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Education

Submission + - Can For-Profit Tech Colleges Be Trusted? (infoworld.com)

Submitted by
snydeq
snydeq writes: "InfoWorld's Robert Scheier takes a closer look at for-profit IT-oriented colleges, questioning whether IT pros and employers can trust the quality of education on offer at institutions such as University of Phoenix, DeVry, ITT Tech, and Kaplan in the wake of increasing scrutiny for alleged deceptive practices that leave in high debt for jobs that pay little. 'For-profit schools carry a stigma in some eyes because of their reputation for hard sales pitches, aggressive marketing tactics, and saddling students with big loans for dubious degrees or certificates,' Scheier writes. 'Should IT pros looking to increase their skills, or people seeking to enter the IT profession, consider such for-profit schools? And should employers trust their graduates' skills?'"
Censorship

Submission + - Block major labels off the internet (bustallmajors.com) 2

Submitted by slart42
slart42 writes: Bust all major labels is a campaign to block web site access to anyone accessing the internet from computers belonging to major record labels. The site provides a script to embed into your web site/blog/whatever, which displays a message (analogue to the error message users see when trying to access youtube videos from countries where the record industry does not want you to see the content) and blocks access when viewing the site from an IP address belonging to a list of record labels or industry associations. With enough people using this, it could make a pretty strong message.

Submission + - Egypt planned to survey (tagesschau.de) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: When Egypt's secret service was raided by opposition on March 5th, the practitioner and activist Mustafa Hussein found a green file which he took home for passing to Public Attorney's Office personally. The papers, which he published on the net, secret service's dept of technology and information describes an offer by "Gamma International" which specializes in "security programs and devices to intrude electronic mail boxes". Their software is allegedly capable to enter Yahoo, GoogleMail and Hotmail mailboxes, record Skype calls and even eavesdrop on persons through their laptops' built-in microphone and camera. Egypt's secret service had already received a laptop with a limited demo of the "Finfisher" software to try out the "manifold options to intrude email".
The documents include communication between Egypt's secret service's IT dept and finance dept on Gamma's 390.000 Euro offer which had been placed through their Egyptian partner MCS. Two pages list hardware, and software named FinSpy and FinFly, along with training for 24 persons and 2-year maintenance.
On Gamma's web site, the Finfisher software is offered as "Governmental IT Intrusion and Remote Monitoring Solutions".
Gamma's offices include sites in Munich, Germany, and UK. This may be sensitive as German law (StGB 202c) expressively forbids private persons to develop or sell computer software to permit unsolicited access to private data.

http://www.finfisher.com/FinFisher/en/index.php
Idle

Submission + - Hungary uses iPad to draft new constitution (networkworld.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Hungary is drafting its new constitution on, believe it or not, an iPad. Jozsef Szajer, a Hungarian politician and member of the European Parliament, wrote an enthusiastic blogpost last week detailing how he's using Apple's tablet device to flesh out Hungary's new constitution, the country's first since 1949.

Not only is Szajer using the iPad to churn out new constitutional drafts, but he's also using it to review new draft proposals. Apparently all aspects of the new Hungarian constitution are being vetted via the iPad in one form or another.
Cloud

Submission + - Facebook Resumes Talks With Skype (zdnet.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: You may soon be able to start a Skype video call with your friends on Facebook. The latest rumor suggests that Facebook and Skype have resumed talks about integrating the video conferencing technology on the social network.

The two companies first talked about a potential partnership in September 2010, but they could not reach an agreement. When Skype 5.0 was released in October 2010, the new version offered voice calling between Facebook friends, but it did not include a video chatting feature.
Moon

Submission + - Giant Underground Chamber Discovered On the Moon (siliconindia.com) 2

Submitted by
siliconeyes
siliconeyes writes: "Scientists at the Indian Space Research Organization have discovered a giant underground chamber on the moon, which they feel could be used as a base by astronauts on future manned missions to moon.

An analysis by an instrument on Chandrayaan-1 revealed a 1.7-km long and 120-metre wide cave near the moon's equator that is in the Oceanus Procellarum area of the moon that could be a suitable 'base station' for future human missions."
Android

Submission + - Mobile Operator Sprint embeds rootkit in Android (xda-developers.com) 1

Submitted by pucko
pucko writes: User "k0nane" at the forum of xda-developers.com have discovered an interesting piece of software in Android based Samsung mobiles sold by Sprint.
Apparently Sprint have embedded a secret application called Carrier IQ which have full control over the phone and everything the user does with it.
It even monitors input, which essentially means; Sprint have full access to your passwords, your banking accounts and your corporate secrets.
Encryption and SSL is a worthless defence, Sprint and Carrier IQ sees your information BEFORE it is protected.

The question is now, how many other carriers uses this rootkit? Does it exist on iPhone? Blackberry?

