Comment Re:FDC Servers (Score 1) 375
I've used ServerAxis for the last couple of years and everything's been great, so I'm not sure why you have them on your "black list".
Comment Slanted Summary (Big Surprise) (Score 1, Interesting) 417
Pretty slanted summary. By "identity service", I interpret Schmidt as meaning that they prefer people use their own real identity because that makes it a better service for users. As we see on Slashdot, comments posted by anonymous cowards are only occasionally worth much.
And the "bait" comment is completely fabricated.
Submission + - Awesome death spiral of a bizarre star | Bad Astro (discovermagazine.com)
jamie writes: "Astronomy | I sometimes think I've seen everything there is in the sky, with nothing new left to see.Then I get a rude — but welcome — wake-up call.Check. This. Out."
Submission + - Lizard Evolves to Life Birth (nationalgeographic.com)
Csiko writes: Evolution has been caught in the act: a species of Australian lizard is abandoning egg-laying in favor of live birth.
Submission + - Flash Player as a spy system (h-online.com)
suraj.sun writes: If a forged certificate is accepted when accessing the Flash Player's Settings Manager, which is available exclusively online, attackers can potentially manipulate the player's website privacy settings. This allows a web page to access a computer's web cams and microphones and remotely turn the computer into a covert listening device or surveillance camera.
At the "Meta Rhein Main Chaos Days 111b" (German language link), Fraunhofer SIT employee Alexander Klink presentedPDF a scenario in which he used a man-in-the-middle attack (MiTM) to intercept the communication with Adobe's Settings Manager. The Settings Manager itself is a simple Flash applet, and the Adobe pages load it into the browser as an SWF file via HTTPS – a fixed link to it is encoded into the browser.
However, the MiTM attack allows attackers to inject a specially crafted applet which, to put it simply, manipulates the Flash cookies (Local Shared Objects, LSOs) on the victim's computer in such a way that the computer's web cam and microphone become accessible to arbitrary domains – by default, no domain has access to these components. This, in turn, allows images and audio to be transmitted to the attacker's server via RTMP streaming.
H-online: http://www.h-online.com/security/news/item/Flash-Player-as-a-spy-system-1073161.html
At the "Meta Rhein Main Chaos Days 111b" (German language link), Fraunhofer SIT employee Alexander Klink presentedPDF a scenario in which he used a man-in-the-middle attack (MiTM) to intercept the communication with Adobe's Settings Manager. The Settings Manager itself is a simple Flash applet, and the Adobe pages load it into the browser as an SWF file via HTTPS – a fixed link to it is encoded into the browser.
However, the MiTM attack allows attackers to inject a specially crafted applet which, to put it simply, manipulates the Flash cookies (Local Shared Objects, LSOs) on the victim's computer in such a way that the computer's web cam and microphone become accessible to arbitrary domains – by default, no domain has access to these components. This, in turn, allows images and audio to be transmitted to the attacker's server via RTMP streaming.
H-online: http://www.h-online.com/security/news/item/Flash-Player-as-a-spy-system-1073161.html
Comment Re:Limited problems (Score 1) 234
I'm using Tbird 3.0.6 on OS X Snow Leopard and haven't seen any problems. All POP3.
Submission + - 40+Flights By 2014 for the US Spaceflight Industry (spacefellowship.com)
Matt_dk writes: "Norm Augustine, chair of the White House's blue-ribbon panel reviewing the space program, recently stated, "NASA ought to be exploring outer space and doing new things, and turning over the transportation of weight and people, goods and people, to low Earth orbit ... [as] a commercial endeavor, in our view." Indeed, the U.S. commercial orbital spaceflight industry is already entrusted to launch multi-billion-dollar satellites for the national security sector, as well as one-of-a-kind scientific missions for NASA."
The Geek Atlas 145
brothke writes "A recent search on Amazon for travel guides returned over 30,000 results. Most of these are standard travel guides to popular tourist destinations which advise the reader to go to the typical tourist sites. The Geek Atlas: 128 Places Where Science and Technology Come Alive is a radically different travel guide. Rather than recommending the usual trite destinations, which are often glorified souvenir stores, the book takes the reader to places that make science real and exciting, and hopefully those who exit such places are more knowledgeable than when they went in." Read on for the rest of Ben's review.
Submission + - Staying afloat in a sea of iPhone apps (computerworld.com.au)
Burnsy writes: During all the hype of Apple celebrating its 1.5 billion iPhone App Store downloads, some good advice on how to be successful and stand out in the App Store came out. One story describes how developers are increasingly coming up with various strategies to make a splash, employing everything from temporary discounts to guerilla marketing tactics. On the other hand, some successful developers, such as the creator of the Flight Control app, which has been the number one selling app in 20 countries, talk about the pitfalls of Apple's approval process for the App Store. They say it can take a developer up to three months to get an application approved and distributed on the App Store and that maybe the iPhone bubble is soon to burst.
Submission + - Revising History To Fit The Bible 2
macs4all writes: Not content to mold science class to foment its agenda, this article reports that those ka-ray-zee "educators" in Texas are proposing "revamping the K-12 curriculum to emphasize the roles of the Bible, the Christian faith and the civic virtue of religion in the study of American history. Two of them want to remove or de-emphasize references to several historical figures who have become liberal icons, such as César Chávez and Thurgood Marshall."
