grindcorefan - Slashdot User

Submission + - Expert: 75% of Employees Fall For Phishing (threatpost.com)

Submitted by Trailrunner7 on Friday April 08, 2011 @10:19AM

Trailrunner7 writes: In the wake of the data breach at e-mail marketing firm Epsilon, the specter looms of widespread phishing attacks on hundreds of millions of e-mail users whose information was stolen from the firm. But according to Aaron Higbee, the Chief Technology Officer at Intrepidus Group, organizations had reason to fear phishing attacks long before the Epsilon breach made headlines. In fact, he said, 75% of employees fall for phishing scams of one kind or another.

Targeted attacks against employees are a growing problem for organizations of all stripes, Higbee told Threatpost, and the public remains woefully ignorant of how phishing scams work, making them highly susceptible to being scammed.

Submission + - Clever Devices Turn Trees into Wind Turbines (inhabitat.com) 1

Submitted by jldailey618 on Friday April 08, 2011 @10:06AM

jldailey618 writes: By placing mini wind turbines on top of trees, German architect Wolfgang Frey has created a more aesthetically pleasing method of harnessing wind energy. Frey put a 3.5m diameter wind rotor atop a Douglas fir to generate 5 to 6 kW. Despite the 30 percent power loss due to the turbine's placement in a canopy, the device still provides enough energy to supply the needs of the nearby houses, including Frey’s.

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: Relativity 3

Submitted by Stenchwarrior on Friday April 08, 2011 @09:44AM

Stenchwarrior writes: Maybe this one's been done to death, but I knew the way-smarter-than-me people here at Slashdot would have a nice way to explain Einstein's Theory of Relativity to my 68 year old father. Don't get me wrong, he's an intelligent man. He's a design engineer and vice president of his company, but a little "set in his ways" if you will.

I've read Brian Greene's Elegant Universe and I especially love the cars-racing-down-the-track analogy to explain why time apparently slows the faster we travel, but that didn't sink in with the guy. I also tried to explain (in an effort to show real-world application) that even the GPS satellites had to be re-calibrated to account for the speed difference they travel relative to us on the ground to make the results accurate, but my father the skeptic simply replied "I don't believe you".

I know, I know, just because someone doesn't believe in gravity doesn't mean it doesn't exist. But I'd really like to find a way to get this through to my dad; it's a notion that I believe as verifiable and a fact and I want him to understand the same things I made myself learn all those years ago. Have any good references or analogies?

Submission + - Tennessee Bill Helps Teachers Challenge Evolution (sciencemag.org) 1

Submitted by sciencehabit on Friday April 08, 2011 @09:14AM

sciencehabit writes: In a 70-28 vote yesterday, the Tennessee House of Representatives passed HB 368, a bill that encourages science teachers to explore controversial topics without fear of reprisal. Critics say the measure will enable K-12 teachers to present intelligent design and creationism as acceptable alternatives to evolution in the classroom. If the bill passes, Tennessee would join Louisiana as the second state to have specific "protection" for the teaching of evolution in the classroom.

Submission + - AT&T + T-Mobile USA ramifications

Submitted by

The Grim Reefer2

on Friday April 08, 2011 @09:11AM

The Grim Reefer2 writes: "Woe to the rivals of AT&T (NYSE:T) and T-Mobile USA this morning: Executives from all of the nation's major wireless carriers likely are holed up in their respective war rooms, debating strategy and discussing their next moves.

And it's a good bet the C-level meeting rooms at Sprint Nextel (NYSE:S) are overflowing, as CEO Dan Hesse and his team struggle to squeak out a win from what many are calling a disaster. (Sprint's stock was down more than 12 percent in early trading.) Sprint had been rumored just days ago to be in discussions for a merger with T-Mobile, but it seems the deal didn't sit well with Sprint executives--or AT&T pulled the rug out."

