magnet0 - Slashdot User

Submission + - DHS Sends Tourists Home Over Twitter Jokes (itworld.com)

Submitted by

itwbennett

on Monday January 30, 2012 @02:37PM

itwbennett writes: "In a classic case of 'we say destroy, you say party hard,' the US Dept. of Homeland Security detained a pair of British twentysomethings for 12 hours and then sent them packing back to the land of the cheeky retort. At issue is a Tweet sent by Leigh Van Bryan about plans to 'destroy America,' starting with LA, which, really, isn't that bad an idea."

Submission + - Jailbreaking The Internet For Freedom's Sake (infoworld.com)

Submitted by

snydeq

on Monday January 30, 2012 @02:19PM

snydeq writes: "With so many threats to a free and open Internet, sooner or later, people will need to arm themselves for the fight, writes Deep End's Paul Venezia. 'If the baboons succeed in constraining speech and information flow on the broader Internet, the new Internet will emerge quickly. For an analogy, consider the iPhone and the efforts of a few smart hackers who have allowed anyone to jailbreak an iPhone with only a small downloaded app and a few minutes,' Venezia writes. 'All that scenario would require would be a way to wrap up existing technologies into a nice, easily-installed package available through any number of methods. Picture the harrowing future of rampant Internet take-downs and censorship, and then picture a single installer that runs under Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux that installs tor, tools to leverage alternative DNS servers, anonymizing proxies, and even private VPN services. A few clicks of the mouse, and suddenly that machine would be able to access sites "banned" through general means.'"

Submission + - Senator Wants TSA To Conduct 'Independent' Scanner (propublica.org) 1

Submitted by OverTheGeicoE on Monday January 30, 2012 @11:00AM

OverTheGeicoE writes: US Senator Susan Collins, the top Republican on the homeland security committee, plans to introduce a bill that would require a new health study of the X-ray body scanners used to screen airline passengers nationwide. If the bill becomes law, TSA would be required to choose an 'independent laboratory' to measure the radiation emitted by a scanner currently in use at an airport checkpoint and use the data to produce a peer-reviewed study, to be submitted to Congress, based on its findings. The study would also evaluate the safety mechanisms on the machine and determine 'whether there are any biological signs of cellular damage caused by the scans.' Many Slashdotters are or have been involved in science. Is this a credible experimental protocol? Is it reasonable to expect an organization accused of jeopardizing the health and safety of hundreds of millions of air travelers to pick a truly unbiased lab? Would any lab chosen deliver a critical report and risk future funding? Should the public trust a study of radiology and human health designed by a US Senator whose highest degree is a bachelor's degree in government?

Toshiba Begins Selling MacBook Air SSD 162

Posted by CmdrTaco on Tuesday November 09, 2010 @12:33PM from the double-it-please dept.

Lucas123 writes "Toshiba has made the solid state drive used in the new MacBook Air generally available for use by equipment manufacturers. At just 2.2mm thick, the company said the drive represents a new form factor that is about one-third the thickness of a thin hard disk drive and that is 42% smaller than even a mini-SATA SSD module. The new Blade X-gale SSD series has a maximum throughput of 220MB/sec. and can store up to 256GB of data."

Submission + - How Hollywood Generally Gets Tech Wrong

Submitted by adeelarshad82 on Tuesday November 09, 2010 @10:20AM

adeelarshad82 writes: For tech fans, feature films and TV shows are replete with laughable, forehead-smacking misrepresentations and misunderstandings of technology that we use every day. Some of these mistakes are so common that they have become conventions that filmmakers likely think they must include so the audience will understand what's going on, for instance the cell phone dial tones. In truth, conventions similar to CSI's famous infinite image zoom only serve to reinforce the bizarro rules of an alternate on-screen tech universe that is similar to our own, but oddly different.

Submission + - Worker Rights Extend to Facebook (nytimes.com) 1

Submitted by wjousts on Tuesday November 09, 2010 @10:11AM

wjousts writes: From the NY Times:
In what labor officials and lawyers view as a ground-breaking case involving workers and social media, the National Labor Relations Board has accused a company of illegally firing an employee after she criticized her supervisor on her Facebook page.

American Medical Response of Connecticut had a policy that barred employees from depicting the company "in any way" on Facebook or other social media. The National Labor Relations Board has ruled that this policy runs afoul of the National Labor Relations Act which gives employees the right to form unions and prohibits employers from punishing workers for discussing working conditions.

Is Your Laptop Cooking Your Testicles? 293

Posted by CmdrTaco on Tuesday November 09, 2010 @09:47AM from the sterility-seems-like-value-add dept.

Velcroman1 writes "Whoever invented the 'laptop' probably didn't worry too much about male reproductive health. Turns out, unsurprisingly, that sitting with a computer on your lap will crank up the temperature of your nether regions, which could affect sperm quality. And there is little you can do about it, according to the authors of a study out today in the journal Fertility and Sterility, short of putting your laptop on a desk. The researchers hooked thermometers to the scrotums of 29 young men (!) who were balancing a laptop on their knees. They found that even with a lap pad under the computer, the men's scrotums overheated quickly. 'Millions and millions of men are using laptops now, especially those in the reproductive age range,' said Dr. Yefim Sheynkin, a urologist at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, who led the new study."

LimeWire Lives Again 278

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday November 09, 2010 @09:12AM from the there's-a-lesson-here dept.

