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Comment Re:It's good to have allies (Score 1) 987

by mckinnsb (#34547676) Attached to: Michael Moore Posts Julian Assange's Bail
It looks like Assange may have found a way to generate the capital he so desperately needs to continue his fight against conspiracy in government. He would have lost completely without someone in big media with serious cash on his side. Now it looks like he might actually have a fighting chance of having some success with his goals, and staying out of prison.
The Internet

Michael Moore Posts Julian Assange's Bail 987

Posted by CmdrTaco from the right-is-right dept.
digitaldc quotes Michael Moore in a story running on the Huffington Post where he says "Yesterday, in the Westminster Magistrates Court in London, the lawyers for WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange presented to the judge a document from me stating that I have put up $20,000 of my own money to help bail Mr. Assange out of jail. Furthermore, I (Michael Moore) am publicly offering the assistance of my website, my servers, my domain names and anything else I can do to keep WikiLeaks alive and thriving as it continues its work to expose the crimes that were concocted in secret and carried out in our name and with our tax dollars."
Security

Homeland Security Drops Color-Coded Terror Alerts 183

Posted by timothy from the magic-8-ball-warnings dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "The LA Times reports that the Homeland Security Department is poised to end its five-tiered, color-coded terrorism warning system, a post-Sept. 11 endeavor that has been called too vague to be useful and has been mostly ignored or mocked by the public. The domestic security advisory system was created in 2002 under then-Secretary Tom Ridge and in 2004, the department began assigning color threat levels to general targets such as aviation, financial services and mass transit. However the Department hasn't changed the alert level in four years, even after the attempted bombing of a flight to Detroit on Christmas Day 2009 and the alert level has only been elevated to red once, on Aug. 10, 2006, when British police disrupted a plot to detonate liquid explosives on airliners. Although it is unknown what, if anything, will replace the color-coded alerts, a senior Homeland Security official, who did not want to speak on the record about a decision still under review, says that 'the goal is to replace a system that communicates nothing.'" Can't we just re-use the big DefCon displays from Wargames?

Comment Re:So much for security through obscurity... (Score 1) 132

by mckinnsb (#34307470) Attached to: Malaysian Indicted After Hacking Federal Reserve
Likely because:
  1. The federal reserve bank may have been testing a new system which would allow financial institutions to access a list of stolen credit cards via a web or network interface for electronic transactions in order to safeguard them.
  2. FedComp is (likely) already a subscription service which is accessible via the internet for employees of said federal credit unions.

I don't think there's anything to see here. The guy stole "already stolen" credit cards and tried to sell them for a profit. He's a con artist, nothing more. There's been a lot of drum-up about US cyber security in the media lately (see: Stuxnet) and methinks its all just a lot of FUD in order to ply the citizenry into allowing "greater government oversight" of the internet and private networks.
Education

How the 'Tech Worker Visa' Is Remaking IT In America 436

Posted by samzenpus from the good-intentions dept.
theodp writes "Back in 2008, the Department of Homeland Security enacted a controversial 'emergency' rule to allow foreign students earning tech-related degrees in the US to work for American employers for 29 months after graduation without a work visa. The program would allow US companies to recruit and retain the 'best' science and tech students educated at the top US universities, explained Microsoft. But two-and-a-half years later, it turns out the top US universities are getting schooled by less-renowned institutions. Computerworld reports the DHS program is dominated by little-known, for-profit Stratford University, whose 727 approved requests for post-graduate Optional Practical Training (OPT) STEM extensions tops all schools and is more than twice the combined total of the entire Ivy League — Brown (26), Columbia (105), Cornell (90), Dartmouth (18), Harvard (27), Princeton (16), Penn (50), and Yale (9). In second place, with 533 approved requests, is the University of Bridgeport. In another twist, the program's employers include IT outsourcing and offshoring 'body shops' like Kelly Services, whose entities snagged about 50 approvals, more than twice the combined total of tech stalwarts Google (15), Amazon.com (2), Yahoo (2), and Facebook (3)."
Biotech

Stopping Malaria By Immunizing Mosquitoes 100

Posted by Soulskill from the will-they-get-a-public-option dept.
RedEaredSlider writes "Millions of people in the tropics suffer from malaria, a mosquito-borne disease that has been difficult to treat and which costs many developing countries millions of dollars per year in lost productivity. Up to now, efforts at controlling it have focused on attacking the parasites that cause it, keeping mosquitoes from biting, or killing the insects. But at Johns Hopkins University, Rhoel Dinglasan, an entomologist and biologist, decided to try another tack: immunizing mosquitoes. When a mosquito bites an infected human, it takes up some of the gametocytes. They aren't dangerous to people at that stage. Since plasmodium is vulnerable there, that is the point Dinglasan chose to attack. A mosquito's gut has certain receptor molecules in it that the plasmodium can bind to. Dinglasan asked what would happen if the parasite couldn't 'see' them, which would happen if another molecule, some antigen, were binding to those receptors."
Businesses

IE6 Addiction Inhibits Windows 7 Migrations 470

Posted by Soulskill from the second-verse-same-as-the-first dept.
eldavojohn writes "As anyone in the industry will tell you, a lot of money went into developing web applications specific to IE6. And corporations can't leave Windows XP for Windows 7 until IE6 runs (in some way) on Windows 7. Microsoft wants to leave that non-standard browser mess behind them, but as the article notes, 'Organizations running IE6 have told Gartner that 40% of their custom-built browser-dependent applications won't run on IE8, the version packaged with Windows 7. Thus, many companies face a tough decision: Either spend time and money to upgrade those applications so that they work in newer browsers, or stick with Windows XP.' Support for XP is going to end in April 2014. In order to deal with this, companies are looking at virtualizing IE6 only (instead of a full operating system) so that it can run on Windows 7 — even though Microsoft says this violates licensing agreements. IE6 is estimated to have roughly 16% of browser market share, and due to mistakes in the past it may never truly die."
Security

Chertoff Advocates Cyber Cold War 115

Posted by timothy from the sir-your-analogy-is-unbuttoned dept.
Jack Spine writes "The US and allied countries should formulate a doctrine to apply the principles of nuclear deterrence to cyber attacks and cyber espionage, according to former US Homeland Security secretary Michael Chertoff. No matter that it's very difficult to attribute the source of cyber attacks — just take punitive action against the platform being used to attack, says Chertoff."

