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Security

Submission + - d0z.me: The Evil URL Shortener (spareclockcycles.org)

Submitted by supernothing
supernothing writes: DDoS attacks seem to be in vogue today, especially considering the skirmishes over Wikileaks in the past few weeks. The size of a DDoS attacks, however, has historically been limited by how many computers one has managed to recruit into a botnet. These botnets almost universally require code to be executed on the participants' local systems, whether they be willing or unwilling. A new approach has been emerging recently, however, which uses some simple Javascript to achieve similar ends. d0z.me is a new service that utilizes these techniques, but provides a unique twist on the idea. Posing as a legitimate URL shortening service, it serves users the requested pages in an iframe, while simultaneously participating in a DDoS attack in the background. No interaction is required beyond clicking the link and staying on the page. This makes it relatively trivial to quickly mount large scale DDoS attacks, and affords willing participants plausible deniability in the assault. Full writeup here.
Education

Is Going To an Elite College Worth the Cost? 391

Posted by timothy from the drag-out-the-causation-correlator dept.
Pickens writes "Jacques Steinberg writes in the NY Times that the sluggish economy and rising costs of college have only intensified questions about whether expensive, prestigious colleges make any difference. Researchers say that alumni of the most selective colleges earn, on average, 40 percent more a year than those who graduated from the least selective public universities, as calculated 10 years after they graduated from and found that 'attendance at an elite private college significantly increases the probability of attending graduate school, and more specifically graduate school at a major research university.' But other researchers say the extent to which one takes advantage of the educational offerings of an institution may be more important, in the long run, than how prominently and proudly that institution's name is being displayed on the back windows of cars in the nation's wealthiest enclaves."
Government

Cablegate, the Game 90

Posted by timothy from the just-a-hopeless-semantic dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Cablegate: The Game is a game where players can read, tag and summarize the recently released US Embassy Cables. Points are awarded for finding the most tags in a cable." I wish this game were extended to more news sources generally — automated scans are nice, but can't (yet) make all the connections humans can.
Censorship

UK Gov't Wants To Block Internet Porn By Default 642

Posted by timothy from the get-naked-for-the-cctv-instead dept.
airfoobar writes "Yet another country wants to 'protect the children' by blocking all internet porn — not just child porn, all porn. The British gov will talk with ISPs next month to ask them to make porn blocking mandatory (and they appear more than happy to comply). As an effect, adults who want to access pornography through their internet connections will have to 'opt in.' Their rationale is that if ISPs have managed to block all child porn, they'll also be able to block all other porn as well."
Censorship

Amazon Taking Down Erotica, Removing From Kindles 641

Posted by kdawson from the slippery-cliff dept.
ctmurray writes "The independent writers who publish on Amazon report that erotica books containing incest are being taken down with no explanation by Amazon, and removed from the Kindles of purchasers of the books. Author Selena Kitt writes: 'I want to be clear that while the subject of incest may not appeal to some, there is no underage contact in any of my work, and I make that either explicitly clear in all my stories or I state it up front in the book's disclaimer. I don't condone or support actual incest, just as someone who writes mysteries about serial killers wouldn't condone killing. What I write is fiction.' Kindle's own TV ad features a book with a story line of sex between a 19-year-old and his stepmother, defined in some states as incest (Sleepwalking by Amy Bloom)."
Businesses

Humble Bundle 2 Is Live 217

Posted by kdawson from the now-how-much-would-you-pay dept.
Dayofswords writes "The first Humble Bundle was a monster success, with over 100,000 people donating over $1 million in total to support the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Child's Play, and of course the developers behind the games. The second bundle is now live (bundle site), containing five great games: Braid, Cortex Command, Machinarium, Osmos, and Revenge of the Titans. Each game is DRM-free, the games work on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux, and you pay what you want and decide where your money goes."
Privacy

A Nude Awakening — the TSA and Privacy 728

Posted by Soulskill from the keep-it-above-the-waist dept.
DIplomatic writes "The Oklahoma Daily has a well-written editorial about the current state of airport security. Though the subject has overly-commented on, this article is well worth the read. Quoting: 'The risk of a terrorist attack is so infinitesimal and its impact so relatively insignificant that it doesn't make rational sense to accept the suspension of liberty for the sake of avoiding a statistical anomaly. There's no purpose in security if it debases the very life it intends to protect, yet the forced choice one has to make between privacy and travel does just that. If you want to travel, you have a choice between low-tech fondling or high-tech pornography; the choice, therefore, to relegate your fundamental rights in exchange for a plane ticket. Not only does this paradigm presume that one's right to privacy is variable contingent on the government's discretion and only respected in places that the government doesn't care to look — but it also ignores that the fundamental right to travel has consistently been upheld by the Supreme Court. If we have both the right to privacy and the right to travel, then TSA's newest procedures cannot conceivably be considered legal. The TSA's regulations blatantly compromise the former at the expense of the latter, and as time goes on we will soon forget what it meant to have those rights.'"
Earth

