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Security

Submission + - Scientists Reveal New Malware Detection Method (net-security.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Scientists from NQ Mobile's Mobile Security Research Center, in collaboration with North Carolina State University disclosed a new way to detect mobile threats without relying on known malware samples and their signatures. Today, malicious software often sits in app marketplaces for days, weeks and even months being downloaded, before finally being discovered. RiskRanker is a unique analysis system that can automatically detect whether a particular app exhibits dangerous behavior. It differs from other malware tools by identifying apps with risky behavior while they are in the app market and before they make their way to a user's phone.
Google

Submission + - Jury Rules Google Violated Java Copyright, Google Moves for Mistrial (arstechnica.com) 1

Submitted by eldavojohn
eldavojohn writes: Details are thin but the long covered Oracle Vs Google trial has at least partially been decided in favor of Oracle against Google violating copyrights in Android when when it used Java APIs to design the system. Google moved for a mistrial after hearing the incomplete decision. The patent infringement accusations have yet to be ruled upon.
Wireless Networking

Submission + - Why Apple's iPad Has Been Good for Sprint (itworld.com) 1

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes: Today, Sprint CEO Dan Hesse said in an interview with Om Malik that iPad has been good to his company because many people are opting for the Wi-Fi only iPad and pairing it with Sprint's 3G/4G Overdrive MiFi device (which the company sells with a special Overdrive case for the iPad) rather than choosing an iPad 3G that is limited to AT&T's network. The statement illustrates that many consumers are seeing the advantages to of choosing lower-cost devices without integrated 3G and pairing one or more of them with a more robust MiFi solution.
Space

Astronomers Solve the Mystery of 'Hanny's Voorwerp' 123

Posted by kdawson from the do-not-look-directly-into-the-quasar dept.
KentuckyFC writes "In 2007, a Dutch school teacher named Hanny van Arkel discovered a huge blob of green-glowing gas while combing though images to classify galaxies. Hanny's Voorwerp (meaning Hanny's object in Dutch) is astounding because astronomers have never seen anything like it. Although galactic in scale, it is clearly not a galaxy because it does not contain any stars. That raises an obvious question: what is causing the gas to glow? Now a new survey of the region of sky seems to have solved the problem. The Voorwerp lies close to a spiral galaxy which astronomers now say hides a massive black hole at its center. The infall of matter into the black hole generates a cone of radiation emitted in a specific direction. The great cloud of gas that is Hanny's Voorwerp just happens to be in the firing line, ionizing the gas and causing it to glow green. That lays to rest an earlier theory that the cloud was reflecting an echo of light from a short galactic flare up that occurred 10,000 years ago. It also explains why Voorwerps are so rare: these radiation cones are highly directional so only occasionally do unlucky gas clouds get caught in the crossfire."
Earth

1,400 Megapixel Pan-STARRS Telescope Comes Online 54

Posted by timothy from the don't-get-your-panstarrs-in-a-bunch dept.
ElectricSteve writes "Astronomers in Hawaii have announced they've successfully managed to boot up the Pan-STARRS (Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System) telescope. Working from dusk to dawn every night, Pan-STARRS is able to map one-sixth of the sky each month, allowing astronomers to track all moving objects, calculate their orbits, and identify any potential threats to Earth. There are four Pan-STARRS cameras in total, each capable of capturing around 1.4 billion pixels over a sensor measuring 40 centimeters square. The focal plane of each camera contains an almost complete 64x64 array of CCD devices, each containing approximately 600x600 pixels, for a total resolution of 1.4 gigapixels."
Communications

HTC Dragging Feet On GPL Source Release For "Hero" Phone 181

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the something-about-defecating-where-you-eat dept.
Squiff writes to mention that despite being based on the Open Handset Alliance's Android platform and using several open source components, HTC are effectively refusing to release the source for the GPL parts of their "Hero" Phone code, saying that they are "waiting for their developers to provide it." It has been called an "object of lust," it's beating the iPhone for awards, and it seems to be the first Android phone that really is "the phone to have," to hear some people tell it. It has also just become available in the US after a June release in Europe.

Submission + - The Dangers of "Social Spam" (slate.com)

Submitted by Kandinsky51
Kandinsky51 writes: Marketing ploys that trick you into contacting all your friends about a product, like the ViddyHo GChat epidemic from a few months ago or a more recent one from WeGame, expose the danger that social networks pose for a new sort of spam. Rather than send Rolex ads straight to your junk bin, these emails or IMs pose as social network updates that promise a photo or video. If you register and provide your webmail login--which plenty of people do, amazingly--the site can mine your contacts and email them all on your behalf. Most examples have been innocuous thus far, but it's a huge opportunity for more malicious spammers.
Intel

Submission + - Intel releases CPUs for gaming laptops & mobil

Submitted by
adeelarshad82
adeelarshad82 writes: "The Core i7 processor, codenamed "Nehalem," created quite the buzz in the desktop community, tearing up performance charts. Thankfully, every Intel chip that ends up in a desktop is usually followed by a mobile version. At the IDF this year, Intel introduced three top-shelf mobile Core i7s, codenamed "Clarksfield": The Core i7-920XM (Extreme), the Core i7-820QM, and the Core i7-720QM. The launch is focused primarily on high-end and gaming laptops that are also affordable. With Clarksfield, Intel gives us a glimpse of what to expect for laptops in the coming year. We knew performance would tip the scales in the Core i7's favor, and the benchmark tests proved it. The big picture here is that these processors, especially the Core i7 820QM and 720QM, will begin to show up in hardcore gaming and very high-end multimedia systems for a lot less than what you would pay for the Alienware M17x ($4,850) and Falcon Northwest Fragbook DRX ($6,449)."
Security