Of course, reasoned heads on the Texas Board of "Education" will surely prevail. Those members, hand-picked for their "enlightened" views are exemplified by Board member David Barton, founder of WallBuilders, a group that promotes America's Christian heritage; and Rev. Marshall, who preaches that Watergate, the Vietnam War and Hurricane Katrina were God's judgments on the nation's sexual immorality.
The conservative reviewers say they believe that children must learn that America's founding principles are biblical. For instance, they say the separation of powers set forth in the Constitution stems from a scriptural understanding of man's fall and inherent sinfulness, or "radical depravity," which means he can be governed only by an intricate system of checks and balances.
Of course, reasoned heads on the Texas Board of "Education" will surely prevail. Those members, hand-picked for their "enlightened" views are exemplified by Board member David Barton, founder of WallBuilders, a group that promotes America's Christian heritage; and Rev. Marshall, who preaches that Watergate, the Vietnam War and Hurricane Katrina were God's judgments on the nation's sexual immorality.
The conservative reviewers say they believe that children must learn that America's founding principles are biblical. For instance, they say the separation of powers set forth in the Constitution stems from a scriptural understanding of man's fall and inherent sinfulness, or "radical depravity," which means he can be governed only by an intricate system of checks and balances.
Submission + - Marijuana smoke damages DNA (examiner.com) 8
mmmscience writes: http://www.examiner.com/x-1242-Science-News-Examiner~y2009m6d17-Marijuana-smoke-damages-DNA The campaign to legalize marijuana has a new obstacle to overcome. Researchers from the UK and Sweden have discovered that smoking the cannabis plant causes DNA damage that could potentially lead to cancer. Because cannabis is less combustible than tobacco, the report states that it has 50% more carcinogenic polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. And what's more, there is the added danger of smoking technique: marijuana smokers inhale more deeply, meaning 3-4 cannabis cigarettes a day is equivalent to 20 tobacco cigarettes.
Submission + - SPAM: Kindle Pricing, Business Models and Source Code
narramissic writes: "A trifecta of Kindle-related news surfaced this week, with Jeff Bezos speaking at Wired's 'Disruptive by Design' conference on topics including Kindle pricing and business models. And yesterday, reports blogger Peter Smith, 'there was a flurry of blogging activity yesterday stating that Amazon had released the Kindle source code. Once everyone caught their breath, it became apparent that the files in question were just some open source libraries that Amazon had modified (they're being good open source citizens and releasing mods they've made to open source code — good for them!), not the complete source code.' Now, back to the Kindle pricing: According to a post at Wired, Bezos said Amazon opted to sell the Kindle for 'something akin to the actual cost for hardware,' rather than subsidizing the hardware costs and requiring a monthly subscription or requiring the buyer to purchase a certain number of books per month because 'fees and minimum purchase requirements create friction.' Smith has a different take: 'If I'm buying a Kindle from Amazon that enables me to buy books from Amazon, I'm broadcasting a desire to buy Kindle books. I would welcome some subsidization of the hardware since I'm going to be buying content anyway. No, I really think Amazon priced the Kindle the way they did because they thought they could get away with doing so (and they were right, it would seem).' Meanwhile, over at the New York Times, Bezos said 'that he sees Kindle-the-device and Kindle-the-book-format as two separate business models, and that the Kindle iPhone App won't be the last software reader to appear.'"
Link to Original Source
Link to Original Source
Microsoft To Open Retail Stores 535
chaz373 writes "CNET reports that Microsoft is going retail. In the 'Beyond Binary' blog Ina Fried reports, 'After years of brushing off the notion, Microsoft said on Thursday that it will open up its own line of retail stores. Without detailing the plans, Microsoft said it has hired David Porter, a 25-year Wal-Mart veteran, to lead the effort. Sources say that Porter's mission will be to develop the company's retail plans and that the effort is likely to start small with just a few locations.'"
Submission + - Does Active SETI Put Earth in Danger? 3
Ponca City, We Love You writes: "There is an interesting story in Seed Magazine on active SETI — sending out signals to try to contact other civilizations in nearby star systems. Alexander Zaitsev, Chief Scientist at the Russian Academy of Sciences' Institute of Radio Engineering and Electronics, has access to one of the most powerful radio transmitters on Earth and has already sent several messages to nearby, sun-like stars. But some scientists think that Zaitsev is not only acting out of turn by independently speaking for everyone on the entire planet but believe there are possible dangers we may unleash by announcing ourselves to the unknown darkness. "We're talking about initiating communication with other civilizations, but we know nothing of their goals, capabilities, or intent," says SETI researcher John Billingham. This ground has been explored before in countless works of science fiction most notably "The Killing Star," a 1995 novel that paints a frightening picture of interstellar civilizations exterminating their neighbors with relativistic bombardments, not from malice, but simply because it is the most logical action. Billingham urges a broad, interdisciplinary discussion of Active SETI. "At the very least we ought to talk about it first, and not just SETI people. We have a responsibility to the future well-being and survival of humankind.""
