Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×

Submission + - Defence Department Takes Control of Australian Science (canberratimes.com.au)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Nature and The Canberra Times reports Australian scientists are alarmed by a new law giving the Defence Department permit and censorship powers over scientists, punishable by 10 years jail with no right to remain silent. Civil Liberties Australia says it violates scientists' rights, and Defence Report says the act violates international human rights law. Hundreds of scientists signed a petition against the law, which came into effect April 2.

Submission + - This May Be The Most Unsecure Router Ever Made (20+ Major Security Bugs) (softpedia.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: LTE routers made by Quanta Computer Incorporated, a Taiwanese hardware manufacturer, are plagued by over twenty major security flaws ranging from backdoor accounts to remote code execution bugs, from hardcoded SSH keys to undocumented diagnostics pages, and from weak WPS PINs to network eavesdropping functions.

As the researcher explains: "A personal point of view: at best, the vulnerabilites are due to incompetence; at worst, it is a deliberate act of security sabotage from the vendor." The vendor has not fixed any of these issues even after almost four months.

Submission + - 'Chilling Effect' of Mass Surveillance Is Silencing Dissent Online, Study Says (vice.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Research suggests that widespread awareness of mass surveillance could undermine democracy by making citizens fearful of voicing dissenting opinions in public. A paper published in Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, the flagship peer-reviewed journal of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC), found that "the government’s online surveillance programs may threaten the disclosure of minority views and contribute to the reinforcement of majority opinion.” The NSA’s “ability to surreptitiously monitor the online activities of US citizens may make online opinion climates especially chilly” and “can contribute to the silencing of minority views that provide the bedrock of democratic discourse," the researcher found.

Submission + - Why Buses Need to Be More Dangerous

Submitted by HughPickens.com
HughPickens.com writes: Is there such a thing as being too safe? Jeff Kaufman writes that buses are much safer than cars, by about a factor of 67 but buses are not very popular and one of the main reasons is that if you look at situations where people who can afford private transit take mass transit instead, speed is the main factor. According to Kauffman, we should look at ways to make buses faster so more people will ride them, even if this means making them somewhat more dangerous. Kauffman presents some ideas, roughly in order from “we should definitely do this” to “this is crazy, but it would probably still reduce deaths overall when you take into account that more people would ride the bus”: Suggestions include not to require buses to stop and open their doors at railroad crossings, allow the driver to start while someone is still at the front paying, allow buses to drive 25mph on the shoulder of the highway in traffic jams where the main lanes are averaging below 10mph, and leave (city) bus doors open, allowing people to get on and off any time at their own risk. "If we made buses more dangerous by the same percentage that motorcycles are more dangerous than cars," concludes Kauffman, "they would still be more than twice as safe as cars."

Submission + - EU Court Says Public Wi-Fi Hotspot Owners Aren't Liable For Third Party Piracy

Submitted by Mickeycaskill
Mickeycaskill writes: A preliminary ruling from a European Court of Justice Advocate General has said it is not reasonable for owners of public Wi-Fi hotspots to be held liable for copyright infringement committed by users on these networks.
Sony took legal action against a German business owner after a third party allegedly illegally downloaded music to which the record label owned the rights to on the basis the network should have been secured.
However this view has been rejected by the Advocate General who says it is impossible for all public Wi-Fi to be secured. His recommendation will now be debated by European judges.

Submission + - How far have we come with HTTPS? Google turns on the spotlight

Submitted by alphadogg
alphadogg writes: HTTPS is widely considered one of the keys to a safer Internet, but only if it's broadly implemented. Aiming to shed some light on how much progress has been made so far, Google on Tuesday launched a new section of its transparency report dedicated to encryption. Included in the new section is data highlighting the progress of encryption efforts both at Google and on popular third-party sites. "Our aim with this project is to hold ourselves accountable and encourage others to encrypt so we can make the Web even safer for everyone," wrote HTTPS evangelists Rutledge Chin Feman and Tim Willis on the Google Security Blog. https://security.googleblog.co...

Submission + - diaspora* version 0.4.1.0 released (diasporafoundation.org) 1

Submitted by jaywink
jaywink writes: A new diaspora* version 0.4.1.0 is out. It includes a lot of pages ported to Bootstrap, many bug fixes and small enhancements. Also included is a Terms of Service -feature for podmins. Diaspora* is an open source social networking server that joins all running pods into one big decentralized social network.
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft caught with hand in cookie jar (nzoss.org.nz) 1

Submitted by
dlane
dlane writes: "Representatives of the NZ Open Source Society have successfully opposed a Microsoft software patent application related to XML use in representing productivity data. This was a very broad patent, found subject to prior art: i.e. a very low quality patent that shouldn't have been submitted much less granted. As it was, it took the NZOSS members and their legal team 8 years to get MS to abandon the application.

This isn't the first time they've tried this: another bad application (http://computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/news/F68C4D35A4AE5DD5CC257038000F4A24) was submitted to NZ's patent office although it had been disallowed in other jurisdictions (including US) due to prior art. NZOSS representatives challenged the application and were able to force MS to change the wording to the point where it was no longer seen as a threat to developers.

Whenever Microsoft claims support for "improved quality patents" realise that what they mean is "other people's patents". Feel free to highlight their hypocrisy."

Comment Re:Definitely questions for... (Score 1) 434

by thingie (#30233682) Attached to: Australian Govt. Proposes Internet "Panic Button" For Kids

"1 in 4 children are sexually abused by the internet."

Is that physically possible?

I recommend you take a look at the classic (and timeless) "A Rape in Cyberspace" by Julian Dibbell http://www.juliandibbell.com/text/bungle.html More than ten years old, but containing a core of truth none-the-less.

Slashdot Top Deals

Remember, UNIX spelled backwards is XINU. -- Mt.

Close