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Submission + - Slashdot discount for Foresight@Google, June 25-26 (foresight.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Nanodot's parent organization Foresight Institute cordially invites Slashdot folks to use the code SLASHDOT to get $50 off this upcoming tech conference:

FORESIGHT@GOOGLE
25th Anniversary Conference Celebration & Reunion Weekend
Google HQ in Mountain View, CA
June 25-26, 2011
http://www.foresight.org/reunion

Topics are emerging tech with special emphasis on transformative nanotech.

A rockstar lineup of speakers include:
  BARNEY PELL, PhD — Cofounder/CTO of Moon Express making robotic lunar landers
  WILLIAM ANDREGG — Founder/CEO of Halcyon Molecular
  PAUL SAFFO, PhD — Renowned tech forecaster and strategist
  LUKE NOSEK — CoFounder of Paypal, Partner at the Founders Fund
  SIR FRASER STODDART, PhD — Knighted creator of molecular "switches"
  THOMAS THEIS, PhD — IBM's Director of Physical Sciences
  Keynote JIM VON EHR — Founder/President of Zyvex, the world's first successful molecular nanotech company

Comments, including by Hemos, on previous meetings in this series: http://www.foresight.org/SrAssoc/Comments/
Idle

Submission + - Budweiser Wants Dudes to Stop Shaving (ecouterre.com) 3

Submitted by fangmcgee
fangmcgee writes: Men of America, back away from the shaving cream. Budweiser wants you to conserve 1 million gallons of water by eschewing your razors until World Environment Day on June 5. With the “Grow One, Save a Million” campaign on Facebook, brewski lovers can pledge to save an average of 5 gallons of agua per shave simply by doing nothing.
Security

Submission + - Researchers broke x86 Virtual Machine isolation (blogspot.com)

Submitted by northox
northox writes: Invisible Things Lab has found a very critical security hole in the x86 architecture. They found a way to abuse the virtualization architecture when a physical device as been assign to a guest VM (PCI passthrough) and gain complete access of the hypervisor (i.e. completely bypassing the isolation layer of any hypervisor (e.g. XEN, VMware, etc)). The actual vulnerability is in the VT-d implementation and the exploit use software interrupts (MSI). The solution is to use "Interrupt Remapping" technology which is only available in the very latest Sandy Bridge processors.

Submission + - Do Developers Really Need A Second Monitor? (earthweb.com)

Submitted by
jammag
jammag writes: "It was an agonizing moment: a developer arrived at work to realize his second monitor had been taken (given to the accounting dept., to add insult to injury). Soon, the wailing and the gnashing of teeth began. As this project manager recounts, developers feel strongly — very strongly — about needing a second monitor (maybe a third?) to work effectively. But is this just the posturing of pampered coders, or is this much screen real estate really a requirement for today's developers?"

Submission + - What is the Top Open Source License? (internetnews.com)

Submitted by darthcamaro
darthcamaro writes: Ok, this is an obvious question right? It has to be GPL? No? Not necessarily. A new study released today at the OSBC shows a difference between what open source licenses are used and which ones are included in the top downloaded projects. 68.9 percent of open source software packages use the GPL, however measured by downloads the top open source license is the Apache License at 32.7 percent. The LGPL came in second at 21.0 percent and GPL is third at 14.4 percent.
Patents

Submission + - Open Sourceing and Patents

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A programming buddy and I have cooked up an experimental graphics algorithm (a "2D image processing algorithm" to be precise) that we believe could prove quite useful to people working in a number of different fields if we were to open source it under a GPL license. But there is a small hitch. While we R&D'd every line of the algorithm from zero, putting in 100s of hours of exhausting trial & error and experimentation over a number of months to get it working correctly, we don't know what its "patent compliance status" is. Neither one of us is particularly skilled at reading and understanding what are often highly technical and obscurely worded image processing patents. And there are thousands of them scattered across many different patent databases, filed under all sorts of titkes — i.e. we don't even know WHERE TO START LOOKING to check if our algo overlaps with one or more existing imaging patents.

If we were to open source our graphics algorithm without knowing for certain whether it violates some other person's — or worse — some large, well endowed and potentially "agressively protective" commercial entity's image processing patents, can this bounce back to harm us? i.e. could we get sued for "loss of business" or similar because our "crafted-from-zero" open source graphics algo happens, by chance, to overlap with some 5 or 10 year old patent that we didn't see, didn't understand fully, or didn't realize existed in the first place because its filed under some obscure field (e.g. 'Method for detecting x type edges in y type CMOS images — or — Method for recognizing and removing z type pixel artifacts from x-y-z type medical MR images')?

