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Comment GPS Journals and Conferences (Score 2, Informative) 279

by highways (#32699692) Attached to: Best Way To Publish an "Indie" Research Paper?

Vincenty http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincenty's_formulae is the current benchmark for distance between two points. If you think you've done better, you've got two real options:

(1) A GPS/Navigation Journal, or
(2) Surveying journal

Forget computer science - not really interested in this problem.

As far as conferences are concerned, it's worth trying to get into one of the following:

        * IEEE PLANS http://www.plansconference.org/

        * ION PLANS http://www.ion.org/meetings/

If you think it's still good for a journal, look for who has cited Vincenty's paper in Google Scholar - it will give you a good indication as to what journals to chase.

Submission + - Creative Commons Responds to ASCAP Letter (zeropaid.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Drew Wilson at ZeroPaid has a followup to the story that ASCAP told its members that organizations like EFF and Creative Commons are undermining copyright. A spokesperson from Creative Commons said, “It’s very sad that ASCAP is falsely claiming that Creative Commons works to undermine copyright Creative Commons licenses are copyright licenses – plain and simple, without copyright, these tools don’t even work.” He also said, "Many tens of thousands of musicians, including acts like Nine Inch Nails, the Beastie Boys, David Byrne, Radiohead, and Snoop Dogg, have used Creative Commons licenses to share with the public." Many ASCAP members are already expressing their disappointment with the ASCAP letter over at Mind the Gap. Sounds like ASCAP will be in damage control for a while.
Open Source

Submission + - Open source geographic tracking? 1

Submitted by Walkingshark
Walkingshark writes: I work for a company that needs to track people and equipment across the US as they move to, work on, and leave jobs. The boss has been looking at the typical mix of closed, proprietary software and has also considered building off our existing 10 year old SQL database (with the kind of clunky interface you'd expect from a program built in the late 90's). I'd like to be able to bring him a good open source alternative but so far I haven't been able to find anything that can do what we need. Ultimately, we need to be able to keep track of a few thousand separate pieces of people and equipment, and to move them in dynamically created groups from our locations to and from jobsites in a way that is sharable among between workstations, with updates to location entered at one station being broadcast to all clients in real time. Ideally, this program needs to also give us access to road routing similar to the capability found on Google maps. We'd doubtless need to be able to modify the source for customization, but I was hoping there was something we could find out there that had the core functionality we're looking for.
Transportation

Submission + - High Depreciation May Slow Electric Car Acceptance 1

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "The NY Times reports that as cars like the Nissan LEAF, Coda Sedan and others become available for sale and lease, one question that may give electric car buyers cold feet is bubbling to the surface: How much will these next-gen vehicles be worth a few years down the road? According to a report from the UK’s Glass Guide, unless manufacturers properly address customer concerns regarding battery life and performance, the new breed of electric vehicles (EVs) soon to be launched will have residual values well below those of rival gasoline and diesel models with a typical electric vehicle retaining only 10 percent of its value after five years of ownership, compared to gas and diesel-fueled counterparts retaining 25 percent of their value in that time period. According to Andy Carroll, Managing Director at Glass's, the alarming rate of depreciation is a function of customer recognition that the typical EV battery will have a useful life of up to eight years and will cost thousands of dollars to replace. "Potential used EV buyers fear this cost, but the key issue is that buyers will assume that their specific battery will need replacing in the near future regardless of the manufacturers' predictions of battery life," says Carroll adding that manufacturers could address this problem by leasing the battery to users. "If the anticipated £8,000 cost of the battery in such a car were taken off the list price, and recovered instead through a long-term £100-per-month battery lease scheme, the retained value in monetary terms would make it one of the best performing used cars in its segment, rather than one of the worst.""
Google

Submission + - Google Referred to the Australian Federal Police (abc.net.au)

Submitted by highways
highways writes: Our old friend, Communications Minister Stephen Conroy, Viceroy of the Great Australian Firewall has previously labeled Google's collection of data as "creepy" and "single greatest breach in the history of privacy".

Now, along with Attorney General Robert McClelland, Conroy as referred to Google to the Australian Federal Police for possible breeches of the Telecommunications Act.

Previously, Google has publicly opposed the proposed Internet Filter, labeling it as an attack on free speech in a democratic nation and causing a minor diplomatic stand-off with the US Administration.

Submission + - Tabnapping - A new type of "phishing" scam (scam-detectives.co.uk)

Submitted by scamdetect
scamdetect writes: User Interface specialist and creative lead on Mozilla’s Firefox browser Aza Raskin has outlined a brand new variant on “phishing” attacks which he has christened “Tabnapping”.

Traditionally, “Phishing” has relied upon convincing users to click on a link in an email to take them to a fake website such as their bank, credit card issuer or email account. Once the user logs in to the fake site, their details are transmitted to the fraudster and the account is immediately compromised. Public awareness of “phishing” emails is now relatively high and most people know not to click on links in emails appearing to come from such organisations.

