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Google

Aurora Attackers Were Looking For Google's Surveillance Database 63

Posted by Soulskill
from the go-big-or-go-home dept.
An anonymous reader writes "When in early 2010 Google shared with the public that they had been breached in what became known as the Aurora attacks, they said that the attackers got their hands on some source code and were looking to access Gmail accounts of Tibetan activists. What they didn't make public is that the hackers have also accessed a database containing information about court-issued surveillance orders that enabled law enforcement agencies to monitor email accounts belonging to diplomats, suspected spies and terrorists. Whether this was the primary goal of the attacks as well as how much information was exfiltrated is unknown. current and former U.S. government officials interviewed by the Washington Post say that the database in question was possibly accessed in order to discover which Chinese intelligence operatives located in the U.S. were under surveillance."
Programming

Dart Is Not the Language You Think It Is 174

Posted by Soulskill
from the it's-actually-cobol-in-a-funny-hat dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Seth Ladd has an excellent write-up of Dart: 'When Dart was originally launched, many developers mistook it for some sort of Java clone. In truth, Dart is inspired by a range of languages such as Smalltalk, Strongtalk, Erlang, C#, and JavaScript. Get past the semicolons and curly braces, and you'll see a terse language without ceremony. ... Dart understands that sometimes you just don’t feel like appeasing a ceremonial type checker. Dart’s inclusion of an optional type system means you can use type annotations when you want, or use dynamic when that’s easier. For example, you can explore a new idea without having to first think about type hierarchies. Just experiment and use var for your types. Once the idea is tested and you’re comfortable with the design, you can add type annotations."

Comment: Re:MSN -- Google Talk -- where? (Score 1) 393

by samkass (#43777917) Attached to: Google Drops XMPP Support

I still need to chat and Facebook isn't going to cut it.

Maybe not for you, but for most people I think it will. Most of the Internet users on the planet have Facebook accounts and it's increasingly the best way to chat or contact anyone. Google is pretty much just driving people back to Facebook with this. As long as it's all proprietary, you might as well go with the one with the biggest available group.

Comment: Re:Nothing to do with Google+ (Score 5, Insightful) 393

by samkass (#43777897) Attached to: Google Drops XMPP Support

... Ignoring the fact that Google+ has 390Million Active accounts...

I'll buy that if by "active" you mean "someone said I should try it so I signed up and checked it out for an afternoon" or "I was forced to join Google+ to read the messages of a Groups thread someone pointed me to" or "I have a Google+ account? When did that happen? Oh, I guess I accidentally signed me up yesterday!" then sure.

Communications

Google Drops XMPP Support 393

Posted by Unknown Lamer
from the do-not-evil-yeah-right dept.
Cbs228 writes "During last week's Google I/O conference, the company announced a replacement for its aging Talk instant messenger: Google Hangouts. Hangouts, which is only available for Android, iOS, and Chrome, offers closer integration with Google+. Unfortunately, the new product drops support for the XMPP instant messaging protocol, which has been an integral part of Talk for over ten years. XMPP delivers instant messages to desktop clients, like Pidgin, and enables communication between users on different instant messaging networks. Hangouts users attempting to communicate with contacts on non-Google servers, such as jabber.org, have found that all communications have been suddenly and inexplicably severed. A Google account is now required to communicate with Hangouts users. Google Hangouts joins the ranks of an already-crowded ecosystem of closed, incompatible chat products like Skype." Interesting, because Google Wave was based on XMPP and Google was integral to the creation of the Jingle extension that enabled video chatting over XMPP. Note that no end date has been set for Talk yet, but the end must surely be nigh given Google's recent history of axing products like Reader and CalDAV support from their calendar app without much notice.

Comment: Re: I don't want (Score 2) 403

by samkass (#43661541) Attached to: Adobe's Creative Cloud Illustrates How the Cloud Costs You More

It's also how Photoshop got popular. Letraset ColorStudio was insanely powerful for the day but priced themselves too high and Photoshop came in as the low-end competitor with the friendly interface that could do most of the common stuff acceptably well. Now you've got Photoshop at the high-end and, at least on the Mac, competitors coming in like Pixelmator. We'll see where it leads...

Comment: Re:Words in common - Thai and English (Score 1) 323

by samkass (#43653655) Attached to: English May Have Retained Words From an Ice Age Language

An obvious explanation is why Americans say "Fall" or "Autumn" but English say only "Autumn". "Fall" was slang for "Autumn" in the late 1500's in England, came to the US, and we stuck with it while it was deprecated in England. If we were to colonize Mars tomorrow, they'd probably fix "Lolz" as a permanent word in their lexicon.

Comment: Re:$125K 'personal' limit (Score 1) 228

by samkass (#43564417) Attached to: Salesforce, a Pillow Maker and a $125k AmEx Bill

AmEx cards don't have a pre-set limit.

...that they'll tell you about. They know how much they think you're capable of repaying and will start to deny charges when you reach the limit. They just won't tell you what the limit is.

