Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Cloud

Submission + - Vmware, a falling giant? (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Lashat
Lashat writes: According to Ars Technica "A new survey seems to show that VMware's iron grip on the enterprise virtualization market is loosening, with 38 percent of businesses planning to switch vendors within the next year due to licensing models and the robustness of competing hypervisors."

What do /.ers say about moving away from what is IMHO the most stable and feature rich vm architecture available? Full disclosure:I am not clear on how the licensing has changed since that is not my department.
Security

Submission + - Anonymous Cancels Drug-Ring Attack (infoworld.com) 1

Submitted by
snydeq
snydeq writes: "Anonymous supporters have backed off threats to expose Zeta drug gang collaborators, an operation launched in early October as a retaliation for an alleged kidnapping of an Anonymous follower by the Mexico-based drug gang. Members of Anonymous had posted a video claiming the group could identify journalists, police officers, and taxi drivers who collaborate with the Zeta crime syndicate. Zeta has not shied away from targeting its online critics. In September the crime group hung two people from an overpass warning bloggers and "online snitches" to beware. The decapitated body of another social-media reporter was found later with a similar warning. Worried about the impact on both misidentified people and Anonymous followers, other supporters of the Anonymous movement worked to dismantle the operation over the weekend. In effect, the group canceled the attack, according to online news site Milenio."

Submission + - 1 MW E-Cat Cold Fusion Test Completed (pesn.com) 4

Submitted by
sanosuke001
sanosuke001 writes: "Andrea Rossi's E-Cat 1MW Cold Fusion test completed in Italy with 30+ attendees including Professors from the University of Bologna, the Associated Press, NyTeknik, Focus.it, and additional physicists. The test failed to reach the 1 MW load goal, however, reached 479 kWh in looped mode. Some skepticism is still warranted as the prospective customer, although satisfied with the test, remains anonymous. According to an article at Wired (http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-10/29/rossi-success), there has been some speculation that the covert customer could be DARPA. Also, the generator used to initialize the E-Cat device was apparently connected for the entirety of the test but assured that its output was turned off. I, for one, have a little hope in this being real but take it with a very large grain of salt."
AI

Submission + - Scientists create massively parallel computer from (extremetech.com)

Submitted by
MrSeb
MrSeb writes: "A group of Japanese scientists have built a massively-parallel, brain-like computer out of an organic molecule called DDQ. This computer, which is built from 300 DDQ “neurons,” has successfully calculated how heat diffuses through a medium, and the mutation of normal cells into cancer cells. The work of Anirban Bandyopadhyay and his team from the National Institute for Materials Science in Tsukuba, Japan, revolves around a molecule called 2,3-dichloro-5,6-dicyano-p-benzoquinone, or DDQ for short. DDQ is a ring molecule that can connect with up to six neighboring DDQ molecules. Most importantly, each DDQ molecule can be programmed into four different states, each conducting electricity differently. 300 DDQ molecules are placed on a gold substrate, and their conductive states and connections to other molecules are programmed using a scanning tunneling microscope. The end result is a cellular automaton of 300 neuron-like molecules that can perform calculations in a massively parallel way. It is another characteristic of DDQ "brains" that is most intriguing: When a DDQ molecule changes state, the change ripples down through the molecules that it's connected to, destroying old bonds and creating new circuits as it goes — much like a neuron making new synapse connections. This could eventually lead to emergent computing, where the DDQ brain can react to external stimuli and evolve over time."
Censorship

Submission + - Disatrous IP Legislation is back - and worse than (eff.org)

Submitted by geekgirl09
geekgirl09 writes: Today Representative Lamar upped the ante, introducing legislation, called the Stop Online Piracy Act, or "SOPA," that would not only sabotage the domain name system but would also threaten to effectively eliminate the DMCA safe harbors that have spurred much economic growth and online creativity.

As with its Senate-side evil sister, PROTECT-IP, SOPA would require service providers to “disappear” certain websites, endangering Internet security and sending a troubling message to the world.

