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Politics

Submission + - International observers could face criminal charges in Texas (texastribune.org)

Submitted by mescobal
mescobal writes: Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott warned international election observers not to come closer than 100 feet from a pollng place; otherwise, they could be subject to criminal prosecution.
The warning was addressed to a group of international observers who intend to monitor polls.
The OCSE (http://www.osce.org/odihr/elections) an UN affiliated organization of observers was concerned about voter ID issues among other things.

Submission + - Blackhole's 'point of no return' found (harvard.edu) 1

Submitted by dsinc
dsinc writes: Using a continent-spanning telescope, an international team of astronomers has peered to the edge of a black hole at the center of a distant galaxy. For the first time, they have measured the black hole’s “point of no return” — the closest distance that matter can approach before being irretrievably pulled into the black hole.

According to Einstein’s theory of general relativity, a black hole’s mass and spin determine how close material can orbit before becoming unstable and falling in toward the event horizon. The team was able to measure this innermost stable orbit and found that it’s only 5.5 times the size of the black hole’s event horizon. This size suggests that the accretion disk is spinning in the same direction as the black hole.
The observations were made by linking together radio telescopes in Hawaii, Arizona, and California to create a virtual telescope called the Event Horizon Telescope, or EHT. The EHT is capable of seeing details 2,000 times finer than the Hubble Space Telescope.
NASA

Submission + - NASA Upgrades Mars Curiosity Software ... From 350M Miles Away (computerworld.com)

Submitted by
CWmike
CWmike writes: "Picture doing a remote software upgrade. Now picture doing it when the machine you're upgrading is a robotic rover sitting 350 million miles away, on the surface of Mars. That's what a team of programmers and engineers at NASA are dealing with as they get ready to download a new version of the flight software on the Mars rover Curiosity, which landed safely on the Red Planet earlier this week. 'We need to take a whole series of steps to make that software active. You have to imagine that if something goes wrong with this, it could be the last time you hear from the rover,' said Steve Scandore, a senior flight software engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. 'It has to work,' he told Computerworld. 'You don't' want to be known as the guy doing the last activity on the rover before you lose contact.'"
Businesses

Submission + - The Apple vs. Samsung Trial is Already Over

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Jared Newman writes that it seems that the purpose of Apple's trial against Samsung escapes most people — it isn’t about getting compensation for products that were released in 2007, it’s about protecting the products that Apple will release in 2013 and 2015 and beyond — and Apple has already won that fight. Earlier this year, Ron Amadeo of Android Police analyzed the design of Samsung’s Galaxy S III and called it “the first smartphone designed entirely by lawyers,” because it avoids nearly all of Apple’s trade dress claims against earlier products. "Unlike Samsung’s previous Galaxy S phones, the S III doesn’t have a perfectly rectangular shape with uniformly rounded corners, and size of the bezels on each side of the screen are not equal," writes Newman. "Samsung also abandoned the colorful square app icons found in earlier versions of its software and removed the stationary app tray from the phone’s app list." Win or lose, Samsung’s reputation is getting dinged in this trial. That’s why you see Conan O’Brien poking fun at Samsung, and not Apple, in a comedy skit. As Jim Dalrymple notes, $2.5 billion is chump change for Apple and in the big scheme of things, it’s not even that much for Samsung, which made $5.9 billion in profits last quarter alone. The bigger issue in this case is whether Samsung can continue to make its products look like Apple’s. "If Samsung has any pride, it’ll keep producing designs that don’t invite accusations of copying," writes Newman. "Recent products suggest that Samsung has already moved beyond that. The legal pressure has already been applied. In the future, may the best product win.""
Google

Submission + - Google announces privacy changes, you can't opt-ou 2

Submitted by bs0d3
bs0d3 writes: Google said Tuesday it will require users to allow the company to follow their activities across e-mail, search, YouTube and other services. The information will enable Google to develop a fuller picture of how people use its growing empire of Web sites. Consumers will have no choice but to accept the changes. The policy will take effect March 1 and will also impact Android mobile phone users, who are required to log in to Google accounts when they activate their phones. People who wish to search anonymously can use startingpage.com

Comment Re:Fragmentation (Score 1) 237

by mescobal (#38679424) Attached to: Ubuntu Tablet OS To Take On Android, iOS
Agree with that. I have an Acer Iconia W500 with Kubuntu in it. You can get a very satisfactory tablet experience using the "Search" desktop and any of the KDE applications. Okular for example (PDF viewer and more) is one of the most finger-friendly applications. GTK3 based applications on the other hand are NOT finger friendly. One example (among many): the changes they made in the layout of scrollbars (they are nearly invisible until you touch a 3 pixel wide zone). I tried GS, Unity, XFCE and the only DE that isn't a pain to use with a touch interface is KDE (but it still isn't a touch-ready DE). To have a decent browsing experience you have to install an extension to Firefox (Grab and Drag). I still can't make multitouch work though (no 2-finger zoom).

