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Education

Submission + - Fight Begins To Secure Turing Papers For UK Museum (justgiving.com)

Submitted by Blacklaw
Blacklaw writes: Auction house Christie's is planning to sell offprints of Alan Turing's early work for an estimated £500,000 — and the fight has begun to raise the money so UK codebreaking museum and charity Bletchley Park can house the documents in the building where Turing performed his war-winning work and birthed the concept of a modern 'universal computer.'
If the money isn't raised, the papers could disappear into a private archive, never to be seen again.

Submission + - Which Language to Learn? 3

Submitted by LordStormes
LordStormes writes: I've been a Java/C++/PHP developer for about 6 years now. However, I'm seeing the jobs for these languages dry up, and Java in particular is worrisome with all the Oracle nonsense going on. I think it's time to pick up a new language or risk my skills fading into uselessness. I'm looking to do mostly Web-based back-end stuff. I've contemplated Perl, Python, Ruby, Erlang, Go, and several other languages, but I'll put it to you — what language makes the most sense now to get the jobs? I've deliberately omitted .NET — I have no desire to do the Microsoft languages.
Games

Submission + - Don't get naked while playing Xbox Kinect (gamepron.com) 1

Submitted by UgLyPuNk
UgLyPuNk writes: The latest gaming blockbuster from Harmonix, the Kinect-enabled Dance Central hit shelves this week and already it’s taking the world by storm.

I was trying out the Kinect Dance Central game and I was getting hot so I took off my clothes. I had no idea that the game was going to take A BUNCH OF PICTURES OF ME
Emulation (Games)

Submission + - JavaScript Gameboy emulator, detailed in 8 parts (imrannazar.com)

Submitted by Two9A
Two9A writes: JavaScript has shed its image of being a limited language, tied to DOM manipulation in a browser; in recent years, new engines and frameworks have given JS a reputation as a language capable of bigger things. Mix this in with the new elements of HTML 5, and you have the capacity to emulate a game console or other system, with full graphical output. This series of articles looks in detail at how an emulator is written in JavaScript, using the example of the Gameboy handheld: starting at the CPU, and (as of part 8) running a copy of Tetris.

Submission + - The Stuxnet Worm? More Than 30 People Built It (theatlantic.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: At a small conference on cybersecurity sponsored by TechAmerica, Symantec's Brian Tillett put a number on the size of the team that built the virus. He said that traces of more than 30 programmers have been found in source code.
The Courts

NCsoft Sued For Making Lineage II 'Too Addictive' 360

Posted by Soulskill from the dopamine-farming dept.
An anonymous reader writes "South Korean MMO game publisher NCsoft is finding itself facing another lawsuit, this time for making games that are 'too addictive.' US Lineage II player Craig Smallwood is suing the publisher for $3 million because he found himself playing Lineage II for 20,000 hours over a period of 5 years. At times, his average play session would persist for over 11 hours, crippling his life and ability to function. A federal judge is allowing the court case to go forward (PDF), stating that the plaintiff has a claim for negligence and gross negligence against the publisher."

Submission + - ISP to prioritise gaming traffic (pcpro.co.uk) 1

Submitted by nk497
nk497 writes: A UK ISP is now offering a broadband package just for gamers, which will prioritise their traffic to give them an edge over rival players. Demon Internet has also set up direct networks with gaming companies to boost speeds, and is promising lower latency and a higher usage cap than standard packages. "Looking at the usage of gamers, it's actually more akin to a small business," the company said. While paying to get specific content streamed more quickly may worry net neutrality campaigners, Demon says it has enough capacity for its own customers and that's who it's looking out for.
Security

Submission + - Malware's long tail: parked domains (threatpost.com)

Submitted by Paul-Threatpost
Paul-Threatpost writes: Security experts are divided over what to do about the millions of unmanaged parked Web domains, which have become a platform for Web based attacks. While some say that traffic to the sites is minuscule, a new analysis from Armorize suggests that scammers are still doing pretty well by mining traffic from the Web's "long tail."
Games

