CaptYossarian - Slashdot User

Submission + - What Does DHS Know About You? (philosecurity.org)

Submitted by

Sherri Davidoff

on Monday September 07, 2009 @01:10PM

Sherri Davidoff writes: "Here's a real copy of an American citizen's DHS Travel Record retrieved from the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol's Automated Targeting System (ATS). This was obtained through a FOIA/Privacy Act request... The document reveals that the DHS is storing the reader's:

Credit card number and expiration
IP address used to make web travel reservations
Hotel information and itinerary
Full airline itinerary, including flight numbers and seat numbers
Phone numbers, incl. business, home & cell
Every frequent flyer and hotel number associated with the subject, even ones not used for the specific reservation
"

Submission + - Lost World of Fanged Frogs and Giant Rats (guardian.co.uk)

Submitted by

pilsner.urquell

on Monday September 07, 2009 @08:48AM

pilsner.urquell writes: "40 previously unidentified species where discovered on Papua New Guinea including a hairy caterpillar, a iridescent beetle, a striped possum, among others. The finds where discovered in the pristine jungle habitat of the Mount Bosavi crater a volcano that last erupted more than 200 millennium ago."

Submission + - Lawsuit Claims WGA is Spyware. (electronista.com)

Submitted by

twitter

on Sunday September 06, 2009 @10:32PM

twitter writes: "Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA), Microsoft's euphemistically named digital restrictions scheme, is the target of another spyware and false advertising lawsuit.
Microsoft this week was sued in a Washington district court for allegedly violating privacy laws through Windows XP's Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) copy protection scheme. Similar to cases filed in 2006, the new class action case accuses Microsoft of falsely representing what information WGA would send to verify the authenticity of Windows and that it would send back information [daily ip address and other details that could be used to trace information back to a home or user].

The complaint further argued that Microsoft portrayed WGA as a necessary security update rather than acknowledge its copy protection nature in the update. WGA's implementation also prevented users from purging the protection from their PCs without completely reformatting a computer's system drive.

There were at least two other lawsuits launched in 2006 over WGA. According to the Wikipedia article, none of them have been resolved. The system is built into Vista and Windows 7. It is something that should be avoided by people who value their privacy and any business that has to follow laws such as HIPPA."

Submission + - India's first stealth fighter to fly in 4 months (ndtv.com) 1

Submitted by xmpcray on Sunday August 30, 2009 @06:46AM

xmpcray writes: In less than four months from now, India's first stealth fighter will fly for the first time. It is called the Fifth Generation Fighter Aircraft or FGFA being developed in Russia by Sukhoi. Several of the technologies being developed for the stealth fighter have evolved from those used in the Sukhoi 30 MKI. Considered the most maneuverable fighter in the world, the Sukhoi 30 MKI uses thrust vectored engines which deflect the exhaust from its engines to extreme angles which enable the jet to pull off violent maneuvers like a flat spin where the jet literally spins around on its axis.

Open Source Software In the Military 91

Posted by kdawson on Sunday July 19, 2009 @08:04AM from the keep-it-stupid-stupid dept.

JohnMoD writes With the advent of forge.mil, etc. the military seems to be getting on board with free and open source software. A working group meeting is going to be held at Georgia Tech in Atlanta, August 12-13, 2009. There's a pretty good lineup of speakers including a Marine from the Iraq-Marine Expeditionary Forces, who was on the ground and saw the agility open source gave to him and his soldiers. A number of OSS projects are going to be meeting there: Delta 3D, OpenCPI, FalconView, OSSIM, Red Hat, etc. Looks like there will be some good discussions."

Submission + - Space Station Marathon (spacefellowship.com)

Submitted by

RobGoldsmith

on Saturday July 04, 2009 @07:12AM

RobGoldsmith writes: "If you've never seen a spaceship with your own eyes, now's your chance. The International Space Station (ISS) is about to make a remarkable series of flybys over the United States. Beginning this 4th of July weekend, the station will appear once, twice, and sometimes three times a day for many days in a row. No matter where you live, you should have at least a few opportunities to see the biggest spaceship ever built."

Comment excuses are like old diapers (Score 1) 865

by CaptYossarian on Wednesday July 01, 2009 @06:53PM (#28551275) Attached to: Staying In Shape vs. a Busy IT Job Schedule?

they all stink and noone wants em that sounds like a regular day in a busy armory like mine. its all about time management. i love to sleep in as late as possible (0610 usually for me) so i prep my stuff to the point where when its time to get up, im out the door in a minute tops. adjust your diet to include a healthy breakfast and many small healthful snacks. if you cant find the intestinal fortitude to sacrifice some of that me time for some real productive time, then do something to up your heartrate every time you get up to get a drink, a snack, a smoke, or go to the bathroom. as mentioned earlier, find a way to get a pullup bar near you and bang out a max set every time you do something. the better shape youre in the more energy youll have and the better youll sleep, so you can use those as building blocks to help you jump outta bed and do a quick workout-maybe a mile or two on the eliptical/exercise bike (if youre not already used to working out id advise against running because its high-impact), some situps, flutter kicks, jumping jacks, pushups....the process is continuous.

NIH Spends $400K To Figure Out Why Men Don't Like Condoms 844

Posted by samzenpus on Monday June 22, 2009 @06:59PM from the as-obvious-as-the-rubber-nose-on-your-face dept.

