dvhirt - Slashdot User

NSA Patents a Way To Spot Network Snoops 161

Posted by CmdrTaco on Monday December 22, 2008 @01:15PM from the welcome-to-the-holidays dept.

narramissic writes "The National Security Agency has patented a technique for figuring out whether someone is messing with your network by measuring the amount of time it takes to send different types of data and sounding an alert if something takes too long. 'The neat thing about this particular patent is that they look at the differences between the network layers,' said Tadayoshi Kohno, an assistant professor of computer science at the University of Washington. But IOActive security researcher Dan Kaminsky wasn't so impressed: 'Think of it as — if your network gets a little slower, maybe a bad guy has physically inserted a device that is intercepting and retransmitting packets. Sure, that's possible. Or perhaps you're routing through a slower path for one of a billion reasons.'"

AVG Virus Scanner Removes Critical Windows File 440

Posted by kdawson on Monday November 10, 2008 @08:42PM from the it-just-acts-like-one dept.

secmartin writes "The popular virus scanner AVG released an update yesterday that caused their software to mark user32.dll as a virus. Since this is a rather critical file, AVG's suggestion to remove it caused problems for users around the world who are now advised to restore the file through the Windows Recovery Console. AVG just posted an update about this (FAQ item 1574) in the support section of their site. Their forums are full of complaints."

How To Kill an Open Source Project With New Funding 187

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Friday October 03, 2008 @02:25PM from the money-still-the-root-of-all-evil dept.

mir42 writes "The OpenSource multimedia authorware project Sophie, formerly hosted by USC Los Angeles, may just have been killed by new funding. The original funding organization, Mellon Foundation, approved a grant to redevelop the four year project from scratch in Java. The grant was awarded to a Bulgarian company based on their proposal, which is simply an exact description, including the UI and the artwork, of the current Sophie. Being an OpenSource project, this isn't strictly illegal, but let's say, not nice and definitely not innovative, coming from a former sub-sub-contractor on the project. Some of the original, now laid-off developers started OpenSophie.org trying to salvage the project. As the current version is still somewhat buggy and slow, it might just be enough to alienate all potential users of Sophie to the point that nobody will even try to use the next version. Have others faced similar situations? How would you deal with a situation like this?"

Comment Actual links (Score 0) 386

by dvhirt on Monday November 19, 2007 @03:22PM (#21411095) Attached to: Judge Rules That I Own Slashdot

It seems the website is http://www.theeashsyndicate.com./

But looking at:

X-PHP-Script: www.theeashblahblah.com/linkmachine/auto.php

That links looks interesting: http://www.theeashsyndicate.com/linkmachine/auto.php

Checked reciprocal links (19% complete)

I wonder... maybe more "personal" e-mails coming?

Submission + - Google to unveil its own phone by next year

Submitted by TimeSpeak on Sunday August 05, 2007 @01:58PM

TimeSpeak writes: A widely predicted move by Google, the new gPhone will be unveiled by next year. "Google services, such as its search engine, e-mail and interactive maps, will be loaded on to the phone." Google will undoubtedly dominate the mobile advertisement market, with more capable mobile devices at hand, as a frontier not yet explored. The iPhone may be a tough act to follow. I can see skepticism lying with Google's ability to satisfy the market's incredible thirst for a more advanced mobile device.

Submission + - Yahoo Excludes Open Source for Movie trailers (slashdot.org)

Submitted by D_Otis on Friday June 01, 2007 @01:46PM

D_Otis writes: Has Yahoo stepped over to the dark side? For linux users, movie trailers from Yahoo! just went dark. As people increasing expect video to be a part of their resources, and where else but movie reviews would this be most apparent, Yahoo! has decided not to support formats suitable for use with Linux and other open source operating systems and even blocks them. This happens while Google captures greater shares of the video wet-ware market with Youtube and Google videos. Will this mean Yahoo is now more vulnerable in this area? Was this move to curry favor with a possible suitor?

