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Open Source

OpenBSD 4.7 Preorders Are Up 191

Posted by timothy from the so-you're-in-favor-then? dept.
badger.foo writes "The OpenBSD 4.7 pre-orders are up. That means the release is done, sent off to CD production, and snapshots will turn -current again. Order now and you more likely than not will have your CD set, T-shirt or other cool stuff before the official release date. You get the chance to support the most important free software project on the planet, and get your hands on some cool playables and wearables early. The release page is still being filled in, but the changelog has detailed information about the goodies in this release."
Space

Submission + - 15 Year Old Student Discovers New Pulsar (nrao.edu) 1

Submitted by
ScuttleMonkey
ScuttleMonkey writes: "For the second time in as many years a student has made a discovery while participating in the Pulsar Search Collaboratory (PSC), a joint program between the National Radio Astronomy Observatory and West Virginia University designed to get students and teachers involved in analyzing data from the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope (GBT). This time it was high school sophomore Shay Bloxton who discovered a brand new pulsar. "For Bloxton, the pulsar discovery may be only her first in a scientific career. "Participating in the PSC has definitely encouraged me to pursue my dream of being an astrophysicist," she said, adding that she hopes to attend West Virginia University to study astrophysics. Late last year, another West Virginia student, from South Harrison High School, Lucas Bolyard, discovered a pulsar-like object called a rotating radio transient. His discovery also came through participation in the PSC.""

Submission + - Full body scanners see all EXCEPT bomb components

Submitted by pcause
pcause writes: Bruce Schneier points us to a video from Germany that shows the new, invasive full body scanners don't seem to be able to show/detect bomb components. Surprised? Of course this isn't the first time that TSA has rushed to embrace a new, high tech gadget that didn't work in the real world. Remember the failed sniffer technology? Perhaps it is time to reconsider the entire theatre of security and political correctness that TSA provides and get some folks in there that are actually concerned with real security.

Submission + - MS Learned of IE Zero-Day Flaw Last September (wired.com)

Submitted by N!NJA
N!NJA writes: Microsoft was aware months ago of a critical security vulnerability well before hackers exploited it to breach Google, Adobe and other large U.S. companies but did not patch the hole until Thursday.

The software giant had intended to release a patch for the flaw in February — more than four months after learning about it — but had to speed up that plan and role it out this week in the wake of news that Google and others had been hacked through the flaw, the world’s largest software maker acknowledged Thursday.

Meron Sellen, a security researcher at BugSec, an Israeli firm, quietly reported the vulnerability to Microsoft in September, according to security firm Kaspersky.
Wireless Networking

Submission + - Is good video over Wi-Fi possible? (networkworld.com)

Submitted by
bednarz
" rel="nofollow">bednarz writes: "Video over Wi-Fi can be iffy, buggy, blurry and jittery. But Cisco has new code that uses three tools to compensate for Wi-Fi weaknesses that degrade video quality. 1) It takes a new approach to video multicasting by using access points to convert a multicast transmission into multiple, separate unicasts. 2) It can assign different priorities to individual streams, so a video by the company president gets a higher priority than a clip from a sports broadcast. 3) It can block new video requests if they will cause video quality for the new request, or for the overall network, to erode."
IT

Submission + - Why 'Running IT as a Business' Is a Bad Idea (infoworld.com) 2

Submitted by snydeq
snydeq writes: InfoWorld's Bob Lewis dispels the familiar litany that 'IT should be run as a business,' instead offering insights into what he is calling a 'guerilla movement' to reject conventional 'IT wisdom' and industry punditry in favor of what experience tells you will work in real organizations. 'When IT is a business, selling to its "internal customers," its principal product is software that "meets requirements." This all but ensures a less-than-optimal solution, lack of business ownership, and poor acceptance of the results,' Lewis writes. 'The alternatives begin with a radically different model of the relationship between IT and the rest of the business — that IT must be integrated into the heart of the enterprise, and everyone in IT must collaborate as a peer with those in the business who need what they do.' To do otherwise is a sure sign of numbered days for IT, according to Lewis. After all, the standard 'run IT as a business' model found its origins in the IT outsourcing industry, 'which has a vested interest in encouraging internal IT to eliminate everything that makes it more attractive than outside service providers.'

