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Security

Submission + - How To Tell if Your Hotel Guest Is a Terrorist (schneier.com) 2

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Bruce Schneier takes a look at a list from the Department of Homeland Security which details 19 suspicious behaviors for hotel guests as indicators of possible terrorism. Further discussed is the DHS initiative "If you see something say something", and the possible problems with recruiting amateurs for security, and likely result of getting amateur security in return.
Earth

Submission + - Climate Change Could Drive Coffee to Extinction by 2080 1

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Coffee is the world's favorite beverage and the second-most traded commodity after oil. Now Nick Collins reports that rising global temperatures and subtle changes in seasonal conditions could make 99.7 per cent of Arabica-growing areas unsuitable for the plant before the end of the century and in some areas as soon as 2020. Even if the beans do not disappear completely from the wild, climate change is highly likely to impact on yields and the taste of coffee, a beverage of choice among slashdot readers, will change in future decades. "The worst case scenario, as drawn from our analyses, is that wild Arabica could be extinct by 2080," says Justin Moat. "This should alert decision makers to the fragility of the species." Arabica is one of only two species of bean used to make coffee and is by far the most popular, accounting for 70 per cent of the global market including almost all fresh coffee sold in high street chains and supermarkets in the US and most of Europe. A different bean known as Robusta is used in freeze-dried coffee and is commonly drunk in Greece and Turkey, but Robusta's high caffeine content makes it much less pleasant to most palates. In some areas, such as the Boma Plateau in South Sudan, the demise could come as early as 2020, based on the low flowering rate and poor health of current crops. The researchers used field study and 'museum' data (including herbarium specimens) to run bioclimatic models for wild Arabica coffee, in order to deduce the actual (recorded) and predicted geographical distribution for the species. "Arabica can only exist in a very specific pace with a very specific number of other variables," says Aaron Davis, head of coffee research at the Royal Botanic Gardens. "It is mainly temperature but also the relationship between temperature and seasonality – the average temperature during the wet season for example.""
Security

Submission + - Stuxnet Infected, But Didn't Affect Chevron Network In 2010 (cnet.com)

Submitted by Penurious Penguin
Penurious Penguin writes: CNET and the Wall Street Journal in correspondence with Chevron representatives reveal that back in 2010, Stuxnet did reach Chevron, where it managed to infect, but not significantly affect their network. The issue was, according one Chevron rep, "immediately addressed" and "without incident". Chevron's general manager of the earth sciences department, Mark Koelmel, said to the CIO Journal:

"I don't think the U.S. government even realized how far it had spread," ... "I think the downside of what they did is going to be far worse than what they actually accomplished."

Submission + - Occupy Wall Street's Rolling Jubilee to Bail Out the People (businessinsider.com)

Submitted by Quince alPillan
Quince alPillan writes: Occupy Wall Street has a new plan for helping the 99%. They've set up an old-fashioned telethon they're calling the Rolling Jubilee to buy up bad debt with donations and then forgiving the debt outright. As a test run, they set themselves up as a debt collector and they were able to use $500 to buy $14,000 worth of bad debt, which they then forgave. The telethon will be held at the Le Poisson Rouge on Thursday, November 15. It will also stream online.

Comment Re:Good for him (Score 1) 576

by nmoore (#41925681) Attached to: All of Nate Silver's State-Level Polling Predictions Proved True
I cast a ballot to vote for a slate of electors who claimed they would cast their electoral vote in a particular way. The duplicity is the ballot had the Presidential candidate's name and not the electors' names, but in my state only politics, and not law, demands that the electors actually vote for the name I selected.
Programming

Microsoft Roslyn: Reinventing the Compiler As We Know It 195

Posted by Soulskill from the now-with-3d dept.
snydeq writes "Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister sees Microsoft's Project Roslyn potentially reinventing how we view compilers and compiled languages. 'Roslyn is a complete reengineering of Microsoft's .NET compiler toolchain in a new way, such that each phase of the code compilation process is exposed as a service that can be consumed by other applications,' McAllister writes. 'The most obvious advantage of this kind of "deconstructed" compiler is that it allows the entire compile-execute process to be invoked from within .NET applications. With the Roslyn technology, C# may still be a compiled language, but it effectively gains all the flexibility and expressiveness that dynamic languages such as Python and Ruby have to offer.'"
Cellphones

California Governor Vetoes Ban On Warrantless Phone Searches 462

Posted by Soulskill from the take-that-citizens dept.
kodiaktau writes "In probably the most important decision Gov. Brown of California will make this year, he has vetoed the bill that would require officers to get a search warrant before searching cellular phones of arrested citizens. This further enables the police to carry out warrantless searches of private property extending into contacts, email, photos, banking activity, GPS, and other functions that are controlled by modern phones. 'He cites a recent California Supreme Court decision upholding the warrantless searches of people incident to an arrest. In his brief message (PDF), he also doesn’t say whether it’s a good idea or not. Instead, he says the state Supreme Court’s decision is good enough, a decision the U.S. Supreme Court let stand last week.'"
The Almighty Buck

