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Government

Submission + - Electronic Surveillance by US Law Enforcement Agencies Rising Steeply (paritynews.com)

Submitted by hypnosec
hypnosec writes: According to data obtained by American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), surveillance of emails and other forms of Internet communications without warrants has increased substantially over the last two years. Documents, obtained by ACLU after months of litigation, reveal that there has been a whopping 361 per cent increase in “pen register” and “trap-and-trace” orders between 2009 and 2011. ACLU has appealed to US congress to bring in more judicial oversight of pen register and trap-and-trace orders as agencies don’t require a warrant to obtain such orders.
AMD

AMD Partners With BlueStacks To Bring Android Apps To PCs 143

Posted by timothy from the just-pinch-your-mouse dept.
eldavojohn writes "News outlets are reporting that AMD has partnered with BlueStacks to bring Android apps to AppZone Player, something that will apparently allow the more than 500,000 mobile apps to run on your PC. From their announcement: 'What's special about the player on AMD-based products? There are many challenges with running apps that were originally designed for phones or tablets on a PC that in most cases has a larger screen and higher resolution display. To solve this, BlueStacks has designed and optimized the player for AMD Radeon graphics and in particular, our OpenGL drivers found in our APUs and GPUs so you get a great 'big-screen' experience. Additionally, the apps are integrated into AppZone, our online showcase and one-stop-shop for apps accelerated by AMD technology.' Unfortunately this appears to only work on AMD-based PCs (although nowhere does it say that it won't work on Intel CPUs or non-Radeon GPUs). Also no word on how they overcame the difference between a mouse and touchscreen (think pinch to zoom)."
Mars

Submission + - Curiosity Rover Finds "Ancient Streambed" Proving Mars Once Had Water (twitter.com) 3

Submitted by eldavojohn
eldavojohn writes: As NPR reports, NASA's Curiosity Rover has tweeted pictures of proof of water on Mars. Indications arose earlier this year but researchers are now calling this proof of a stream ankle to hip deep running at about three feet per second judging by the pictures. The shapes prove these rocks were weathered as they were transported by something and the sizes tell you that that something couldn't be wind.
Security

Submission + - Penetration Testing for the Masses 2

Submitted by compumike
compumike writes: Every week we read about companies being hacked through insecure websites. Big companies have in-house security teams, but a new browser-based website penetration testing tool can scan, attack, and detect the biggest threats, such as SQL injection, XSS, and other vulnerabilities, finding holes in more than 90% of websites scanned — even in frameworks like Django and Rails. Can expensive security consultants be replaced by an army of machines providing website security for the masses?
Businesses

What Should Start-Ups Do With the Brilliant Jerk? 480

Posted by timothy from the put-them-in-management-with-the-other-jerks dept.
First time accepted submitter glowend writes "Cliff Oxford writes in the New York Times 'I define Brilliant Jerks as specialized, high-producing performers. They are not, however, brilliant business people, and that is what companies need during periods of rapid growth. There are a lot of hurdles to cross when companies move from start-up to growth, including dealing with chaos and changes in culture. But the biggest hurdle is dealing with the human factor — how you move, shift and replace people as the company grows into the next level of success.' So how do you make the best use of the Brilliant Jerk as your company grows?"

Submission + - Wind energy beat iPod in U.S. job creation (computerworld.com)

Submitted by dcblogs
dcblogs writes: Electronics manufacturing jobs are mostly overseas, which helps to keep one million workers at China's Foxconn plants busy. In contrast, the majority of wind energy jobs are in the U.S., say researchers in a study by the Personal Computing Industry Center (PCIC), an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Center. The PCIC researchers applied a methodology similar to what they used in an earlier study to measure the job impact of the iPod. This working paper by PCIC found that the wind industry creates a larger share of total employment in the U.S. than the iPod did in 2006, 74% versus 34%. But as many as half of the wind energy jobs may disappear if a tax credit is allowed to expire at year-end, say the PCIC paper and the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA). The PCIC paper estimates that wind energy has created as many as 27,000 direct jobs in the U.S., and 9,250 jobs overseas. AWEA estimates that the industry has provided 75,000 jobs in the U.S. The tax credit runs for 10 years, and provides 2.2 cents credit for every kWh produced. In a report this year, the National Science Foundation reported that high-tech manufacturing employment has declined by 28% since 2000, or about 687,000 jobs.
Crime

