31026335
submission
Velcroman1 writes:
This is some of the best driving I've ever done," Steve Mahan said the other day. Mahan was behind the wheel of a Toyota Prius tooling the small California town of Morgan Hill in late January, a routine trip to pick up the dry cleaning and drop by the Taco Bell drive-in for a snack. He also happens to be 95 percent blind.
Mahan, head of the Santa Clara Valley Blind Center, “drove” along a specially programmed route thanks to Google’s autonomous driving technology. Look, ma! No hands. And no feet!” Mahan jokes at one point in the video. “I love it,” he added. Google announced the self-driving car project in 2010. It relies upon laser range finders, radar sensors, and video cameras to navigate the road ahead, in order to make driving safer, more enjoyable and more efficient — and clearly more accessible. In a Wednesday afternoon post on Google+, the company noted that it has hundreds of thousands of miles of testing under the belt, letting the company feel confident enough in the system to put Mahan behind the wheel.
31018699
submission
colinneagle writes:
My friend and Network World editor, Ellen Messmer posted an article yesterday about the results of an analysis by Aspect Security of the Central Repository maintained by Sonatype. The study was announced by Aspect and Sonatype yesterday. Both the study and Ellen's article have set off a bit of a firestorm in both the open source and security communities about the security or lack thereof of open source libraries and components.
As noted in Ellen's article some of the biggest libraries that are used and have known vulnerabilities are Google Web Toolkit (GWT); Apache Xerces; Spring MVC; and Struts 1.x.
The buzz with the release of the study and Ellen's article is calling into question whether open source is any more or less secure than closed source code. Another issue is whether or not open source companies and authors are vigilant in closing holes and insecurities in their code. I spoke with Wayne Jackson, CEO of Sonatype, the company that maintains the Central Repository which was the subject of this study. I know Jackson from his days as CEO of Sourcefire. Wayne is a long time supporter and believer in open source.
Wayne told me that people looking at this study and using it to say that open source is less secure than closed source are mistaken. There are vulnerabilities in just about all code and libraries. The fact that this study saw so much use of vulnerable libraries is more about the popularity and wide spread usage of open source than whether it is more or less secure. To Jackson, that is the real finding of this study. Look how many applications and enterprises use open source libraries and components. It is pretty ubiquitous.
31018537
submission
Volanin writes:
The e-book versions of Harry Potter are being released through Pottermore, and Rowling has chosen to do a number of interesting things with them, including releasing them without DRM restrictions.
One of the encouraging things about the Pottermore launch is that the books will be available on virtually every platform simultaneously, including the Sony Reader, the Nook, the Kindle and Google’s e-book service.
Even Amazon has bowed to the power of the series and done what would previously have seemed unthinkable: it sends users who come to the titles on Amazon to Pottermore to finish the transaction.
31018209
submission
politkal writes:
According to the FBI's internal inquiry on counterterrorism training, the FBI taught agents that the Bureau "has the ability to bend or suspend the law to impinge on the freedoms of others"; that agents should "never attempt to shake hands with an Asian"; that Arabs were "prone to outbursts" of a "Jekyll & Hyde" nature.
31017865
submission
politkal writes:
"An influential group of UK lawmakers has called on Google to introduce an algorithm to remove search links found to be in breach of privacy — or face legislation to force it to do so.
It follows complaints from ex-Formula One boss Max Mosley about the difficulty he faced in getting a video removed from the internet.
The search giant argued it was not its job to monitor net content.
The cross-party committee said this argument was "totally unconvincing".
The report by a committee of MPs and peers was commissioned by the government to look into privacy and free speech issues after a series of high profile super-injunctions were made public last year.
Celebrities including Ryan Giggs found that gagging orders against newspapers were routinely flouted online. In Mr Giggs' case, the details of his super-injunction were mentioned at least 75,000 times on Twitter, the committee said.
Its report said that online firms needed to be brought in line with offline media in such cases.
"We recommend that, when granting an injunction, courts should be proactive in directing the claimant to serve notice on internet content platforms such as Twitter and Facebook," it said.
Some of the harshest criticism was reserved for Google.
"Where an individual has obtained a clear court order that certain material infringes their privacy and so should not be published, we do not find it acceptable that he or she should have to return to court repeatedly in order to remove the same material from internet searches," the report said."
more at the source url...
31016967
submission
politkal writes:
"Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei — involved in a $1.35 billion Ultrafast Broadband project in New Zealand — is almost certainly a front for Chinese intelligence, a defence analyst claims.
That's the collective view of the security community in the US, Britain and Australia, according to Auckland-based defence analyst Paul Buchanan, who says it would be prudent for Prime Minister John Key to listen to them." Secondary source: http://chinhdangvu.blogspot.com/2012/03/huawei-certainly-front-for-chinese.html
