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Submission + - Twitter-shaming can cost you your job - whether you're giving or receiving (infoworld.com)

Submitted by
tsamsoniw
tsamsoniw writes: "Hoping to strike a blow against sexism in the tech industry, developer and tech evangelist Adria Richards took to Twitter to complain about two male developers swapping purportedly offensive jokes at PyCon. The decision has set into motion a chain of events that illustrate the impact a tweet or two can make in this age of social networking: One the developers and Richards have since lost their jobs, and even the chair of PyCon has been harassed for his minor role in the incident."

Submission + - House Fails to Extend Patriot Act Spy Powers (wired.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: The House failed to extend three key expiring provisions of the Patriot Act on Tuesday, elements granting the government broad and nearly unchecked surveillance power on its own public.

  The “roving wiretap” provision allows the FBI to obtain wiretaps from a secret intelligence court, known as the FISA court, without identifying the target or what method of communication is to be tapped.

  The “lone wolf” measure allows FISA court warrants for the electronic monitoring of a person for whatever reason — even without showing that the suspect is an agent of a foreign power or a terrorist. The government has said it has never invoked that provision, but the Obama administration said it wanted to retain the authority to do so.

  The “business records” provision allows FISA court warrants for any type of record, from banking to library to medical, without the government having to declare that the information sought is connected to a terrorism or espionage investigation.

The failure of the bill, sponsored by Rep. James F. Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis), for the time being is likely to give airtime to competing measures in the Senate that would place limited checks on the act's broad surveillance powers. The White House, meanwhile, said it wanted the expiring measures extended through 2013.
NASA

Submission + - Curious NASA Pre-Announcement (nasa.gov) 2

Submitted by CrtxReavr
CrtxReavr writes: 'NASA will hold a news conference at 2 p.m. EST on Thursday, Dec. 2, to discuss an astrobiology finding that will impact the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life.'
Security

Submission + - Most Consumers Support Government Cyber-Spying (eweekeurope.co.uk)

Submitted by scurtis
scurtis writes: Nearly two thirds of computer users globally believe that it is acceptable for their country to spy on other nations by hacking or installing malware, according to Sophos's mid-year 2010 Security Threat Report, with 23 percent claiming to support this action even during peace time. Perhaps more surprisingly, 32 percent of respondents said that countries should also be allowed to plant malware and hack into private foreign companies in order to spy for economic advantage.

“It's kind of curious, because these are the people that have got no time for hackers and the bad guys at all, but seem to think it's all right for countries to do this,” said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos. “I think they need to remember that, one day, it might be a country attacking your company's network, and trying to infiltrate it, and how are you going to feel about it then?”

Last week, at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas, former US National Security Agency director, retired Gen. Michael Hayden, emphasised the importance of clearly defining what cyber-war really is.
Businesses

Submission + - The Good and Ugly Side Of GPL 1

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: Matt Mullenweg (the creator of wordpress open source blog software), after review by various legal experts, is sticking to his guns that themes and plugins that "extend" Wordpress violates the GPL if they are not themselves distributed under the GPL. Matt has gone so far as to post this on Twitter. Accoding to Matt, premium template called thesis should be under GPL and the owner is not happy about it. WordPress is willing to sue the maker of thesis theme for not following GPL licensing. The webmasters and thesis owners are also confused with new development. Mark Jaquith wrote an excellent technical analysis of why WordPress themes inherit the GPL. This is why even if Thesis hadn't copy and pasted large swathes of code from WordPress (and GPL plugins) its PHP would still need to be under the GPL. The Open Source / GPL vs Thesis debate continues further and some claims that Matt Mullenweg is anti-capitalist, the GPL is a communist ideology, and why users should moving away from WordPress.
Google

Submission + - Catching satnav errors on Google Street View (pcpro.co.uk)

Submitted by Barence
Barence writes: Most of the satnav companies allow users to report errors with their maps but do they ever get fixed? PC Pro's Paul Ockenden uses Google StreetView to highlight glaring and dangerous flaws in Tele Atlas maps — which are used by TomTom and Google Maps itself — but the company has failed to respond to numerous reports of map errors posted over the course of several years. "About half a mile from where I live, a Tele Atlas-based satnav will instruct you to turn off at a junction where there’s only an on-ramp," Ockenden reports. "I’ve witnessed some confused and dangerous driving at this junction as people try to find the non-existent exit, so I wouldn’t be surprised if major mapping errors like this are a danger to road safety."
Technology

