Slashdot is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Media

Submission + - New site reads+evaluates the ToS so you dont have to (tos-dr.info)

Submitted by mork
mork writes: Not that anyone reads the small print in the terms of service anyway, but now a new web site does this for you (http://tos-dr.info/). They evaluate the terms to see what rights they claim over your usage. The goal is to give users control over their valuable user data and privacy. The site holds peer-reviewed summaries of many social media sites and is working on expanding its evaluations. The work gets released as free software and open data.

Comment Alternative uses (Score 1) 134

by mork (#39938857) Attached to: Controlling Bufferbloat With Queue Delay

> But you can avoid the worst problems by having someone actively managing the checkout
> queues, and this is the solution for bufferbloat as well: AQM (Active Queue Management).

Can someone please implement this system at Heathrow to reduce the queues there?
The Internet

Submission + - Egypt flips internet kill switch; could the U.S.? (pcmag.com)

Submitted by mykos
mykos writes: Human rights and government control are on a crash course in today's world. How much power do governments get when push comes to shove? Do they have the power to cut your entire nation off from the rest of the world? Senators Joseph Lieberman and Susan Collins have proposed the "Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act". But from whom are they protecting cyberspace? Egypt is answering this question for themselves right now.
Music

Submission + - Record companies lose, artists gain (espen.com)

Submitted by mork
mork writes: A recent MSc thesis from two students at Norwegian School of Management show that after 10 years of digitalization of music, the average (Norwegian) musician's income has increased by 66%. As a group, the only losers in digital music seems to be the record companies. The musicians' income increase is due to increased income from concerts, various collection agencies and stipends from the government in the period from 1999 to 2009. During the same period, record sales have decreased by about 50%. The fall in income from record sales is less important for the musicians, however, since, on average, they only receive 15% of record sales, whereas they receive on average 50% from concerts and 80% from collection agencies (who collects provisions from radio play and other uses of the artists' productions.). The thesis also shows that the fall in record sales also means that record companies are becoming less important as launchpads for new artists, and that records to a larger degree become "business cards" — i.e., a marketing tool — to attract audiences to concerts.

Comment Auditing (Score 1) 209

by mork (#28207123) Attached to: Should Auditors Be Liable For Certifications?

Auditors check that the company have security policies, that they have proper procedures and that these have been followed in the past. There is obviously no guarantee that the employees in the company will continue to follow the security procedures, just because they have done so in the past. Security breaches usually occur because someone failed to follow procedure.

Security standards and audits give the company assurance that they have reduced the chance of security breaches as much as possible. However , you can NEVER certify any system as "secure".
Audits usually control access and change procedures for systems and verify that there are controls and procedures that have been followed up to that point in time.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IT_audit for more info.

Comment Focused accountants (Score 1) 369

by mork (#27723823) Attached to: Cosmetic Neurology

"... I'm a little concerned that we could be raising a generation of very focused accountants.'""

What about those of us that are already "focused accountants" what do we get out of this "Neuro Revolution"?
Space

Submission + - Countdown To NASA's Kepler Mission (blogspot.com)

Submitted by
Adam Korbitz
Adam Korbitz writes: "NASA's planet-hunting Kepler mission is set to launch late on the evening of March 6th. A few days ago the space telescope arrived in Florida for final launch preparations.

According to the NASA/JPL Planet Quest website:

NASA's Kepler spacecraft, scheduled to launch in March on a journey to search for other Earths, has arrived in Cape Canaveral, Fla.

Kepler will hunt for planets using a specialized one-meter diameter telescope called a photometer to measure the small changes in brightness caused by the transits.

Over a four-year period, Kepler will continuously view an amount of sky about equal to the size of a human hand held at arm's length or about equal in area to two "scoops" of the sky made with the Big Dipper constellation.

A map of the area Kepler will search is shown above superimposed on a photograph of the constellation Cygnus, The Swan. More information on the Kepler Field of View can be found here.

NASA has posted a countdown clock for Kepler, as well as animations of the spacecraft mission and the science objectives.

"
United States

Lessig Decides Not to Run For Congress 80

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the jedis-are-going-to-feel-this-one dept.
micheas writes "Larry Lessig has decided that running for U.S. Congress himself in a special election would be too risky to his Change Congress movement and has decided not to run. 'With lots of mixed feelings, I have decided a run for Congress would not help the Change Congress movement. I explain the thinking in this 5 minute video (a new record for me!). First question: What happens to the contributions to Lessig08? As explained on the ActBlue page, all will go to (the yet to be established) Change Congress organization.'"
Security

Why Old SQL Worms Won't Die 64

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the looking-for-a-user-security-patch dept.
narramissic writes "In a recent ITworld article, Security researcher Brent Huston ponders how it is that versions of SQL worms dating back to 2002 represent nearly 70% of all malicious traffic on the Internet today. 'I have made a few attempts to backtrack hosts that perform the scans and at first blush many show the signs of common botnet infections. Most are not running exposed SQL themselves, so that means that the code has likely been implemented into many bot-net exploitation frameworks. Perhaps the bot masters have the idea that when they infiltrate a commercial network, the SQL exploits will be available and useful to them? My assessment team says this is pretty true. Even today, they find blank "sa" passwords and other age-old SQL issues inside major corporate clients. So perhaps, that is why these old exploits continue to thrive."
Patents

Judge Makes Lawyers Pay For Frivolous Patent Suit 263

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the not-making-partner-anytime-soon dept.
Gallenod writes "The Denver Post is reporting that the U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld the decision of a Federal judge who threw out and reversed a jury decision in favor of a patent infringement claim and ordered the plaintiff's lawyers to pay the defendants' court costs. U.S. District Senior Judge Richard P. Matsch sanctioned the plaintiff's attorneys for 'cavalier and abusive' misconduct and for having a 'what can I get away with?' attitude during a 13-day patent infringement trial in Denver. With the Appeals Court in agreement, could this case be the 'shot heard round the world' in the revolution against patent trolls?"

Slashdot Top Deals

"More software projects have gone awry for lack of calendar time than for all other causes combined." -- Fred Brooks, Jr., _The Mythical Man Month_

Close