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Microsoft

Submission + - Security researcher finds hundreds of browser bugs

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: PC Magazine reports on a very understated late night post to the full-disclosure mailing list, in which security researcher Michael Zalewski shared a fuzzing tool reportedly capable of identifying over a hundred browser bugs. Some of these bugs, he says, may be already known third parties in China. The report also includes an account of how browser vendors fared fixing these flaws so far. Not surprisingly, Microsoft's response timeline appears damn depressing.
Google

Submission + - Android Text Messages Intermittently Going Astray

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: Reports from Engadget and others suggest that Tiger Woods and Brett Favre might want to avoid Android for the time being. Engadget reports that Android's default text messaging app still has horrible text messaging bugs that can that intermittently send texts to the wrong person. 'This is ticking me off like no other technology glitch that I experienced in recent years,' reads one unhappy camper's post on a lengthy Help Forum thread opened on March 16th. 'If a bank deposited my paycheck into another person's account I wouldn't stress so much cause I can always get the money back. How the hell do you take words back? 'Oh sorry boss you had to find out that I think you're an idiot, can I still keep my job, please please please?'' Over at Google Code, Issue 9392 — SMS are intermittently sent to wrong and seemingly random contact — carries a priority of 'Medium,' even though it has 600+ comments and has been starred by 3,600+ people.
Science

Submission + - Is Something Wrong with the Scientific Method? 6

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "Jonah Lehrer has an interesting article in the New Yorker reporting that all sorts of well-established, multiply confirmed findings in science have started to look increasingly uncertain as they cannot be replicated. This phenomenon doesn’t yet have an official name, but it’s occurring across a wide range of fields, from psychology to ecology and in the field of medicine, the phenomenon seems extremely widespread, affecting not only antipsychotics but also therapies ranging from cardiac stents to Vitamin E and antidepressants. “One of my mentors told me that my real mistake was trying to replicate my work," says researcher Jonathon Schooler. "He told me doing that was just setting myself up for disappointment.” For many scientists, the effect is especially troubling because of what it exposes about the scientific process. "If replication is what separates the rigor of science from the squishiness of pseudoscience, where do we put all these rigorously validated findings that can no longer be proved?" writes Lehrer. "Which results should we believe?" Francis Bacon, the early-modern philosopher and pioneer of the scientific method, once declared that experiments were essential, because they allowed us to “put nature to the question" but it now appears that nature often gives us different answers. According to John Ioannidis, author of “Why Most Published Research Findings Are False," the main problem is that too many researchers engage in what he calls “significance chasing,” or finding ways to interpret the data so that it passes the statistical test of significance—the ninety-five-per-cent boundary invented by Ronald Fisher. "The scientists are so eager to pass this magical test that they start playing around with the numbers, trying to find anything that seems worthy,”"
Wireless Networking

Submission + - News Key Recovery Attacks on RC4/WEP (events.ccc.de)

Submitted by
yuhong
yuhong writes: "From the abstract: "In this paper, we present several weaknesses in the stream cipher RC4. First, we present a technique to automatically reveal linear correlations in the PRGA of RC4. With this method, 48 new exploitable correlations have been discovered. Then we bind these new biases in the PRGA with known KSA weaknesses to provide practical key recovery attacks. Henceforth, we apply a similar technique on RC4 as a black box, i.e. the secret key words as input and the keystream words as output. Our objective is to exhaustively find linear correlations between these elements. Thanks to this technique, 9 new exploitable correlations have been revealed. Finally, we exploit these weaknesses on RC4 to some practical examples, such as the WEP protocol. We show that these correlations lead to a key recovery attack on WEP with only 9,800 encrypted packets (less than 20 seconds), instead of 24,200 for the best previous attack.""
Crime

Submission + - Four IT Consultants Charged with $80MM NYC Rip-Off

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: It's I-told-you-so time for Slashdot commenter frnic, who smelled a crime last March after reading that New York City had dropped $722 million on its still-under-development CityTime Attendance System. Nine months later, US Attorney Preet Bharara charged "four consultants to the New York City Office of Payroll Administration...for operating a fraudulent scheme that led to the misappropriation of more than $80 million in New York City funds allocated for an information technology project known as 'CityTime.'" Three of the four consultants were also charged — along with a consultant's wife and mother — with using a network of friends-and-family shell corporations to launder the proceeds of the fraud. Dept. of Investigations Commissioner Rose Gill Hearn called it a shame that 'supposed experts hired and paid well to protect the city's interests were exposed as the fox guarding the hen house.'
IBM

Submission + - IBM Files The Patent Troll Patent (conceivablytech.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: What a way to end the year! It's all or nothing over at IBM as the company goes for the gold and files the patent troll patent. Forget the Hyperlink patent or the POS shutdown patent, IBM wants the patent patent. Its idea is centered around an approach to manage patents from inventor training to filing and protection strategies, including competitive monitoring. At least in theory, IBM could get approval to own the idea how to manage patents and make a business out of IP. The next time you file a patent, you may want to contact them as you may need a license to file for filing.
Science

Submission + - North magnetic pole racing toward Siberia (scientificamerican.com)

Submitted by RogerRoast
RogerRoast writes: The north magnetic pole (NMP) drifts from year to year. The NMP, also known as the dip pole, is the point on Earth where the planet's magnetic field points straight down into the ground. Scottish explorer James Clark Ross first located the NMP in 1831 on the Boothia Peninsula in what is now northern Canada, and with the planting of a flag claimed it for Great Britain.
Perl

Submission + - 23 Years of Culture Hacking with Perl (wordpress.com)

Submitted by
Modern Perl
Modern Perl writes: "Larry Wall, the creator of Perl, reflects on Perl's history of hacking its culture, from subverting the reductionist culture of Unix to reinventing the ideas of programming language and culture in Perl 6 and the verbal aikido used to encourage honest detractors to become valuable contributors. Perl turned 23 years old last week, and Perl 6 is available."
The Internet

Submission + - Skype outages continue into second day (networkworld.com)

Submitted by netbuzz
netbuzz writes: And according to a statement issued this morning, the company doesn’t appear to know when service will return to normal: “Unfortunately, it’s not possible for us to predict on an individual level when you’ll be able to sign in again, and we thank you for your patience in the meantime.” In a blog post yesterday, Skype blamed the disruption on problems with “supernodes.”

Submission + - BYTE is coming back (technologizer.com)

Submitted by harrymcc
harrymcc writes: More than a dozen years after its death, BYTE magazine is still the most beloved computer magazine of all time--the one that employees of every other tech mag got used to being compared unfavorably with. And now it's being revived, in the form of a new BYTE.com. The new version isn't replicating the focus of the old BYTE--it's focused on the use of consumer tech products in a business environment--and I'm pretty positive it won't feature Robert Tinney's art or epic Jerry Pournelle columns. But I'm glad to see the legendary brand back in use rather than sitting in limbo.
Science

Submission + - 50,000 year-old finger bone connect to present man (sciguru.com)

Submitted by RogerRoast
RogerRoast writes: Gene sequencing of a 50,000 year old bone found in Siberia shows that the cave dwellers were neither Neandertals nor modern humans, but the individual is from a group that shares a common origin with Neanderthals. The bone belonged to a female lived at that time.

Submission + - Skype outage affects millions (skype.com)

Submitted by JustABlitheringIdiot
JustABlitheringIdiot writes: As I write this I am waiting for my Skype to finally log me back in.

Apparently they lost some of their supernodes for quite a while there and things are now slowly recovering. Can anybody explain what happened in more depth? Did this affect your business today?

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