Submission + - Star-Eating Black Hole May Be Producing Universe's (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit on Friday April 08, 2011 @09:10AM

sciencehabit writes: Astronomers have observed possibly the biggest blast ever seen in the cosmos. When NASA's SWIFT space observatory first spotted it 10 days ago, observers thought it was a massive star blowing up as a supernova and expected it to fade within hours or even minutes. But the high-energy radiation from the source has shown no sign of dying down, which suggests that astronomers may have caught a star in the process of being ripped to shreds by a black hole.

Submission + - Japan Battles Partial Nuclear Meltdown

Submitted by

Hugh Pickens writes

on Sunday March 13, 2011 @06:48AM

Hugh Pickens writes writes: "The Financial Times reports that Japanese nuclear experts are working to contain a partial meltdown at an earthquake-stricken nuclear power plant (reg. may be required) north of Tokyo, as fears grow that the death toll from Friday’s massive quake and tsunami could reach the tens of thousands. A partial meltdown, experts said, would likely mean that some portion of the reactors’ uranium fuel rods had cracked or warped from overheating, releasing radioactive particles into the reactors’ containment vessels. Some of those particles would have escaped into the air outside when engineers vented steam from the vessels to relieve pressure building up inside. Adding to problems at the site, hydrogen was building up inside the Number Three reactor’s outer building, threatening an explosion like the one that blew apart the Number One reactor building’s roof and outer walls on Saturday. However, it remains unclear how far radiation has spread from the facility. Some local residents and health workers were diagnosed with radiation poisoning in precautionary tests, but they show no outward symptoms of distress. "Even if you have a radiation release, although that’s not a good thing, it’s not automatically a harmful thing. It depends on what the level turns out to be," says Steve Kerekes, a spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute, a US industry group, adding that a person exposed to the highest radiation levels measured at the Fukushima site would absorb in two to three hours the same amount of radiation that he would normally absorb in 12 months – a significant but not necessarily injurious amount, especially if exposure time was short."

Submission + - 48% of Tablet Users Transmit Sensitive Data

Submitted by destinyland on Sunday March 13, 2011 @03:09AM

destinyland writes: 48% of tablet owners have used their tablet device to transmit sensitive data, according to a new online survey by Harris Interactive. This compares to just 30% of smartphone users, though it's younger adults (aged 18-34) who are more likely to than adults. 52% of tablet owners between the ages of 18 and 34 say they're confident about transmitting sensitive data over their tablet device, versus just 41% between the ages of 35 and 34, and 28% between the ages of 45 and 54. (While just 33% of people over the age of 55 shared the same confidence.) "There may be an psychological explanation for the main tablet vs smartphone security point," notes one technology site. "Somebody using a tablet — even though its on a wireless connection — may think of it in the same way as a computer, where it’s well established people are usually happy to transmit sensitive data...With a smartphone, there’s still more of a psychological reminder that any information you send is literally beamed through the air."

Submission + - Portal 2 Sneak Peek, In-Game Footage (hothardware.com)

Submitted by

Ninjakicks

on Sunday March 13, 2011 @12:29AM

Ninjakicks writes: "At the PAX East show in Boston today, Valve Software was showing off some in-game footage from the highly anticipated puzzle-platformer Portal 2. Due to hit store shelves and Steam next month, Fans of the original Portal will no doubt recognize some of the gameplay elements, but the visuals seen here have been enhanced significantly and some new items like the blue Repulsion Gel (among others) are being introduced. And of course, like the original, there are plenty of laughs to go around as well."

Submission + - Twitter discards client UI community (google.com)

Submitted by Antique Geekmeister on Saturday March 12, 2011 @02:38PM

Antique Geekmeister writes: Twitter has just decided to discard the community of developers who've created interesting, innovative, and exciting to start-up company applications. The announcement at http://groups.google.com/group/twitter-api-announce/browse_thread/thread/c82cd59c7a87216a?hl=en shows that they intend to switch from the "bazaar" model of development to the "cathedral", with much tighter control of user interfaces for "security" and "consistency".

Submission + - Spanish government to subsidize IPv6 (elpais.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 12, 2011 @02:31PM

An anonymous reader writes: The Spanish government will initiate a plan to incorporate IPv6 starting in april, initially the Ministry of Industry with other ministries to follow. The biggest part of the plan is a program of subsidies for small and medium sized enterprises that will cover projects involving, among others, pilot testing, network reconfiguration, purchase of software and equipment replacement. The plan will revise registration procedures for the .es TLD to include IPv6 addressing.

