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Spam

Submission + - CAPTCHA: Why it's terrible and some potential user-friendly alternatives (roarc.co.uk) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: I was Ironically foiled by the very subject matter of this article by Slashdot's submission form. CAPTCHA puzzles are a necessary evil to prevent us all from an inbox full of viagra. However, they're inconvenient, inaccessible (for visually impaired users) and machines are getting better at solving them too. How can CAPTCHA puzzles be made more relevant, user-friendly and future-proof? Will they even matter any more in the future? I'm an Undergrad Artificial Intelligence Student and these are my thoughts.
Privacy

Submission + - Minneapolis police catalog license plates and location data (startribune.com)

Submitted by tripleevenfall
tripleevenfall writes: The Minneapolis Star-Tribune reports that Minneapolis police used automated scanning technology to log location data for over 800,000 license plates in June alone, with 4.9 million scans having taken place this year. The data includes the date, time, and location where the plate was seen.

Worse, it appears this data is compiled and stored for up to a year and is disclosed to anyone who asks for it.
Education

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: What should I study to make educational games for the web? 2

Submitted by Modern Primate
Modern Primate writes: I want to make educational games for the web of approximately the quality of many of the Flash games I've seen. I've tinkered a bit with Flash and Actionscript before, but I'm told Flash is on its way out (and isn't supported on the iPad/iPhone anyway). HTML5 isn't universally supported yet, either. What should I study to be able to make web games that are compatible with multiple formats? I have some very basic coding skills from writing macros in Visual Basic for Excel, but not much more than that. I want to learn something that can get me started until I can afford to pay someone to code for me. What does Slashdot suggest?
Windows

Submission + - You can't bypass the UI formerly known as Metro on Windows 8 (networkworld.com) 1

Submitted by colinneagle
colinneagle writes: The final build of Windows 8 has already leaked to torrent sites, which is giving the propellerheads a chance to dig through the code. One revelation will probably not sit well with enterprise customers: you can't bypass the don't-call-it-Metro UI.

Normally, you have to boot Windows 8 and when the tiled desktop UI (formerly known as Metro) came up, you had to click on one of the boxes to launch Explorer. Prior builds of Windows 8 allowed the user to create a shortcut so you bypass Metro and go straight to the Explorer desktop.

Rafael Rivera, co-author of the forthcoming Windows 8 Secrets, confirmed to Mary Jo Foley at ZDNet that Microsoft does indeed block the boot bypass routine from prior builds.

He also believes that Microsoft has blocked the ability for administrators to use Group Policy to allow users to bypass the tiled startup screen. There had been hope that Microsoft would at least relent and let corporate users have a bypass, if only for compatibility’s sake.

Submission + - First Crysis 3 Video Relased, Shows off CryENGINE 3 Capabilities (paritynews.com)

Submitted by hypnosec
hypnosec writes: The first Crysis 3 trailer has been released and it shows off in-game footage and the mind blowing capabilities of the CryENGINE 3 that now supports DirectX 11. The real-time rendering has been taken up a notch allowing gamers to experience some of the best visuals ever seen. CryENGINE3 delivers excellent graphics and it is more or less “what you see is what you play” thing thanks to the news tools that allows for tessellation in real-time, enhanced ocean and water rendering, improved character technology along with dynamic volumetric light beams and light shaft effects. The engine also delivers Composite 3D Lens Flares & FX along with Procedural HDR Flares and Shapes. “Crysis 3 is out February 2013 and is playable publicly for the first time at GamesCom 2012.”
Google

Submission + - Google Starts Punishing Pirate Sites In Search Results (theverge.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Google constantly tweaks how its search engine delivers results to people, but it's rolling out a major new change next week: it'll start generally downranking sites that receive a high volume of copyright infringement notices from copyright holders. Google says the move is designed to "help users find legitimate, quality sources of content more easily" — meaning that it's trying to direct people who search for movies, TV shows, and music to sites like Hulu and Spotify, not torrent sites or data lockers like the infamous MegaUpload. It's a clear concession to the movie and music industries, who have long complained that Google facilitates piracy — and Google needs to curry favor with media companies as it tries to build an ecosystem around Google Play. Google says it feels confident making the change because because its existing copyright infringement reporting system generates a massive amount of data about which sites are most frequently reported — the company received and processed over 4.3 million URL removal requests in the past 30 days alone, more than all of 2009 combined. Importantly, Google says the search tweaks will not remove sites from search results entirely, just rank them lower in listings.
Patents

Submission + - Judge overturns patent suit, rules RIM did not infringe (ottawacitizen.com)

Submitted by ottdmk
ottdmk writes: You may recall this recent Slashdot story about Mformation being awarded 147.2 million dollars in a patent suit agains RIM. Well, it appears a California appeals judge has disagreed with that verdict. As part of the ruling if Mformation successfully appeals, the matter will go to a new trial instead of the jury award being restored.

