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The Military

Submission + - Mechanic's Mistake Trashes $244 Million Aircraft 1

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "DefenseTech reports that accident report is finally out for the Air Force E-8C Joint Surveillance Targeting and Attack Radar System (JSTARS) on a mission to track down insurgents planting roadside bombs in Iraq or Afghanistan that started refueling with a KC-135 on on March 13, 2009 when thecrew hear a “loud bang throughout the midsection of the aircraft” and vapor and fuel started pouring out of the JSTARS out of “at least two holes in the left wing just inboard of the number two engine.” The pilot immediately brought the jet back to its base in Qata where mechanics found that the number two main fuel tank has been ruptured, “causing extensive damage to the wing of the aircraft.” How extensive? $25 million dollars worth of extensive. What caused this potentially fatal and incredibly expensive accident to one of the United States’ biggest spy planes? According to the USAF accident report, a contractor accidentally left a plug in one of the fuel tank’s relief vents (PDF) during routine maintenance. “The PDM subcontractor employed ineffective tool control measures,” reads the report. Tool control measures? "You know, the absolutely basic practice of accounting for the exact location of every tool that is used to work on an airplane once that work is finished." Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz just told Congress that "there is a JSTARS platform that was damaged beyond economical repair that we will not repair" so if this is the one Schwartz is talking about, then one mechanic's mistake has damaged a $244 Million aircraft beyond repair."
Security

Submission + - New Weapon Against Copper Thieves 1

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Pervasive thefts of copper wire from under the streets of Fresno, California have prompted the city to seal thousands of its manhole covers with concrete and in Picher, Oklahoma, someone felled the town’s utility poles with chain saws, allowing thieves to abscond with 3,000 feet of wire while causing a blackout as the theft of copper cables in costs US companies $60 million a year and the FBI says it considers theft of copper wire to be a threat to the nation’s baseline ability to function. But now PC World reports that a US company has developed develop a new cable design that removes almost all the copper from cables in a bid to deter metal thieves. Unlike conventional cables made from solid copper, the GroundSmart Copper Clad Steel Cable consists of a steel core bonded to a copper outer casing, forming an equally effective but far less valuable cable by exploiting the corrosion-resistance of copper with the conductive properties of steel. "Companies trying to protect their copper infrastructure have been going to extreme measures to deter theft, many of which are neither successful nor cost effective," says CommScope vice president, Doug Wells. "Despite efforts like these, thieves continue to steal copper because of its rising value. The result is costly damage to networks and growing service disruptions." The GroundSmart Copper Clad Steel cable is the latest technical solution to the problem of copper theft which has included alternatives like cable etching to aid tracing of stolen metal and using chemicals that leave stains detectable under ultra-violet light. However the Copper Clad Steel strikes at the root of the problem by making the cable less susceptible to theft by both increasing the resistance to cutting and drastically decreasing the scrap value."
Software

Submission + - Fostering a "just fix it" software development cul (sail2software.com)

Submitted by lscotte
lscotte writes: During my career in software development I've encountered many different corporate cultures. A common one is what I like to call a "culture of blame". In blame cultures, everything revolves around finding someone else to blame. When a project is late, product managers blame developers. When there are bugs, developers blame QA. When tests fail, QA blames development. When there are production problems, operations blames developers. When QA can't get test environments to work, QA blames operations. When software is pushed before it's ready, developers blame product managers. It's all about plausible deniability and a "circle of blame".

A much more productive choice is what I call it the "just fix it" culture, and you can read what that means to me here
DRM

Submission + - Microsoft Taking Aggresive Steps Against Linux on (softwarefreedom.org) 2

Submitted by Microlith
Microlith writes: Microsoft has updated their WHQL certification requirements for Windows 8, and placed specific restrictions on ARM platforms that will make it impossible to install non-Microsoft operating systems on ARM devices, and make it impossible to turn off or customize such security.

Choice quotes from the certification include from page 116, section 20: "On an ARM system, it is forbidden to enable Custom Mode. Only Standard Mode may be enable." which prevents users from customizing their security, and in section 21: "Disabling Secure MUST NOT be possible on ARM systems" to prevent you from booting any other OSes.
Blackberry

Submission + - Leaked Memo Says Apple Provides Backdoor to Govern 2

Submitted by Voline
Voline writes: In a tweet early this morning, cybersecurity researcher Christopher Soghoian pointed to an internal memo of India's Military Intelligence that has been liberated by hackers and posted on the Net. The memo suggests that, "in exchange for the Indian market presence" mobile device manufacturers, including RIM, Nokia, and Apple (collectively defined in the document as "RINOA") have agreed to provide backdoor access on their devices.

The Indian government then "utilized backdoors provided by RINOA" to intercept internal emails of the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission, a US government body with a mandate to monitor, investigate and report to Congress on "the national security implications of the bilateral trade and economic relationship" between the US and China. Manan Kakkar, an Indian blogger for ZDNet, has also picked up the story and writes that it may be the fruits of an earlier hack of Symantec.

