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Government

CISPA's Author Has Another Privacy-Killing Bill To Pass Before He Retires 138

Posted by Soulskill from the get-while-the-gettin's-good dept.
Daniel_Stuckey writes: "You might remember House Intelligence Chair Mike Rogers, a Republican from Michigan, from his lovely, universally-hated CISPA cybersecurity bill that would have allowed nearly seamless information sharing between companies and the federal government. You might also remember him from his c'est la vie attitude towards civil liberties in general. Well, we've got some good news and some bad news: Rogers announced today that he won't seek re-election and is instead retiring from politics to start a conservative talk radio show on Cumulus. The bad news? He's got at least one terrible, civil liberties-killing bill to try to push through Congress before he goes. Like CISPA, the newly introduced 'FISA Transparency and Modernization Act,' seeks to make it easier for the federal government to get your information from companies."

Comment Re:The "Proprietary Codec" guy? (Score 2) 112

by Dr.Dubious DDQ (#46569775) Attached to: JavaScript Inventor Brendan Eich Named New CEO of Mozilla
Po-TAY-to, Po-TAH-to... :-)
(If h.264/mp3/aac was the only issue I wouldn't be all that worried, but the "ORBX.js" followup makes it seem like Eich doesn't really care beyond "as long as 'consumers' don't have to pay money to 'consume', who cares if 'producing' is by proprietary permission only?")
Cellphones

Ubuntu Phone Isn't Important Enough To Demand an Open Source Baseband 137

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the pick-your-battles dept.
colinneagle (2544914) writes "Canonical is producing a version of the Ubuntu Linux distribution specifically for smartphones, but Richard Tynan, writing for PrivacyInternational.org, recently pointed out that the baseband in Ubuntu-powered phones will remain proprietary. ... Some have criticized Canonical for missing an opportunity to push for a fully Open Source smartphone, but in order to fix this problem (and open up the code for this super-critical bit of software), we need companies that have a large amount of clout, in the smartphone market, to make it a priority. Canonical (with Ubuntu) just doesn't have that clout yet. They're just now dipping their toes into the smartphone waters. But you know who does have that clout? Google.

Google has made a point of touting Open Source (at least sometimes), and they are the undisputed king of the smartphone operating system world. And yet I hear no big moves by Google to encourage phone manufacturers to utilize Open Source baseband firmware, such as OsmocomBB. So has Canonical missed an opportunity? No. Not yet. If (some may say 'when') Ubuntu gains a critical amount of market share in the phone world, that will be their chance to pressure manufacturers to produce a truly Open Source phone. Until then, Canonical needs to continue to work within the world we have today."
Programming

Ask Slashdot: Will Older Programmers Always Have a Harder Time Getting a Job? 379

Posted by Soulskill from the recommendation:-stop-aging dept.
Theseuss writes "Given the strong youth culture associated with the modern day Silicon Valley startup scene, many times it falls to the 40-year-old programmer to prove that he can still use the newest up-and-coming technology. Yet the rate at which the tech sector is growing suggests that in 20 years there will be a an order of magnitude more 'old-hat' programmers in the industry. As such, do you think the cultural bias towards young programmers will change in the near future?"

Submission + - MediaGoblin devs: "Mad about government censorship? Do something about it."

Submitted by paroneayea
paroneayea writes: Responding to recent news that YouTube is giving the UK Government tools to broadly flag even legal videos on YouTube for takedown, the MediaGoblin developers have made a call to arms: "Mad about Government censorship? Let's do something about it." The MediaGoblin crew are currently running a campaign for federation and privacy features, including expanding federation tools like PyPump to make adding federation easier for all sorts of python web applications.
Government

CIA Accused: Sen. Feinstein Sees Torture Probe Meddling 187

Posted by timothy from the taking-the-heat-off-that-other-agency dept.
A reader writes with this news from the Washington Post: "In an extraordinary public accusation, the head of the Senate Intelligence Committee declared on Tuesday that the CIA interfered with and then tried to intimidate a congressional investigation into the agency's possible use of torture in terror probes during the Bush administration. The CIA clandestinely removed documents and searched a computer network set up for lawmakers, said Sen. Dianne Feinstein in a long and biting speech on the Senate floor. In an escalating dispute with an agency she has long supported, she said the CIA may well have violated criminal laws and the U.S. Constitution."
Science