Submission + - Discovery Triples Total Number of Stars in Univers (keckobservatory.org)

Submitted by suraj.sun
suraj.sun writes: Astronomers have discovered that small, dim stars known as red dwarfs are much more prolific than previously thought—so much so that the total number of stars in the universe is likely three times bigger than realized.

When astronomers used powerful instruments on the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii to detect the faint signature of red dwarfs in eight massive, relatively nearby galaxies called elliptical galaxies, which are located between about 50 million and 300 million light years away, they discovered that the red dwarfs, which are only between 10 and 20 percent as massive as the Sun, were much more bountiful than expected.

“This important study, which uses information at the red end of the optical spectrum, was aided by advances in detector technology that have been implemented at Keck,” said Keck Observatory Director Taft Armandroff.

“No one knew how many of these stars there were,” said Pieter van Dokkum, a Yale University astronomer who led the research, which is described in Nature’s Dec.1 Advanced Online Publication.

The team discovered that there are about 20 times more red dwarfs in elliptical galaxies than in the Milky Way, said Charlie Conroy of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, who was also involved in the research.

Keck Observatory : http://keckobservatory.org/news/discovery_triples_total_number_of_stars_in_universe/

Submission + - Ask slashdot: Linux replacement for Apple TV

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: My wife wants an Apple TV. I'm not sure I do. Is there a good Linux replacement? Alternatively, if she insists on the Apple TV, is there a good way to put an X server and a Windows RDP client on it?
It's funny. Laugh.

Tofu Activists Spoof Meat-Based Indie Game 420

Posted by Soulskill from the have-a-burger-to-celebrate dept.
Faulkner39 writes "In response to the recently released independently developed platformer Super Meat Boy, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has released a Flash-based spoof game titled Super Tofu Boy. The spoof attempts to mirror the original by featuring a protagonist made of tofu and an antagonist made of meat in a statement promoting animal rights. Ironically, however, the original game is about a human boy who is vulnerable because he lacks skin (Meat Boy), raising the question: 'is the spoof in reality really about cannibalism?'" The Super Meat Boy team posted a response on their Twitter feed.
Earth

Using Cinnamon In the Production of Nanoparticles 126

Posted by samzenpus from the what-about-the-brown-sugar? dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Scientists at the University of Missouri used cinnamon to replace almost all toxic chemicals needed for making gold nanoparticles used in electronics and healthcare products. Nanoparticle production requires the use of extremely dangerous and toxic chemicals. While the nanotechnology industry is expected to produce large quantities of useful nanoparticles in the near future, the entire production process could be detrimental to the environment."
Censorship

Submission + - DNS-Attack on wikileaks.org?

Submitted by xophos
xophos writes: wikileaks.org at the moment resolves to 184.72.37.90 instead of the correct 88.80.13.160 .
Is this a problem with my local isp or an attack?
Space

Submission + - NASA Sets Extraterrestrial Search Update (cbsnews.com)

Submitted by Arvisp
Arvisp writes: A seemingly routine press release issued by NASA is causing a serious stir in the blogosphere today with no small amount of hyperventilation about the possibility that scientists may have something to say about the discovery of extraterrestrial life.
A press conference, which will be streamed on NASA TV, is set for Thursday at 2 p.m. EST (1900 GMT) at the agency's headquarters in Washington, D.C. According to NASA, the event will discuss "an astrobiology finding that will impact the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life. Astrobiology is the study of the origin, evolution, distribution and future of life in the universe."
NASA has also brought together a geologist, an oceanographer, a biologist, and an ecologist for a panel discussion at the press conference. That's got peoples' imaginations running wild.

Submission + - Torrent Users Fight Back (techspot.com)

Submitted by eonlabs
eonlabs writes: Torrent users being blamed for illegally downloading Farcry are fighting back. In a 96 page lawsuit, the lawyers at Dunlap, Grubb, and Weaver are being accused of 'extortion, fraudulent omissions, mail fraud, wire fraud, computer fraud and abuse, racketeering, fraud upon the court, abuse of process, fraud on the Copyright Office, copyright misuse, unjust enrichment, and consumer protection violations.'

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