Slayer Silver Wolf writes with this excerpt from TorrentFreak: "'On October 26 the remaining LimeWire developers were forced to shut down the company's servers and modify remote settings in the filesharing client to try to harm the Gnutella network. They were then laid off. Shortly after, a horde of piratical monkeys climbed aboard the abandoned ship, mended its sails, polished its cannons, and released it free to the community.' And so, LimeWire Pirate Edition (LPE) was born. Based on the LimeWire 5.6 beta that was briefly released earlier this year and then withdrawn when Lime Wire LLC lost its lawsuit, LPE is now in the wild. In many ways, it is better than the version killed by the RIAA."

Submission + - Private Sector Cyber Ops (defensetech.org) 1

Submitted by Javez on Tuesday November 09, 2010 @07:26AM

Javez writes: "Last week the Washington Post reported that the Cyber Command is seeking authority to launch cyber attacks in efforts to protect U.S. interests. This request is said to have drawn objections from administration lawyers concerned about the legality of offensive cyber operations. The right to bear cyber arms and the right to return fire in cyber space are both issues we have discussed recently on this blog. As you may recall back in April of this year, the Pentagon took a retaliatory tone when it asserted its right to return fire against cyber attacks aimed at the United States.

They say timing is everything so Last week, I received a tip about a private sector entity returning cyber fire. The tip came with a high degree of confidence and raised a number of concerns."

Read more: http://defensetech.org/2010/11/08/private-sector-cyber-ops-getting-hotter/#ixzz14mdmQMa7
Defense.org

Malicious Websites Can Initiate Skype Calls On iOS 177

Posted by Soulskill on Monday November 08, 2010 @09:02PM from the buck-passing dept.

An anonymous reader writes "In this article, security researcher Nitesh Dhanjani shows how iOS insecurely launches third-party apps via registered URL handlers. Malicious websites can abuse this to launch arbitrary applications, such as getting the Skype.app to make arbitrary phone calls without asking the user. Dhanjani 'contacted Apple's security team to discuss this behavior, and their stance is that the onus is on the third-party applications (such as Skype in this case) to ask the user for authorization before performing the transaction.' He also discusses what developers of iOS apps can do to design their software securely and what Apple can do to help out."

World's Northernmost Town Gets Nightlights 144

Posted by samzenpus on Friday November 05, 2010 @12:20AM from the goodbye-darkness-my-old-friend dept.

Velcroman1 writes "On October 26, 2,000 Norwegians watched the sun set. The next time they'll see it rise? Sometime in February. Extended nighttime is an annual occurrence for the residents of Longyearbyen, Norway — Earth's northernmost town. Located at 78 degrees north latitude in the Arctic circle, Longyearbyen experiences a phenomenon called Polar Night, in which the town remains in perpetual darkness for four months each winter. To lighten up the seemingly endless night, Philips has started an experiment called 'Wake Up the Town.' And anyone who's complained about the brief daylight hours in winter will want to know how it works."

Submission + - USB 3.0: Everything You Need to Know

Submitted by

Esther Schindler

on Wednesday August 25, 2010 @04:55PM

Esther Schindler writes: "After a lengthy gestation period, the third generation of the Universal Serial Bus is making its way to the market. USB 3.0, also known as SuperSpeed USB, has throughput of up to 5 gigabits per second. That's even faster than the 3Gb/sec of SATA hard drives and 1Gb/sec. of high-end networking in the home, and USB 3.0: Everything You Need to Know goes into plenty of the techie details. But is it already obsolete — will LightPeak make USB 3.0 irrelevant?"

'Retro Programming' Teaches Using 1980s Machines 426

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday August 25, 2010 @03:06PM from the old-timey-processing dept.

Death Metal Maniac writes "A few lucky British students are taking a computing class at the National Museum of Computing (TNMOC) at Bletchley Park using 30-year-old or older machines. From the article: '"The computing A-level is about how computers work and if you ask anyone how it works they will not be able to tell you," said Doug Abrams, an ICT teacher from Ousedale School in Newport Pagnell, who was one of the first to use the machines in lessons. For Mr Abrams the old machines have two cardinal virtues; their sluggishness and the direct connection they have with the user. "Modern computers go too fast," said Mr Abrams. "You can see the instructions happening for real with these machines. They need to have that understanding for the A-level."'"

Submission + - "Retro programming" teaches using 1980s machines (bbc.co.uk) 1

Submitted by

Death Metal Maniac

on Wednesday August 25, 2010 @10:00AM

Death Metal Maniac writes: ""Modern computers go too fast," said Mr Abrams. "You can see the instructions happening for real with these machines. They need to have that understanding for the A-level.""

Submission + - Why GNU Grep Is Fast As Comapre To BSD Version

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 23, 2010 @11:15AM

An anonymous reader writes: There is some flamage currently going on regarding BSD grep vs GNU grep performance. Mike Haertel, the original author of GNU grep added some interesting information regarding its performance — "#1 trick: GNU grep is fast because it AVOIDS LOOKING AT EVERY INPUT BYTE. #2 trick: GNU grep is fast because it EXECUTES VERY FEW INSTRUCTIONS FOR EACH BYTE that it *does* look at. Moreover, GNU grep AVOIDS BREAKING THE INPUT INTO LINES. Looking for newlines would slow grep down by a factor of several times, because to find the newlines it would have to look at every byte!

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