Comment Re:Treasure Act of 1996 (Score 1) 169
From the article: "The reliquary has been declared a treasure trove at an inquest, meaning the proceeds of its sale will be shared between James's family and the landowner." Sounds fair enough.
Comment touch is all over the Mac OS (Score 5, Insightful) 352
I am not a Windows user, so I can't comment on Gruman's take on Windows 7, but he seems to be missing a lot about the Mac. Ever since the iPhone and the advent of CocoaTouch, Apple has been migrating touch elements into the desktop Cocoa framework and the laptop trackpad hardware. Today's MacBooks have trackpads that are, essentially, as sensitive as the iPhone. Two-finger scrolling has been joined by other gestures, most recently four-finger strokes to invoke Expose and the like. Application in Cocoa can (and many do) take advantage of two finger "spread" and "squeeze" gestures to zoom in and out, or "twist" gestures to rotate.
Gruman identifies the chicken and egg problem correctly enough, but misses the fact that Apple has a great advantage in the way Cocoa is architected. Many of these features can be implemented by Apple in such a way that Cocoa apps inherit these behaviors "for free." At this point the Mac OS is quite "touchy" and this drives some of the tablet rumors we hear. There is very little to prevent Apple from making the Mac screen itself an input device with gestures that many (if not most) Mac apps would have no trouble interpreting.
The other advantage for Apple in all this is CocoaTouch itself. Apple has a touch interface already widely deployed and is on its third generation of the framework that drives it. The iPhone/iPodTouch has many more users than MS Surface and Apple is learning from every one of them. Just because a casual user of the Mac OS does not get confronted by a host of touch options does not mean the potential is not present, after all, this is the company that ships a five button mouse configured to act like a one button mouse!
Submission + - Is there a zero-day OpenSSH exploit in the wild? (dshield.org)
eefsee writes: sans.org reports 'Over the past 24 hours we've had a number of readers tell us that there is an OpenSSH exploit in active use.' It is not clear if this is a real exploit or sysadmin CYA masquerading as exploit, but some web hosts have already turned of SSH in response. On 7/5 HostGator shut down SSH on all its shared servers. Site5 did the same thing the next day. The loss of SSH, of course, kills SFTP on these hosts as well, forcing customers to fall back on FTP. Now that is security!
Submission + - Web hosts spooked by OpenSSH exploit (hostgator.com) 1
eefsee writes: On 7/5 HostGator shut down SSH on all its shared servers. The next day Site5 did the same thing. There are some claims that this is a hole so big in SSH that the baddies can gain root access on their Linux servers, so OpenSSH/SSL services had to be shut down until there was a fix. The odd thing is that there has been no new US-CERT announcement of any such vulnerability. Does anyone know what these hosts are reacting to? Should we all be shutting off OpenSSH on Linux and patching urgently or are these guys over-reacting. The loss of SSH, of course, kills SFTP on these hosts as well. What do customers have to fall back on? FTP. Now that is security!
Submission + - The free version of Google Apps is history. (techcrunch.com) 2
An anonymous reader writes: http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/07/what-the-hell-happened-to-the-free-version-of-google-apps/
The free version of Google Apps is history. The current sign up page makes no mention of the previously free Standard edition. Instead, new users get a 14 day free trial, and then must pay $50 per user per year after that trial. Google Apps is a suite of online applications like gmail, Google calendar, Google Docs, etc. that are packaged and tailored for business use.
Earlier this year we reported that the usage caps were being squeezed by Google over time for Google Apps, from 200 users down to just 50. When the service first launched in August 2006 it was free and described as "a service available at no cost to organizations of all shapes and sizes." A paid version first appeared in 2007.
Dave Girouard, Google's President of Enterprise, commented on our post that talked about the decreasing number of users allowed for the free version, saying that the cap reductions were needed to keep resellers happy, adding "There's no reason to believe that the cap will continue to "move down" — we have no plans whatsoever to do that."
