66155959
submission
netbuzz writes:
Two Canton, Mass., teenagers spot a building on fire Saturday night. One calls 911 and the other pulls a nearby “pole box.” Canton police report how that went: “Care to venture a guess on what worked the quickest? If you said the ‘pole box’ you are correct! Although numerous 911 calls did eventually come in reporting the fire, the Canton Fire Department was already enroute because those old boxes communicate directly with Canton Fire Alarm.” Score one for old-school tech.
65617605
submission
netbuzz writes:
Someone has actually kept count of the number of startups that have chosen to “namify” their company’s moniker by slapping an “ify” at the end of an ordinary word, a practice made most famous by Spotify. The count: 337 since 2007 and 73 so far this year. “I don't know how aware founders are of this pattern or how it's been ridiculed,” says Chris Johnson, the Seattle-based branding consultant doing the counting.
64743709
submission
netbuzz writes:
Ex-Cisco engineer Brad Cooper, whose first-degree murder conviction for the 2008 strangulation slaying of his wife Nancy was overturned last year based on disputed Google Maps search evidence, today pleaded guilty to second-degree murder. Cooper will be sentenced to a minimum of 12 years in prison and has agreed to allow the adoption of his two young daughters by Nancy Cooper’s sister. In addition to the disputed Google Maps evidence, prosecutors in the initial trial had alleged that Cooper, a VoIP expert, may have borrowed a Cisco 3825S router from his employer in order to fake a phone call from his wife to him after she was already dead. The router was never found.
64343489
submission
netbuzz writes:
A Tennessee man is facing minor criminal charges after his butt-dialing 911 allowed police to overhear a restaurant conversation in which he allegedly discussed visiting a drug dealer. And while this may seem like an unlikely scenario it turns out that such accidental dialing to the authorities has led to quite a few overheard conversions and quite a few arrests, some for serious crimes.
63386947
submission
netbuzz writes:
The Wikimedia Foundation this morning reports that 50 links to Wikipedia from Google have been removed under Europe’s “right to be forgotten” regulations, including a page about a notorious Irish bank robber and another about an Italian criminal gang. “We only know about these removals because the involved search engine company chose to send notices to the Wikimedia Foundation. Search engines have no legal obligation to send such notices. Indeed, their ability to continue to do so may be in jeopardy. Since search engines are not required to provide affected sites with notice, other search engines may have removed additional links from their results without our knowledge. This lack of transparent policies and procedures is only one of the many flaws in the European decision.”
62819493
submission
netbuzz writes:
Friday is the 15th annual SysAdmin Appreciation Day and one IT department at a Florida credit union has not been shy about rectifying what it considers to be an underwhelming acknowledgement from co-workers last year. Posters featuring their pictures and scattered throughout the workplace spell it out thusly: “So appreciate an IT person (Friday) and we may allow you to use your computer tomorrow.”
62750065
submission
netbuzz writes:
This was inevitable: Endless hype about the Internet of Things has produced an endless string of imitators; the Internets of This, That and Whatever. Some are quite silly, although few would quibble with the need to encrypt the Internet of Weed.
62139059
submission
netbuzz writes:
And you thought you’d never hear about the Y2K bug again. So did the families of some 14,000 Pennsylvania men who were born in the 1800s yet recently received draft notices from the Selective Service. The snafu originated with a Pennsylvania Department of Motor Vehicles database that uses two-digit dates to represent birth years. ‘‘It’s never happened before,’’ a department spokesman told Associated Press.
61973079
submission
netbuzz writes:
802.11ac is already delivering much higher Wi-Fi throughput. Later this year, with wave two of the standard, a feature called multiuser MIMO will boost network efficiency and help Wi-Fi nets handle the explosion of mobile clients. “A common misconception is that multiuser MIMO makes the network ‘go faster,’” says one expert. “It really doesn’t. It creates multiple logical connections with devices at the same time. This increases network efficiency.” That means by being able to transmit to as many as four clients at once, the 11ac access point can make full use of its available “gigabit” capacity at every moment.
60667793
submission
netbuzz writes:
Virtually unnoted in last week’s announcement that Cisco is acquiring ThreatGRID was that the New York-based security company last year received an undisclosed amount of funding from In-Q-Tel, the venture arm of the Central Intelligence Agency. Given that In-Q-Tel has pumped untold millions into technology startups since its launch in 2000, it’s not unusual for major vendors to acquire and absorb such companies. What’s different this time, though, is that Cisco is today scrambling to counter the impression – especially abroad – that it is in league with the U.S. intelligence community, a charge it has always denied. And in addition to the financial connection, there are also familial ties between Cisco’s latest acquisition and U.S. intelligence.
60547413
submission
netbuzz writes:
The Electronic Frontier Foundation is calling it “a crushing blow for copyright trolls:” A federal appeals court today has for the first time ruled against what critics call a shakedown scheme aimed at pornography downloaders and practiced by the likes of AF Holdings, an arm of notorious copyright troll Prenda Law. The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit called the lawsuit “a quintessential example of Prenda Law’s modus operandi” in reversing a lower court ruling that would have forced a half-dozen ISPs to identify account holders associated with 1,058 IP addresses.
59794445
submission
netbuzz writes:
The worst of DRM is set to infest law school casebooks. One publisher, AspenLaw, wants students to pay $200 for a bound casebook but at the end of class they have to give it back. Aspen is touting this arrangement as a great deal in that the buyer will get an electronic version and assorted online goodies once they return the actual book. However, law professors and the Electronic Frontier Foundation are calling it nothing but a cynical attempt to undermine used book sales, as well as the first sale doctrine that protects used bookstores and libraries.
59576143
submission
netbuzz writes:
Three years ago today, software consultant Sohaib Athar was working on his laptop at home in Pakistan when he tweeted: "Helicopter hovering above Abbottabad at 1AM (is a rare event)." And then: "A huge window-shaking bang here in Abbottabad Cantt. I hope it’s not the start of something nasty :-S." It was for Osama bin Laden. Today Athar says, “People do bring it up every now and then.”
59215077
submission
netbuzz writes:
A band called netcat is generating buzz in software circles by releasing its debut album as a Linux kernel module (among other more typical formats.) Why? “Are you ever listening to an album, and thinking ‘man, this sounds good, but I wish it crossed from user-space to kernel-space more often!’ We got you covered,” the band says on its Facebook page. “Our album is now fully playable as a loadable Linux kernel module.”
58082477
submission
netbuzz writes:
Cybercriminals are able to get cash from a certain type of ATM by sending a text message. The tactic is being reported by security vendor Symantec, which has periodically written about a type of malicious software it calls "Ploutus" that first appeared in Mexico. The malware is engineered to plunder a certain type of standalone ATM, which Symantec has not identified. The company obtained one of the ATMs to carry out a test of how Ploutus works, but it doesn't show a brand name.
