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The Internet

Submission + - Religious sites riskier than porn sites (huffingtonpost.com)

Submitted by drkim
drkim writes: Article: "According to a report released... by security software firm Symantec, religious and ideological websites are riskier to visit than adult and pornographic websites. ...analysis found that religious sites had more than triple the average number of threats per infected site than pornographic sites..."
Apple

Submission + - Orbitz CEO says Mac users willing to spend $20 more per night on a hotel room

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Orbitz CEO claims in CNBC interview that Mac users willing to spend $20 more per night on a hotel room vs users on a pc. So my question is do Mac users demand better quality or are they just suckers?
Apple

Submission + - Mac virus using Office 2000 vulnerability to spread (technet.com)

Submitted by danomac
danomac writes: It appears that Mac users aren't very vigilant about keeping their machines fully patched — Microsoft is reporting that an old Office vulnerability is being exploited to turn the Mac into a zombie for a botnet.

The patch for this was apparently issued almost three years ago, and it is apparently still infecting machines today.

Submission + - John McAfee, antivirus pioneer, arrested by Belize police (techworld.com)

Submitted by concertina226
concertina226 writes: McAfee antivirus founder John McAfee is reportedly taking legal advice after a raid on his Belize home by police resulted in the software entrepreneur’s arrest and the death of his pet dog.

The raid in the early morning of 1 May by the country’s armed ‘Gang Suppression Unit’ (GSU) allegedly involved the doors to McAfee’s house being smashed down, his property ransacked, and his dog shot.

After searching the house for drugs and firearms and handcuffing him and his 12 employees, the police detained McAfee for a number of hours before releasing him at 2am the following morning.
Google

Submission + - Google makes $1bn a year in Australia; pays just $74k tax (delimiter.com.au)

Submitted by daria42
daria42 writes: Looks like Apple isn't the only company with interesting offshore taxation practices. The financial statements for Google's Australian subsidiary show the company told the Australian Government it made just $200 million in revenue in 2011 in Australia, despite local industry estimating it actually brought in closer to $1 billion. The rest was funnelled through Google's Irish subsidiary and not disclosed in Australia. Consequently the company only disclosed taxation costs in Australia of $74,000. Not bad work if you can get it — which Google apparently can. About that 'don't be evil' motto? Yeah. Not so much.
Security

Submission + - Osama Bin Laden didn't encrypt his files (sophos.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: If you're running a terrorist organisation, it might make sense to encrypt your files.

Clearly Osama Bin Laden didn't realise that — as some of the documents seized during the raid on his hideout in Pakistan have been made public for the first time.

17 electronic documents, which were found on USB sticks, memory cards and computer hard drives after US Navy Seals killed the terrorist chief in the May 2011 raid, are being released in their original Arabic alongside English translations by the Combating Terrorism Center, reports Sophos.

Submission + - DIY home NAS for a variety of legacy drives 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: I have at least 10 assorted hard drives ranging from 100 GB to 3 TB, and including external drives, IDE desktop drives, laptop drives, etc.

What's the best way to setup a home NAS to utilize all this 'excess' space? And could it be setup with redundancy built-in so a single drive failure would cause no data loss?

I don't need anything fancy. Visibility to networked Windows PCs is great; ability to streak to Roku / iPad / Toshiba etc would be great but not necessary. What's the best way to accomplish this goal?
The Military

Submission + - Squid-Inspired Tech Could Lead to Color-Changing Smart Materials (gizmag.com)

Submitted by Zothecula
Zothecula writes: If you’ve ever watched a cephalopod such as a squid changing color, then you’ll know that it’s a pretty amazing process – they can instantly change the appearance of their skin from dark to light and back again, or even create pulsating bands of color that travel across it. They are able to do this thanks to muscles that manipulate the pigmentation of their skin. Now, scientists from the University of Bristol have succeeded in creating artificial muscles and cells, that might someday allow for the same sort of color changes in smart clothing that can camouflage itself against different backgrounds.
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft using Linux to optimize Skype traffic (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A security researcher believes that Microsoft has overhauled Skype, with thousands of Linux boxes serving as the "supernodes" that route calls between users of the voice-over-IP service. Kostya Kortchinsky of Immunity Security "discovered the Linux supernodes using a Skype probing technique he and colleague Fabrice Desclaux first demonstrated in 2006", according to Ars Technica. The drastic infrastructure change doesn't affect the peer-to-peer nature of the calls between Skype users.
The Gimp