If Apple is providing governments with a backdoor to iOS, can we assume that they have also done so with Mac OS X?
Google

Submission + - Google TV reborn: ARM support, new OEMs, and more

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: For some time the future of Google TV was looking pretty grim. Logitech's Revue failed miserably, and Sony seemed like the only supporter of Google TV when the 3.1 update came out in October. With competitors like Roku making waves everywhere, the ever louder drum of rumors surrounding an Apple TV, and every TV manufacturer out there trying to figure out how Smart TVs will keep them relevant, Google needed to make a big play to keep their service in the game. More hardware, less expensive, and faster distribution are necessary in order for the platform to survive.
Space

Submission + - DARPA Chooses Leader for 100-Year Starship Project

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "With Nasa scaling back its manned space programs, the idea of a manned trip to the stars may sound audacious, but the 100 Year Starship (100YSS) study is an effort seeded by DARPA to develop a viable and sustainable model for persistent, long-term, private-sector investment into the myriad of disciplines needed to make long-distance space travel practicable and feasible. The goal is not to have the government fund the actual building of spacecraft destined for the stars, but rather to create a foundation that can last 100 years in order to help foster the research needed for interstellar travel. Now DARPA has provided $500,000 in seed money to help jumpstart the effort and chosen Mae Jemison, the first African-American woman to go into space, to lead 100YSS. Jemison, who is also a physician and engineer, left NASA in 1993 after a six-year stint in which she served as science mission specialist aboard space shuttle Endeavour, becoming the first black woman to fly in space. Since leaving the space agency, she has been involved in education and outreach efforts and technology development. Rounding out her resume, Jemison also served as a medical aofficer for the Peace Corps in Sierra Leone and Liberia, is a professionally trained dancer, speaks Russian, Swahili and Japanese, and was the first real astronaut to make a cameo in an episode of "Star Trek: The Next Generation." Jemison won the contract with her proposal titled "An Inclusive Audacious Journey Transforms Life Here on Earth & Beyond.""
Facebook

Submission + - My Facebook hack (computerworld.com)

Submitted by Lucas123
Lucas123 writes: My holiday sugar stupor was interrupted one morning last week by a series of phone calls from friends telling me they'd been contacted via a Facebook chat session in which they were told my wife and I had been mugged in the U.K. while on vacation and needed money to get home. I ran to my computer to find a half-dozen chat sessions open using my Facebook profile all requesting help in the form of money from my friends via a Western Union tranfer. As I frantically tried to tell each friend it was a phishing scam, the hacker would open a new session and begin the scam on another friend. It became a bit like Whac-A-Mole. I quickly changed my password and logged out, stopping the attack. And, thankfully, my friends are tech savvy. But I was still shaken up by the fact that someone had hacked my password and was passing themselves off as me in real time. According to Facebook, while these attacks are rare, when they happen they're "high impact."

Submission + - Court OKs Barring High IQs for Cops (go.com) 3

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: "A man whose bid to become a police officer was rejected after he scored too high on an intelligence test has lost an appeal in his federal lawsuit against the city.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York upheld a lower court’s decision that the city did not discriminate against Robert Jordan because the same standards were applied to everyone who took the test.

“This kind of puts an official face on discrimination in America against people of a certain class,” Jordan said today from his Waterford home. “I maintain you have no more control over your basic intelligence than your eye color or your gender or anything else.” "
Privacy

Submission + - Judge Doesn't Care About Supreme Court GPS Case (forbes.com) 1

Submitted by nonprofiteer
nonprofiteer writes: The Supreme Court is currently deciding whether or not law enforcement need a warrant before they put a GPS tracker on a person's car — http://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/united-states-v-jones/. A judge in St. Louis doesn't seem to care about that, tho. He ruled last week that the FBI didn't need a warrant to track the car of a state employee they suspected was collecting a paycheck without actually going to work. (Their suspicions were confirmed.) While in favor of corrupt government employees being caught, it's a bit disturbing that a federal judge would decide a warrant wasn't needed while the Supreme Court has said the issue is unclear.
Facebook

Submission + - Extremely Viral Facebook Clickjacking Scam (net-security.org)

Submitted by Orome1
Orome1 writes: A new and extremely viral clickjacking scam has been spotted targeting curious Facebook users. It hooks them with links to titillating, disgusting or "amazing" videos that their friends apparently "liked", but once they click on the link, they are redirected to a splash page where they are asked to jump through some hoops in order to watch the video. Unfortunately, their clicks are hijacked to "like" the video without their knowledge and to post the same bait message on their own Walls, while they are redirected to a page seemingly containing that and other interesting videos. Will Facebook users ever learn?
Android

Submission + - Transformer Prime to get ICS January 12, boot unlo (facebook.com)

Submitted by symbolset
symbolset writes: The maker of the wildly popular Transformer Prime Tegra 3 tablet Asus announces via their Facebook page that Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) will be available January 12th. In addition they are developing a boot unlocker which will void the warranty and break Google movie rentals, but will allow modding.

There's also announced an intermediate software update to improve the camera and touch experience, and they're dropping GPS from the feature list for poor performance.
Programming

Submission + - 10 Programming Languages That Could Shake Up IT (infoworld.com)

Submitted by
snydeq
snydeq writes: "InfoWorld's Neil McAllister takes a look at 10 cutting-edge programming languages, 'each of which approaches the art of software development from a fresh perspective, tackling a specific problem or a unique shortcoming of today's more popular languages. Some are mature projects, while others are in the early stages of development. Some are likely to remain obscure, but any one of them could become the breakthrough tool that changes programming for years to come — at least, until the next batch of new languages arrives.'"
Microsoft

Submission + - Average .NET developer salary in U.S.: $92,000 (visualstudiomagazine.com) 1

Submitted by msmoriarty
msmoriarty writes: Visual Studio Magazine just conducted its first annual salary survey, and according to the results, the average developer focused on Microsoft technologies in the U.S. earns $92,000. 59 percent of those surveyed said their salary rose in 2011. The charts on this page show the average salary by job title, male v. female, and education level, while on the bottom of this page a chart breaks out the average salary by major metropolitan areas.

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