Submission + - Kinect hack builds 3D maps of the real world (wired.co.uk)

Submitted by Lanxon
Lanxon writes: Noted Kinect-tinkerer Martin Szarski has used a car, a laptop, an Android smartphone and the aforementioned Xbox 360 peripheral to make a DIY-equivalent of Google Street View. The Kinect's multi-camera layout can be used to capture some fuzzy, but astonishingly effortless 3D maps of real world locations and objects. As we saw in Oliver Kreylos' early hack, you can take the data from Kinect's depth-sensitive camera to map out a 3D point-cloud, with real distances. Then use the colour camera's image to see which RGB pixel corresponds to each depth point, and eventually arrive at a coloured, textured model.

Submission + - Will It Blend? The New Blender User Interface (linux.com)

Submitted by jennifercloer
jennifercloer writes: The 3D powerhouse Blender is arguably the most complicated piece of desktop software in the open source world. It handles every part of the workflow used to create a CGI film or a 3D game: creating objects, rigging them to move, animating them, controlling lighting, rendering scenes, and even editing the resulting video. Each release packs in more new features than most people can understand without consulting a textbook (or two). One of the down sides, though, is that over the years Blender has developed the reputation of being difficult to learn. Fortunately, the latest release takes on that challenge head-first, and makes some major improvements.
Open Source

Submission + - Open Source Movie Recommendation API (thenextweb.com)

Submitted by michuk
michuk writes: Filmaster.com, an open source film community website that serves only Creative Commons content, unveiled their movie recommendations & reviews API enabling external programmers to create independent services that harness its power. Beta testing of Filmaster iPhone app dubbed ‘Foursquare for films' launched at the same time.
The Military

Submission + - Chinese Stealth Fighter Jet May Use US Technology

Submitted by
Ponca City
Ponca City writes: "In 1999 a US F-117 Nighthawk was downed by a Serbian anti-aircraft missile during a bombing raid. It was the first time one of the fighters had been hit, and the Pentagon blamed clever tactics and sheer luck. The pilot ejected and was rescued. Now the Guardian reports that pieces of the wrecked US F-117 stealth fighter ended up in the hands of foreign military attaches. "At the time, our intelligence reports told of Chinese agents crisscrossing the region where the F-117 disintegrated, buying up parts of the plane from local farmers," says Admiral Davor Domazet-Loso, Croatia's military chief of staff during the Kosovo war. "We believe the Chinese used those materials to gain an insight into secret stealth technologies ... and to reverse-engineer them." Zoran Kusovac says the Serbian regime routinely shared captured western equipment with its Chinese and Russian allies. "The destroyed F-117 topped that wish-list for both the Russians and Chinese," says Kusovac."
Canada

Submission + - NDP slams CRTC's approval of usage-based billing (straight.com) 1

Submitted by silentbrad
silentbrad writes: The NDP's digital-issues critic says a decision by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission to allow usage-based billing threatens access to the Internet. According to Timmins-James Bay MP Charlie Angus, usage-based billing is unfair to consumers and could be used by large Internet service providers to limit competition from third-party ISPs and online media sources, such as Netflix.

Comment Re:Google resources (Score 1) 257

by CodeShark (#34952278) Attached to: Are Google's Patents Too Weak To Protect Android?
That is close to what I was thinking about relative to IBM, etc., but I should have probably related it more to the patent stores held by Motorola, Hitachi, Samsung, and others.

The problem there is that all those chip makers are also partially beholden to apple, etc. as well for part of their profit margins.

Curious... A Google/ARM related consortium would NOT have similar enumbrances would they?

Comment Google resources (Score 4, Interesting) 257

by CodeShark (#34939364) Attached to: Are Google's Patents Too Weak To Protect Android?
Actually I would like to suggest that Google's main approach and threat would be to counter the whole software is patentable paradigm in ways that the big three (Microsoft, Apple, and Oracle) will not want to defend against. Plus the likely scenario that IBM would rather see Google succeed than the other three, and their patent portfolio in the form of prior art assistance to Google would change the game entirely, or the fact that Google is likely to code around any patents more quickly than any trial can move forward. So I think that trying to take Google and Android down via patents is a losing proposition.

Plus the Google ecosystem can effectively fight off alot of threats simply by the fact that they are have no obligation to play nice when it comes to search engine trafficking/optimization and/or investments.

For example, picture what happens if Google puts resources into Postgres, MariaDB, or any of the other major database platforms that would cut into the profitability of Oracle or Microsoft. Or takes up the banner of Open Office to free it from the clutches of Sun, further weakening Microsoft profit margins. What people are learning is that Google at least so far tends to be a very worthy adversary. So far we also like Google more than the billionaires clubs as run by Gates and Ellison.

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