Submission + - Flickr Censors Egypt Police Photos (thomashawk.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 12, 2011 @01:46PM

An anonymous reader writes: Yesterday Flickr removed a photoset of Egyptian Secret Police photos which had been posted to an Egyptian journalist's Flickrstream. The photos were obtained when the journalist acquired them from what he called "one of Mubarak's largest torture facilities." Flickr cited the fact that the photos "were not the user's own work" as justification for the censorship, even though Flickr staffers themselves frequently upload work that is not "their own" to their personal photostreams.

Submission + - Is Daylight Saving Time Bad for You?

Submitted by

Hugh Pickens writes

on Saturday March 12, 2011 @01:08PM

Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Time Magazine reports that according to experts on circadian rhythms, the hour shift in sleep schedule from Daylight Savings Time can have serious effects on some people's health, particularly in people with certain pre-existing health problems with one study finding that men were more likely to commit suicide during the first few weeks of Daylight Saving Time (DST) than at any other time during the year and another study showing that the number of serious heart attacks jumps 6% to 10% on the first three workdays after DST begins. Dr. Xiaoyong Yang, an assistant professor of comparative medicine and cellular and molecular physiology at Yale University, theorizes that shifts in biologic rhythms could trigger harmful inflammatory or metabolic changes at the cellular level, which these individuals may be more susceptible to. "Most people don't have much of a problem — they can adjust their body clock quickly. Eventually, after a couple of days, they already can adapt to the new schedule," says Yang. "But for some groups of people — people who have depression or a heart problem — there's some research that suggests that [they] have a higher risk of suicide and heart attack.""

Submission + - CS Profs Debate Role of Math in CS Education

Submitted by theodp on Saturday March 12, 2011 @11:48AM

theodp writes: Worried that his love-hate relationship with math might force him to give up the pursuit of computer science, CS student Dean Chen finds comfort from an unlikely source — the postings of CS professors on the SIGSE mailing list. 'I understand that discussing the role of math in CS is one of those religious war type issues,' writes Brad Vander Zanden. 'After 30 years in the field, I still fail to see how calculus and continuous math correlate with one's ability to succeed in many areas of computer science...I have seen many outstanding programmers who struggled with calculus and never really got it.' Dennis Frailey makes a distinction between CS research and applied CS: 'For too long, we have taught computer science as an academic discipline (as though all of our students will go on to get PhDs and then become CS faculty members) even though for most of us, our students are overwhelmingly seeking careers in which they apply computer science.' Frailey adds that part of the problem may be that some CS Profs — math gods that they may be — are ill-equipped to teach CS in a non-mathematical manner: 'Let's be honest about another aspect of the problem — what can the faculty teach? For a variety of reasons, a typical CS faculty consists mainly of individuals who specialize in CS as a discipline, often with strong mathematical backgrounds. How many of them could teach a good course in cloud computing or multi-core systems or software engineering or any of the many other topics that the graduates will find useful when they graduate? Are such courses always relegated to instructors or adjuncts or other non-tenure-track faculty?' So, how does this jibe with Slashdotters' experience?

Submission + - Leslie Valiant Wins 'Nobel Prize' of Computing (ispyce.com)

Submitted by

autospa

on Wednesday March 09, 2011 @12:57PM

autospa writes: "ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery today named Leslie G. Valiant of Harvard University the winner of the 2010 ACM A.M. Turing Award for his fundamental contributions to the development of computational learning theory and to the broader theory of computer science. Valiant brought together machine learning and computational complexity, leading to advances in artificial intelligence as well as computing practices such as natural language processing, handwriting recognition, and computer vision. He also launched several subfields of theoretical computer science, and developed models for parallel computing. The Turing Award, widely considered the "Nobel Prize in Computing", is named for the British mathematician Alan M. Turing. The award carries a $250,000 prize, with financial support provided by Intel Corporation and Google Inc."

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