The National Institutes of Health has given $423,500 to researchers at Indiana University's Kinsey Institute to figure out why men don't like to wear condoms. The institute will also study why men have trouble using condoms and investigate "penile erection and sensitivity during condom application." "The project aims to understand the relationship between condom application and loss of erections and decreased sensation, including the role of condom skills and performance anxiety, and to find new ways to improve condom use among those who experience such problems," reads the abstract from Drs. Erick Janssen and Stephanie Sanders, both of the Kinsey Institute.

Submission + - Researchers Find Gaps in Iranian Filtering (securityfocus.com)

Submitted by

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property

on Sunday June 21, 2009 @07:10AM

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes: "With all the turmoil and internet censorship in Iran making it difficult to get an accurate picture of what's going, security researchers have found a way to analyze gaps in Iran's filtering by analyzing traffic exiting Iran. The short version is that SSH, torrents and Flash are high priorities for blocking, while game protocols like WoW and X-Box traffic are being ignored, even though they also allow communication. Hopefully, this data will help people think of new ways to bypass filtering and speak freely, even though average Iranians have worse things to worry about than internet censorship, now that the reformists have been declared anti-Islamic by the Supreme Leader. Given the circumstances, that declaration has been called 'basically a death sentence' for those who continue protesting."

Submission + - Diploma Denied to Student Who Blew Kiss to Family (foxnews.com) 1

Submitted by suraj.sun on Wednesday June 17, 2009 @03:32PM

suraj.sun writes: A Maine high school senior was denied his diploma at graduation after he took a bow when his name was called, pointed to friends and blew a kiss to his family.

Justin Denney was graduating from Bonny Eagle High School June 12 and had gotten up on stage to receive his diploma when he gestured to his friends and relatives.

School Superintendent Suzanne Lukas abruptly told Denney to return to his seat, according to WMTW TV in Maine. He didn't get his diploma.

His mother, Mary Denney, is livid. Her son told her that the superintendent warned, "There's no fooling around up here."

"He just kind of looked at her because he wasn't fooling around. He didn't consider that fooling around or misbehaving in any sense of the word," Mary Denney told WMTW.

Lukas reportedly asked the soon-to-be graduate why he thought he deserved a diploma.

"He goes, 'Because I worked hard and I earned it,' and she goes, 'No, go take your seat,'" his mother told the station.

Other students also walked away empty-handed because of various disruptions during the ceremony. Some started playing with beach balls and others were separated from their friends, according to WMTW.

Mary Denney doesn't believe her son violated any code of conduct.

Fox News : http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,526642,00.html

Submission + - Harvard Study Says Weak Copyright Benefits Society 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 17, 2009 @03:00PM

An anonymous reader writes: Michael Geist summarizes an important new study on file sharing from economists Felix Oberholzer-Gee and Koleman Strumpf. The Harvard Business School working paper finds that given the increase in artistic production along with the greater public access conclude that "weaker copyright protection, it seems, has benefited society." The authors' point out that file sharing may not result in reduced incentives to create if the willingness to pay for "complements" such as concerts or author speaking tours increases.

Frog Species Discovered Living In Elephant Dung 56

Posted by samzenpus on Friday June 12, 2009 @07:08PM from the I've-lived-in-worse-places dept.

rhettb writes "Three different species of frogs have been discovered living in the dung of the Asian elephant in southeastern Sri Lanka. The discovery — the first time anyone has recorded frogs living in elephant droppings — has widespread conservation implications both for frogs and Asian elephants, which are in decline. Apparently the frogs feed on the many invertebrates present in elephant dung."

The Perils of Pop Philosophy 484

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday June 02, 2009 @05:20AM from the bloggers-beware dept.

ThousandStars tips a new piece by Julian Sanchez, the guy who, in case you missed it, brought us a succinct definition of the one-way hash argument (of the type often employed in the US culture wars). This one is about the dangers of a certain kind of oversimplifying, as practiced routinely by journalists and bloggers. "This brings us around to some of my longstanding ambivalence about blogging and journalism more generally. On the one hand, while it's probably not enormously important whether most people have a handle on the mind-body problem, a democracy can't make ethics and political philosophy the exclusive province of cloistered academics. On the other hand, I look at the online public sphere and too often tend to find myself thinking: 'Discourse at this level can't possibly accomplish anything beyond giving people some simulation of justification for what they wanted to believe in the first place.' This is, needless to say, not a problem limited to philosophy."

Ten Applications That Changed Computing 437

Posted by timothy on Sunday May 31, 2009 @07:03PM from the where-are-emacs-and-TeX dept.

bfire writes "The term 'killer app' gets tossed around quite liberally these days. Nearly every piece of software released seems to be pitched as having the potential to send shockwaves throughout the IT world. In reality, there have been precious few applications which have truly changed the computing industry over the years. This article lists some of the top ten true killer apps that changed computing, from Phil Zimmermann's gold standard in encryption, PGP, to Dr Solomon's groundbreaking anti-virus toolkit, to Mitch Kapor who took the idea of VisiCalc for Apple and created Lotus 1-2-3 for DOS." Typical for top-10 lists, the choices seem pretty arbitrary — what changed your corner of the computing world?

Comment free market (Score 1) 3

by CaptYossarian on Sunday May 31, 2009 @01:54PM (#28159625) Attached to: Keeping the PC personal at school.

bug them for excessive use of their consumables. like paints or inks or whatever their medium of choice is. theyll get tired of your counter-freeloading. or you could just charge them for access. tell them that the time you spend recovering from their tooling around is costing you too much, so you have to defray those costs on them.

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