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Security

Submission + - Blast-Proof Fabric Resists Multiple Car Bombs (gizmodo.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Zetix is a fabric so strong it will resist multiple car bomb blasts without breaking. It absorbs and disperses the energy from explosions thanks to an inner structure so adamantiumtastic it can be used in body armor, window covering, military tents and hurricane defenses — it might even be able to fend off my ex-wife. When not shielding from explosions, it can be used as medical sutures that won't damage body tissue. All of this is thanks to a property that apparently defies the laws of physics: helical-auxetics, objects that actually get fatter the more you stretch them. The concept makes my head want to explode, but when you see it in action it actually makes sense.
Security

Submission + - Microsoft suggests IE more secure than Firefox (computerworld.com)

Submitted by
Ian Lamont
Ian Lamont writes: "Microsoft and Mozilla are fighting over whose browser is more secure. In a report released last Friday, Jeff Jones, the strategy director in Microsoft's security technology unit, says that IE has had half as many vulnerabilities as Firefox in the last three years. Mozilla's response, delivered in a blog post by Mike Shaver, Mozilla's chief evangelist, not only noted that Firefox bugs are fixed more quickly, but also said Jones' analysis was flawed: 'Even if the scales were the same, and we were living in a parallel universe in which Microsoft even approached Mozilla's standards of transparency and disclosure, the logic is just baffling: Jeff is saying that Mozilla's products are less secure than Microsoft's because Mozilla fixed more bugs. By that measure, IE4 is even more secure, because there were no security bugs fixed in that time frame; bravo to Microsoft for that!'"
The Almighty Buck

Submission + - The Taxman Barely Cometh

Submitted by
theodp
theodp writes: "While Congress is considering lowering the 35% federal tax rate, a lot of companies don't need help from Washington. They've been finding legal ways to shrink their tax bill for years, with 'cross-border tax arbitrage' — getting profits out of the U.S. if taxes are lower offshore — emerging as one of the hottest tax-avoidance strategies. A list compiled by BusinessWeek of the S&P 500 companies sending in the smallest checks sports a number of high-tech household names, including Amazon and Yahoo, who respectively sent Uncle Sam 2.8% and 2.9% of their earnings before income taxes over the past five years, and Apple, which paid a whopping $0 in cash taxes last year."
Networking

Submission + - 'Poor man's broadband' is web alternative

Submitted by holy_calamity
holy_calamity writes: An ex-MIT professor is trialling a peer-to-peer networking system as a back-up to the internet in Pakistan. A modified bittorrent protocol has computers dial each other directly using modems over local calls to access large, relatively common files like software patches or educational materials. Computers share logs of which machines have which files to maintain a distributed directory. His full paper is here.
The Almighty Buck

Submission + - New Peak Oil Advocate: Big Oil (wsj.com)

Submitted by bagsc
bagsc writes: In this morning's Wall Street Journal is an article on how Big Oil CEOs and OPEC Ministers are admitting oil production may be near its limit. CEO of ConocoPhillips James Mulva is quoted saying "I don't think we are going to see the supply going over 100 million barrels a day.... Where is all that going to come from?" While the EIA currently estimates about 85 million barrels per day production this year, that doesn't give the world too much room to increase consumption.
Books

Submission + - Book copies Wikipedia; Publisher aggressive on IP. (wikipedia.org) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Two pages of a book, Black Gold: The New Frontier in Oil for Investors, consist of a direct copy from the English Wikipedia article on the Khobar Towers Bombing. The book is published by John Wiley and Sons, the same publisher who, earlier this year, threatened a blogger with legal action over a clear case of fair use commentary.
Networking

Submission + - AT&T Engineer describing NSA syping architectu 1

Submitted by juanfe
juanfe writes: The Washington Post is reporting on the whistleblowing by a former AT&T network engineer who describes how and where AT&T's facilitation of NSA wiretapping was set up. This has been discussed on Slashdot before, but it's a particularly well-explained description for the lay person of why a fiber splitter allowing NSA to sift in all of AT&T's US backhaul traffic (including UUNet, Sprint and GlobalCrossing) is a bad thing.
United States

Submission + - California's Governor's Mandatory Health Plan

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: Following the lead of Massachussetts, California's governor has outlined a plan for mandatory healthcare in California, but perhaps they should be waiting a bit longer to see if it is working in Mass, before they become the second state with the plan. I believe it's important to have health insurance, but if you don't have it, it's not really affecting others, so you don't really hurt other people. The health insurance companies seem to like the idea, but it might increase costs of healthcare in California. Is mandatory health insurance in California really a good idea?
Security