Submission + - Gimp 2.8 Finally Released (gimpusers.com)

Submitted by
Cryophallion
Cryophallion writes: "After many years of development, gimp 2.8 is finally released. Among it's features the oft desired single window mode, layer groups, and many other massive improvements including some of the gimpui teams' work. This might be the release that helps make the gimp a much more user friendly experience for newcomers, and has features that are rivalling those of certain exceptionally expensive commercial programs. While the porting th GEGL is still ongoing (and recently reported to have made massive advances made), this is a major step forward for one of the premier open source projects."
NASA

Submission + - A quick look a the SpaceX blast into history (networkworld.com)

Submitted by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes: "If all goes smoothly – and it hasn’t so far — Space Exploration Technologies or SpaceX will this month send its Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon space capsule into low earth orbit on the first public resupply mission to the International Space Station. The Dragon will stay about 18 days and deliver a little over 1,000 pounds of cargo. A successful mission will go a long way toward bolstering the idea of non-NASA spacecraft ferry equipment and ultimately astronauts to the space lab. It won’t be an easy task by any means. “This is a really tough flight. What we’re asking them to do is amazing,” NASA’s William Gerstenmaier said during one recent news meeting. Here we take a look at the components of this historic space flight."
Java

Submission + - JavaFX Runs on Raspberry Pi (i-programmer.info)

Submitted by mikejuk
mikejuk writes: Oracle seem to be concerned that the Raspberry Pi manages to run Java properly and they are actively working on the problem. To prove that it more than just works what better than to get a JavaFX app up and running — what could be more cutting edge.
Unfortunately the trick was performed using a commercial version of the JDK with JIT support and some private code but it is still early days yet. Watch the video to see it in action.
Java and JavaFX on Raspberry Pi takes us into a whole new ball game.

Submission + - British Ban Spikes Pirate Bay Traffic (torrentfreak.com)

Submitted by sleiper
sleiper writes: Today sees UK ISPs begin to block access for their subscribers to the Pirate Bay URL. Sky, Talk Talk, Virgin Media and O2 have already blocked access and the UK's biggest provider, BT, are currently reviewing their legal position.

This access ban however has seen The Pirate Bay's traffic spike to 12million more page views than their previous daily record.

It seems obvious that a message is being sent, that this type of censorship is not the way forward. The Pirate Bay keeps on sailing"
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft raises UK prices by a third and can't rule out future hikes (computerworlduk.com) 1

Submitted by
DerekduPreez
DerekduPreez writes: "Microsoft has revealed that it will increase volume licencing prices in the UK by an average of 29 percent to adjust for the ‘sustained currency differences between European countries’.

UK businesses have until 1st July to place their orders under the current prices before the changes take effect.

Microsoft claims that because of sustained differences between the British Pound and the Euro, price spikes are necessary to maintain consistency across the region.

Microsoft also confirmed that it could not rule out future increases, as it will continue to monitor currency movements and may make further adjustments if there are large fluctuations."
Censorship

Submission + - UK magazine pulled from US store after a feature on 'hacking' (tuxradar.com) 1

Submitted by super_rancid
super_rancid writes: UK-based Linux Format magazine was pulled from Barnes and Noble bookstores in the US after featuring an article called 'Learn to Hack'. They used 'hack' in the populist security sense, rather than the traditional sense, and the feature — which they put online — was used to illustrate how poor your server's security is likely to be by breaking into it.
Technology

Submission + - Researchers Push Implanted User Interfaces (txchnologist.com)

Submitted by
MatthewVD
MatthewVD writes: "A new, user interface-enabled generation of electronics that you wear under your skin could be used for convenience, or even pleasure, rather than medical reasons. Scientists at Autodesk Research in Toronto have implanted electronics with user buttons, pressure sensors and LEDs under the skin of a cadaver's arm and wrapped in artificial skin. The electronics could buzz you when you have an appointment, carry memory cars with data or connect you in a social network with others wearing electronics. "It's a way of letting someone under your skin," says one expert. The researchers will be presenting at the Association of Computing Machinery Conference next week."
Book Reviews

