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Moon

NASA Plans to Smash Spacecraft into the Moon 176

Posted by samzenpus from the hit-it-hard dept.
djasbestos writes "NASA is planning to smash a spacecraft into the Moon in order to look for hydrogen deposits in the poles. More notably, it will impact with significantly greater force (100x, per the article) than previous Moon collisions, such as by the Lunar Prospector and Smart-1 probes. Admiral Ackbar was unreachable for comment as to the exact location and size of the Moon's thermal exhaust port."
Security

Submission + - Chip and PIN vulnerable to attack, again!

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Now-infamous University of Cambridge security researchers Ross Anderson, Saar Drimer, and Steven Murdoch, who last year showed us Tetris on a payment terminal, have now shown how a paperclip can be used to bypass the UK banks' snake-oil "tamper-resistance" in their paper at the IEEE Security and Privacy conference (PDF link). Why does this matter? Because the banks were sticking their customers with the bills when cloned cards were used, since the system was supposed to be invulnerable. Despite the banks' claims, the devices weren't even certified! The BBC featured the attack on the news last night. Hopefully this will lead to thousands of customers getting their money back.
Cellphones

Submission + - Bill could force Apple, AT&T to unlock iPhone 1

Submitted by quantumghost
quantumghost writes: When T-Mobile began selling Apple's iPhone in Germany last fall, a legal skirmish ensued, forcing the wireless carrier to sell it untethered to a contract — at $1,460, no less. T-Mobile eventually persuaded a court that the two-year contract was legal. Now that same kind of European rule would be imported into the United States — meaning AT&T would be legally required to sell a contract-free iPhone — if a new Democratic proposal in the U.S. House of Representatives becomes law.

http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9879554-7.html
The Military

Submission + - VG Software Models Crowds In Military Simulator (gamecritics.com)

Submitted by
Brandon Erickson
Brandon Erickson writes: "While videogame technology has been used before to model enemy behavior in military training simulations, it has yet to be applied to modeling the behavior of noncombatants in warzones. But that's all about to change thanks to Dr. Frederick McKenzie and his colleagues, whose research is presented in the March issue of Simulation & Gaming. Their work, sponsored by the Defense Modeling and Simulation Office, the Air Force Research Laboratory, and the Joint Forces Command, uses the commercially available AI.implant software to incorporate realistic crowd behavior into a military simulator."
Businesses

How Do You Find Programming Superstars? 763

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the can't-beat-a-human-signal-to-noise-filter dept.
Joe Ganley writes "You are a programming superstar, and you are looking for work. I recognize this happens relatively rarely, which is part of my problem. But stipulating that it happens, how do I, as a company looking to hire such people, connect with them? Put another way, how do you the programming superstar go about looking for a company that seems like one you'd like to work for? The company I work for is a great place to work; we only hire really great people, we work on hard, interesting problems, and we treat our employees well. We aren't worried about retention or even about how to entice people to work here once we've found them. The problem is simply finding them. The signal-to-noise ratio of the big places like Monster and Dice is terrible. We've had much better luck with (for example) the Joel on Software job boards, but that still doesn't generate enough volume." What methods have other people used to find the truly elite?
Security

Submission + - Strong passwords prohibited 1

Submitted by
Atario
Atario writes: "This post and thread over at The Daily WTF made me realize I was not the only one experiencing a strange phenomenon: the prohibition of strong passwords by the very sites that most need them — financial institutions. A quick Google search reveals that the observation is also far from new. We're talking short maximum lengths, smashing case, disallowing special characters (really freaky ones like "!" or "."), and so on. Yet most of them seem to realize requiring both numbers and letters is a Good Thing. What is going on here?"
Music

Submission + - Swedish Record Labels Back Filesharing

Submitted by
Klatoo55
Klatoo55 writes: "A coalition of seven independent record labels in Sweden has joined to form The Swedish Model, a pro-filesharing discussion platform that seeks to restore focus on music and develop a coherent business model to take the music industry into the years to come. Torrentfreak shares some additional info on the site as well as interviews with the labels involved."

Submission + - Poll; Do you still use tape drives?

Submitted by
Digimer
Digimer writes: "Four year ago I began writing an open-source backup program. I made the decision back then that I would not support tape drives, as I felt they were obsolete in the face of cheap, large "disk" storage. As I began demo'ing the first version a couple years ago, the most frequent question I got was "Does it support tape drives?".

Now, I am writing the next version. So I want to ask Slashdot to help me with a very formal, scientific poll:

1. Do you use tape drives?
2. If you were looking at a new backup solution, would you want it to support tape drives?"
Censorship

Submission + - Danish ISP Tele2 appeals piratebay.org ruling (tele2.dk)

Submitted by
gronbaek
gronbaek writes: "Tele2 has decided to appeal against the 29 January 2008 ruling by the Frederiksberg Bailiffs Court which led to Tele2 blocking customer access to the Swedish website, thepiratebay.org.

"If ISPs are required to block their customers' access to the Internet, there must be crystal clear guidelines. We are gradually moving into a grey area in which ISPs may in future have to prevent customer access to legal content on the Internet without there being absolute clarity about the legal basis," concludes Nicholai Pfeiffer.

Following Tele2's appeal against the Court's ruling, the case will now be heard before the High Court."
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft screening serch results?

Submitted by
afilonov
afilonov writes: "Sherry Gil from Seeking Alpha wonders if Microsoft removes some search results, particularly sites which have AdSense or Google Search links (article). I did a bit of my own search, looks like author is right."
Media (Apple)

Submission + - Universities hand out iPhones & iPods to fresh (acu.edu)

Submitted by srck
srck writes: ACU has announced that the 08/09 incoming students will all be given an Apple device, after being a participant in a trial including Harvard, MIT, Stanford, and Yale, providing access to learning materials via Apple iPod Touches and iPhones, extending the iTunes University concept over wi-fi. From the article:

At ACU — the first university in the nation to provide these cutting-edge media devices to its incoming class — freshmen will use the iPhones or iPod touches to receive homework alerts, answer in-class surveys and quizzes, get directions to their professors' offices, and check their meal and account balances — among more than 15 other useful web applications already developed, said ACU Chief Information Officer Kevin Roberts.
Role Playing (Games)

Submission + - MMOGCHART.COM Updated! (mmogchart.com)

Submitted by
SirBruce
SirBruce writes: "MMOGCHART.COM has finally been updated after a long hiatus. New subscription numbers are available for several MMOGs, most notably to World of Warcraft, RuneScape, Dofus, Tibia, and NCSoft's various titles. Also included are preliminary numbers for Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, Lord of the Rings Online, and Tabula Rasa. Check out the Charts section for all the latest graphs and the Analysis and Conclusions section for a discussion of the methodology and research, as well as information on each individual game."
The Courts

Submission + - RIAA "expert witness" exposed (blogspot.com)

Submitted by
NewYorkCountryLawyer
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: "Prof. Johan Pouwelse of Delft University — one of the world's foremost experts on the science of P2P file sharing and the very same Prof. Pouwelse who stopped the RIAA's Netherlands counterpart in its tracks back in 2005 — has submitted an expert witness report characterizing the work of the RIAA's expert, Dr. Doug Jacobson, as "borderline incompetence". The report (pdf), filed in UMG v. Lindor, pointed out, among other things, that the steps needed to be taken in a copyright infringement investigation were not taken, that Jacobson's work lacked "in-depth analysis" and "proper scientific scrutiny", that Jacobson's reports were "factually erroneous", and that they were contradicted by his own deposition testimony. This is the first expert witness report of which we are aware since the Free Software Foundation announced that it would be coming to the aid of RIAA defendants."

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