technology investing, according to Bloomberg. Montana has invested in open source enterprise software maker CoreOS, after meeting founder Alex Polvi at a Y Combinator showcase in August. Celebrities, whether those affiliated with sports or entertainment, are increasingly getting into the Silicon Valley startup scene as investors. Others include Ashton Kutcher (now that he played Steve Jobs, he knows everything about technology), Will Ferrell (who knew?) and Leonardi DiCaprio (if he can afford to buy an island...).

Submission + - Google Alters Search Algorithm to Handle Complex Queries (nytimes.com)

Submitted by onehitwonder
onehitwonder writes: Yesterday, Google unveiled one of the biggest ever changes to its search engine, as part of a shift away from matching keywords on Web pages to understanding the meaning of search queries, according to The New York Times. Google revealed few details about how the new search algorithm, called Hummingbird, works or what it changed. The company did say that it made the change a month ago, though consumers may not have noticed a significant difference to search results during that time. Google execs said the company made the changes because Google users are asking increasingly long and complex questions and are searching Google more often on mobile phones with voice search.

Submission + - Pissed-off Martha Stewart out to exterminate patent troll Lodsys (gigaom.com)

Submitted by McGruber
McGruber writes: Gigaom's Jeff John Roberts reports that Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, Inc. (MSLO) has filed a lawsuit against Lodsys, a shell company that gained infamy two years ago by launching a wave of legal threats (http://paidcontent.org/2011/10/13/419-app-developer-gives-in-to-lodsys-in-david-and-goliath-patent-fight/) against small app makers, demanding they pay for using basic internet technology like in-app purchases or feedback surveys.

In the complaint filed this week in federal court in Wisconsin, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia asked a judge to declare that four magazine iPad apps are not infringing Lodsys’ patents, and that the patents are invalid because the so-called inventions are not new. The complaint explained how Lodsys invited the company to “take advantage of our program” by buying licenses at $5,000 apiece. It also calls the Wisconsin court’s attention to Lodsys’ involvement in more than 150 Texas lawsuits. In choosing to sue Lodsys and hopefully crush its patents, Martha Stewart is choosing a far more expensive option than simply paying Lodsys to go away.

Submission + - "Malware renaissance" sparked by the rise of web services and HTML5 (v3.co.uk)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: F-secure's Christine Bejerasco told press at a conference in Helsinki that web services like Facebook and Dropbox had created more opportunities for malware: "The internet is becoming very dynamic. More than ten years ago it was mainly meant for consuming content. Malware during those times was pretty simple: they'd attack the website, load [malware] onto it so people would get infected. The problem during those times was that hosting was quite expensive, so there weren't a lot of malicious websites. Those days are gone," she said

"The renaissance period came when blogging became normal, this really gained momentum when websites like Facebook and Dropbox arrived. it also helped when HTML5 came and made it so anyone could post anything, anytime they wanted."

Submission + - The New Meaning of "Open Source Talent" (wsj.com)

Submitted by onehitwonder
onehitwonder writes: “Open source talent” has long referred to individuals who work with open source software. Today, the term is starting to be used to describe online communities like Kaggle, Elance, and TopCoder that are open globally to anyone who wants to participate in them, and to organizations seeking their talent, skills, and capabilities. Has the term "open source" been co-opted?

Submission + - U.S. Borders Are Back Doors for Device Searches (nytimes.com)

Submitted by onehitwonder
onehitwonder writes: Newly released documents reveal how the government uses border crossings to seize and examine travelers’ electronic devices instead of obtaining a search warrant to take them, according to The New York Times' Susan Stellin. The documents reveal what had been a mostly secretive process that allows the government to create a travel alert for a person (regardless of whether they're a suspect in an investigation), then detain that individual at a border crossing and confiscate or copy any electronic devices that person is carrying. The documents come courtesy of David House, a fund-raiser for the legal defense of Chelsea Manning, formerly known as Pfc. Bradley Manning.

Submission + - Newest YouTube user to fight a takedown is copyright guru Lawrence Lessig (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by onehitwonder
onehitwonder writes: Lawrence Lessig has teamed with the Electronic Frontier Foundation to sue Liberation Music, which recently demanded that YouTube take down a lecture Lessig had posted that features clips from the song "Lisztomania" by the French band Phoenix (on Liberation Music's label). Liberation claimed copyright infringement as the reason it demanded the takedown, but in his countersuit, Lessig is claiming Liberation's "overly aggressive takedown violates the DMCA and that it should be made to pay damages," according to Ars Technica.

Submission + - A New Spate of Deaths in the Wireless Industry (wsj.com)

Submitted by onehitwonder
onehitwonder writes: The race to build out advanced cellphone networks in the U.S. has contributed to a spike in deaths among tower workers, making this one of the industry’s deadliest years and drawing fresh scrutiny from federal regulators, according to The Wall Street Journal. At least 10 workers have died in falls from communication towers so far this year, and three more were seriously injured. The accidents, nine of which were related to cellphone network work, come during one of the biggest building booms in years, as Sprint Corp. and T-Mobile US Inc. ramp up major network upgrades in an attempt to catch up with Verizon Wireless and AT&T Inc.