Submission + - Health care exemption on data breeches (theregister.co.uk)

Submitted by
Combat Wombat
Combat Wombat writes: "New data breach rules for US healthcare providers have come under criticism from a security firm that specialises in encryption. As part of the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act, which comes into effect from 23 September, health organisations in the US that use encryption will no longer be obliged to notify clients of breaches."
Censorship

Submission + - Amazon bans public domain from Kindle (sacred-texts.com) 6

Submitted by
John B. Hare
John B. Hare writes: "John B. Hare writes "Many publishers of public domain content on the Kindle are being turned away for reasons which Amazon declines to clarify. In the past two weeks any publisher posting a public domain book (or a book which appears to be a public domain book) have received the message "Your book is currently under review by the Kindle Operations team as we are trying to improve the Kindle customer experience. Please check back in 5 business days to see if your book was published to the store."

Amazon claims that this is a quality control issue, that readers can't figure out on their own that a five page Kindle book for $9.99 is a rip-off or yet another Kindle edition of 'Pride and Prejudice' is pointless. This was supposed to be the point of user feedback and the Kindle return policy: the user can quickly decide what the best choice is, and if they don't like it, back out without any harm done.

I own and run one of the primary contributors of new public domain etexts on the web: sacred-texts.com. When the ban went into effect, I was just back from an intense round of chemo. I was disappointed to get this message. I am (was?) in the process of converting all of the 2000+ ebooks at sacred-texts into Kindle editions. I use a homebrew preflight Kindle filter to construct the Kindle binary from my master files, which we have invested nearly a million dollars into creating. We spend thousands a month in-house doing legal clearance, scanning, OCRing, and proofing, often by domain experts. So we are hardly a fly-by-night operation. In fact, many of the PD texts floating around on the Internet and on the Kindle were originally done at sacred-texts at great investment of labor and time. Our Kindle return rate is close to zero.

This morning I received an email stating:

Dear Publisher,

We're working on a policy and procedure change to fix a customer experience problem caused by multiple copies of public domain titles being uploaded by a multitude of publishers. For an example of this problem, do a search on "Pride and Prejudice" in the Kindle Store. The current situation is very confusing for customers as it makes it difficult to decide which 'Pride and Prejudice' to choose. As a result, at this time we are not accepting additional public domain titles through DTP, including the following: The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ
The Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ
Traces of a Hidden Tradition in Masonry and Medieval Mysticism
The History of the Knights Templar by Nicolas Notovitch...


If you believe that we have wrongly identified this title as a public domain title, and you are the copyright holder or are authorized to sell it by the copyright holder, then please reply to title-submission@amazon.com with appropriate documentation of your e-book rights.

Thank you, Amazon.com

As can be seen, this brings an entirely new issue into play: apparently, if I owned the rights to a public domain book and can prove it, they will reconsider. However, nobody can own a public domain book. Amazon is telling us that in order to post our books we need to prove a contradiction!

One key point is that Amazon has applied this ban completely non-selectively. Established publishers such as myself and others who have never had any quality control issues whatsoever, and give good value for the price, have all been tarred with the broad brush of 'Public Domain Publisher--do not post'.

By banning new public domain books from the Kindle, they are making an implicit decision as to which books people should read. You can argue that 'you can get these texts anywhere' but by excluding high quality Kindle books of them from the nascent Kindle marketplace, Amazon is implicitly trying to decide what is a valid part of our culture and what isn't. This trend does not bode well for the future of ebooks.

"
Windows

Submission + - Microsoft offers Windows 7 to students for $30

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Microsoft today announced students would be able to purchase upgrade versions of Windows 7 for a significantly reduced price until January 3, 2010 at 12:00am CST. A valid e-mail address given by a college or university must be used. An e-mail will be sent telling the student if he or she qualifies for the discount. Eligible students are allowed to purchase one copy of either Windows 7 Home Premium or Windows 7 Professional from the online store. The discount price applies to the following countries: the UK (£30) and the US ($30). More information is available at 741.com, a site just launched today that is dedicated to advertising Windows 7 to students.

"In the US, students can pre-order their copy of Windows 7 beginning September 17th and can download the OS beginning on October 22nd (general availability)," a Microsoft spokesperson confirmed with Ars. "Students in the UK can pre-order their copy beginning on September 30th for download on October 22nd. Students in all other participating markets can take advantage of the offer beginning on October 22nd. In most markets, the offer ends on January 3rd (in Australia the offer is available until March 31st).

Submission + - Security/Privacy Advice

Submitted by James-NSC
James-NSC writes: My employer is changing its policy towards employee use of social networks. I've been asked to give a 40 minute presentation to the entire company (attendance is mandatory) on the security and privacy concerns pertaining to social networking. While I was putting it together, I ended up with some miscellaneous information that pertains to security/privacy in general. Ex: the emerging ATM skimming (mainly for our European employees), a reminder that email is not private, malware/drive-by in popular search results, things of that nature. Since these don't really fall into the slated topic, I've ended up with a section titled "While I have you...". I'm going to have the attention of every employee and with attendance being mandatory, I thought it would be a great opportunity to give advice on security/privacy issues as a whole and not just those pertaining to social networks. As it's an opportunity that one seldom gets, I'd hate to not utilize it to its full potential. If you had the attention of an entire company with employees in the US, UK, Asia and Australia, what advice would you give?

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