75135695
submission
fsterman writes:
DNSSEC deployment will dramatically improvement to the security and privacy of the internet. Unfortunately, the popular notion of DNSSEC is that is somehow degrades the security of the internet. It's time to debunk DNSSEC FUD and recognize how it will improve the security and privacy of the internet.
71624689
submission
fsterman writes:
Since the Snowden revelations, E2E web crypto has become trendy. There are browser add-ons that bolt a PGP client onto webmail and both Yahoo and Google are planning to support PGP directly. They attempt to prevent UI spoofing with icons similar to the site-authentication banks use to combat phishing.
The problem is that a decade of research shows that users habituate to these icons and come to ignore them. An attacker can pull off UI spoofing with a 90%+ success rate.
67224813
submission
fsterman writes:
Domain name seizures used to be a rare occurrence, but US law enforcement has become adept at exploiting a quirk in the Internet's governance structure that allows them to seize a wide range of domains without due process. The rate has been increasing exponentially, with a total of 87 in 2010 to 1,700 in mid-2013. A month ago, nearly 5,000 domains were seized by a corporation using civil proceedings. The types of attacks targeting DNS have been increasing as well, such as when a US embassy had GoDaddy shut down a political protest site.
63937981
submission
fsterman writes:
The power advantages brought by the RISC instruction sets used in Power and ARM chips is often pitted against the X86's efficiencies of scale. It's difficult to asses how much the difference between instruction sets matter because teasing out the theoretical efficiency of an ISA from the proficiency of a chip's design team, technical expertise of its manufacturer, and support for architecture-specific optimizations in compilers is nearly impossible . However, new research examining the performance of a variety of ARM, MIPS, and X86 processors gives weight to Intel's conclusion: the benefits of a given ISA to the power envelope of a chip are minute.
60810807
submission
fsterman writes:
Growing up on Slashdot, I've been watched ICANN and the slow decline of the DNS system with great dismay. A year ago, I set out to create a scalable interoperability layer for Namecoin that doesn't involve proxies or mirroring content.
Speech.is reimplements DNS lookups within the browser itself. When coupled with emerging WebRTC P2P networks we are able to push all processing to the client side, shielding us from legal liability.
What's *really* amazing is that I was able to backport some of the censorship resistant properties of the Namecoin .bit TLD to regular websites. Governments will be unable to selectively censor websites and it will be *very* difficult for politicians and judges to rationalize their way into blacklisting the entire domain.
The www.speech.is website has the full nitty-gritty details. However, remember that this is a developer preview!
60180309
submission
fsterman writes:
Imagine a world in which we could use a Windows clone to cross-compile our applications in a continuous integration environment or run that one Windows program that a single customer needs for backwards compatibility. Think it's impossible? Well, the crazy talented ReactOS developers have an IndieGoGo campaign for a community edition and a donation gives you a vote on which apps the latest release should cover. They have make $20,000 of their $50,000 and they have a couple of few weeks left. Any other Slashdoter's want to help make Windows even MORE obsolete?
58705503
submission
fsterman writes:
Apparently Ballmer is speaking at my graduation upcoming graduation. As a proponent of direct-action, FLOSS fanatic, and software patent hater, I would like to inject something intelligent into whatever retrospective his speech delivers.
Any suggestions?
56487469
submission
13130460
submission
fsterman writes:
I bit into a cookie last night and a spike of pain shot through my jaw- I need to find a dentist! I just moved to town and I need a new one. I found a wonderful family doctor who uses electronic record keeping; it's amazing to have a doctor that can do a keyword search through your records or send electronic prescriptions to the pharmacy so they are ready for pickup. But finding him was a happy accident, doctors rarely advertise and I can't find any directory of techno-savvy doctors.
I was hoping some Slashdotters might have suggestions on how to find a doctor with electronic record keeping. Make it quick- my molars really hurt!
10558234
submission
fsterman writes:
My day job is working at a printing company and the set-up for the $20,000 printer their and the $100 printer at my house is almost the exact same, except when I went browsing for the printer on my home network I needed to have the drivers installed on my laptop whereas the work printer shares the driver; no install needed. As a usability person, it's the single largest problem with printers. Why the hell don't the manufacturers just have the various drivers reside on the printer? It would only require a few megs of space, it would give a leg-up to smaller vendors, and it could be a great selling point "No driver install headaches!"
9046972
submission
fsterman writes:
I sit on a student government board which distributes funds for technology projects that benefit students. The head of security updated us about a swipe card system for the computer terminals that was approved and funded only to be blocked by the head of facilities because the man had a bad experience with swipe cards at a hotel. Potentially even more disturbing was how an faculty adviser had played off the presentation as one big "scare tactic" and that if identity theft had been happening we would "hear more about it." While I plan to make my opinion heard to both the head of facilities, the campus president, etc, the biggest problem is funding. Are there any laws (or lawyers) that /. readers can clue me in on to force them to protect my information?
