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Submission Summary: 0 pending, 115 declined, 36 accepted (151 total, 23.84% accepted)

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Idle

Submission + - MythBusters Mishap Sends Cannonball Through House (sfgate.com)

Submitted by
ewhac
ewhac writes: "The San Francisco Chronicle is reporting that the MythBusters accidentally sent a cannon ball hurtling in to Dublin this afternoon, punching through a home, bouncing across a six-lane road, and ultimately coming to a rest inside a now-demolished Toyota minivan. Amazingly, there were no injuries. The ball was fired from a home-made cannon at the Alameda County Sheriff's Department bomb range, and was intended to strike a water target. Instead the ball missed the water, punched through a cinder-block wall, and skipped off the hill behind. Prior to today, the MythBusters had been shooting episodes at the bomb range for over seven years without major incident. It is not clear whether Savage/Hyneman or Belleci/Imahara/Byron were conducting the experiment."

Submission + - xkcd Creator Randall Munroe Nominated for Hugo (thehugoawards.org)

Submitted by
ewhac
ewhac writes: "Easter Sunday saw the release of the nominations for the 2011 Hugo Awards. Among the many distinguished names was Randall Munroe, creator of xkcd, nominated for the 2011 award for Best Fan Artist. The 2011 Hugos will be presented at WorldCon 2011 in Reno in August this year. (Be sure to fill out and return your ballot!)"
Security

Submission + - Facebook App Exposes Abject Insecurity (facebook.com) 1

Submitted by
ewhac
ewhac writes: "Back in June, the American Civil Liberties Union published an article describing Facebook's complete lack of meaningful security on your and your friends' information. The article went virtually unnoticed. Now, a developer has written a Facebook "Quiz" based on the original article that graphically illustrates all the information a Facebook app can get its grubby little hands on by recursively sweeping through your friends list, pulling all their info and posts, and showing it to you. What's more, apps can get at your information even if you never run the app yourself. Facebook apps run with the access privileges of the user running it, so anything your friend can see, the app they're running can see, too. It is unclear whether the developer of the Facebook app did so "officially" for the ACLU."
The Courts

Submission + - Fry's Exec Arrested for Embezzling $65M (sfgate.com)

Submitted by
ewhac
ewhac writes: "The vice president of mechandising and operations for Fry's Electronics, Ausaf Umar Siddiqui, was arrested last Friday on charges of embezzlement to the tune of at least $65 million. Sales representatives are normally independent contractors, to preserve impartiality during negotiations. According to IRS allegations, Siddiqui convinced Fry's management he should be sole sales representative. He then struck side deals with major vendors (not named in the complaint) starting in 2005 where, in exchange for placing large orders and keeping their products on the shelves, the vendors would pay enormous kickbacks to a shell corporation set up by Siddiqui, called PC International. Siddiqui used the money to lead an extravagant lifestyle, racking up nearly $18 million in casino gambling losses. He is currently held on $300,000 bond."
Music

Submission + - Vandal Destroys Scenemusic.net (scenemusic.net)

Submitted by
ewhac
ewhac writes: "Scenemusic.net, a/k/a Nectarine.fr, a site continuously streaming demoscene-related music for over eight years, was destroyed today by an online vandal. Scenemusic.net's collection was one of the most comprehensive on the net, with tunes going back over 20 years to the Commodore-64 days. Still recovering from a similar attack barely a month ago, Scenemusic.net had been reassembled and was staggering back to its feet when today's attack maliciously and completely destroyed the database. Left without a usable backup, the site's administrator Christophe has sadly decided to throw in the towel, and has recommended to PayPal subscribers helping to defray bandwidth costs to cancel their subscriptions.

Editorial Remarks: We may idly speculate about Christophe's security and administrative acumen, but this remains a sad loss for the net, not merely for the destroyed resource, but for the ever-decreasing ability for hobbyists and enthusiasts to operate an Internet presence without being completely overrun by anonymous, and in many cases automated, sociopaths."
Wireless Networking

Submission + - Diagnosing WiFi Dropouts

Submitted by
ewhac
ewhac writes: "A rather important user on my home wireless network — my sweetie — regularly experiences drop-outs on the network lasting from a few seconds to three minutes, which cause timeouts and are nearly fatal to her computer usage. Before I blame the problem on her machine, I would like to conclusively prove or disprove the culpability of the wireless network environment. What diagnostic tools are available? Are there ways of measuring the resilience of a WiFi interface to noise/interference? Assuming it's neighbors with competing WAPs, how can I measure the degree of interference they may be causing? How can I correlate RF noise with a network hang?