Feds Call Full-Tilt Poker a 'Global Ponzi Scheme' 436

Posted by Soulskill from the and-let-the-chips-fall-where-they-may dept.
blair1q writes "Popular (and heavily advertised) poker website Full-Tilt Poker was sued today by the U.S. government, following an investigation that revealed it to be a massive Ponzi Scheme. The principals in the company set up a complicated system to direct funds from subscribers' poker accounts into their own bank accounts. This was in contravention of their own claim that users' money was untouched. Players' accounts amounted to $390 million, but the company only has $60 million in the bank, having over time distributed $440 million to its own directors and executives."
Input Devices

Microsoft Tech Can Deblur Images Automatically 204

Posted by timothy from the pleasantly-awesome dept.
An anonymous reader writes "At the annual SIGGRAPH show, Microsoft Research showed new technology that can remove the blur from images on your camera or phone using on-board sensors — the same sensors currently added to the iPhone 4. No more blurry low light photos!"
Earth

2 In 3 Misunderstand Gas Mileage; Here's Why 1042

Posted by kdawson from the bad-at-math dept.
thecarchik sends in this piece, which was published last March but remains timely: "OK, so here's a little test: Which saves more gasoline, going from 10 to 20 mpg, or going from 33 to 50 mpg? If you're like most Americans, you picked the second one. But, in fact, that's exactly backwards. Over any given mileage, replacing a 10-mpg vehicle with one that gets 20 mpg saves five times the gasoline that replacing a 33-mpg vehicle with one that gets 50 does. Last summer, Duke University's Fuqua School of Business released a study that shows how much damage comes from using MPG instead of consumption to measure how green a car is. Management professors Richard Larick and Jack Soll's experiments proved that consumers thought fuel consumption was cut at an even rate as mileage increased."
Music

Beautifully Rendered Music Notation With HTML5 259

Posted by timothy from the pretty-printing-for-piano dept.
An anonymous reader writes "This is incredible. This guy has built a music notation engraver entirely in JavaScript, allowing for real-time music editing right in the browser. Here's a demo. The library has no external dependencies, and all the glyphs, scores, beams, ties, etc. are positioned and rendered entirely in JavaScript."
Google

Microsoft Claims Google Chrome Steals Your Privacy 522

Posted by samzenpus from the our-competitor-is-bad dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft is going on the offensive against Google, accusing the search giant of creating a browser that does not respect user privacy. The company posted a video, embedded below, on TechNet Edge with the following description: 'Watch a demo on how Google Chrome collects every keystroke you make and how Internet Explorer 8 keeps your information private through two address bars and In Private browsing.' Microsoft's first criticism is Chrome's combining the address bar and the search box into a single entry box; IE8 keeps those fields separate. 'By keeping these boxes separate, your privacy is better protected and the addresses of the sites you're visiting aren't automatically shared with Microsoft, or anyone else,' says IE product manager Pete LePage."
Displays

Multiple-Display Power Tools For Linux? 410

Posted by timothy from the it's-a-hard-knock-life dept.
shift writes "I've used multiple monitors for years (currently 3) and find that Linux is lacking in power tools for such setups. Even Windows 7 has added the feature to move a window from screen to screen with keyboard shortcuts. Are any of the major desktop environments adding such features? I'm still stuck on FVWM and have defined functions to swap the contents of screens as well as move windows from screen to screen and so on. But this just seems like such basic functionality people would want in multi-screen setups that I'm surprised I don't find any of these features in our latest desktop environments."
The Internet

Murdoch To Explore Blocking Google Searches 549

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the why-is-no-one-calling-for-his-head dept.
In another move sure to continue the certain doom looming over classic publications, Rupert Murdoch has elaborated on the direction he would take in an effort to monetize the content that his websites deliver by attempting to block much of Google's ability to scan and index his news sites. "Murdoch believes that search engines cannot legally use headlines and paragraphs of news stories as search results. 'There's a doctrine called "fair use," which we believe to be challenged in the courts and would bar it altogether,' Mr Murdoch told the TV channel. 'But we'll take that slowly.'"
Sci-Fi

AMC Releasing a New "The Prisoner" In November 174

Posted by kdawson from the that's-number-six-to-you dept.
DynaSoar writes "The Prisoner is one of the most influential and enduring TV shows to have appeared during the 1960s. This single-season (1967-68), 17-episode series, starring its co-writing, co-directing executive producer Patrick McGoohan, maintains a steady fan base and gains more with each syndication re-release. For over 40 years there have been announced intentions and projects to resurrect this surreal psychodrama combining science fiction, allegory, and spy thriller in a new series or movie (but always without McGoohan, who adamantly refused, saying 'he'd done it'). Finally, since December 2008 a remake has been in the can. In November 2009, AMC will begin airing an original six-part mini-series of The Prisoner starring James Caviezal as the spy who resigns only to find himself abducted and transported to 'The Village,' where he is renamed (or rather renumbered) Number Six, and where the minds behind his incarceration attempt to pry and/or trick secrets from his brain. Chief among those minds is the visible face of the administration, Number Two, played by Ian McKellen. Unlike the original, with a new Number Two in each episode, McKellen appears throughout. To promote the upcoming release, AMC is presenting (along with a ton of 'additional material') the entire original 17 episodes, free for the streaming."

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