But it gets worse. Under this bill, service providers (including hosting services) would be under new pressure to monitor and police their users’ activities.
Security

Submission + - NSA Says Gov't is Working to Push Attack Data to I (threatpost.com)

Submitted by Trailrunner7
Trailrunner7 writes: The commander of the U.S. Cyber Command said that the federal government is working on a system now that would allow it to work with ISPs and others to help stop ongoing attacks against government and private networks by pushing intelligence and attack signatures to them.

To help defend against attacks such as the onea that hit RSA and DigiNotar, as well as other, more mundane yet still damaging, ones, Gen. Keith Alexander, director of the NSA and commander of the U.S. Cyber Command said that the government is testing out a system now that has the capability to push real-time attack signatures and other information to ISPs and other organizations in key positions n order to head off ongoing operations.

"The adversary has all the advantage. They can scan and wait and if you make a mistake, they get in," Alexander said. "That's the dynamic we have to change. The intent would be to push signatures to the ISPs and if anything bad happens, we can update it dynamically with what we see. That's a huge step forward and we're having success with that. We need to communicate dynamically with our systems and our allies."
Cloud

Submission + - Tor anonymizing network Compromised by French rese (thehackernews.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: French researchers from ESIEA, a French engineering school, have found and exploited some serious vulnerabilities in the TOR network. They performed an inventory of the network, finding 6,000 machines, many of whose IPs are accessible publicly and directly with the system’s source code. They demonstrated that it is possible to take control of the network and read all the messages that circulate.

But there are also hidden nodes, the Tor Bridges, which are provided by the system that in some cases. Researchers have developed a script that, once again, to identify them. They found 181. "We now have a complete picture of the topography of Tor," said Eric Filiol.

Read More at "The Hacker News" — http://thehackernews.com/2011/10/tor-anonymizing-network-compromised-by.html

Submission + - Wikileaks shutting down due to lack of money (marketwatch.com)

Submitted by stevegee58
stevegee58 writes: The financial blockade by financial firms like Bank of America, Visa, MasterCard, Western Union, and PayPal has finally caught up with Wikileaks.

Due to lack of funding Wikileaks has announced on its web site that they're temporarily ceasing publication.

Submission + - Lying About Your Military Record Ruled Free Speech

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: ""I'm a retired Marine of 25 years," said Xavier Alvarez soon after he was elected to the board of the Three Valleys Municipal Water District in Claremont, CA. "Back in 1987, I was awarded the congressional Medal of Honor." Alvarez's lie about the Medal of Honor put him in violation of the Stolen Valor Act of 2005, a law passed by Congress and signed into law by President George W. Bush that prohibits anyone from falsely claiming "to have been awarded any decoration or medal authorized by Congress for the armed forces of the United States." Alvarez's "semper fraud" led to a criminal conviction, which was later thrown out by the US. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco which found that the Stolen Valor Act was an unconstitutional restriction of free speech. Now the US Supreme Court has agreed to to decide whether the Constitution's free speech clause protects people who falsely claim to have been awarded military medals. Jonathon Turley writes in the LA Times that however distasteful, with the Stolen Valor Act, Congress has made it possible to jail someone simply for telling a lie. "The Alvarez case could establish a legal principle that would allow Congress to criminalize virtually any fib, which could lead to a sweeping new form of regulating speech in the United States," writes Turley. "Giving the government such power would allow it to target "liars" who it portrays as endangering or dishonoring society.""

Submission + - Adobe admits to using 'synthetic' deblur images in (dpreview.com) 1

Submitted by ColdWetDog
ColdWetDog writes: Adobe has admitted an image used in its 'image deblur' presentation was artificially blurred for the purposes of the demonstration. The company said the blur on the image was 'more complicated than anything we can simulate using Photoshop's blur capabilities.' It described the move as 'common practice in research' and defended the use of the image because 'we wanted it to be entertaining and relevant to the audience.' The other images shown were the result of camera shake, it said.

