Slashdot

An anonymous reader writes "SourceForge.net, which is owned by the same parent company as Slashdot, just added support for OpenID so that users can now login to their accounts using it. In their announcement OpenID on SourceForge.net they say, "OpenID is getting tremendous traction and we're happy to be jumping into it. it's bringing us back in touch with fresh web (2.0) technology. as a decentralized open-source standard, it's a perfect fit for us — it allows us to streamline more user interaction and participation with our site, and hopefully more for the whole OSS community." There is also more about this on the OpenID blog where they congratulate SourceForge for, "continuing to help get OpenID in the hands of open source developers on a daily basis!""

An anonymous reader writes "From OpenID.net

"As a great way to lead into the Internet Identity Workshop this week in Mountain View CA, both Microsoft and Google shipped OpenID features in beta products this past Friday. Microsoft Research announced an experimental Provider while Google announced the ability to comment on Blogger blogs using OpenID.

"

An anonymous reader writes "Blogger in Draft now lets you enable OpenID-based commenting which means that users of OpenID-enabled services — such as LiveJournal and WordPress — can comment on blogs using their accounts from those sites, rather than with Blogger/Google accounts. This feature is in Draft to to hear feedback about the implementation, and to test it further before moving it to Blogger's main site. Google is also working on functionality to let Blogger's URLs (both Blog*Spot and custom domains) be used for commenting elsewhere on the web."
http://bloggerindraft.blogspot.com/2007/11/new-feature-openid-commenting.html

The European Union has funded an ambitious project related to wearable technology. This project, named WearIT@work will end in one year and was funded with 14.3 million euros of EU money, even if the total project cost is expected to exceed 23 million euros. For mobile workers, the goal is to replace traditional interfaces, such as screen, keyboard or computer unit, by speech control or gesture control, without modifying the applications. This wearable system is currently being tested in four different fields including aircraft maintenance, emergency response, car production and healthcare. But read more for additional references and pictures showing emergency rescuers and doctors using some of these wearable computers to ease their work.

An anonymous reader writes "Was the data that Google uses in their new "My Location" feature gathered illegally? Apparently yes, according to this discussion following this New York Times' article between a user and Barry Schnitt, Google's spokesperson: Check it out, it's very interesting. Looks like this could become a major headaches for Google's lawyers."

Faced with its second mass protest by members in its short life span, Facebook, the enormously popular social networking Web site, is reining in some aspects of a controversial new advertising program .... Late yesterday the company made an important change, saying that it would not send messages about users' Internet activities without getting explicit approval each time.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/30/technology/30face.html?ex=1354165200&en=f448f8a210da7bdf&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

Australia's University of Technology in Queensland (QUT) has created a groundbreaking new system that can detect invisible intruders on wireless LANs. Wireless networks have been almost impossible to thoroughly secure as they possess no clearly defined boundaries, instead they are defined by the quality and strength of the receiving antenna. QUT Information Security Institute researcher Dr Jason Smith has invented a new system to detect eavesdropping on unencrypted networks or active hijackings of computer sessions when a legitimate user who is logged onto the network leaves the connection. Smith has created a series of monitoring techniques that when used together can detect both attackers and configuration mistakes in network devices. According to Smith, ""the strength of the signal travelling in a wireless network and the round trip time of the signal are both monitored because they will change if an intruder enters the network. Separately monitoring the signal and round trip time is unreliable, but correlating them against each other makes the system accurate," he said. Smith goes on to list further features and benefits of the new system and how threats can be responded to.
http://www.computerworld.com.au/index.php/id;1359088162;fp;16;fpid;1