Submission + - In Brazil, all vehicles must have radio IDs by 2014 (clicrbs.com.br) 1

Submitted by
morcego
morcego writes: "Brazil's National Traffic Council (CNT) published today, Friday, a resolution that institutes the National System of Automatic Vehicle Identification (Siniav). According to the Q&A published (Google translation from Portuguese), only "visible and public" information will be available (vehicle year or fabrication, make, model, combustible, engine power and license plate number), without any personal information about the owner or registration data. This system will be mandatory to all vehicles (cars, trucks, motorcycles etc) and should cost vehicle owners aprox. R$ 5 (less than US$3)."
Data Storage

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: Best non-offsite backup/protection of data? 3

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: I know that most people out there use backup services into the cloud now, offsite, but does anyone out there have good ideas on how to best protect data without it leaving the site? I'm a photographer and shoot 32GB to 64GB in a couple of hours. I've got about 8TB of images over the past decade and just can't imagine paying to host them somewhere offsite. I don't make enough money as it is. Currently I just redundantly back them up to hard drives in different rooms of my house, but that's a total crapshoot — if there's a fire, I'd be out of luck. Does anyone keep a hard disk or NAS inside a fireproof safe? In a bunker in the cellar? In the detatched garage? It's so much data that even doing routine backups bogs the system down for days. I'd love suggestions, especially from gamers or videographers who have TBs they need to back up, on what options there are on a limited budget to maximize protection. Thank you!
Science

Submission + - While Early Carnivorous Ancestors Thrived, Vegetarians Went Extinct (medicaldaily.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: It is perhaps intrinsically human, to wonder about your origins. Now, new research has emerged that has found that our ancestors' dietary habits had a hand in keeping some alive and driving others extinct. Specifically, research has found that ancestors who were vegetarians died out while their meat-eating counterparts – our ancestors – thrived.
Vincent Balter, of the École Normale Supérieure in Lyon, and his colleagues in Toulouse, France and Johannesburg, South Africa studied the enamel in fossilized teeth. According to the study published in the most recent issue of Nature, "Laser ablation profiles of strontium/calcium, barium/calcium and strontium isotope ratios in tooth enamel are a means to decipher intra-individual diet and habitat changes." In other words, the researchers used lasers to quantify the amount of barium, calcium, and strontium, which allowed them to determine their diets and where they lived.
Government

Submission + - Validating voters in open source governance

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: As we (very gradually) move away from feudal, leader-based forms of governance to collaborative and open source governance, some interesting new issues arise. The biggest is usually user authentication: how can we avoid sock-puppets and spammers from overtaking the voting process? Enter the concept of the streetwiki, an ingenious system for having humans validate their physical neighbors. Bleeding-edge social organization meets ancient validation protocol.
Privacy

Submission + - Patient just wants to see his data from his implanted medical device (umass.edu)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Hugo Campos got an implanted cardiac defibrillator shortly after collapsing on a BART train platform. He wants access to the data wirelessly collected by the computer implanted in his body, but the manufacturer says no. It seems weird that a patient can't get access to data about his own heart. Hugo and several medical device engineers are responding to live Q/A on Sunday night on such topics via ACM MedCOMM webcast at ACM SIGCOMM.

http://icdusergroup.blogspot.com/
Ubuntu

Submission + - Ubuntu Delays Wayland Plans, System Compositor (phoronix.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Wayland-usage in Ubuntu 12.10 via setting it up as a system video compositor has been delayed to at least Ubuntu 13.04. Developers made progress on running Ubuntu on Wayland (there are experimental packages available), but they need more time to complete their work and ready Wayland. For those wanting to try out Wayland on Linux, there is a specialty Wayland LiveCD.

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: Where is the best place to start with ICS SCADA Security training?

Submitted by antipickle
antipickle writes: I am an IT manager for a mid size construction company. We have recently been purchased by a much larger company and are migrating much or our IT infrastructure over to their data center and my responsibilities are shrinking.

Rather than jump ship completely I would like to be able to transition to another part of the company that installs SCADA systems.

I have been considering taking a course from Infosec Institute to obtain an IACRB CSSA certification. The information I have been able to gather about Infosec Institute has been mostly positive, however there's not much out there about IACRB.