Physics Forum At Fermilab Bans Powerpoint 181

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the powerpoint-considered-harmful dept.
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Amanda Solliday reports at Symmetry that six months ago, organizers of a biweekly forum on Large Hadron Collider physics at Fermilab banned PowerPoint presentations in favor of old-fashioned, chalkboard-style talks. 'Without slides, the participants go further off-script, with more interaction and curiosity,' says Andrew Askew. 'We wanted to draw out the importance of the audience.' In one recent meeting, physics professor John Paul Chou of Rutgers University presented to a full room holding a single page of handwritten notes and a marker. The talk became more dialogue than monologue as members of the audience, freed from their usual need to follow a series of information-stuffed slides flying by at top speed, managed to interrupt with questions and comments. Elliot Hughes, a Rutgers University doctoral student and a participant in the forum, says the ban on slides has encouraged the physicists to connect with their audience. 'Frequently, in physics, presenters design slides for people who didn't even listen to the talk in the first place,' says Hughes. 'In my experience, the best talks could not possibly be fully understood without the speaker.'"
Education

Ask Slashdot: How Do I Change Tech Careers At 30? 451

Posted by timothy from the question-is-will-you-trust-yourself-next-year? dept.
First time accepted submitter possiblybored writes "I'm 30, and I am a technology teacher and the school's technology coordinator. I like my job, but I have been having thoughts about switching careers and focusing more on technology in the private sector. I like Microsoft products and would head in that direction, probably. Is it too late for me to think about this? What is the best way to get started on this path? I'm not so much interested in programming (though I'd like to learn a language some day) as much as I am intrigued by topics like setting up e-mail servers, reading about cloud stuff like Office 365, and looking at information on collaborative technology. I'm a good teacher and excel at explaining things as well. Any advice the community could offer would be greatly appreciated!"
PHP

The New PHP 254

Posted by Soulskill from the less-filling-tastes-great dept.
An anonymous reader writes "This article at O'Reilly Programming suggests that PHP, a language known as much for its weaknesses as its strengths, has made steady progress over the past few years in fixing its problems. From the article: 'A few years ago, PHP had several large frameworks (e.g. CakePHP, CodeIgniter, and so on). Each framework was an island and provided its own implementation of features commonly found in other frameworks. Unfortunately, these insular implementations were likely not compatible with each other and forced developers to lock themselves in with a specific framework for a given project. Today the story is different. The new PHP community uses package management and component libraries to mix and match the best available tools. ... There are also exciting things happening with PHP under the hood, too. The PHP Zend Engine recently introduced memory usage optimizations. The memory usage in PHP 5.5 is far less than earlier versions.'"

Comment Re:We're fixing this (Score 1) 333

by Dr.Dubious DDQ (#46340849) Attached to: How Mobile Apps Are Reinventing the Worst of the Software Industry

(Excuse the following mini-rant: the last day or two I've been finding my ability to "get into" FirefoxOS quite frustrating, as described here)

I'm hopeful. I'd like to try it and see, and more importantly, learn to participate directly, but I'm finding it impossible because I'm too cash-poor to pay even $200-300 for a new phone or tablet (e.g. the Geeksphone Revolution), and there doesn't seem to be any other way to get a real FirefoxOS device in the US (where I am), an in any case being stuck in an area with only CDMA coverage, a FirefoxOS "phone" seems unavailable anyway, making that kind of money hard to justify even if I had it available.

I could come up with $25-50 for a device to learn on, but I can't have one. The ongoing announcements of affordable devices seemingly everywhere else but where I could use one feels pretty frustrating.

I also feel like an idiot because I can't seem to find any useful technical information about FirefoxOS at a level between "try to read the raw source code" and the very attractive but not very informative brochureware at https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/... .

It's frustrating: I'm too poor to buy a special-order device, and too "rich" (by global standards) to be able to buy the devices most recently announced. I'm too "smart" to get the information I want (from the brochureware) and too "stupid" (from the source) at the same time.

If I don't shut up here this is going to turn into a tedious, incoherent essay, so I will.
Crime

Indian Hustle: How Fraudsters Prey On Would-be US Tech Workers 124

Posted by timothy from the lowest-of-the-low dept.
New submitter angel115 points out this article on the widespread fraud committed in India against many thousands of those seeking visas to work in the U.S. Many Indian techies rely on the services of visa brokers (or people who claim to be), and end up burned by the transaction. From the article: "Some are lucky enough to get a visa — only to find that the promised job in the US doesn’t materialize. Then the visa holders are forced to return to India after spending thousands of dollars just surviving. ... No official figures are available for the number of frauds in India, but an unclassified document released by Wikileaks showed that in 2009, US consular officials cited H-1B scams as one of the two most common fraud categories in India." Another interesting detail: As part of a U.S. government investigation, "Officers investigated 150 companies in the city and discovered that 77 percent 'turned out to be fraudulent or highly suspect.' ... Officials uncovered a scheme where Hyderabadis were claiming to work for made-up companies in Pune so the Mumbai consulate would be less suspicious about their applications. 'The Hyderabadis claimed that they had opened shell companies in Bangalore because "everyone knows Hyderabad has fraud and Bangalore is reputable,” according to the internal communiqué [later published by Wikileaks]."

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