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Comment Re:News flash (Score 1) 470

by kantos (#45278329) Attached to: How Your Compiler Can Compromise Application Security

actually.... the old standby is that undefined behavior is just that:

Undefined behavior -- behavior, upon use of a nonportable or erroneous program construct, ... for which the standard imposes no requirements. Permissible undefined behavior ranges from ignoring the situation completely with unpredictable results, to having demons fly out of your nose.
Censorship

UK Prime Minister Threatens To Block Further Snowden Revelations 431

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the on-with-their-heads dept.
Bruce66423 writes "From the article: 'In a statement to MPs on Monday about last week's European summit in Brussels, where he warned of the dangers of a "lah-di-dah, airy-fairy view" about the dangers of leaks, the prime minister said his preference was to talk to newspapers rather than resort to the courts. But he said it would be difficult to avoid acting if newspapers declined to heed government advice.' So that will achieve something won't it? Don't these politicians understand that blocking publication in just the UK achieves nothing? The information is held outside the UK, and will be published there; all he's doing is showing his real colors."
Firefox

Firefox's Blocked-By-Default Java Isn't Going Down Well 362

Posted by Soulskill from the teaching-grandma-to-click-through-dialog-boxes dept.
JG0LD writes "The Firefox web browser will, henceforth, require users to manually activate Java objects on sites that they visit, Mozilla has confirmed. This even affects up-to-date versions of Java, which you can see on the block list. The change is aimed at improving security and moving away from a dependence on proprietary plug-ins, but critics say it will cause untold headaches for developers, admins and less-technical end-users. "
Television

Are Cable Subscribers Subsidizing Internet-Only TV Viewers? 223

Posted by Soulskill from the enjoy-it-while-it-lasts dept.
waderoush sends a tongue-in-cheek open letter to cable TV subscribers from somebody who has cut the cord in favor of streaming shows over the internet. "Dear Cable TV Subscriber: I don't think I've ever told you how grateful I am. I haven't paid a cent for cable television since 2009. Yet I have on-demand access via the Internet to a growing cornucopia of great shows like Game of Thrones, Homeland, Mad Men, and Breaking Bad, at reasonable à la carte prices. And it's all because you continue to pay exorbitant and ever-increasing monthly fees for your premium cable bundle (around $80 per month, on average). After all, your money goes straight to the studios and networks that produce and distribute all the expensive first-run programming that I'm perfectly happy to watch later at heavily discounted prices. So in effect, you're subsidizing my own footloose, freeloading, cord-cutting TV habits. I don't know how to thank you!"
Yahoo!

Yahoo CEO Says It Would Be Treason To Decline To Cooperate With the NSA 524

Posted by samzenpus from the tell-us-everything dept.
McGruber writes "During Wednesday's TechCrunch Disrupt conference, Marissa Meyer was asked what would happen if Yahoo simply declined to cooperate with the NSA. She replied 'Releasing classified information is treason. It generally lands you incarcerated.' Meyer also revealed that the 2007 lawsuit against the Patriot Act had been filed by Yahoo: 'I'm proud to be part of an organization that from the very beginning in 2007, with the NSA and FISA and PRISM, has been skeptical and has scrutinized those requests. In 2007 Yahoo filed a lawsuit against the new Patriot Act, parts of PRISM and FISA, we were the key plaintiff. A lot of people have wondered about that case and who it was. It was us ... we lost. The thing is, we lost and if you don't comply it's treason.'"
Communications

Ask Slashdot: Can We Still Trust FIPS? 138

Posted by timothy from the just-slide-it-under-my-door dept.
First time accepted submitter someSnarkyBastard writes "It has already been widely reported that the NSA has subverted several major encryption standards but I have not seen any mention of how this affects the FIPS 140-2 standard. Can we still trust these cyphers? They have been cleared for use by the US Government for Top-Secret clearance documents; surely the government wouldn't backdoor itself right?...Right?"
Security

TOR Wants You To Stop Using Windows, Disable JavaScript 341

Posted by timothy from the so-say-we-all dept.
itwbennett writes "The TOR Project is advising that people stop using Windows after the discovery of a startling vulnerability in Firefox that undermined the main advantages of the privacy-centered network. The zero-day vulnerability allowed as-yet-unknown interlopers to use a malicious piece of JavaScript to collect crucial identifying information on computers visiting some websites using The Onion Router (TOR) network. 'Really, switching away from Windows is probably a good security move for many reasons,' according to a security advisory posted Monday by The TOR Project."
Businesses

India To Overtake US On Number of Developers By 2017 157

Posted by Soulskill from the america-projected-to-maintain-lead-in-professional-Whopper-eaters dept.
dcblogs writes "There are about 18.2 million software developers worldwide, a number that is due to rise to 26.4 million by 2019, a 45% increase, says Evans Data Corp. in its latest Global Developer Population and Demographic Study. Today, the U.S. leads the world in software developers, with about 3.6 million. India has about 2.75 million. But by 2018, India will have 5.2 million developers, a nearly 90% increase, versus 4.5 million in the U.S., a 25% increase though that period, Evans Data projects. India's software development growth rate is attributed, in part, to its population size, 1.2 billion, and relative youth, with about half the population under 25 years of age. Rapid economic growth is fueling interest in development. India's services firms hire, in many cases, thousands of new employees each quarter. Consequently, IT and software work is seen as clear path to the middle class for many of the nation's young. For instance, in one quarter this year, Tata Consultancy Services added more than 17,000 employees, gross, bringing its total headcount to 263,600. In the same quarter of 2010, the company had about 150,000 workers."
Windows