Submission + - Magellan II adaptive optics beats Hubble Space Telescope (arizona.edu)

Submitted by muon-catalyzed
muon-catalyzed writes: The incredible 'first light' images captured by the new adaptive optics system called Magellan|AO for "Magellan Adaptive Optics" in the Magellan II 6.5-meter telescope are at least twice as sharp in the visible light spectrum as those from the NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. "We can, for the first time, make long-exposure images that resolve objects just 0.02 arcseconds across — the equivalent of a dime viewed from more than a hundred miles away." said Laird Close (University of Arizona), the project's principal scientist.
The 6.5-meter Magellan telescopes in the high desert of Chile were widely considered to be the best natural imaging telescopes in the world and this new technology upgraded them to the whole new level. With its 21-foot diameter mirror, the Magellan telescope is much larger than Hubble with its 8-foot mirror. Until now, Hubble always produced the best visible light images, since even large ground-based telescope with complex adaptive optics imaging cameras could only make blurry images in visible light. The core of the new optics system the so-called Adaptive Secondary Mirror (ASM) that can change its shape at 585 points on its surface 1,000 times each second, counteracting the blurring effects of the atmosphere.

Submission + - Surveillence story turns into a warning about employer monitoring

Submitted by rtfa-troll
rtfa-troll writes: The story from yesterday about Google searches has turned into a warning about how work place surveillance could harm you. It turns out that Michele Catalano's husband's boss tipped off the police after finding "suspicious" searches including "pressure cooker bombs" in his old work computer's search history. Luckily for the Catalanos, who even allowed a search of their house when they probably didn't have to, it seems professional and friendly policemen supported by the FBI were called in and instead of them getting killed in a SWAT raid Catalano was merely talked to politely by some men in black cars who even mentioned to Catalano that 99 times out of 100 these tip-offs come to nothing. Perhaps a lesson to be a bit more careful about your privacy so that what you do on the internet remains between you and the professionals in the NSA in future? Best to use tor so that you can be sure they are the only ones listening in. Maybe also a good tip for what to look for if you want to get revenge on former team members who leave you with a pile of bad code?

Submission + - Cyber Insurance: Solution or Snake Oil?

Submitted by onehitwonder
onehitwonder writes: A recent article in The Wall Street Journal’s CIO Journal argues in favor of the benefits of cyber liability insurance—policies designed to help companies cover costs they incur in the aftermath of data breaches (whether for investigation, remediation, customer notification, regulatory fines or legal settlements). Two Deloitte consultants interviewed for the article argue that cyber insurance can help companies offset the increasingly staggering costs of a data breach. (Several of the biggest data breaches in recent history, including Heartland and TJX, have cost those companies hundreds of millions of dollars. A Mizuho Investors Securities analyst estimated the total cost of the 2011 Sony data breaches at $1.25 billion.)

The question is, will insurance providers really come through when companies begin filing claims on their cyber liability policies, or will they find ways out? A 2011 article from Computerworld notes that even though a growing number of companies have been purchasing cyber insurance, it's hard to find examples where one of those policies has actually covered the costs of a data breach. Moreover, the Computerworld article points out that many cyber insurance policies cover only the cost of re-creating whatever data may have been lost during the breach--not notification costs, legal costs or other related expenses.

Submission + - NSA Provided £100m Funding For GCHQ Operations (telegraph.co.uk)

Submitted by cold fjord
cold fjord writes: The Telegraph reports, "GCHQ has received at least £100million from the US to help fund intelligence gathering, raising questions over American influence on the British agencies. ... It also emerged that the intelligence agency wants the ability to “exploit any phone, anywhere, any time” and that some staff have raised concerns over the “morality and ethics” of their operational work. ... The agency has faced claims it was handed intelligence on individuals from the US gained from the Prism programme that collected telephone and web records. However, it has been cleared of any wrongdoing or attempts to circumvent British law by the parliamentary intelligence and security committee, as well as by Mr Hague. The payments from the US National Security Agency (NSA) are detailed in GCHQ’s annual “investment portfolios”, leaked by Mr Snowden to The Guardian. The NSA paid GCHQ £22.9million in 2009, £39.9million in 2010 and £34.7million in 2011/12. ...Another £15.5million went towards redevelopment projects at GCHQ’s site in Bude, Cornwall, which intercepts communications from the transatlantic cables that carry internet traffic. ... A Cabinet Office spokesman said: “In a 60-year alliance it is entirely unsurprising that there are joint projects in which resources and expertise are pooled, but the benefits flow in both directions.” "

Submission + - Hospital Resorts to Big Brother Tactics to Ensure Employees Wash Hands

Submitted by onehitwonder
onehitwonder writes: Long Island's North Shore University Hospital is using sensors and video cameras to make sure employees wash their hands, according to an article in today's New York Times. Motion sensors detect when hospital staff enter an intensive care unit, and the sensors trigger a video camera. Feeds from the video camera are transmitted to India, where workers there check to make sure staff are washing their hands. The NYT article notes that hospital workers wash their hands as little as 30 percent of the time that they interact with patients. The Big Brother like system is intended to reduce transmission of infections as well as the costs associated with treating them.

Slashdot Top Deals

Top Ten Things Overheard At The ANSI C Draft Committee Meetings: (5) All right, who's the wiseguy who stuck this trigraph stuff in here?

Close