FtDFtM - Slashdot User

Comment The problem is who is reviewing solutions (Score 1) 119

by FtDFtM on Tuesday November 08, 2011 @04:39PM (#37989846) Attached to: DARPA Seeks Input On Securing Networks Against Attackers

The problem is that they have government contractors reviewing potential solutions. The same people who are incapable of coming up with workable solutions themselves. So what makes anyone think they would know a good solution, even if it bit them in the ass?

DARPA announced a grant program for this last August at Black Hat. We spent a month crafting an RA for developing a solution based upon formal methods that would change the advantage from the attacker to the defender. Even if we were full of shit, you'd think DARPA would want to know more, in case we weren't. We got a form letter rejection for "Mudge". Am I bitter I spent a month trying to help out the DoD? you bet. I have better things to do.

It reminds me of when the Web was first emerging and I was getting my MBA - Anderson Consulting came to our school with a "contest" to see who could come up with the best business model for the web. Anyone know where AC is now? The DoD needs a good shot of Darwin.

Submission + - TSA Violated Federal Law with Body Scanners (epic.org)

Submitted by FtDFtM on Friday July 15, 2011 @12:55PM

FtDFtM writes: Federal Appeals Court ruled that TSA violated federal law by not taking public comment prior to implementing body scanners.

Writing for a unanimous court, Judge Ginsburg found there was "no justification for having failed to conduct a notice-and-comment rulemaking," and said, "few if any regulatory procedures impose directly and significantly upon so many members of the public."

TSA Announces Pilot of Trusted Traveler Program 388

Posted by Soulskill on Friday July 15, 2011 @12:50PM from the another-day-at-the-theater dept.

Bob the Super Hamste writes "CNN reports that the TSA has announced the pilot of their trusted traveler program. This is the program where an individual gives up additional information to the government and then gets expedited security. The pilot program will only be available to certain frequent fliers on Delta passengers flying out of Atlanta and Detroit, and to American Airlines passengers flying out of Miami and Dallas. Plans are in the work to expand this to other airports and other airlines as well."

Submission + - Remember this ... Google searches make you forget (independent.ie)

Submitted by Tomahawk on Friday July 15, 2011 @12:42PM

Tomahawk writes: Widespread use of internet search engines and databases such as Google to find information is making people lose their memory, scientists have discovered.

Researchers found increasing number of users relied on their computers as a form of "external memory" as frequent use of online information libraries "wired" human brains.

I could tell you more, but I've forgotten... but the link is here!

Submission + - Researcher finds dangerous vulnerability in Skype (networkworld.com)

Submitted by alphadogg on Friday July 15, 2011 @11:16AM

alphadogg writes: A security consultant has notified Skype of a cross-site scripting flaw that could be used to change the password on someone's account, according to details posted online. The consultant, Levent Kayan, based in Berlin, posted details of the flaw on his blog on Wednesday and notified Skype a day later. He said on Friday he hasn't heard a response yet. The problem lies in a field where a person can input their mobile phone number. Kayan wrote that a malicious user can insert JavaScript into the mobile phone field of their profile.

Submission + - Should Google add Analytics to + as Privacy Fix? (computerworld.com)

Submitted by nonprofiteer on Friday July 15, 2011 @10:57AM

nonprofiteer writes: "Web usage analytics software has been around for many years, giving publishers traffic data for their sites, yet this type of functionality has been extremely limited or non-existent for users of consumer social networking sites.

Has the time come for analytics in social networks, as a way to bring transparency to how content is being shared and to dispel privacy concerns? Could this be a game-changing privacy feature for the first social network to adopt such a policy?"

To use Facebook as an example, the analytics data could be limited to identifying profile visitors in three generic ways — the three main types of Facebook connections: friends, friends-of-friends and "everyone" else who also has a Facebook account....

Thus, if someone creates a photo album that he only wants his friends to have access to, it would be helpful to see an analytics report that reflects, say, that 15 friends saw it, but also seven friends-of-friends, which the user didn't intend to have happen."

Submission + - Study: Ad Networks Not Honoring Do-Not-Track (itworld.com)

Submitted by

itwbennett

on Friday July 15, 2011 @10:24AM

itwbennett writes: "According to a new study from Stanford University's Center for Internet Society, almost half of the Network Advertising Initiative (NAI) members that Stanford studied left tracking cookies in place after a Web user opted out of targeted ads. NAI's executive director said that with no consensus on what do-not-track means, ad networks continue to gather data for business reasons other than providing targeted advertising. 'Under the NAI self-regulatory code, companies commit to providing an opt out to the use of online data for online behavioral advertising purposes,' Curran said. 'But the NAI code also recognizes that companies sometimes need to continue to collect data for operational reasons that are separate from ad targeting based on a user's online behavior.'"