The Black Underbelly of Windows 8.1 'Blue' 608

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the can't-let-google-win-most-evil-crown dept.
snydeq writes "Changes in Microsoft's forthcoming upgrade to Windows 8 reveal the dark underbelly of Microsoft's evolving agenda, one that finds pieces of Windows 8 inexplicably disappearing and a new feature that allows Microsoft to track your local searches cropping up, InfoWorld's Woody Leonhard reports. 'As Windows 8.1 Milestone Preview testers push and prod their way into the dark corners of Windows 8.1 "Blue," they're finding a bunch of things that go bump in the night. From new and likely unwelcome features, to nudges into the Microsoft data tracking sphere, to entire lopped-off pieces of Windows 8, it looks like Microsoft is changing Windows to further its own agenda.'" A lot of the stuff the article gripes about are what Google has been doing for ages with Android: requiring a Microsoft account, funneling users to their services first, tracking your system usage, etc.
IT

Why Your Users Hate Agile 597

Posted by Soulskill from the they-prefer-strength-or-charisma dept.
Esther Schindler writes "What developers see as iterative and flexible, users see as disorganized and never-ending. This article discusses how some experienced developers have changed that perception. '... She's been frustrated by her Agile experiences — and so have her clients. "There is no process. Things fly all directions, and despite SVN [version control] developers overwrite each other and then have to have meetings to discuss why things were changed. Too many people are involved, and, again, I repeat, there is no process.' The premise here is not that Agile sucks — quite to the contrary — but that developers have to understand how Agile processes can make users anxious, and learn to respond to those fears. Not all those answers are foolproof. For example: 'Detailed designs and planning done prior to a project seems to provide a "safety net" to business sponsors, says Semeniuk. "By providing a Big Design Up Front you are pacifying this request by giving them a best guess based on what you know at that time — which is at best partial or incorrect in the first place." The danger, he cautions, is when Big Design becomes Big Commitment — as sometimes business sponsors see this plan as something that needs to be tracked against. "The big concern with doing a Big Design up front is when it sets a rigid expectation that must be met, regardless of the changes and knowledge discovered along the way," says Semeniuk.' How do you respond to user anxiety from Agile processes?"
Windows

Google Security Expert Finds, Publicly Discloses Windows Kernel Bug 404

Posted by Soulskill from the second-verse-same-as-the-first dept.
hypnosec writes "Security expert Tavis Ormandy has discovered a vulnerability in the Windows kernel which, when exploited, would allow an ordinary user to obtain administrative privileges of the system. Google's security pro posted the details of the vulnerability back in May through the Full Disclosure mailing list rather than reporting it to Microsoft first. He has now gone ahead and published a working exploit. This is not the first instance where Ormandy has opted for full disclosure without first informing the vendor of the affected software."
Crime

LibertyReserve.com Shuttered, Founder Arrested In Spain 138

Posted by samzenpus from the long-arm-of-the-law dept.
hypnosec writes "Libertyreserve.com has been shut with the founder arrested by police in Spain this week over his alleged involvement in money laundering. Libertyreserve.com has been down for over three days now and the arrest seems to be the reason behind the outage. Arthur Budovsky Belanchuk, a 39-year-old male, has been arrested by Spanish authorities as a part of their ongoing investigations into money laundering. U.S. officials may very well seek his extradition."
Medicine

Belief In God Correlates With Better Mental Health Treatment Outcomes 931

Posted by Soulskill from the take-two-communion-wafers-and-call-me-in-the-morning dept.
Hatta writes "According to researchers from Harvard Medical School, belief in god is correlated with improved outcomes of treatment for depression. Quoting: 'In the study, published in the current issue of Journal of Affective Disorders, researchers comment that people with a moderate to high level of belief in a higher power do significantly better in short-term psychiatric treatment than those without. "Belief was associated with not only improved psychological well-being, but decreases in depression and intention to self-harm," says David H. Rosmarin, Ph.D., an instructor in the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.' This raises interesting questions. Does this support the concept of depressive realism? If the association is found to be causal, would it be ethical for a psychiatrist to prescribe religion?"
Windows

Windows 8 Killing PC Sales 1010

Posted by samzenpus from the you're-not-helping dept.
yl-roller writes "IDC says Windows 8 is partly to blame for PC sales suffering the largest percentage drop ever. 'As if that news wasn't' troubling enough, it appears that a pivotal makeover of Microsoft's ubiquitous Windows operating system seems to have done more harm than good since the software was released last October.' According to a ZDNet article, IDC originally expected a drop, but only half the size."

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