Comment 10 years of fear reading sec lists (Score 5, Insightful) 249
No matter the OS, no matter the exploit, that name alone in the title of an email to bugtraq can send shivers down the spine.
Microsoft's Code Contribution Due To GPL Violation 508
ozmanjusri writes "While Microsoft presented its recent embrace of the GPL as 'a break from the ordinary,' and the press spoke of them as going to great lengths to engage the open source community,' as is often the case with Microsoft, it turns out they had an ulterior motive. According to Stephen Hemminger, an engineer with Vyatta, Microsoft's Hyper-V used open-source components in a network driver and the company released the code to avoid legal action over a GPL violation. Microsoft's decision to embrace the GPL was welcomed by many in the open source community, but their failure to honestly explain the reason behind the release will have squandered this opportunity to build trust, something which is sadly lacking in most people's dealings with Microsoft."
Comment GameRanger saved the day (Score 1) 70
Two things: There was little stress testing because GPG has a byzantine Internet policy, and forbids its workers from using anything but the Web at work. No holes were poked for them to test online.
Second, Scott Kevill's GameRanger quickly pulled the slack in for Demigod, and supported the game online just two days after launch. As I write this, there are around 100 people playing Demigod on GameRanger right now.
Submission + - Brendan Eich Explains ECMAScript 3.1 to Developers (sdtimes.com)
VonGuard writes: "On April 9, ECMA International produced the final draft for the first major update to JavaScript since 1999. It's called ECMAScript 3.1, but will soon be known as ECMAScript, Fifth Edition. You'll know it as JavaScript, the Next Generation. Mozilla will begin implementing these features after Firefox 3.5, and Microsoft is already showing prototypes behind closed doors. The question, however, is what this will change for JavaScript coders. To get those answers, I tracked down Brendan Eich, Mozilla's CTO and the creator of JavaScript. I transcribed the interview without any editorial since he explains, perfectly, what's changing for programmers. Long story short: Json will be safer, getters and setters will be standard, and strict mode will make things easier to debug."
Submission + - Lost Interview with Dave Arneson Surfaces (gamasutra.com)
VonGuard writes: "Though Dave Arneson, co-creator of Dungeons and Dragons, passed earlier this week, his spirit lives on in games of all shapes and sizes. Gamasutra unearthed a lost interview with Arneson, and has published the piece. It touches on the origin of the 20-sided dice, what orcs should look like, and how Dave was influencing young developers. In his final years, Dave was teaching game design at Full Sail and still running games of Blackmoor with friends."
Submission + - Objective-J Objectifies JavaScript (sdtimes.com)
VonGuard writes: "Objective-C has long been the name of the game in the Apple development world. For the last six months, however, a small startup in Silicon Valley has been trying to bring Objectivity to JavaScript. The start-up, 280 North, is hoping Web developers won't find their new programming language, Objective-J, objectionable. It's an exact replica of Apple's Objective-C, written in JavaScript, for JavaScript."
Submission + - Google Introduces Payment Plan for App Engine (sdtimes.com)
VonGuard writes: "Google App Engine has been a free platform for independent developers since it opened up. But today, Google is pushing the App Engine to be a more mature and business-ready platform. The company announced today that users can now pay to remove the quota on their usage of the App Engine. On the free side of the fence, this will, however take a bite out of performance: users of the free form of App Engine will see their resource pool shrink over the next 90 days, giving professionals more to work with on the backend. All the details are on the App Engine page. Now the real question is how will Google App Engine stack up against Amazon Web Services in the real business world."
Submission + - Snakebite Open Testing Network On The Way (sdtimes.com)
VonGuard writes: "What's the worst thing about building an open source project, particularly a cross-platform project? Having to store a whole test lab in your basement or garage. The folks behind Snakebite are fed up with keeping SPARCs, G4's and old Windows boxes for testing. Snakebite is an open network, designed to give open source projects access to all manner of platforms, compilers, and operating systems. The project has yet to launch, but it's on its way and should be ready soon. As the folks behind the project have said: Why develop open source software on closed source networks?"
Submission + - Plug-in Architecture On the Way for GCC (sdtimes.com)
VonGuard writes: "This year marks the 25th anniversary of the GNU Operating System. A major part of that system has always been the GNU Compiler Collection. This year, some of the earliest bits of GCC also turn 25, and yet some of the collection's most interesting years of growth may still be ahead. The GCC team announced today that the long-standing discussion over how to allow plug-ins to be written for GCC has been settled. The FSF and the GCC team have decided to apply the GPL to plug-ins. That means all that's left is to build a framework for plug-ins; no small task to be sure. But building this framework should make it easier for people to contribute to the GCC project, and some universities are already working on building windows into the compilation process, with the intent of releasing plug-ins."
Submission + - Web Testing Framework Windmill 1.0 Almost Done (sdtimes.com)
VonGuard writes: "I just wrote up an interview I conducted with Michael Rogers and Adam Christian, two of the core developers behind Windmill. They're getting close to finishing up version 1.0 of this open source Web testing framework. For those of you familiar with Selenium, Windmill is quite similar, with some definite differences. For one thing, it's easier to debug applications using Windmill, and tests can be written in JavaScript, Python and C. But Rogers and Christian seem even more enthusiastic about the fact they their team is easily available for questions either through email or on IRC, something they said is lacking on the Selenium project. Rogers was hired earlier this year to work on Windmill full time for Mozilla."
Submission + - Huge corporate Vista deployment
daria42 writes: Most corporations are shunning Windows Vista so far until service pack 1 is released, but the Australian Customs Service will shortly rollout the new operating system to more than five thousand desktops all around Australia.
Submission + - MacResearch Introduces OpenMacGrid
Drew McCormack writes: "MacResearch.org has just introduced OpenMacGrid. It is a distributed computing grid similar to SETI@home, but unlike other networks, it is built up entirely of Macs utilizing Xgrid, and access is unrestricted — anyone with Mac OS X 10.4 can donate cycles, and any scientist with a reasonable project can burn cycles."
Submission + - Geo-engineering to fend off climate change
moon_monkey writes: While cutting greenhouse gases might be the best way to halt climate change, it's reassuring to know some scientists are already thinking about ways to combat fend off runaway warming if this doesn't work. NewScientistSpace has an interesting blog post about some pretty crazy-sounding ways for combating climate change. These include pumping sulfur into the atmosphere, sending thousands of tiny mirrors into orbit and even painting all our roads white to reflect the Sun's rays. Could this be the next X-prize?
Submission + - Interview with Sullo the Author of Nikto
http://www.cgisecurity.com writes: "I've just posted an interview with the author of the popular open source web application security assessment tool nikto. I spoke with Chris Sullo about the current state of the project, future, and other things on his mind involving the application security space."
Mars Camera's Worsening Eye Problems 93
Mr_Foo writes "According to a Nature article, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's HiRISE imager is suffering from a loss of peripheral vision. The problem surfaced less than a month after the orbiter reached Mars. One the camera's four color detectors has completely stopped working, and it is feared that the problems are spreading. Currently seven of the fourteen HiRISE's detectors are sending back corrupted data and although the issue is only creating a 2% loss of signal at this time it is expected to worsen. The lead investigator for the mission is quoted as saying the problem is systemic: 'In the broken detectors, extra peaks and troughs are somehow being introduced, causing... a "ringing" in the signal. "We don't know where the ringing is coming from," [the investigator] says.' Warming the electronics before taking images seems to help the problem. This effect might be one reason why the detectors on the cold periphery of the array were the first to pack up."
