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Bug

Facebook Bug Lets Hackers Delete Friends 89

Posted by timothy from the friends-don't-let-friends dept.
swandives writes "There's lot of talk about Facebook and privacy at the moment, but a bug in Facebook's website lets hackers delete Facebook friends without permission. Steven Abbagnaro, a student from Marist College in Poughkeepsie, New York, reported the flaw, writing proof-of-concept code that scrapes publicly available data from users' Facebook pages and deletes all of their friends, one by one. The victim first has to click on a malicious link while logged into Facebook. Abbagnaro's code exploits the same underlying flaw that was first reported by Alert Logic security analyst M.J. Keith who discovered a cross-site request forgery bug, where the website doesn't properly check code sent by users' browsers to ensure that they were authorized to make changes on the site."
Google

Google Street View Logs Wi-Fi Networks, MAC Addresses 559

Posted by timothy from the cannot-see-basements dept.
An anonymous reader points to this story at The Register that says "Google is collecting more than just images when they drive around for the Street View service. 'Google's roving Street View spycam may blur your face, but it's got your number. The Street View service is under fire in Germany for scanning private WLAN networks, and recording users' unique MAC (Media Access Control) addresses, as the car trundles along.' There's a choice quote at the end: 'Google CEO Eric Schmidt recently said Internet users shouldn't worry about privacy unless they have something to hide.'"
The Internet

France Bans Use of 2.0 114

Posted by CmdrTaco from the stranger-things-have-happened dept.
illybilly writes "French President Nicholas Sarkozy was mad about what was called a 'version 2.0' website redesign for the presidential palace in Paris. So he pushed through legislation that bans the use of the term '2.0' in France."
Graphics

Microsoft Adopts SVG For Internet Explorer 9 152

Posted by timothy from the what-will-child-services-say dept.
An anonymous reader writes "SVG has been a published standard for almost a decade. Microsoft has had nothing to do with it, even while every other major browser adopted SVG as a supported format and interface. Just in the last few weeks, though, Microsoft has thrown a surprising amount of its weight behind SVG." This means for IE 9, but it's a start.

Comment Re:Consistent Histories? (Score 1) 365

by cavemanf16 (#31101438) Attached to: Physicists Discover How To Teleport Energy
I love this! The "science is god" crowd always loves to cry foul when anyone claims that there are fundamental absolutes about morality, existence, and rationality because, well, obviously we don't know everything. But when science fiction *possibilities* (not probabilities, but possibilities - and in this case, rather far-fetched ones) are taken to task, they want to cry foul again. So which is it, atheists/evolutionists/agnostics? Do we have ANY reasonable, rational basis to believe that information CAN be transmitted faster than light? (Cluetrain: The answer is NO!) Do we have any reasonable, rational basis to disprove God's existence either? (Cluetrain: no, you don't... perhaps you can't prove His existence, but you also can't disprove His existence, either, on purely material grounds.) BTW, The General Theory of Relativity *refined* Newton's theories; it didn't blow it away and make it null and void.
Bug

Microsoft Says Windows 7 Not Killing Batteries 272

Posted by kdawson from the epidemic-of-noticing dept.
VindictivePantz sends word that the Windows 7 team has posted a new blog entry discussing their conclusions about the reported Windows 7 battery failures. "To the very best of the collective ecosystem knowledge, Windows 7 is correctly warning batteries that are in fact failing and Windows 7 is neither incorrectly reporting on battery status nor in any way whatsoever causing batteries to reach this state. In every case we have been able to identify the battery being reported on was in fact in need of recommended replacement. ...every single indication we have regarding the reports we've seen are simply Windows 7 reporting the state of the battery using this new feature and we're simply seeing batteries that are not performing above the designated threshold. ... We are as certain as we can be that we have addressed the root cause and concerns of this report, but we will continue to monitor the situation."
Security

"No Scan, No Fly" At Heathrow and Manchester 821

Posted by kdawson from the stand-and-deliver dept.
An anonymous reader writes "It is now compulsory for people selected for a full body scan to take part, or they will not be allowed to fly from Heathrow or Manchester airports. There is no optional pat down. Also, a rule which meant that people under 18 were not allowed to participate in the body scanner trial has been overturned by the government. There is no mention of blurring out the genitals, however reports a few years back said X-ray backscatter devices aren't effective unless the genitals of people going through them are visible."
GNU is Not Unix

How Can I Contribute To Open Source? 332

Posted by kdawson from the in-kind dept.
rtobyr writes "I work for a state government agency. That means we can't donate money, because it's a 'gift of public funds.' I had the idea to put up a Web page stating that we 'use the following free software to save tax dollars,' as a way to help spread the word about open source software, but management calls this an 'endorsement.' A mirror server is a no-go as well. I'm certainly not a talented enough programmer to help with development. I've donated $10 here and there out of my own pocket, but I'm hoping you Slashdotters have some creative ideas about how my organization could give something back to the teams that create free software we benefit so much from."
GUI

Will Tabbed Windows Be the Next Big Thing? 528

Posted by timothy from the oh-for-the-love-of-gimp dept.
kai_hiwatari writes "The recently released KDE SC 4.4 Beta 1 has introduced tabbed windows as a new feature. It is now possible to tab together windows from different applications. This looks like it will be a very good productivity tool. Like the tabbed browsers, this may well end up as a feature in all desktop environments in the years ahead."
Earth

NRC Relicensing Old "Zombie" Nuclear Plants 260

Posted by kdawson from the old-and-in-the-way dept.
mdsolar writes "In the Dec. 7 edition of The Nation, Christian Parenti details what he considers to be the real problem with nuclear power as a solution to carbon emissions in the US: Not the high cost of new nuclear power, but rather the irresponsible relicensing of existing nuclear power plants by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The claim is that the relicensed plants — amounting to more than half ot the 104 original 1970s-era nukes in the US — operate like zombies beyond their design lifetimes only because of lax regulation spurred by concern over carbon dioxide emissions. But these plants are actually failing, as demonstrated by a rash of accidents. And some of the ancient plants are now being allowed to operate at 120% of their designed capacity. There is a video interview with Parenti up at Democracy Now."

Comment Dropbox + KeePass (Score 1) 1007

by cavemanf16 (#30065816) Attached to: Best Tool For Remembering Passwords?
Dropbox is a great "access anywhere" secure solution across all major OS platforms, and using KeePass is a great software (as many have already mentioned) for managing all the different passwords you have. Upload KeePass - the executable and the database - to Dropbox, keep your master password verification file that KeePass creates for you on the computers you use and a USB key drive, and you will be very safe and secure, but unhindered by being tied to a particular OS or physical media. When you use dozens of different password-only websites, multiple network logins at work, and your own home computer password apps, it becomes imperative to manage it all in some sane way. The only way to do this for me before was a USB key + TrueCrypt + KeePass, but with Dropbox you eliminate the physical media to be lost accidentally. (And I thought a while back that I HAD lost my USB key, and I literally started freaking out before finding it on my car floor. Switched to Dropbox later that night, and no more freak-out sessions for me.)

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