Comment Support contracts.. (Score 1) 369

by mckinnsb (#33900832) Attached to: Convincing Your Employer To Go With FOSS?

Cost is generally not the biggest issue. Your boss is probably against FOSS because most Pay-For-Play software generally comes with support & maintenance contracts issued from the people who wrote the software, which are extremely important to management types, while software like Plone requires a support or maintenance contract through a third-party provider (i found this: http://plone.net/providers )

If you can convince him that the best way for him to handle this situation and all potential future ones is purchasing a third-party support contract which can also be supported by you if need be since the software is open source, then you might have a shot. Otherwise, I'm not sure. I've seen a lot of good software packages turned down as solutions to business problems simply because there was no support contract.
Science

CERN LHC Reaches Its Goals For 2010 90

Posted by CmdrTaco from the christmas-break-woohoo dept.
Anonymous Dupaeur writes "The goals for the first run of the most powerful particle collider (and the most energetic storage ring since ISR) were recently surpassing the 10^32 level of luminosity, with a destructive 15 MJ energy per-beam. This is a significant milestone, opening the way to collect more and more data. The current plan is to stop the proton collisions soon, and provide an ion (Pb) beam and conclude this year with a X-mass break. The next year is expected to bring at least one inverse femtobarn of data, which is achievable with such beam power. After that, the entire accelerator complex will be shut down for a year, due to budget costs for science in Europe."
Censorship

Chinese Nobel Winner's Wife Detained 289

Posted by timothy from the cutting-off-prime-source-of-nobel-gossip dept.
suraj.sun writes with word (snipped from CNN) that censoring the news of Liu Xiaobo's Nobel prize wasn't enough for the government of China; now, Liu's wife "has been detained in her apartment in Beijing, China, and is not allowed to see people or use her telephone, a human rights group citing her attorney said Sunday. The woman, Liu Xia, has not been charged with a crime, said Freedom Now, a US-based group. 'Liu Xia is under enormous pressure,' said Dr. Yang Jianli, a member of Liu Xiaobo's defense team and a human rights specialist with Freedom Now. 'We hope that world leaders will immediately condemn this shameful act by the Chinese government and urge Liu Xia's immediate and unconditional release.'"
Privacy

Reuters Ends Anonymous Comments 159

Posted by Soulskill from the someone-is-wrong-on-the-internet dept.
eldavojohn writes "In an effort to retain civility, it appears that Thompson Reuters has ended anonymous web comments. You may recall the defense of the anonymous commenter, but you need look no further than Reuters' own Dean Wright (Global Editor, Ethics, Innovation and News Standards of Reuters) for two lengthy editorials arguing against anonymity online. After reading his complaints against anonymous readers, it almost seems like they need a moderation system to decide what's worth reading and what's trash."
Microsoft

Ballmer Promises Microsoft Tablet By Christmas 356

Posted by CmdrTaco from the also-i-want-pie dept.
judgecorp writes "Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer told an audience at the London School of Economics, that there will be tablets running Microsoft's Windows operating system available by Christmas. 'We as a company will need to cover all form factors,' he told an audience of students and press. 'You'll see slates with Windows on them – you'll see them this Christmas.' Mind you, if he's talking about the rumoured HP Windows 7 slate, he may not be so pleased when it appears. A recent YouTube video showed a supposed prototype which has been described as a 'trainwreck in the making.'"
Medicine

15-Year-Old Boy Fitted With Robotic Heart 241

Posted by Soulskill from the stay-away-from-nausicaans,-kid dept.
An anonymous reader writes "What do you do when a 15-year-old boy is close to death and ineligible for a heart transplant? If you're Dr. Antonio Amodeo you turn to an artificial solution and transplant a robotic heart, giving the boy another 20-25 years of life. The Italian boy in question suffers from Duchenne muscular dystrophy, which rapidly degenerates the muscles and eventually leads to death. Having such a disease renders the boy ineligible for a heart transplant, meaning almost certain death without an alternative solution. Dr. Amodeo found such an alternative in the form of a 90-gram, fully-robotic heart that took 10 hours to fit inside the boy's left ventricle. It is a permanent solution offering as much as 25 years of life and is powered by a battery worn as a belt."
Linux

Torvalds Becomes an American Citizen 654

Posted by CmdrTaco from the i-did-that-34-years-ago dept.
netbuzz writes "Having brought his open-source work and family to the United States from Finland some time ago, Linus Torvalds has marked an important personal milestone by attaining US citizenship. A casual remark on the Linux kernel mailing list about registering to vote led to the community being in on the news. Torvalds has acknowledged being a bit of a procrastinator on this move, writing in a 2008 blog post: 'Yeah, yeah, we should probably have done the citizenship thing a long time ago, since we've been here long enough (and two of the kids are US citizens by virtue of being born here), but anybody who has had dealings with the INS will likely want to avoid any more of them, and maybe things have gotten better with a new name and changes, but nothing has really made me feel like I really need that paperwork headache again.' In that post he also expresses dislike for the American style of politics in which he will now be able to participate directly."

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