What is the Slashdot communities opinion on this?
Science

Submission + - Researchers Develop Algorithm to Trace Source of Computer Virus, Epidemics, More (skynews.com.au)

Submitted by hypnosec
hypnosec writes: Want to trace the source of virus that has infected your computer? Researchers at a Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland have the answer. The scientists have devised software capable of tracing computer viruses back to their source. Beyond computer viruses, the software can also trace terror suspects, rumor-mongering and even infectious diseases back to their source. Pedro Pinto, one of the researchers, explained that the algorithm works by going through information in a reverse direction back to the original source. He said, “Using our method, we can find the source of all kinds of things circulating in a network just by 'listening' to a limited number of members of that network.” The team tested their software on a known data maze to check if their research actually pinpoints the individuals behind the 9/11 attacks and they were able to pin-point three suspects, out of which one was the master mind behind the attacks.
Ubuntu

Submission + - Ubuntu Considers Replacing Nautilus File Manager (launchpad.net)

Submitted by
zeis
zeis writes: "In comment #3 in bug report 1034080 on Launchpad Sebastien Bacher wrote: 'I'm not sure yet, I'm leaning toward shipping both version in the archive for quantal with 3.4 on the CD and discussing at UDS the way forward based on the feedback nautilus 3.6 and other filemanagers got.
Looking around us "elementary os" has its own filemanager (marlin, written in vala), "mint" just started their own project "nemo" which is a fork of nautilus 3.4 ... we might decide to follow GNOME, try joining efforts with the marlin or nemo team to maintain a full featured file manager or maintain our own filemanager (less likely at this point, that's not a topic which was raised before).'"
Security

Submission + - Dorifel Malware Encrypts Files, Steals Financial Data, May Be Related to Zeus (threatpost.com)

Submitted by Trailrunner7
Trailrunner7 writes: While much of the world was focused yesterday on the Gauss malware saga, there was another interesting infection happening, mainly in the Netherlands, that researchers think may be related to the Zeus and Citadel attacks, though the motivation behind the attack is somewhat of a mystery. The new malware, called Dorifel, has infected thousands of businesses in the Netherlands and Europe and researchers say that it's stealing online banking data and the crew behind it may be working on some other attack campaigns, as well.

Researchers looking at the Dorifel infections found that, aside from the odd concentration of infections in the Netherlands, there are a couple of other odd components to the attack campaign. David Jacoby, a malware researcher at Kaspersky Lab, traced the malware back to the hosting servers, and found that not only was Dorifel being hosted on there, there also were several other pieces of malware being hosted on those boxes, along with a lot of stolen financial information.

Along with the stolen financial data, which included credit card numbers, CVVs and victims' names, the servers also contained exploits for a pair of Java vulnerabilities. One of those flaws, CVE-2012-0507, has been used in a variety of targeted attacks and other malware campaigns.
PlayStation (Games)

Submission + - PlayStation boss defends vita, slams social gaming (gamesindustry.biz)

Submitted by donniebaseball23
donniebaseball23 writes: Sony Computer Entertainment America boss Jack Tretton has come out swinging to defend the lackluster response the games industry has seen with the PS Vita. He deemed the sales level for the portable as "acceptable" so far, and he brushed off any notion that social and free-to-play games are putting huge pressure on the portable and dedicated consoles market. "I think the opportunity to be in the console business is greater than ever before," he told GamesIndustry International. "[Social and free-to-play] is a business I think a lot of companies are learning is difficult to sustain for the long term. It's an adjunct or it's an add-on, but it's not where gaming is headed. It's an additive diversion. There's a place for social and freemium, but it's not going to replace the business models that are out there."
Security

Submission + - Georgia Tech Launches "Titan" Threat Intelligence System (securityweek.com)

Submitted by wiredmikey
wiredmikey writes: A new malware intelligence system developed at Georgia Tech Research Institute is helping organizations share threat intelligence and work together to understand malware and cyber attacks. Dubbed Titan, the system lets members submit threat data and collaborate on malware analysis and classification. Unlike some other systems, members contribute data anonymously so no one would know which specific organizations had been affected by a specific attack. Titan users also get reports on malware samples they have submitted, such as the potential harm, the likely source, the best remedy, and the risks posed by the sample. The analysis is based on what GTRI researchers learn by reverse-engineering the malware. The project currently analyzes and classifies an average of 100,000 pieces of malicious code each day and growing. While other information sharing initiatives have been launched, many are by vendors, which sometimes sparks concern that the vendor may have some bias, and may be pushing a certain product. Not the case with Titan.
The Military

Submission + - Meet DARPA's New Militarized Earthworm

Submitted by derekmead
derekmead writes: Meshworm is an indestructible, robotic earthworm that can crawl virtually silently at a speed of about 5 millimeters per second. DARPA wants to send it into battle.

Believe it or not, the Pentagon’s been working on building a robotic earthworm for a while. They tried putting one together with gears. They tried with air-powered and pneumatic pumps, but the results were bulky and untenable. Then, researchers at Harvard, MIT and Seoul National University in Korea put their heads together and designed an “artificial muscle.” It’s essentially a polymer mesh that’s wrapped with nickel and titanium wire designed to stretch and contract with heat. When an electric current is applied, the mesh mimics the circular muscle system of an earthworm to scoot forward.

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