I guess not. They didn't move the cap down, they just killed the Standard product entirely. No mention of this change was made at a Google Apps press event held last month.
You can actually still see the free version at this page. But it doesn't appear to be linked to from any Google page at this point. We're emailing Google for comment.
The free version of Google Apps is history. The current sign up page makes no mention of the previously free Standard edition. Instead, new users get a 14 day free trial, and then must pay $50 per user per year after that trial. Google Apps is a suite of online applications like gmail, Google calendar, Google Docs, etc. that are packaged and tailored for business use.
Earlier this year we reported that the usage caps were being squeezed by Google over time for Google Apps, from 200 users down to just 50. When the service first launched in August 2006 it was free and described as "a service available at no cost to organizations of all shapes and sizes." A paid version first appeared in 2007.
Dave Girouard, Google's President of Enterprise, commented on our post that talked about the decreasing number of users allowed for the free version, saying that the cap reductions were needed to keep resellers happy, adding "There's no reason to believe that the cap will continue to "move down" — we have no plans whatsoever to do that."
I guess not. They didn't move the cap down, they just killed the Standard product entirely. No mention of this change was made at a Google Apps press event held last month.
You can actually still see the free version at this page. But it doesn't appear to be linked to from any Google page at this point. We're emailing Google for comment.
Comment Re:Customer information sharing (Score 1) 526
Actually, it's been years since I signed my name on any credit card slip. I sign "R U Checking" instead. Literally two years and I have yet to be challenged. I never thought of this as a security move, I just figured I'm trying to learn whether people ever check the sig. In my experience, even when they look at it, they don't see it.
Comment Video at NPR (Score 2, Informative) 191
A video of the blind man walking down the corridor accompanies this story at National Public Radio.
Submission + - Active glacier found on Mars?
Smivs writes: "A probable active glacier has been identified for the first time on Mars.
The icy feature
has been spotted in images from the European Space Agency's (Esa) Mars Express spacecraft.
The young glacier appears in the Deuteronilus Mensae region between Mars' rugged southern highlands and the flat northern lowlands. "If it was an image of Earth, I would say 'glacier' right away," Dr Gerhard Neukum, chief scientist on the spacecraft's High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) was quoted as saying.
"We have not yet been able to see the spectral signature of water. But we will fly over it in the coming months and take measurements. On the glacial ridges we can see white tips, which can only be freshly exposed ice.
Dr Neukum said glacial features would be prime locations for robotic rovers to look for evidence of life on Mars."
The young glacier appears in the Deuteronilus Mensae region between Mars' rugged southern highlands and the flat northern lowlands. "If it was an image of Earth, I would say 'glacier' right away," Dr Gerhard Neukum, chief scientist on the spacecraft's High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) was quoted as saying.
"We have not yet been able to see the spectral signature of water. But we will fly over it in the coming months and take measurements. On the glacial ridges we can see white tips, which can only be freshly exposed ice.
Dr Neukum said glacial features would be prime locations for robotic rovers to look for evidence of life on Mars."
Submission + - First Evidence of Another Universe? 2
blamanj writes: Three months ago, astronomers announced the discovery of a large hole at the edge of our universe. Now, Dr. Laura Mersini-Houghton thinks she knows what that means. (Subscription req'd at New Scientist site, there's also an overview here.) According to string theory, there are many universes besides our own. Her team says that smaller universes are positioned at the edge of our universe, and because of gravitational interactions, they can be observed, and they're willing to make a prediction. The recently discovered void is in the northern hemisphere. They contend another one will be found in the southern hemisphere.
Submission + - Obama at Google (yahoo.com)
infinitysv5 writes: Obama made a campaign stop at Google. He pledged to post government data on the Internet in universally accessible formats, and likened his quick rise in politics to Google's rapid emergence as the giant it is. He also fielded questions, like this one:
"Obama was prepared when Google CEO Eric Schmidt, the event moderator, asked him the most efficient way to sort a million 32-bit integers.