Submission + - Book Review: Scala for the Impatient

Submitted by K77
K77 writes: Note to /. editors: Obviously, Scala has become a hot topic. Despite occasional mentions on /. — usually in conjunction with Facebook or Twitter — there has not been much discussion here of resources to help people learn scala. I seldom write reviews, but this book is just so good I need to share this. Please consider publishing my review, below, or making suggestions which would make it more helpful to /. readers.
----

If you're not using Scala yet but you've been reading about it online, you've probably noticed a lot of discussion and speculation online about which companies and how many people are actually using Scala in production. It's clear that Scala is generating a lot of interest, and similarly clear that many people haven't quite figured out whether Scala is suitable for them and their projects. IS Scala a fit for you? For your company? What does it take to become productive in Scala? "Scala for the Impatient" can help you decide for yourself and your teams. And if you decide to adopt Scala for a project, this book will also help get you going.

Let's make one thing clear from the start: "impatient" is not a euphemism for "unprepared." Bring your A-Game. This is a book for programmers who are serious about their craft. Fittingly for a language as elegant as Scala, the book is also graceful, well written and thoughtfully edited. You will learn in plain language what's essential and what's extra in Scala. There's no fluff here. Every sentence matters.

But impatience is not the book's only virtue. A wave of Scala books is coming to market. I've read several, most of which I'm unlikely to pick up again. Scala for the Impatient is different, thanks to a unique design and mission. Despite being a relatively young language, a strong dogma seems to have grown up around how Scala is to be taught by books. Not all dogma is bad. But Scala for the

Impatient deliberately breaks away from the pack in three remarkable ways:

i) not jumping immediately into functional programming;
ii) thoroughly establishing common ground with experienced Java (and C++) programmers; and
iii) dispatching re-mappable differences before introducing really new concepts

What?!? We could be forgiven for thinking that functional programming is the most important thing about Scala. That might be true, but then why has Scala — a relative latecomer to the family of functional languages — generated so much excitement? Perhaps there's more to Scala. Indeed, there is so much more that functional programming makes mostly cameo appearances before finally taking center stage in Chapter 12. That's right: Chapter 12. And I assure you, the first eleven chapters are not slow.

On the contrary, Horstmann swings for the fences on every page, because there's a lot of work to do. Not the least of this work is establishing common ground with experienced Java programmers. If you've ever wondered how much of the "chattiness" of Java is imposed by the JVM, now you know: none of it. Scala is capable of great expressiveness in good hands, so it makes sense to take a fresh look at types, objects and control before applying them functionally. You won't be bored. Like learning a foreign language, you may find that learning Scala gives you a deeper appreciation for the languages you already know.

The third remarkable trait of this book is that Horstmann deliberately addresses what I call re-mappable differences between Java and Scala. Because there is so much genuinely new about Scala, it's important not to be distracted along the way by things which may look new but really are simply remapped. Scala for the Impatient is the only book I've seen so far which demonstrates that the author really understands this. Moreover, Horstmann writes plainly about what you *must* know to be productive in Scala and which are the truly esoteric bits and when you would need them.

I won't read the table of contents to you, but I do want to mention three chapters which really stand out. You've probably heard that Scala has strong support for XML. This gets a whole chapter, and I think you'll be amazed at how natural it feels. Scala makes working with XML fun — ok, tolerable — for humans. Another brief but technically solid chapter is devoted to Actors which provide the clean, baked-in concurrency which is a major driver for Scala adoption. And there's even a chapter on the parser library embedded in Scala, which is very useful when you need to parse protocols or storage structures for example. Since parsing theory is a specialty likely unfamiliar to many readers, the essentials are summarized. While the Scala parser library won't replace traditional language recognition tools, its internal domain specific language for parsing may save you from having to jump in and out of Scala for many common tasks.

Finally, the exercises are excellent. Don't skip them! In fact, some of the exercises would make good interview questions. (Hint!)
Space

Submission + - ESA juices up for mission to Jupiter's icy moons (gizmag.com)

Submitted by cylonlover
cylonlover writes: The European Space Agency (ESA) has announced that Jupiter’s icy moons will be the focus of its next Large science mission. Getting the nod over the New Gravitational Wave Observatory (NGO), that would have hunted for gravitational waves, and ATHENA, the Advanced Telescope for High-Energy Astrophysics, the Jupiter Icy moons Explorer (JUICE) is scheduled to arrive at Jupiter in 2030 with the goal of studying its Galilean moons as potential habitats for life.

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