Submission + - Mac gaming hits a snag (pcauthority.com.au) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Until a few months ago the concept of gaming on OS X was so farfetched that things like the quality of graphics drivers just didn't matter. Then Valve launched its Steam distribution service on the platform and with it dozens of games. Virtually overnight the Mac went from gaming pariah to a viable platform for games. But now, Mac Steam users are currently receiving a warning, not to upgrade to the latest 10.6.4 patch for OS X from Apple. The problem is that, while Valve has worked with Apple over the Mac implementation of Steam, it is still essentially a platform in its infancy . While Windows receives a huge amount of attention from gaming hardware makers, and drivers drop on a monthly basis, this part of the ecosystem is lacking in the world of the Mac, leading to situations like this.
Games

Submission + - Battle.net 2.0: The Antithesis of Consumer Confide (the-ghetto.org)

Submitted by SharpFang
SharpFang writes: Quoting the article:

Battle.net 2.0 is supposed to be the future of online gaming. Instead, it is the antithesis of consumer confidence, a combination of corporate suits who don’t play video games and game designers who can’t do damage control. (...) The company wants a real-time strategy game that appeals to your mom’s bridge club.”

A sad story how corporate politics of total control removed most of what made Starcraft competitive and successful.
Networking

A Broadband Survey That Asks the Right Questions 120

Posted by timothy from the how-much-hentai-is-enough? dept.
Lauren Weinstein writes "I've just deployed the first ever Broadband Survey under the auspices of GCTIP, which asks questions that the FCC neglected to ask about service types, promised vs. actual broadband speeds, user satisfaction (or lack thereof) with their ISPs and local ISP competition, etc. I'm already finding the detailed comments many persons are leaving on the survey form to be extremely illuminating and with sufficient participation I'm hoping my reports from this data will be useful to the Internet community broadly."
Australia

Carbon-14 Dating Reveals 5% of Vintage Wines May Be Frauds 336

Posted by timothy from the better-than-backdating-a-check dept.
Carbon dating isn't used only for such academic pursuits as trying to determine the age of the Shroud of Turin, or figure out how old some rocks are. An anonymous reader writes "Up to 5% of fine wines are not from the year the label indicates, according to Australian researchers who have carbon-dated some top dollar wines."
Security

Submission + - US Law Firms Targeted by Cyberscams

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "The San Francisco Chronicle reports that last year a Long Beach law firm received an e-mail from a Hong Kong businessman seeking help collecting debts from American customers. After a month of signing paperwork and exchanging telephone calls, the attorney received word that one debtor had sent a $200,000 cashier's check to pay off his balance. The attorney deposited it in his firm's account, subtracted his $10,000 fee and wired the remaining $190,000 to his Hong Kong client. Then the attorney's bank called and told him the $200,000 check had bounced. "They send me a nice, big, worthless check," says the attorney. In this case, the bank was able to prevent the wire transfer from reaching its destination but attorneys say they are on the receiving end of sophisticated scams with increasing frequency that include attacks to steal client data that can be sold or used to learn the details of future litigation. "Six months ago I hadn't seen any of them," says attorney Brian Hoffman. "A couple of months ago I started seeing them once a week. Now I see them once or twice a day." Cyber-criminals now see law firms as particularly lucrative targets that can earn them hundreds of thousands of dollars per heist. "Most law firms are going to be in trouble if this is the level of adversary they're going to deal with," says attorney Alex Stamos. "It's impossible even for the largest law firms to have a dedicated security team that can hold their own against these people.""
Windows

Submission + - Windows XP's built-in Wi-Fi Security Hole (itworld.com) 1

Submitted by JimLynch
JimLynch writes: When I'm really, really bored at an airport, I'll start looking around the local Wi-Fi networks with WireShark. This is an outstanding network protocol analyzer. Usually it's used for checking out what's really going on in your business network. Of course, if you know what you're doing you can also use it on Wi-Fi to see just how awful everyone's security is around you. But, that's a story for another day. Recently, I noticed that I kept seeing "Free Public Wifi" APs (access points) showing up. I assumed it was someone trolling for innocents wanting to be infected with malware. I was wrong. It's actually a much more interesting Windows XP security flaw.

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