Obama said he did not favor the bubble sort method, impressing engineers by his reference to a method of sorting out numerical algorithms.
"You answered the question correctly," Schmidt said."
Only a politician would even mention bubble sort.
"Obama was prepared when Google CEO Eric Schmidt, the event moderator, asked him the most efficient way to sort a million 32-bit integers.
Obama said he did not favor the bubble sort method, impressing engineers by his reference to a method of sorting out numerical algorithms.
"You answered the question correctly," Schmidt said."
Only a politician would even mention bubble sort.
Submission + - MySpace Hacked: Alicia Keys and other bands hit (youtube.com)
cottagetrees writes: Security uber-researcher Roger Thompson has discovered multipled hacked MySpace pages — most notably MySpace's #4 most popular major music artist Alicia Keys.
Thompson has posted a super-interesting detailed video here:
According to Thompson, the hack and exploit have some interesting characteristics...
1. MySpace is hacked, as opposed to the
bad guys getting the usernames and passwords of a few bands (other bands
hit include "Greements of Fortune," a French funk band, "Dykeenies," a
rock band from Glasgow, and several others.
2. When a visitor visits the infected page, they're first hit by an
exploit (which installs malware in the background if they're not fully
patched against the latest security vulnerabilities), and next they're
presented with a Fake Codec which tells them they need to install a
codec to view the video. So even if they're patched, they can fall
victim to the exploit.
3. The bad guys are using a deviously ingenious hack: The HTML in the page contains some sort of image map, which basically makes it so you can click on anything over a wide
area on the page and your click is directed to the malicious hyperlink.
Even the ads on the page are affected.
Thompson's blog, with more information, is at http://explabs.blogspot.com/
Submission + - Steal for the WGA (blogspot.com)
eefsee writes: How can you support TV & movie writers during the current Writers Guild of America (WGA) strike? Kay Reindl, a TV writer, suggests boycotting iTunes in favor of bittorrent: '...go ahead and watch those DVDs. Yes, we're being underpaid for them but at least we ARE being paid. What I don't want people to do, however, is download episodes from iTunes or watch episodes on a network's website. ...when you download something or watch streaming video with commercials and the writers don't get any money for it, the networks call it promotion. ...Steal from the networks. You KNOW how much they hate it. But we're not supposed to hate it if they steal from us. Somehow, that's their logic. If you don't know how to use Bittorrent, go read up on it.' Makes you feel downright good to be a criminal!
Submission + - Domain Registry of America Scam
eefsee writes: "In 2003 the Domain Registry of America was cited by the FTC for its deceptive practices. They got into similar hot water for a renewal scam in Canada. This company is still at it today, though. They send out deceptive "Domain Name Expiration Notice" up to six months before most domains expire, making it seem that the domain needs to be renewed within the month and charging four times the typical market price for this renewal. I usually just toss these "notices," but my mom almost signed her domains over to these clowns. I just got another "Domain Name Expiration Notice" from DROA today and I'm getting fed up. Who do you think I should tell? My state attorney general? The FTC? They've been down that road before and seem none the worse for wear. Any ideas of how to get these folks shut down?"
Submission + - Fake Steve Unmasked (nytimes.com)
eefsee writes: The NYT reveals (silly login required): 'For the last 14 months, high-tech insiders have been eating up the work of an anonymous blogger who assumed the persona of Steven P. Jobs, Apple's chief executive and one of the world's most famous businessmen. ... Meanwhile, on the other side of the country, Daniel Lyons, a senior editor at Forbes magazine who lives near Boston, has been quietly enjoying the attention.' Does Lyons worry that he will be held accountable for what some perceive as mean-sprited comments such as those about Linux 'freetards?' 'Yes,' he admits, but he's still planning on publishing the book 'Options: The Secret Life of Steve Jobs, a Parody.'
