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Security

Submission + - Nike+ FuelBand: One Big Security Hole For Your Life (hothardware.com)

Submitted by
MojoKid
MojoKid writes: "Nike+ FuelBand, a $149 wristband with LED display that tracks your daily activity, tells you how many calories you've burned, lets you know how much fuel you have left in the tank (seriously), and basically keeps track of "every move you make." If you think that sounds like a privacy nightmare waiting to happen, it pretty much is. A source directly connected to Nike reported an amusing, albeit startling anecdote about a guy who got caught cheating on his girlfriend because of the Nike+ FuelBand. "They shared their activity between each other and she noticed he was active at 1-2AM, when he was supposed to be home." That's just one scenario. What if the wristband gets lost or stolen? How much data is actually stored on these sorts of devices?"
Security

Submission + - 35% Of Americans Would Wear "Electric Shock Bracelet" in Order to Fly (infowars.com) 1

Submitted by dryriver
dryriver writes: Infowars.com reports: 'A survey commissioned by Infowars and conducted by Harris Interactive has found that 35% of American adults would be willing to wear an electric shock bracelet in order to fly, another startling example of how many Americans are willing to give up their rights in the name of safety. The idea of mandating travelers to wear an electric shock bracelet sounds like something out of a dystopian sci-fi movie, but the proposal was seriously considered and very nearly implemented by the Department of Homeland Security back in 2008. As the linked Youtube video highlights, not only would the bracelets have been used to deliver incapacitating electric shocks to suspected terrorists, they would also have contained tracking technology to spy on the wearer.
Android

Submission + - Why You Can't Build Your Own Smarthphone: Patents (itworld.com)

Submitted by
jfruh
jfruh writes: "In the mid-00s, more and more people started learning about Android, a Linux-based smartphone OS. Open source advocates in particular thought they could be seeing the mobile equivalent of Linux — something you could download, tinker with, and sell. Today, though, the Android market is dominated by Google and the usual suspects in the handset business. The reason nobody's been able to launch an Android empire from the garage is fairly straightforward: the average smartphone is covered by over 250,000 patents."
Science

Submission + - Scientists Study "Frictional Ageing" - Standing Objects Becoming Harder to Move (bbc.com) 1

Submitted by dryriver
dryriver writes: The BBC reports: 'Have you ever had the impression that heavy items of furniture start to take root – that after years standing in the same place, they’re harder to slide to a new position? Do your best wine glasses, after standing many months unused in the cabinet, seem slightly stuck to the shelf? Has the fine sand in the kids’ play tray set into a lump?

If so, you’re not just imagining it. The friction between two surfaces in contact with each other does slowly increase over time. But why? A paper by two materials scientists at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, USA, suggests that the surfaces could actually be slowly chemically bonding together.

There are already several other explanations for this so-called “frictional ageing” effect. One is simply that two surfaces get squashed closer together. But a curious thing about friction is that the frictional force opposing sliding doesn’t depend on the area of the contacting surfaces. You’d expect the opposite to be the case: more contact should create more friction. But in fact two surfaces in apparent contact are mostly not touching at all, because little bumps and irregularities, called asperities, prop them apart. That’s true even for apparently smooth surfaces like glass, which are still rough at the microscopic scale. It’s only the contacts between these asperities that cause friction.'

Submission + - Best system for Core Infrastructure Documentation

Submitted by reboot-qld
reboot-qld writes: Ive been tasked with the job of coming up with a solution that would allow us to document Core Infrastructure systems. We are a company with over 300 Servers spread in 8 locations running Nix/Windows.
This would need to include Hardware / Software as well as any dependencies they have on other systems.
Having it do it automatically is not a must as we will need to do a full manual audit as well as there are systems turned off or fire walled off.
What would the Community recommend. Any help / Ideas would be most welcome.

Submission + - DoD gives nod to open source (oss-institute.org)

Submitted by
bluelip
bluelip writes: "A 68 page PDF has been released that details the benefits of opensource within the DoD. A paragraph on the first page reads,

"Imagine if only the manufacturer of a rifle were allowed to clean, fix, modify or upgrade that rifle. The
military often finds itself in this position with taxpayer funded, contractor developed software: one
contractor with a monopoly on the knowledge of a military software system and control of the software
source code. This is optimal only for the monopoly contractor, but creates inefficiencies and
ineffectiveness for the government, reduction of opportunities for the industrial base, severely limits
competition for new software upgrades, depletes resources that can be used to better effect and wastes
taxpayer-provided funds.""

Comment Re:Experienced only? (Score 1) 948

by bluelip (#36063756) Attached to: Why the New Guy Can't Code

If you're truly interested in the topic, you'll want to explore more than just what is covered in class. This is where the personal and experimental projects come in. No matter how busy your life is, if you can't find to tinker with something you supposedly love, you're not fit for the job.

Comment Re:Mistake not to mention personal project ... (Score 1) 948

by bluelip (#36063686) Attached to: Why the New Guy Can't Code

I was lucky enough to have an interviewer such as you. I hadn't graduated yet, but had a slew of personal projects under my belt or on the drawing board. Other public projects that I assisted with were also talked about. I was hired because of passion instead of papers mounted on a wall. I don't think I'd work for an organization in the future that didn't hire in the same manner.

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