Turning the tables on the RIAA's attempt to subpoena information from the University of Oregon about the identities of the university students, the Attorney General has now filed additional papers requesting permission from the Court to conduct immediate discovery into the RIAA's 'data mining' techniques, such as the use of unlicensed investigators, the turning over of subpoenaed information to collection agencies, the obtaining of personal information from computers. The AG pointed out (pdf) that "Because Plaintiffs routinely obtain ex parte discovery in their John Doe infringement suits.....their factual assertions supporting their good cause argument are never challenged by an adverse party and their investigative methods remain free of scrutiny. They often settle their cases quickly before defendants obtain legal representation and begin to conduct discovery...... and have dropped cases, such as their case against Tanya Andersen, in which their methods and practices have been challenged through counterclaims...... While the University is not a party to the case, Plaintiffs' subpoena affects the university's rights and obligations. Plaintiffs may be spying on students who use the University's computer system and may be accessing much more than IP addresses." As one commentator succinctly put it, "They'll be going bananas in RIAA land" after reading this filing.

An anonymous reader writes "Read/WriteWeb writes, "Orange SA, a subsidiary of France Telecom, announced today at the Digital ID World conference in San Francisco that France Telecom will act as an OpenID server. That means the company will verify the identities of their 40 million users immediately, without the need for another account to be created, for any other site on the web that supports OpenID." Orange appears to also have plans to accept OpenIDs from other providers to access various services and more information can be found (in French) on their website."
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/ft_openid.php

maotx writes "Many DC residents are fuming tonight after the DC Housing Authority admits it printed their social security numbers on this month's newsletter. Now, more than 10,000 people are at risk of identity theft."

lordicarus writes "I have been an avid reader of Slashdot for nearly 7 years now and have grown to really appreciate the feedback provided by the readers on various questions. My day has come where I have a question that could really use the assistance of the collective mind here.

If you were ever in a situation where you wanted to get all of your television needs... ahem... legally, and you have no access to a cable connection or satellite what would you do? Can IPTV over a broadband cell card get you your fix? Is there some other way to get all the good cable channels I want like SciFi, USA, FX, Comedy Central, Bravo, Cartoon Network, VH1, etc?

I have searched online for various IPTV providers and some of them have a few of those channels (Joost seems to have the most), but not all of them. Is there some option out there that I simply haven't found and don't know about, or am I sadly just SOL?"

Daveman692 writes "Artur Bergman for O'Reilly Radar writes while visiting a brand new Virgin America plane in San Francisco, "I had erroneously believed that use of Open Source as a competitive advantage was no longer possible. I thought that the agility and cost benefits had spread across all industries in the same way it has taken over Wall Street. It was surprising to me to hear that Open Source technologies and a modern service-oriented architecture drastically lowers costs for Virgin and increases the speed of innovation. There is no surprise when you hear that most of the IT staff don't come from an airline background, but are Silicon Valley engineers. I wonder what other industries are ripe for an technological infusion to shake them up?""
http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2007/07/_virgin_america.html

ecklesweb writes "The Boston Globe reprots that Hacks are no longer a joke at MIT. Three students tripped an alarm while "exploring" the Faculty Club under the cover of dark. Instead of fines or community service, the three students face up to 20 years in prison on charges of felony breaking and entering and trespassing. Of course, maybe it's just *botched* hacks that are no joke at MIT..."

dolphinling writes "Everyone is aware that the Mozilla Corporation makes some money, and employs some people now. Google has full-time employees working on Firefox too, as do a number of other places. Yet despite that, in the six months up to Firefox 2 some 27% of the patches to Firefox were submitted by key volunteers, and those patches represent 24% of changes made to the source code. What's more, those numbers only counted contributers with 50 patches or more, so the actual numbers are probably quite a bit higher. It's good to see that even as Mozilla does so well in the business world, it can still keep its ties to the community so strong." They were running these number to find out who they need to start offering support to. So: contribute to Firefox, and you know you'll get a hand up. Nice work, folks.

An anonymous reader writes "As rumored last week, AOL's John Panzer has now announced support for OpenID for all AOL/AIM users. He begins, "I think that user-centric, interoperable identity is hugely important to enable the social experiences we're trying to provide. This is a work in progress, but things are coming along thanks to our authentication team's diligent effort." With AOL joining Microsoft and (unofficially) Yahoo! in supporting OpenID, will Google be next?"