websinthe - Slashdot User

Submission + - Newly Discovered Quasar Defies Age of Universe (techzwn.com)

Submitted by jjp9999 on Thursday June 30, 2011 @06:40PM

jjp9999 writes: The brightest and most distant quasar ever discovered is giving astronomers a window to space 12.9 billion years old. The findings were published in the June 30 issue of the Journal Nature. Joshua Philipp wrote in his blog, TechZwn, that "the age of the quasar poses some difficult questions" as its intense light helped researchers conclude the black hole at its center has the mass of two billion suns. Matching its age and size with the Big Bang theory, however, the quasar is similar to “finding a 6-foot-tall child in kindergarten,” as noted by astrophysicist Marta Volonteri, in Science News. The European Southern Observatory (ESO), which found the quasar, wrote on its website “This very high mass is hard to explain so early on after the Big Bang."

Submission + - The Most Dangerous Programming Mistakes (infoworld.com)

Submitted by

snydeq

on Thursday June 30, 2011 @06:18PM

snydeq writes: "Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister discusses the most dangerous programming mistakes, and what can be done to avoid them. 'Even more than input validation errors, this year's top 25 list is rife with application security blunders of all kinds. Some of them sound fairly esoteric, such as "inclusion of functionality from untrusted control sphere." But of all such errors, the highest-ranking one on the list is "missing authentication for critical function" — in other words, the attacker was able to gain access because there was no lock on the door to begin with,' McAllister writes. 'With the pace of Internet attacks accelerating, now is not the time to cut QA staff or skimp on testing and code review.'"

Submission + - LulzSec CIA hack highlights uptick in cyber crime

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 15, 2011 @09:30PM

An anonymous reader writes: The latest victim of the now infamous hacking group LulzSec is none other than the US's own Central Intelligence Agency, adding to the recent string of high profile hacking cases worldwide.

Submission + - Anonymous strikes Malaysian govt (malaysiakini.com)

Submitted by durianwool on Wednesday June 15, 2011 @09:16PM

durianwool writes: Anonymous has struck at least 10 Malaysian government portals in retaliation of last week's blocking of 10 popular file sharing sites like Pirate Bay. The sites have been defaced with the message,"Greetings, Malaysia, We have seen the censorship taken by the Malaysian government, blocking sites like The Pirate Bay, and WikiLeaks. Malaysia is one of the world's strictest governments, even blocking out movies, and television shows.These acts of censorship are inexcusable. You are taking away a basic human right. The Internet is here for freedom, without fear of government interference. Do not think that no one else notices".

Currently the Malaysian government doesn't censor politically sensitive sites, but they have been accused of doing so during election campaigns, such as the 2-week DDOS attacks on Malaysiakini and Sarawak Reporter in April during the by-elections then. Those attacks were traced to apparrently to China. Are there cracker guns for hire there?

Just a matter of principle, shouldn't Anonymous attack places like China where they have effectively broken the Internet. Not only Pirate Bay is blocked, but IMDB to and most of Google.

Submission + - Kinect Windows SDK to be announced tomorrow (tekgoblin.com)

Submitted by

tekgoblin

on Wednesday June 15, 2011 @09:12PM

tekgoblin writes: "We knew that Microsoft had a Kinect SDK on the way and now it may finally launch. Microsoft is hosting a live presentation at Channel9 tomorrow at 9am pacific supposedly to announce the Kinect SDK."

Submission + - LexisNexis open sourcing supercomputing platform (computerworld.com.au)

Submitted by

angry tapir

on Wednesday June 15, 2011 @07:16PM

angry tapir writes: "LexisNexis is planning to release its internally developed supercomputing platform as open source, providing developers with an alternative to the Hadoop framework for large-scale data processing."

Comment I have my suspicions ... (Score 2) 84

by websinthe on Monday June 13, 2011 @11:08PM (#36432068) Attached to: WSJ and Al-Jazeera Lure Whistleblowers

I often look at 'free web based proxy' sites and wonder if they're just set up by some law enforcement agency to fuel their party-van. Same goes for pr0n sites. Would there be a way for media organisations to do this legitimately? I doubt it could be done here in Australia.

Submission + - How the Internet Works for web design class? 3

Submitted by cultiv8 on Monday June 13, 2011 @10:39PM

cultiv8 writes: I am teaching an Intro to Web Design class this next fall at a local college that specializes in arts and design. This is the most "technical" class required for their major (other than the Adobe suite of software) and I'm looking for papers and resources that describe "how the internet works". Subjects I want to cover (during the course of 3 hours) include LAMP, TCP/IP & related protocols, DNS, principles of OSS, and why you should love your system admin. I'm searching for resources, preferably under a Creative Commons license, to distribute and share with students. Any recommendations?

Submission + - Anonymous to attack Malaysian government portal (thestar.com.my)

Submitted by petman on Monday June 13, 2011 @10:24PM

petman writes: Hacker group Anonymous has targeted the Malaysian government portal. An attack is scheduled for Wednesday, 15 June 2011 at 7:30 pm GMT. This threat comes hot on the heels of the government decision to block 10 file sharing websites allegedly for copyright violations.

Comment Re:Just learn HTML. (Score 1) 545

by websinthe on Monday June 13, 2011 @09:09PM (#36431262) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Web Site Editing Software For the Long Haul?

I agree. You'll never be able to build a properly usable site if you don't have an intermediate knowledge of the code that goes into a site. It's like trying to write a novel without learning proper grammar.

Submission + - linux.conf.au finally controls domain name (delimiter.com.au)

Submitted by daria42 on Monday June 13, 2011 @08:01PM

daria42 writes: It’s taken several years, quite a lot of negotiation and the use of alternatives to get it through an uncertain period. But Australian open source conference linux.conf.au has finally permanently secure the rights to its own domain name. No more six month outages!

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