Submission + - Breaking, Entering, and Installing Linux In A Congressmans Office. 1

Submitted by tetrahedrassface
tetrahedrassface writes: A person, or persons broke windows out of Rep. Michael Grimm's New Dorp headquarters a few days ago, gaining entry to the office of the representative What they did then is a little odd, They installed Linux on his computers, but instead of a dual boot they wiped the drives. '"All of my polling data, all of the data from my IDs of voters, and a bunch of other campaign information. But fortunately we had everything backed up from literally hours before, so we don't lose anything because we have backups,' Grimm said. The representative is calling the action a 'crime against the government', FBI is investigating.
Intel

Submission + - Even Windows 8 Users Prefer Windows 7 (techweekeurope.co.uk)

Submitted by
judgecorp
judgecorp writes: "Windows 8 is not proving an instant hit amongst the early adopters who have got their hands on it. More than half of them prefer Windows 7, according to a survey by a Windows 8 forum. Skeptics cited fears of price and compatibility issues. Meanwhile, Intel is busily applying damage limitation to criticism by CEO Paul Otellini. Apparently he did say Windows 8 wasn't ready — but added that it was still a good idea to get it out before the holiday season."

Comment Ehh. (Score 5, Insightful) 1223

by tetrahedrassface (#41471359) Attached to: Torvalds Uses Profanity To Lambaste Romney Remarks

Linus is entitled to his opinions no matter how correct they are. However, I would go further and say that the two party system is largely staffed by fucking corrupt morons, and that if you think they are different you are batshit crazy. The two parties are just two arms of the *same machine*. Thank you.
Linux

Torvalds Uses Profanity To Lambaste Romney Remarks 1223

Posted by samzenpus from the can't-we-all-just-get-along? dept.
netbuzz writes "Last night Linux creator Linus Torvalds took to his Google+ page and called Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney 'a f***ing moron.' Torvalds' stated reason? Romney's much-ridiculed suggestion that air passengers would be safer in emergencies if aircraft windows could be opened (a suggestion which some, including Snopes.com, have taken as a joke). Torvalds also recently called Mormonism, Romney's religion, 'bats**t crazy.' Is this just Linus being Linus? Or does such outspokenness on non-technical matters reflect poorly on the Linux community that Torvalds leads?"
Games

Submission + - Savage XR 1.0 is Savagely Fun. (newerth.com)

Submitted by tetrahedrassface
tetrahedrassface writes: If you played the original cult classic, Savage: The Battle For Newerth and were proud that back in the day the development team made a Linux version available there is good news. After years of work, and many SVN revisons a new, much more dynamic and savage Savages is available. The game is available for Linux, Mac, and Windows and many features have been improved upon. Notably a improved models, a new editor, custom content and much more. It looks wonderful.
Operating Systems

Ask Slashdot: What Distros Have You Used, In What Order? 867

Posted by timothy from the was-it-yggdrasil? dept.
colinneagle writes "Linux dude Bryan Lunduke blogged here about the top three approaches he thinks are the easiest for new users to pick up Linux. Lunduke's, for example, went Ubuntu -> Arch -> openSUSE. It raises a question that Slashdot could answer well in the comments: what's your distro use order from beginning to now? Maybe we could spot some trends."

Submission + - Broken Busted and Out of Time The USPS Living in Dicey Times. (moneynews.com) 2

Submitted by tetrahedrassface
tetrahedrassface writes: The United States Postal Service does a pretty good job of moving mail around. They've been doing it for a couple of hundred years through good times and bad. The bad times for the postal service have gotten worse with the advent of the internet. The service made history a short time ago when it defaulted on its payment to its retirement benefits trust. It's about to happen again on September 30'th. At issue is how the service funds its retirement and health trust and a massive decrease in volume due to online communications such as e-mail, social sites, text, and sms. The employees of the USPS are good people, albeit working for an organization that can't seem to adapt out of the quandary they are in. Losing money badly the service recently agreed to buy used phones to help bolster the bottom line.
Some call this Armageddon for the postal world. According to the Inspector General the service might in fact run out of money for days or weeks in October until volume for the Holidays picks up. By next spring they forecast to be bankrupt entirely with out Congress acting, and there is the rub: Is the USPS a government service or a business and with so much connectivity these days why rely on paper? I'm sure the employees are good people, and don't want to pick on them, but perhaps their business model needs to be set free allowing them latitude in implementing needed changes. Dicey times. Dicey times indeed.

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