Comment IRS Uses Open Source Products (Score 2) 356
IRS internally uses JBoss and Tomcat, both open-source Java application servers. They also use PrimeFaces and the Spring Framework.
Submission + - Ruby on Rails SQL Injection Flaw has Serious Real-Life Consequences
vikingpower writes: "As a previous Slashdot story already reported, Ruby on Rails was recently reported to suffer from a major SQL injection flaw. This has prompted the Dutch government to take the one and only national site for citizens' digital identification offline ( link in Dutch ), here is the English-language placeholder page for the now-offline site. This means that 16 million Dutch citizens can not authenticate themselves anymore with government instances, and that those same government instances can not communicate anything to those same citizens anymore."
Submission + - The Tech Behind Football's Yellow First Down Line (itworld.com)
jfruh writes: "People who like watching American football on TV have come to take a great technological development for granted: they can see on TV a yellow line that indicates how far the offensive team needs to move the ball to get a first down. The line, which has been used on most football broadcasts for more than a decade, is actually something of a technical marvel, with a lot of work going into creating something that's not flashy or obtrusive but enhances the game-watching experience. Even those bored by sports can appreciate the science behind it."
Comment Re:Just buy insurance...it's honestly that simple. (Score 1) 468
If I had mod points, I'd bump your OP up. I have been self-employed in the IT industry for 30 years and have always paid for health insurance for me and my family. Yep, the premiums go up every year, but what other product besides electronics doesn't?
Comment There's a Significant Stereoblind Population (Score 4, Informative) 457
About two to 12 percent of the population can't see 3D, and I'm one of them. That's why we will probably never spend the extra money for a 3D TV.
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.