Submission + - Google images adds face filter to search (searchengineland.com)

Submitted by

gronbaek

on Friday June 01, 2007 @09:45AM

gronbaek writes: "Search engine land writes that:

Google Operating System reports that Google has added the ability to restrict your Google Image search by faces. To do so, just append "&imgtype=face" after your search string.
Try for yourself: without face filter and the same search, with face filter."

Submission + - OpenDNS says Google-Dell browser tool is spyware

Submitted by

PetManimal

on Wednesday May 23, 2007 @05:48PM

PetManimal writes: "David Ulevitch, the founder of OpenDNS, claims that Google and Dell have placed 'spyware' on Dell computers. Ulevitch made the claim based on his observation of the behavior of the Google Toolbar and homepage that comes preinstalled on IE in new Dell machines. He says that a browser redirector sends users who enter nonexistent URLs to a Dell-branded page loaded with Google ads. Another observer, Danny Sullivan, says that this is a different result than what happens on PCs without the redirector. However, the original article notes that Ulevitch has a vested interest in the results of mistyped URLs:

Ulevitch's complaint also stems from the fact that the error redirector breaks some of OpenDNS's functionality. If an OpenDNS user types "digg.xom" by mistake, their browser pulls up the correct "digg.com" instead. But the redirector breaks the free service's typo correction — as well as the browser shortcut feature it unveiled last month. "Google's application breaks just about every user-benefiting feature we provide with client software that no user ever asked for," Ulevitch said.
"

Submission + - One Laptop Per Child using Microsoft OS

Submitted by pallmall1 on Monday May 21, 2007 @08:42AM

pallmall1 writes: The One Laptop Per Child flagship XO laptop is going to roll off the assembly lines loaded with Microsoft embedded software. The recent price increase of the laptop to $173 is due in part to the hardware and licensing costs required to run the Microsoft software. According to Mary Lou Jepsen, CTO of the OLPC project, the "OLPC`s XO laptop series uses Microsoft`s embedded operating system, which requires special drivers to work. However, this increases the cost by nearly US$20 for the laptop, including US$3 for Microsoft`s operating system, and US$15 for a 2GB flash memory to drive the system".

So much for the statement from the OLPC project's President of Software and Content, which flatly denied any plans to incorporate Microsoft software by default.

Submission + - Windows, OS X and Linux: Is There A 4th Platform?

Submitted by

OOPen

on Monday May 21, 2007 @07:46AM

OOPen writes: "An article on OSWeekly.com talks about a fourth platform. Something other than OS X, Linux and Windows and why these three platforms don't allow a fourth contender to enter. "On the other side of this issue, it's easy to just say that Microsoft isn't in a hurry to make Apple's products work well with its operating system, but if you'll remember, Microsoft's own Zune was incompatible with Vista from the very start. If they can't even get their own stuff to work right out of the box, then how in the world are we supposed to expect them to get everything else working, too? In Microsoft's case, this negligence in terms of compatibility is evident of bigger problems within the company."

Submission + - CERN Collider ready; get ready for data deluge

Submitted by

slashthedot

on Monday May 21, 2007 @12:27AM

slashthedot writes: "The world's largest science experiment, a physics experiment designed to determine the nature of matter, will produce a mountain of data. And because the world's physicists cannot move to the mountain, an army of computer research scientists is preparing to move the mountain to the physicists.
At universities across the United States and at other institutions around the world, teams of computer research scientists and physicists are preparing for the largest physics experiment ever.
The collider will give protons a pop hoping to catch a glimpse of the Big Bang, or at least the subatomic particles that are thought to have last been seen at the big event 10 billion to 15 billion years ago that led to the formation of the universe. The CERN collider will begin producing data in November, and from the trillions of collisions of protons it will generate 15 petabytes of data per year.
By comparison, 15 petabytes would be the equivalent of all of the information in all of the university libraries in the United States seven times over. It would be the equivalent of 22 Internets, or more than 1,000 Libraries of Congress. And there is no search function.
More at: http://www.hpcwire.com/hpc/1572567.html"

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