29933981
submission
mr crypto writes:
In 2010 the Washington DC election board announced it had set up an e-voting system for absentee ballots and was planning to use it in an election. However, to test the system, it invited the security community and members of the public to try and hack it three weeks before the election.
"It was too good an opportunity to pass up," explained Professor Alex Halderman from the University of Michigan. "How often do you get the chance to hack a government network without the possibility of going to jail?"
With the help of two graduate students, Halderman started to examine the software. Despite it being a relatively clean Ruby on Rails build, they spotted a shell injection vulnerability within a few hours
23663492
submission
mr crypto writes:
When Google created Places it had an eminently sensible type of crowd-sourcing in mind. The site contains millions of listings, and when owners close without updating their profile, the job falls to customers to keep information current. But like any open system, this one can be abused. Search engine consultants say that closing a business on Google has become an increasingly common tactic among unscrupulous competitors.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/06/technology/closed-in-error-on-google-places-merchants-seek-fixes.html?_r=1&hp
20276286
submission
mr crypto writes:
From Wired: With the “Remote Human Demographic Characterization” challenge, the Air Force is looking for descriptions of a system “that can determine approximate age (adult, teen, child) and gender of small groups of people at a distance.” The challenge “requires a written proposal only.” So if your idea works and you can get the technical details right, you could walk away with $20,000.
(And of course the government would only ever use this on other people...)
19401534
submission
mr crypto writes:
The IBM Watson team recently did an Ask Me Anything on Reddit and answered the most popular questions. A good quick read on strengths, weaknesses, algorithms, and hardware.
17547314
submission
mr crypto writes:
The NY Times is reporting how computers are being used to study subjects whose size and depth have previously made analysis daunting.
From the article: These researchers are digitally mapping Civil War battlefields to understand what role topography played in victory, using databases of thousands of jam sessions to track how musical collaborations influenced jazz, and searching through large numbers of scientific texts and textbooks to track where concepts first appeared and how they spread.
This alliance of geeks and poets has generated exhilaration and also anxiety. The humanities, after all, deal with elusive questions of aesthetics, existence and meaning, the words that bring tears or the melody that raises goose bumps. Are these elements that can be measured?
16520280
submission
mr crypto writes:
DarkPatterns gives a nice overview of nasty things that web sites do — an especially handy guide with examples for your friends that use the web but are a little less tech savvy (assuming Slashdotters have such friends). From the site: "This pattern library is dedicated to Dark Patterns: user interfaces that have been designed to trick users into doing things they wouldn't otherwise have done."
11191848
submission
mr crypto writes:
A team of Russian and American scientists has discovered a new element that has long stood as a missing link among the heaviest bits of atomic matter ever produced. The element, still nameless, appears to point the way toward a brew of still more massive elements with chemical properties no one can predict.
9324084
submission
mr crypto writes:
It can be tough for instructors to find "just the right
book", so why not make it? By blending
open copyright
material with his own, Chuck Severance did exactly that in 11 days resulting in Python for Informatics.
Is plug-n-play the future of textbooks?
From his blog:
"It is quite natural for academics who
are continuously told to .publish or perish to want to
always create something from scratch that is their own
contribution. This book is an for me experiment in
"re-mixing" an book titled Think Python: How to Think Like a
Computer Scientist written by Allen B. Downey, Jeff Elkner
and others.
8856896
submission
mr crypto writes:
User interfaces make copious use of pictures and symbols, but how abstract should images be? Lukas Mathis has an interesting blog entry on where to draw the line.
7904000
submission
mr crypto writes:
Google Loses in French Copyright Case : From the article: PARIS (Reuters) — A Paris court on Friday found the Internet giant Google guilty of violating copyright by digitizing books and putting extracts online, following a legal challenge by French publishers.
7219806
submission
mr crypto writes:
MS beats Linux, Google for Michigan Department of Information Technology infrastructure. Article is light on technical details, mentioning "...weren't robust enough and they lacked the full functionality...". Seems like the consolidation of data centers and to a single platform would save money regardless of which was chosen.
6862834
submission
mr crypto writes:
Maybe some things should just not be. They were not totally explicit as to whether she failed the written or the practical. South Korea does have a practical ... right?
6411399
submission
mr crypto writes:
Multi-touch mouse allows UI to capitalize on capabilities of human hand.
