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Space

Submission + - European satellite finds ozone on Venus (networkworld.com) 1

Submitted by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes: "A European Space Agency satellite has detected a thin ozone layer on Venus that while not produced by live organisms, could help scientist in their search for space life elsewhere.
The discovery by ESA’s Venus Express satellite makes Venus only the third planet in our solar system with an ozone layer with Earth and Mars being the others."
Security

Submission + - Apache Patches Bypass Attack, But Other Web Platfo (darkreading.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: An attack that boils down to a missing forward-slash symbol could give hackers access databases, firewalls, routers, and other internal network resources via misconfigured reverse-proxy Web servers. Researchers first spotted the flaw in Apache, which has just issued a patch for it, but other Web platforms are also likely susceptible.

Apache Issues Patch To Stop Reverse-Proxy Bypass Attack
Programming

Submission + - Katayanagi Prizes go to MIT, Stanford profs (networkworld.com)

Submitted by alphadogg
alphadogg writes: Barbara Liskov, an MIT professor known for her work in programming languages and distributed systems, and Scott Klemmer, a Stanford University associate professor who co-directs the Human-Computer Interaction Group there, have won the fourth annual Katayanagi Prizes in Computer Science. The prizes ($10K & $5K) are presented annually by Carnegie Mellon University in conjunction with the Tokyo University of Technology, and are endowed by Japanese entrepreneur/education advocate Koh Katayanagi. "Barbara Liskov has made many fundamental contributions to computer science, including the development of several important programming languages, new theories of object-oriented programming and important algorithms for managing distributed systems," said Randal E. Bryant, dean of the Carnegie Mellon School of Computer Science.
The Courts

Submission + - Civil suit filed, involving the time zone database (gmane.org) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Arthur David Olson, the creator and maintainer of the timezone database used in about every unix/linux platform in use on the planet, just sent the message to the timezone mailing list: — From: "Olson, Arthur David (NIH/NCI) [E]" Date: Thu, 6 Oct 2011 11:16:02 -0400 Subject: Civil suit; ftp shutdown; mailing list shutdown A civil suit was filed on September 30 in federal court in Boston; I'm a defendant; the case involves the time zone database. The ftp server at elsie.nci.nih.gov has been shut down. The mailing list will be shut down after this message. Electronic mail can be sent to me at @gmail.com. I hope there will be better news shortly. --ado — A Google search does not yet reveal anything about this; does someone know what is going on?
Security

Submission + - SpyEye Trojan Steals Banking Codes (itworld.com)

Submitted by
itwbennett
itwbennett writes: "Researchers from browser security vendor Trusteer have identified a new variant of the SpyEye Trojan that circumvents mobile SMS security procedures by tricking online banking users into changing the phone numbers associated with their accounts. 'Using a combination of MITB (man in the browser injection) technology and social engineering, fraudsters are not only able to bypass OOBA but also buy themselves more time since the transactions have been verified and fly under the radar of fraud detection systems,' Trusteer's Amit Klein warned."
The Internet

Submission + - Northern Canada in the Dark (www.cbc.ca)

Submitted by zentigger
zentigger writes: At approximately 06:36 EDT Thursday, October 6, 2011, Anik F2 satellite experienced an attitude control issue and lost earth lock affecting C, Ku and Ka services. The satellite went into safety mode and moved from pointing to the earth to pointing to the sun.
This has put most of Northern Canada in the dark as all internet and phone services come in over F2.
Music

Submission + - Rdio Ditches Ads, Fees (itworld.com)

Submitted by
itwbennett
itwbennett writes: "Streaming music company Rdio.com is bringing a free tier to their streaming service. 'The amount of music you can listen to in a given month will be capped,' says blogger Peter Smith, 'but Rdio is going ad-free permanently.' All you need is an email address (or a Facebook account) to get started and thankfully, says Smith, 'it sounds like Facebook and its Open Graph are supported but optional.'"
Medicine

Submission + - Did Alternative Medicine Contribute to Steve Jobs' (skeptoid.com) 9

Submitted by
ideonexus
ideonexus writes: "An aspect of Steve Jobs' battle with cancer that the media has been glossing over is the fact that Jobs' spent nine months pursuing alternative therapies to treat his tumor before finally having it surgically removed as modern medicine recommended. Jobs' particular form of pancreatic cancer was very treatable and had a high survival rate, but his delay in seeking professional medical treatment moved him into the low survival rate group.

This raises the question, how could someone as wealthy and intelligent as Steve Jobs do something so foolish as to completely disregard modern medicine in treating such a life-threatening disease? And how much money did Jobs' "naturopath" make off of prescribing a clinically-unproven diet that delayed an effective treatment and dramatically reduced his chances of survival?"

Comment Another important question... (Score 1) 1

by Kalidor (#36791076) Attached to: A Tale of Two Countries

Is this good for America at all. A lot of the best of what comes out of Silicon Valley come from people who have cut their teeth elsewhere. New ideas, different ways of doing things often come from outside the Valley and move in. We've already seen a decline in how important business views tech workers. Many stalwarts of the Valley are beginning to show the cracks of age. To some degree, the Valley is already it's own boys club. You are in or you aren't or you know someone. The question is are the people in this club just repeating what those before them have done, or are they coming up with anything new? Separate yourself form the whole too much and you start to loose sight of the people you are building for, and you begin to overspecialize; We've all heard the line, over-specialize and you breed in weakness.

Comment Re:Vaseline glass. (Score 5, Interesting) 277

by Kalidor (#36214720) Attached to: Testing Geiger Counters

Or rather, they should at least give you what various safety levels are. One of the big misconceptions is that we know what is a dangerous level of radiation: in fact all we know is what is too much radiation. Back in the 50's and 60's a group of scientist were asked to provide safety information on radiation and they came up with a scale using the points of zero and you aren't gonna see the end of the week. They then drew a linear line between these points because they had little to go on, and presented it as a best guess and further research was needed to prove it's truly linear, exponential, logarithmic, or what-have-you. Since then the linear graph has become kind of dogma and various groups have picked various points across it to set their safety thresholds.

You'll find that you have a set threshold in most Asian nations that is quite low, due to close experience and some might say paranoia in relation to the deployment of nuclear arms.
Roughly double these guidelines, and you get what is considered safe in many European countries.
Roughly double them once more, and now you are heading toward the Americas.
 
Android

Submission + - Android security practices? 1

Submitted by Soft
Soft writes: Smartphone security recommendations seem to boil down to Windows-like practices: install an antivirus, run updates, and don't execute apps from untrusted sources. On my own computers, running Linux, I choose to only install (signed) packages from the distribution's or well-known repositories, or programs I can check and compile myself, or run them as a dedicated user--and I don't bother with an antivirus.

What rules should I adopt on my soon-to-be-bought Android device? Can I use it purely with open-source apps and still make the most of it? Are Android's fine-grained permissions (accessing the network, contacts...) reliable? Can apps be trusted not to scan your files and keyboard for passwords and emails? What precautions do security-conscious Slashdotters take to keep control of their phones?

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