Submission + - Microsoft Kills IE6 (windowsteamblog.com)

Submitted by
pimpsoftcom
pimpsoftcom writes: "Microsoft has finally decided to kill off Internet Explorer 6. In a windows team blog post on the official microsoft owned windows team blog site, they recently posted that they will now be doing silent upgrades of IE world wide "real soon now".

While the option was given to allow IE7 and IE8 to linger if corporate policy required it, no such option was given for IE6.

http://windowsteamblog.com/ie/b/ie/archive/2011/12/15/ie-to-start-automatic-upgrades-across-windows-xp-windows-vista-and-windows-7.aspx

Could this finally be the end of everybody's favorite browser to hate?

As a web developer, I can't help but hope so."
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft's Most Exploitable Vulnerability of 2011 (esecurityplanet.com)

Submitted by darthcamaro
darthcamaro writes: We all know that Microsoft has spread it's share of FUD over the years, though in this case it was likely un-intended. Microsoft rated the MS11-020 vulnerability as having an exploit index of 1 earlier this year, their highest possible rating. Nine months later and no exploits.

"This bug was potentially a wormable remote code execution vulnerability in the Windows SMB stack," Tom Cross, manager of IBM's X-Force research group said. The SMB (Server Message Block) network protocol provides shared access to resources and communication between nodes on Windows networks. Microsoft gave the MS11-020 vulnerability an exploitability score of 1, which meant that they expected public exploitation to happen quickly.
Politics

Submission + - White House responds to abolish TSA petition (whitehouse.gov) 1

Submitted by ajclements
ajclements writes: The White House has, via John Pistole the head of the TSA, responded to the potion to abolish the TSA with a predictably vague 'no'. Pistole explains lists reasons the TSA exists, and explains some of its 10 roadmap.
Earth

Submission + - How Often Does Your Car Really Need an Oil Change?

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "The LA Times reports that quick-lube companies have done such a good job convincing consumers that they need to change the oil in their cars every 3,000 miles that drivers are wasting millions of gallons of oil annually because they have their vehicles serviced too often as improvement in oils, friction proofing and car engines have lengthened the oil-change interval, typically 7,500 miles to 10,000 miles for most vehicles. "Our survey data found that nearly half of California drivers are still changing their oil at 3,000 miles or even sooner," says Mark Oldfield, a spokesman for the California Department of Resources, Recycling and Recovery, which has launched a website, checkyournumber.org, where drivers can look up the suggested motor-oil change interval number for their vehicles. Ford Motor Co. recommends oil changes for most of its new vehicles at 10,000 miles, although some still require the service at 7,500 miles. "Our new generation of engines have tighter internal tolerances, which reduces the amount of carbon and other products from combustion that gets into the oil," says Richard Truett, a Ford spokesman. Both Honda and Acura are equipped with a maintenance minder system that recommends oil changes and other services based on a number of vehicle-usage factors, including mileage and climate and other manufacturers have similar systems that alert drivers to the need for an oil change. "The idea is to prevent either over- or under-maintaining a car by following a set schedule," says Chris Martin, a Honda spokesman. "Now, there is no guesswork.""
Android

Submission + - Google Wallet Stores Card Data In Plain Text (darkreading.com)

Submitted by nut
nut writes: The much-hyped payment application from Google on Android has been examined by viaForensics and appears to store some cardholder data in plaintext. Google wallet is the first real payment system to use NFC on Android. Version 2 of the PCI DSS (the current standard) mandates the encryption of transmitted cardholder data encourages strong encryption for its storage. viaForensics suggest that the data stored in plain text might be sufficient to allow social engineering to obtain a credit card number.

Comment Acer Iconia W500 (Score 1) 277

by mescobal (#38339092) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Best Tablet For Running a Real GNU/Linux Distribution?
I have an Acer Iconia W500 with Kubuntu and I'm very happy with it. KDE was the best DE I've found (after trying Unity, Gnome 3, XFCE, etc.). Okular is jus amazing to read PDFs and browse using touch interface. You have to make some adjustmenst (third button emulation). GTK based DE have the problem of the new scrollbars (not touch-friendly). KDE has Plasma and you can make an Android-like interface with few clicks. I have few tips about it : http://conalambre.wordpress.com/

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