“Tabnapping” relies on the user believing that it is impossible for the content of a tab to change while you’re not looking. You may click on a link in Twitter, Facebook or a “sponsored link” in Google which will load a genuine webpage that delivers the content it promises. If you then click away from that site, leaving it open in a “tab” whilst viewing another website, the content of the original tab will change to a fake log-in page impersonating one of the websites you visit most often, be that Facebook, Gmail, Hotmail or your online banking account. You then scan back through your tabs and believe you’ve left the site open and have been logged out, so you log back in again, instantly transmitting your details to the fraudster.
Government

Submission + - Richard Stallman on SaaS: what about apps.gov? (wordpress.com)

Submitted by Meedabyte
Meedabyte writes: Richard Stallman interviewed abaut SaaS and other phenomena. Among others, interesting view about the apps.gov initiatve and the really underestimated impact of the total endorsement of SaaS/IaaS given by US administration.

RMS: "There are governments that want to censor and surveil the Internet, eliminating free speech and privacy. There are companies that want to turn it into something like broadcast TV with a security camera to
watch us, eliminating the our freedom to communicate and our privacy. These companies and governments are joining forces to attack people who share (they call sharing “piracy” or even “counterfeiting“).

If we want to keep the Internet free, we have to organize and press hard."
Security

Submission + - 'Tabnabbing' Phishing Attack Can Steal Passwords (thinq.co.uk)

Submitted by Stoobalou
Stoobalou writes: A top Firefox programmer has figured out a scary new way to carry out phishing attacks, this time using browser tabs.

Aza Raskin, who was appointed Firefox's creative lead in March, has designed a JavaScript-based social engineering exploit that replaces one page with a mock-up of another while the victim is distracted elsewhere.

The attack could be used to harvest user names and passwords for banks, email accounts, or any other type of web site.
Security

Submission + - Devious New Phishing Tactic Targets Tabs

Submitted by andrea.sartori
andrea.sartori writes: An alarming new phishing technique, likely to fool even security-conscious Web surfers, has been described by Brian Krebs yesterday: Devious New Phishing Tactic Targets Tabs [krebsonsecurity.com] A malicious script basically replaces a browser tab's content while the user is not watching and relies on the users' "trust in browser tabs".
Aza Raskin described the method in detail and published a proof-of-concept: A New Type of Phishing Attack [www.azarask.in] and also suggests rather creepy ways this technique may be made more efficient.
Science

Submission + - Titanium Oxide Could Be Used For Optical Storage (thinq.co.uk)

Submitted by Stoobalou
Stoobalou writes: A Japanese research team has discovered that titanium oxide — a material most commonly used in white paint and sunscreen, of all things — could be used in future optical storage disks.

Boffins at the University of Tokyo said that the material could be used to make low-price 'Super Disks' with a storage capacity thousands of times greater than DVD.

The material, which is a new crystalline form of titanium oxide, switches between metal and semiconductor states when exposed to light at room temperature effectively creating an I/O state which is repeatedly reversible.

The team has successfully created the material in tiny particles measuring as little as five nanometers which would give standard-sized disks a theoretical storage capacity a thousand times greater than Blu-ray.
Google

Submission + - Google audits street view data systems (itnews.com.au)

Submitted by schliz
schliz writes: Google's plans to upgrade to high-definition Street View in Australia are on hold until it completes a rigorous internal audit of the processes, it announced today. The company is currently being investigated by international regulators about possible privacy breeches when it became known that its street view vehicles were capturing not only publicly available SSIDs and MAC addresses, but also samples of payload data transmitted over these networks.
Music

Submission + - Florida Governor Sued For Copyright Infringment (pitchfork.com)

Submitted by Kilrah_il
Kilrah_il writes: Florida governor, Charlie Crist, used the Talking Heads' song "Road to Nowhere" in his campaign against his Republican opponent, Marco Rubio. Apparently, he forgot to ask the record company for permission. Warner Bros. contacted him and he promptly stopped using the song, but Talking Heads' frontman, David Byrne, isn't satisfied and is suing him for "one-million dollars" (insert Austin Powers joke here). "[The lawsuit] is not about politics... It's about copyright and about the fact that it does imply that I would have licensed it and endorsed him and whatever he stands for." What do you think the RIAA will say about this?
Google

Submission + - Google Wi-Fi Spy Was Deliberate, Says AU Minister (zdnet.com.au)

Submitted by bennyboy64
bennyboy64 writes: Australia's Communications Minister Stephen Conroy has accused Google of deliberately collecting payload data from unsecured Wi-Fi networks. 'Google have admitted to doing this and claim it was a mistake in the software code, meaning that it was actually quite deliberate, the code was collecting it," Conroy said in Parliament. The minsiter has been waging war on Google ever since it opposed his plans to censor the internet.

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