They're also really bad about reporting stuff accurately to credit bureaus. I almost didn't get my first house because AmEx said I owed more than my salary to them when my balance was actually $0. Needless to say I cancelled my card immediately and haven't had a personal one with them since.

Microsoft

Paul Thurrot Predicts November Debut, $500 Tag For Xbox 720 232

Posted by timothy
from the luckily-not-one-of-my-needs dept.
New submitter inkribbon writes that Microsoft blogger Paul Thurrott has now predicted that Microsoft's Xbox 720 console will actually hit the market this November. Thurrott offers a mix of what he considers cold, known facts and "clearly identified conjecture" about the upcoming device. Important to users is this confidently offered claim about the price: "Microsoft will initially offer two pricing models for the console: a standalone version for $499 and a $299 version that requires a two-year Xbox LIVE Gold commitment at an expected price of $10 per month."

Comment: Re:abetting in the murder of children? (Score 4, Informative) 1111

by samkass (#43340109) Attached to: Build a Secret Compartment, Go To Jail

Parent must be a public union employee.
Private Unions can be good or bad. If they get too bad they no longer have a job. (Ask the Bakers at Hostess)
Public Unions ARE BAD! In private unions there is management vs union. Balance can be struck.
In Public Employee Unions there can be no balance as the management (Politicians) are put into office with the union funds.
Why people can not see this as a horrible situation that can never work out well I will never understand.

The Hostess situation had nothing to do with the unions. The company was sold to private investors who stole all the retirement accounts and decided to gut the business and sell the brand... but they had contracts to get out of. So they gave themselves huge bonuses and cut worker pay until the workers finally stopped working, figured they'd milked it for what it was worth, and sold the assets. You'll be able to buy Twinkies again soon, because the brand was auctioned off to the highest bidder to repay the investors (who also got paid earlier as owners in the form of retirement money funneled into payouts).

The only way the unions failed in this situation is that they weren't powerful enough.

Cellphones

FCC To Update 1996 Cell Phone Radiation Standard 90

Posted by Soulskill
from the don't-rush-yourselves dept.
An anonymous reader writes "It's been more than a decade and a half since the FCC adopted a set of standards for radiation exposure from cell phones. The guidelines set in 1996 (and based on studies from the '80s) have applied to all cell phones released in the U.S. since then. Now, the FCC has decided that modern devices are just a tiny bit different than models from the '90s (where did those suitcase phones go?), so they're going to review and update the standard. 'Even though the FCC hasn't changed its standards for evaluating the safety of cell phones, it has provided consumers with information about how to minimize the risk of exposure to cell phone radiation. For example, the FCC recommends people use the speakerphone feature or an earpiece when talking on the phone, since increasing the distance the device is held from the body greatly reduces exposure. But the agency has not advocated for stricter warnings nor has it even endorsed these safety measures as necessary. The current review of the standards could change that as the agency will look at its testing procedures as well as the educational information it provides to the public about cell phone safety.'"

Comment: Re:Wow (Score 1) 170

by samkass (#43313155) Attached to: Gartner Says 3D Printers Will Cost Less Than $2,000 By 2016

It's a little silly to arbitrarily say something is "enterprise class" isn't it? InvisAlign has been using resin-laser printers to print molds for their aligners since 1999 and prints tens of thousands of unique pieces of plastic a day. It's really about what it lets you do. I think a better distinction is probably "prototyping class" versus "manufacturing class". A $2200 Replicator 2 is a fantastic prototyping, modeling, replacement part, artwork machine, but it's probably not going to be part of an assembly line anytime soon. Those will certainly be under $2K within the next couple years. On the other hand the mass-production ones are still tens of thousands of dollars and will probably take another decade to get down in price.

Bitcoin

Ask Slashdot: Enterprise Bitcoin Mining For Go-Green Initiatives? 312

Posted by Unknown Lamer
from the idle-cycles dept.
Supp0rtLinux writes "Bitcoins are currently trading around $75. I work for a very large organization. We have a fairly large HPC that is usually about 50% idle, as well as about 18K desktops on 4 campuses connected with dark fiber. All stay on 24x7 for after-hours AV scans (weekly) and backups (2-3x a week). All are leases that refresh every 2 years so all have fairly good CPU & RAM specs. As part of a go-green initiative a proposal has come up to use all the PCs for bitcoin in our own mining group; sort of like SETI-at-home style, but with a real dollar value return to us. Additionally, we would setup a queue in our HPC that dedicates 30% to BC mining when in use and up to 99.5% when no other jobs are running. The thought is that all the PCs are on 24x7 anyway and consuming resources so why not allow them to be useful 24x7 as well and generate bitcoins which can then be sold to offset the electrical costs of the running equipment and/or possibly even make a little profit. The guy with the idea says its a no-lose situation as if the price of bitcoins drops to below a certain level and is no longer a financially viable option, we simply stop the mining process. I'm curious what the Slashdot community thinks of this? " Read on for a few more details.

Paralysis through analysis.

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