More detail: My sweetie extensively surfs the net from a Win-XP laptop (and before you accuse the machine of being infected with something, she's very dilligent at keeping it clean and up to date). She virtually lives off this machine, so I can't run dedicated diagnostic tools on it for more than a couple hours. I thought I'd solved the problem by upgrading the WAP from an old Linksys WAP54G to a Netgear WG302v2, but it only marginally reduced the problem. These drop-out issues are not observed on any of the hard-wired computers. The LAN switch is Linksys, and the NAT gateway to the Internet is a dedicated FreeBSD box, so I don't suspect any issues there. So I'd like to test the wireless network and find out what, if anything, is causing the hiccups. I'm aware of passive monitoring tools like kismet, but ultimately I need to diagnose the connection to her machine, ideally in a minimally invasive way."
Television

Submission + - Appeals Court Tosses "Wardrobe Malfunction" (msn.com)

Submitted by
ewhac
ewhac writes: "One of the most famous live television gaffes in recent history was the 2004 SuperBowl halftime "wardrobe malfunction," which briefly exposed a mortified Janet Jackson's breast to an international audience. Bowing to coordinated pressure from socially conservative groups, the FCC fined CBS $550K for the mishap — the $27,500 maximum fine multiplied by CBS's 20 owned-and-operated stations. Today, the US Third Circuit Court of Appeals threw the fine out, saying that the FCC had deviated from its 30-year history on previous such matters, and had, "acted arbitrarily and capriciously," when levying the fine."
The Almighty Buck

Submission + - "Cheaper" 3G iPhone May End Up Costing You (salon.com)

Submitted by
ewhac
ewhac writes: "What Apple giveth, AT&T stealeth right back. A Salon article reads the fine print and crunches the numbers, and finds that the $200 handset price drop is more than eaten up by AT&T's $10/month price hike for unlimited data access over the mandatory two-year contract period. There has been no announcement of new carriers, so AT&T presumably remains the exclusive service provider for iPhone. Also, this rebalancing of the carrier subsidy may give Apple a fiscal incentive to quash 'jailbreak' hacks more vigorously."
The Courts

Submission + - Calif. Supreme Court Overturns Gay Marriage Ban (sfgate.com) 1

Submitted by
ewhac
ewhac writes: "The California State Supreme Court today struck down the state's law banning same-sex marriages. In a 4-3 decision, the court said that "domestic partnerships" were not a complete substitute for marriage. This may pave the way for California to become the second state in the Union to officially sanction same-sex marriages."
The Courts

Submission + - Wikileaks Back Online (sfgate.com)

Submitted by
ewhac
ewhac writes: "After basically bringing down the wrath of every civil libertarian in the country, U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White has conceded that he erred and exceeded Constitutional authority when ordering the Wikileaks domain to be erased, and has dissolved the injunction. He also rejected a motion to have the disputed documents purged from the Wikileaks site. White left open the possibility for Julius Baer & Co's suit to continue forward, but suggested that the bank may want to investigate other ways to redress its grievances."
Software

Submission + - Tools for Understanding Code 2

Submitted by
ewhac
ewhac writes: "Having just recently taken a new job, I find myself confronted with an enormous pile of existing, unfamiliar code written for a (somewhat) unfamiliar platform, and an implicit understanding that I'll grok it all Real Soon Now. Simply firing up an editor and reading through it has proven unequal to the task. What sorts of tools exist for effectively analyzing and understanding a large code base? (You should not assume the development or target platform is Windows.)

I'm familiar with cscope , but it doesn't really seem to analyze program structure, per se. It's just a very fancy 'grep' package with a rudimentary understanding of C syntax. As such, I've only put minimal effort in to it. A new-ish tool called ncc looks very interesting, as it appears to be based on an actual C/C++ parser, but the UI is klunky, and there doesn't appear to be any facility for integrating/communicating with an editor."
Security

Submission + - Researchers Crack *All* CA State Voting Machines

Submitted by
ewhac
ewhac writes: "The San Francisco Chronicle is reporting that computer security researchers throughout the University of California system managed to crack the security on every voting machine they tested that has been approved for use in the state. The researchers are unwilling to say how vulnerable the machines are, as the tests were conducted in an environment highly advantageous to the testers. They had complete access to the devices' source code and unlimited time to try and crack the machines. No malicious code was found in any of the machines, but Matt Bishop, who led the team from UC Davis, was surprised by the weakness of the security measures employed. The tests were ordered by Secretary of State Debra Bowen, who has until Friday of next week to decide whether to decertify any of the machines for use in the upcoming Presidential primary election."
Space

Submission + - Blast at SpaceShipOne Facility Kills Two

Submitted by
ewhac
ewhac writes: "An explosion at the Mojave Air and Space Port has killed two people and critically injured four others, according to the Associated Press. Details are sketchy at the moment. Nitrous oxide is reported to be involved, but it is not yet known if a motor test was involved. The Mojave Air and Space Port, located in the high desert near Edwards Air Force Base, is owned by Scaled Composites LLC, the builders of SpaceShipOne."
Announcements

Submission + - Jim Butterfield, 1936 - 2007 1

Submitted by
ewhac
ewhac writes: "While nearly everyone was going crazy over the iPhone, the computing community lost a luminary on Friday. Jim Butterfield, an early columnist and author for hobbyist computing in the 1970's and 80's, passed away peacefully in his sleep at 1:30 AM on 29 June. He was 71. Jim had been battling cancer since at least December of last year, when he announced he was beginning chemotherapy. Jim was a frequent contributor to periodicals such as The Transactor, COMPUTE!, and TPUG; and was the author of several books on introductory programming. Jim's clear and incisive writing helped introduce a generation of newcomers to the joys and wonders of computers and computer programming. No small fraction of today's engineers owe their livlihoods to Jim's writing and enthusiasm, this chronicler included. He will be missed."

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