Submission + - IEEE looks at Kevin Costner's oil cleanup machines (ieee.org)

Submitted by richardkelleher
richardkelleher writes: IEEE Spectrum takes a look at the machines developed by a company funded by Kevin Costner that are supposed to extract the oil from the gulf waters. Is it possible that in the years since the Exxon Valdez, that Kevin Costner is the only one who has invested money into the technology of oil spill cleanup?
Crime

Submission + - New York wants more DNA (skunkpost.com)

Submitted by crimeandpunishment
crimeandpunishment writes: If Governor David Paterson has his way, New York would take DNA samples from even the lowest level of criminal....doubling the state's DNA database. He says it would help to both solve crimes and clear people who were wrongly convicted. New York would become the first state in the country to do this. Currently DNA isn't collected in most misdemeanors. The plan is getting lots of support among law enforcement, but the New York Civil Liberties Union says there are questions about privacy.
Science

Submission + - How to build a quantum propulsion machine (technologyreview.com)

Submitted by KentuckyFC
KentuckyFC writes: According to quantum mechanics, a vacuum will be filled with electromagnetic waves leaping in and out of existence. It turns out that these waves can have various measurable effects, such as the Casimir-Polder force which was first measured accurately in 1997. Just how to exploit this force is still not clear. Today, however, a researcher at an Israeli government lab suggests how it could be possible to generate propulsion using the quantum vacuum. The basic idea is that pushing on the electromagnetic fields in the vacuum should generate an equal and opposite force. The suggestion is that this can be done using nanoparticles that interact with the vacuum's electric and magnetic fields, generating the well known Lorentz force. In most cases, the sum of Lorentz forces adds up to zero. But today's breakthrough is the discovery of various ways to break this symmetry and so use the quantum vacuum to generate a force. The simplest of which is simply to rotate the particles. So the blueprint for a quantum propulsion machine described in the paper is an array of addressable nanoparticles that can be rotated in the required way. Although such a machine will need a source of energy, it generates propulsion without any change in mass. As the research puts it with masterful understatement, this might have practical implications.
Google

Submission + - Google Launches Public DNS Resolver (blogspot.com)

Submitted by AdmiralXyz
AdmiralXyz writes: Google has announced the launch of their free DNS resolution service, called Google Public DNS. According to their blog post, Google Public DNS uses continuous record prefetching to avoid cache misses- hopefully making the service faster- and implements a variety of techniques to block spoofing attempts. They also say that (unlike an increasing number of ISPs), Google Public DNS behaves exactly according to the DNS standard, and will not redirect you to advertising in the event of a failed lookup. Very cool, but of course there are questions about Google's true motivations behind knowing every site you visit...
Spam

Submission + - Facebook on Spammer Rampage (cnet.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Facebook is on a never before seen legal rampage against high profile internet spammers. Today Facebook was awarded yet another 9 figure settlement, this time for over $700 million dollars. Facebook also has a criminal contempt case on Wallace, which means a high likelihood of prison, a big win for the internet and a milestone in cyber law.

From the courts:
"The record demonstrates that Wallace willfully violated the statutes in question with blatant disregard for the rights of Facebook and the thousands of Facebook users whose accounts were compromised by his conduct," Fogel wrote in his judgment order, which permanently prohibits Wallace from accessing the Facebook Web site or creating a Facebook account, among other restrictions.

Submission + - How to Enter Equations Quickly In Class? 6

Submitted by AdmiralXyz
AdmiralXyz writes: I'm a university student, and I like to take notes on my (non-tablet) computer whenever possible, so it's easier to sort, categorize, and search through them later. Trouble is, I'm going into higher and higher math classes, and typing "f_X(x) = integral(-infinity, infinity, f(x,y) dy)" just isn't cutting it anymore: I need a way to get real-looking equations into my notes. I'm not particular about the details, the only requirement is that I need to keep up with the lecture, so it has to be fast, fast, fast. Straight LaTeX is way too slow, and Microsoft's Equation Editor isn't even worth mentioning. The platform is not a concern (I'm on a MacBook Pro and can run either Windows or Ubuntu in a virtual box if need be), but the less of a hit to battery life, the better. I've looked at several dedicated equation editing programs, but none of them, or their reviews, make any mention of speed. I've even thought about investing in a low-end Wacom tablet (does anyone know if there are ultra-cheap graphics tablets designed for non-artists?), but I figured I'd see if anyone at Slashdot has a better solution.

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