Adobe has photoshopped Photoshop.
Software

Submission + - US Government Expand Tracking Programs

Submitted by bs0d3
bs0d3 writes: On October 12, slashdot covered how US intelligence intends to mine social network data from sites like facebook and twitter in order to help them predict crimes and track people. Most people felt it was a no-brainer that public information should be expected to be used. Well, what if instead of limiting their tracking to publicly available information on the internet, they were expanding to all the public. A traffic cam at every stop light, and on every street corner, with facial recognition software to track the movements of Americans in the real world. That's exactly what they announced this week, with "Next Generation Identification (NGI)" facial recognition service. NGI will result in a massive expansion of government data collection for both criminal and noncriminal purposes. They already have the largest biometric database in the world, it includes 70 million subjects in the criminal master file and more than 31 million civil fingerprints. With a collection that already contains multimodal biometric identifiers such as iris scans, palm prints, photos, and voice data from criminals; data sharing between the FBI and other government agencies and the repurposing of photographs taken for noncriminal activities will further support the FBI's ability to track people as they move from one location to another. Photos can be taken; for example, from the DMV and implicitly from their social network data mining projects. Over the next two and a half years, the program will begin in four states: Michigan, Washington, Florida, and North Carolina.

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: Intranet solutions, what Soft/Tools (slashdot.org)

Submitted by Kaleidoscopio
Kaleidoscopio writes: At my company we have severall intranet applications.
The problem, is that most of them are cloned from a 12 year old ASP application, so basically we keep the same code and layout and adapt as well as we can.
We have been trying for years to change things, but my boss insists that we recycle since its faster than developing something new.
Our main problem at this point is that the code is pretty much garbage after years of changes by severall people and while developing something new is faster, maintenance of the old applications is nightmarish.
We decided to create in our own time, a new framework from which we can develop new applications for our Intranet, if we suceed we may finally enter the 21st century.
Problem is, what to build it on?
Our external supplier suggests Silverlight/Moonlight and .Net, our Java expert wants to build it all in Java while one of our IT guys wants a PHP/MySql solution.
What does the Slashdot crowd suggest?
Personally I'll go with anything as long as it will run in Linux and Windows clients (Server could be Unix or Windows) and will hopefully be around in 10 years time.
Censorship

Submission + - China Says Its Internet Policies Are Open and Clea (itworld.com)

Submitted by
itwbennett
itwbennett writes: "Responding to a US request to explain China's policies regarding blocking us websites, China's foreign ministry said the country's Internet policies have been open and clear. 'The Chinese government encourages and actively supports the Internet's development and we also protect the freedom of expression of citizens in China,' said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu. 'We welcome foreign companies to invest and develop here, and we will continue to foster an open policy market.' The request, filed under World Trade Organization rules, is an effort to understand the trade impact of such blocking after a number of U.S. businesses have made complaints about access to their websites in China."
Politics

Submission + - When Politicians Distort...or Even Reject...Scienc (thebulletin.org)

Submitted by __aaqpaq9254
__aaqpaq9254 writes: Rob Socolow has another great piece in the Bulletin, this one discussing the trend of politicians to reject science. Socolow notes, however, that that isn't the worst case: "More threatening than the distortion of science, however, is its rejection. At issue is whether the scientific way of knowing is privileged relative to other ways of knowing that are rooted in myth. As scientists, we are poorly prepared to respond when science is called "just a theory," on a par with other theories. We are distressed when intelligent design and evolution are placed on the same footing. We consider it self-evident that better climate science will help in sorting out threats to human well-being from climate change. Then we learn that the answer is already known: Our vulnerability is minimal because God wouldn't let climate change injure us."

Submission + - EU Debates Installing A Black Box On Your Computer (activepolitic.com) 1

Submitted by bs0d3
bs0d3 writes: EU MEP Tiziano Motti (Italy), wants everything you do online to be logged and saved, for the sake of the children. Like a black box installed on every computer. He proposes an early warning system of criminal activity, specifically whenever an image of sexually abused children is detected, an alarm, goes to the authorities to be able to see who uploaded it. Tiziano Motti was a politician who just over a year ago managed to get a majority of European Members of Parliament to support the proposal to expand the data storage directive to Google searches. The purpose was to protect children from pedophiles — the same excuse he is using now. His proposal involves a technology called Logbox. And just as with an aircraft's black box, Logbox is installed on computers, laptops, smartphones, and e-readers because yes, all that can be connected to the internet.

Slashdot Top Deals

Passwords are implemented as a result of insecurity.

Close