If you were in our shoes, i.e. strongly wanting to open source a neat 2D graphics algorithm so other people can benefit from it, but uncertain what its patents status is, how would you proceed?
Programming

Submission + - Slashdot not fixed (slashdot.org) 3

Submitted by mustPushCart
mustPushCart writes: Slashdot popular around the world with basement dwellers and secretively anti corporate white collars alike has not yet changed its design after its January 25, 2011 redesign broke hearts and browsers, bringing out its passive aggressive readership into active fist shaking before sending them back into its idle section. The design continues to remain broken on Chrome in addition to being slow, clunky and generally silently hated. Slashdot editors could not be reached for comment at the time of going to press
Science

Submission + - Robots "Evolve" Altruism (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: Computer simulations of tiny robots with rudimentary nervous systems show that, over hundreds of generations, these virtual machines evolve altruistic behaviors. They begin to share small disks--a stand in for food--with each other so that their comrades' traits are passed on to the next generation. Experts say the study sheds light on why various animals--from bees to humans--help each other out, even when it hurts their own chances to reproduce.
Security

Submission + - OS X Crimeware Kit Emerges (threatpost.com)

Submitted by Trailrunner7
Trailrunner7 writes: Crimeware kits have become a ubiquitous part of the malware scene in the last few years, but they have mainly been confined to the Windows platform. Now, reports are surfacing that the first such kit targeting Apple's Mac OS X operating system has appeared.

The kit is being compared to the Zeus kit, which has been one of the more popular and pervasive crimeware kits for several years now. A report by CSIS, a Danish security firm, said that the OS X kit uses a template that's quite similar to the Zeus construction and has the ability to steal forms from Firefox.

Submission + - bitcoin: a force to be reckoned with? (washingtonpost.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Bitcoin, a peer-to-peer digital currency, is being regarded by establishment press with much suspicion, confusion and, most recently, fear. A good example is a recent opinion piece by the Washington Post. As is typical, bitcoin's unique characteristics (scarcity, resilience, unforgeability), which make it useful as a currency, are not discussed. Rather, it is dismissed as a "private electronic currency." Besides incorrectly classifying bitcoin as "private," the author overlooks one crucial point: the "first to market" advantage that bitcoin's existing blockchain possesses. Are these pieces by the media the same sort of flailing that we witnessed with RIAA and MPAA? Confusion, to be followed by demonization, to be followed by legislation?
Networking

Submission + - Sony sued for PlayStation Network data breach (cnet.com)

Submitted by suraj.sun
suraj.sun writes: Like clockwork, the first lawsuit resulting from the security breach of the personal data of more than 75 million Sony PlayStation Network customers has been filed.

The suit was filed today on behalf of Kristopher Johns, 36, of Birmingham, Ala., in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. Johns accuses Sony of not taking "reasonable care to protect, encrypt, and secure the private and sensitive data of its users."

He also believes Sony took too long to notify him and other customers that their personal information had been exposed. Because of that, the complaint alleges, Sony did not allow its customers "to make an informed decision as to whether to change credit card numbers, close the exposed accounts, check their credit reports, or take other mitigating actions."

CNET News: http://news.cnet.com/8301-31021_3-20057921-260.html
Facebook

Submission + - Apple Isn't Tracking You, But Facebook Is... (shugendo.org)

Submitted by
stonemirror
stonemirror writes: "Apple has put out a statement explaining that the file containing locations in the areas where the iPhone has visited are, indeed, the locations of cell towers and such and are, indeed, used to speed up triangulation in iOS Location Services. Apple says that will store less data, encrypt the file on the phone, and not back it up to the desktop in a future release of the platform.

On a related note, it's been revealed that Facebook has been placing tracking cookies onto the computers of non-users of the site, simply for visiting sites which happen to use Facebook Connect for authentication. Facebook blames this on a bug."

Submission + - Security Software Scores Poorly In Security (techweb.com)

Submitted by
Batblue
Batblue writes: "Most of the security and security services software tested by Veracode got an "unacceptable" rating in their first security scans, as did more than 65 percent of all commercial software, a new report released today says.

Veracode's new State of Software Security Report shows only customer support software in worse shape than security products and services, with 82 percent of apps receiving an "unacceptable" rating, versus 72 percent for security software and security services software.

While 66 percent of all commercial software scanned by Veracode received an "unacceptable" rating upon their first security scans by Veracode, the low scores of security products and services software was most telling. "That was a shocker for us," says Sam King, vice president of product marketing at Veracode, which scanned more than 4,800 applications for this report.

"That helps explain some of the headlines we've seen lately-- RSA, HBGary, Comodo ... Attackers are targeting security companies and other vertical industries should be taking better care of the apps. The lesson learned for people buying: you can't assume that even security vendors are any more secure.""
Privacy

Submission + - Bizarre porn raid underscores Wi-Fi privacy risks (msn.com)

Submitted by alphadogg
alphadogg writes: Lying on his family room floor with assault weapons trained on him, shouts of "pedophile!" and "pornographer!" stinging like his fresh cuts and bruises, the Buffalo homeowner didn't need long to figure out the reason for the early morning wake-up call from a swarm of federal agents. That new wireless router. He'd gotten fed up trying to set a password. Someone must have used his Internet connection, he thought. Sure enough, that was the case. Law enforcement officials say the case is a cautionary tale. Their advice: Password-protect your wireless router.
Security

Submission + - Hiding secrets in disk fragmentation (i-programmer.info)

Submitted by mikejuk
mikejuk writes: Disk fragmentation is usually regarded as something to be eliminated but now you can hide your most terrible secrets in plain sight using it as a code. It is all a matter of where you store the data not what you store. A perfectly normal file can be made to store a string of bits simply by moving the storage blocks so that if two blocks are next to each other we code a one and if they are physically separated we code a zero.

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