Submission + - Man hacks 911 system, sends SWAT on bogus raid. 5

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Orange County Register reports that a 19 year old from Washington state broke into the Orange County California 911 emergency system. He randomly selected the name and address of a Lake Forest, California couple and electronically transferred false information into the 911 system. The Orange County California Sheriff's Department's Special Weapons and Tactics Team was immediately sent to the couple's home. The armed officers surrounded the home.Inside the home lived a couple with two toddlers who were asleep and unsuspecting of what was going outside the home. The SWAT team handcuffed the husband and wife before deciding it was a prank.
Education

Submission + - Schools Placing at 99th Percentile for Cheating 3

Submitted by
theodp
theodp writes: "Time reports that sometimes No-Child-Left-Behind really means No-Test-Scores-Left-Behind, creating opportunities for data forensics firms like Caveon (check out their Ten Most Wanted Cheaters poster). Take Houston's Forest Brook H.S., which was a shining example of school reform. In 2005, after years of rock-bottom test scores, 95% of its 11th graders passed the state science test. Teachers were praised and the school was awarded a $165,000 grant by the governor. But an investigation found a host of irregularities and last year's testing was monitored by an outside agency. Test scores plunged and only 39% passed science."
Christmas Cheer

Submission + - Freeloader Solar Charger (wordpress.com)

Submitted by
zsuaro
zsuaro writes: "Check this out...... With this latest gadget, which makes a perfct gift for Christmas, you will never be left with "Low Battery" in your mobile, MP3 Player, iPod or even digcam."
Privacy

Submission + - One-Click-Submission to German terror watchlist (www.bka.de) 5

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: As the German daily Der Tagesspiegel reported today, the German federal criminal agency has a new strategy to catch terrorists: they put up an informational web page about the terrorist group "militante Gruppe" ("militant group") and now look at their web logs. If someone clicks on that link, his IP address will be investigated and he will be put on the terror watchlist. It would be utter madness of us to ask you to click on THIS LINK to put a billion people on their list so we are not even going to mention the URL. In case you find it, do not click on it! Thank you.
Space

Submission + - Sputnik at 50: An improvised triumph (yahoo.com)

Submitted by
caffiend666
caffiend666 writes: "According to an AP News article, "When Sputnik took off 50 years ago, the world gazed at the heavens in awe and apprehension, watching what seemed like the unveiling of a sustained Soviet effort to conquer space and score a stunning Cold War triumph. But 50 years later, it emerges that the momentous launch was far from being part of a well-planned strategy to demonstrate communist superiority over the West." "At that moment we couldn't fully understand what we had done," Chertok recalled. "We felt ecstatic about it only later, when the entire world ran amok. Only four or five days later did we realize that it was a turning point in the history of civilization." "And that winking light that crowds around the globe gathered to watch in the night sky? Not Sputnik at all, as it turns out, but just the second stage of its booster rocket...""
Education

Submission + - Student Attacked After Dropping Cake (infowars.net) 17

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: "School security guards in Palmdale, CA have been caught on camera assaulting a 16-year-old girl and breaking her arm after she spilled some cake during lunch and left some crumbs on the floor after cleaning it up. The girl, Pleajhai Mervin, told Fox News LA that she was bumped while queuing for lunch and dropped the cake. After being ordered to clean it up and then re-clean the spot three times, she attempted to leave the area out of embarrassment but was jumped on by security who forced her onto a table, breaking her wrist in the process."
Windows

Submission + - Hex-Rays Eases Reverse Engineering Tedium (hexrays.net)

Submitted by
staff
staff writes: "Hex-Rays sprl of Belgium announced today the commercial release of its long-awaited decompiler for binary software analysis. After a decade of research into this most difficult area of reverse engineering, Hex-Rays is making available their technology to the analysts and programmers working in the security and compliance sectors. In its first release, the new Hex-Rays decompiler supports 32-bit Intel x86 code such as the software that is used on most computers that run Win32 programs. It is also this code base that contains the notorious security flaws that are announced with some regularity. Hex-Rays decompiler will help analysts locate pesky bugs and security flaws more quickly. With the Hex-Rays decompiler, software analysts can see more clearly the logic flow in the code without getting bogged down in several pages of assembly language listings. http://www.hexrays.net/"

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