Submission + - Getting Google Anonymity (googlesharing.net) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Moxie Marlinspike, the security researcher who has published several SSL/TLS exploits, has just launched a Google anonymity service called GoogleSharing. From the site: "GoogleSharing is a special kind of anonymizing proxy service, designed for a very specific threat. It ultimately aims to provide a level of anonymity that will prevent google from tracking your searches, movements, and what websites you visit. GoogleSharing is not a full proxy service designed to anonymize all your traffic, but rather something designed exclusively for your communication with Google. Our system is totally transparent, with no special "alternative" websites to visit. Your normal work flow should be exactly the same."
Media

Submission + - Sherlock Holmes and the copyright tangle (nytimes.com) 2

Submitted by spagiola
spagiola writes: The New York Times has an interesting piece on the copyright travails of Sherlock Holmes: "At his age, Holmes would logically seem to have entered the public domain. But not only is the character still under copyright in the United States, for nearly 80 years he has also been caught in a web of ownership issues so tangled that Professor Moriarty wouldn't have wished them upon him."

Submission + - Sitting down too long is bad even if you exercise. (google.com)

Submitted by
Ant
Ant writes: "The Register and many more sources on Google News report that sitting down too long, even with exercises, is bad — "Swedish scientists have warned that too much sitting on your backside can provoke cancer, diabetes, heart disease and obesity.

That's pretty obvious, you might think, but the researchers from the Karolinska Institute and the Swedish School of Sport and Health warn that the excessively sedentary are running serious risks, irrespective of how much exercise they do when they're not plonked behind a desk, or lying on the sofa...""
Google

Submission + - IE Bug Used to Hack Google Now Used for Drive-bys

Submitted by CWmike
CWmike writes: Attackers are exploiting the bug in Microsoft's Internet Explorer that is alleged to have been used last month by the Chinese to break into Google's corporate network, security company Websense said on Monday. The news came on the heels of warnings by the French and German governments, which recommended IE users switch to an alternate browser until Microsoft fixes the flaw. Websense said the attack code it spotted is the same as the exploit that went public last week. That code was quickly turned into an exploit module for Metasploit, the open-source penetration testing framework, by HD Moore, the creator of Metasploit. Microsoft acknowledged last week that the flaw had been used to hack Google's network and others. Meanwhile, China is asking, 'What Gmail hack?' spinning news of the real threat: Google. Denying a role in the attacks, reported to have possibly been carried out by Google employees in China, China argued it was, in fact, the biggest victim of cyberattacks.
Space

Submission + - FTL Currents May Power Pulsar Beams (universetoday.com)

Submitted by thomst
thomst writes: Space.com is just now getting around to reporting a story that Spaceref.com reported on January 5 (and Universe Today reported on the 6th) about papers presented at the 215th meeting of the American Astronomical Society on a new model explaining the beam emissions from pulsars as products of superluminal currents within the spinning neutron stars' atmospheres. (The actual papers are here, here, and, especially here — all from Cornell University's arXiv.org open archive of half a million or so "eprints" in physics, mathematics, computer science, quantitative biology, quantitative finance and statistics.)

According to the authors' model, the current generated is, itself, faster than light, although the particles that compose it never individually exceed the universal speed limit, thereby preventing Einsteinian post-mortem rotation. The new model is a general explanation of the phenomenon of pulsar beam emissions that explains emissions at all observed frequencies (and different pulsars emit everything from radio waves to x-rays), which no previous model has done.
Censorship

Submission + - China pays citizens to report porn (ibtimes.com)

Submitted by oxide7
oxide7 writes: China is paying citizens to report online porn to authorities, with nearly 200 people already compensating as the government cracks down on what it considers undesirable content.

Submission + - Japanese Researchers Create See-Through Goldfish (dailytech.com)

Submitted by ultranerdz
ultranerdz writes: South Korean scientists may have created a glowing cat, but Japanese researchers have successfully developed a transparent goldfish.
The clear goldfish allows observers to see the tiny fish's beating heart, which allows scientists to observe living creatures and reduces the numbers of dissections. I wonder when they will start to make transparent humans.
Idle

Submission + - Canada battles homeless population with bird poop (vancouversun.com)

Submitted by quatin
quatin writes: A city in Canada has resorted to using bird poop as a desperate measure to rid itself of the homeless population. The idea behind it is very simple, because bird poop smells. Like really, really smells. City workers have spread chicken manure around city buildings and public parks to make them less "appealing" for the homeless to loiter. Officials have not responded to inquiries of whether a smell test was imposed on public policy plans before implementation.

Submission + - Pirates get naked to protest terahertz scanners

Submitted by Kleiba
Kleiba writes: Members and supporters of the German Pirate Party have pulled a publicity stunt at a number of German airports yesterday, where they spontaneously stripped down to their underwear in order to protest against plans to introduce terahertz full body scanners. Motto of the flashmobs: "No need to scan us — we're already naked!" (German site). The scanners "do not improve security, but pose a threat to the personal rights of the travelers", says Simon Lange, speaker of the Pirate Party. Full body scanners have re-entered the public discussion after the Christmas Day incident over Detroit — according to German magazine "Der Stern" (German site), 63% of the Germans are in favor of implementing mandatory full body scans for all air travelers.

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