In-Depth Look At HTML5 150

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday March 09, 2011 @01:23PM from the digging-in-for-the-long-haul dept.

snydeq writes "InfoWorld's Peter Wayner offers a four-part series devoted to the new features of HTML5. Each article examines the evolving spec in-depth, focusing on canvas, video, audio, and graphics for display options, including the <canvas> and <video> tags, Scalable Vector Graphics, and WebGL; local data storage, including Web Storage, Web Database, and other APIs designed to transform Web pages into local applications; data communications, for cross-document messaging, WebSockets, and other HTML5 APIs that improve website and browser interactivity; and forms, for increasing control over data input and validation."

Comment Re:editorialize much? (Score 1) 1277

by FtDFtM on Wednesday March 09, 2011 @12:57PM (#35431738) Attached to: Utah To Teach USA is a Republic, Not a Democracy

Agreed, inference is not always editorializing - given their choice of an alternative designation, I think you can infer what about "democracy" they did not like and what about "republic" they do like.

Submission + - Leslie Valiant Wins 'Nobel Prize' of Computing (ispyce.com)

Submitted by

autospa

on Wednesday March 09, 2011 @12:57PM

autospa writes: "ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery today named Leslie G. Valiant of Harvard University the winner of the 2010 ACM A.M. Turing Award for his fundamental contributions to the development of computational learning theory and to the broader theory of computer science. Valiant brought together machine learning and computational complexity, leading to advances in artificial intelligence as well as computing practices such as natural language processing, handwriting recognition, and computer vision. He also launched several subfields of theoretical computer science, and developed models for parallel computing. The Turing Award, widely considered the "Nobel Prize in Computing", is named for the British mathematician Alan M. Turing. The award carries a $250,000 prize, with financial support provided by Intel Corporation and Google Inc."

Submission + - Senate Passes Landmark Patent Reform Bill (earthweb.com)

Submitted by inkscapee on Wednesday March 09, 2011 @12:25PM

inkscapee writes: The US Senate is congratulating itself for passing a 'landmark' piece of patent reform legislation. Some key elements are 'first to file' instead of first to invent, and ending fee diversion, which means fees paid to the Patent Office will actually fund the Patent Office. Curiously, this practice has resulted in a backlog of 700,000 patent applications. The House is reportedly working on a similar bill, and soon harmony and rationality will triumph.

Comment six lines (Score 1) 323

by FtDFtM on Wednesday March 09, 2011 @11:21AM (#35430068) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Privacy Paranoia

If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him. This was true 400 years ago. As peragrin says, its about our ability to collect information and assign it to an individual, fairly or otherwise.

Daniel Solove makes a good case that imbalance between the power of the individual vs society (government and/or corporations) invariably precedes upheaval.

Submission + - Facebook may bust up the SMS profit cartel (cnn.com) 3

Submitted by

AndyAndyAndyAndy

on Monday March 07, 2011 @02:36PM

AndyAndyAndyAndy writes: " Fortune has a very interesting article today about wireless providers and their exorbitant profit margins for SMS handling, especially when looking at modern data plans.

'Under the cell phone industry's peculiar pricing system, downloading data to your smartphone is amazingly cheap — unless the data in question happens to be a text message. In that case the price of a download jumps roughly 50,000-fold, from just a few pennies per megabyte of data to a whopping $1000 or so per megabyte.'

A young little application called Beluga caught the attention of Facebook, which purchased the company yesterday.

The app aims to bring messaging under the umbrella of data plans, and features group messaging, picture and video messaging, and integration with other apps.

The author argues that, if successful, Beluga (or whatever Facebook ends up calling it) could potentially be the Skype/Vonage or Netflix-type competitor to the old-school cellular carriers and their steep pricing plans."

Submission + - Wikileaks sparked Arab revolution, says MI6 (rawstory.com)

Submitted by

EnergyScholar

on Monday March 07, 2011 @02:10PM

EnergyScholar writes: "Former British intelligence chief Sir Richard Dearlove credits Wikileaks with helping spark revolution in Middle East, in an off the record speech someone serreptitiously videotaped. In previous stories about the Middle East revolution there were several conversation threads in which people asked whether there was evidence that Wikileaks had helped spark the Middle East revolutions. This is my first story posted to Slashdot, but it's safe to say it won't be my last on this topic. Interested readers should follow the phrase "disruptive compliance" for information about the origins of Wikileaks. "What sort of Hacktivist applications shall we write?" Indeed!"

Submission + - Fact free science is on the move. Beware! (nytimes.com) 6

Submitted by G3ckoG33k on Sunday March 06, 2011 @10:03AM

G3ckoG33k writes: Fact free science is not a joke, it is very much on the move and it is quite possibly the most dangerous movement in centuries, for the entire mankind. One can say it began as counter-movement to Karl Popper's ground-breaking proposals in the early 20th century, which insisted that statements purporting to describe the reality should be made falsifiable. A few decades later some critics of Popper said that statements need peer acceptance, which then makes also natural science a social phenomenon. Even later, in 1996, professor Alan Sokal submitted a famous article ridiculing the entire anti-science movement. Now New York Times has an article describing the latest chilling acts of the social relativistic postmodern loons. It is a chilling read, and they may be swinging both the political left and right. Have they been successful in transforming the world yet? How would we know?

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