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Networking

Military Aircraft To Get All-Fiber Network Gear 144

Posted by timothy from the network-coriolis-effect dept.
coondoggie writes "Looking to significantly reduce weight, improve on-board communications and make it easier to upgrade avionics, the US military is developing prototype phonic gear for use in all aircraft. Behind such a drastic shift is a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency project with an ungainly moniker: Network Enabled by Wavelength division multiplexing Highly Integrated Photonics (NEW-HIP)."

Submission + - Hosting Company Appears to be Violating the GPL (palegray.net) 2

Submitted by
palegray.net
palegray.net writes: "A web hosting provider called Appnor has recently moved the network diagnostics utility WinMTR off of SourceForge, and is now claiming the program to be a closed source, commercial application (it was previously made available under the GPL). I emailed the current maintainer of the original mtr utility about this, and have been informed that this event most likely constitutes an overt GPL violation, as it is presumed that WinMTR contains mtr code. Appnor claims that they have the right to do this, as there have been no external contributions to WinMTR in over ten years. I'm not a lawyer, but I don't think copyright law works that way."
Censorship

Submission + - Anonymous Organizes Global Protests for WikiLeaks (whyweprotest.net)

Submitted by pafein
pafein writes: Internet collective Anonymous launched a global protest for January 15 in support of beleaguered WikiLeaks. Anonymous has a history of defending Internet freedom, beginning with Project Chanology against the Church of Scientology. The group gained recent attention for itself with DDOS attacks on Mastercard, Visa, Paypal and the government of Tunisia.
Biotech

Submission + - Consumer genetic testing available in Australia

Submitted by Megaport
Megaport writes: After the banning of direct-to-consumer genetic testing in Australia last July, new rules were imposed to require a physician to be involved in the process. Now a new Australian start-up, Lumigenix, has launched a genome decoding service for Australian (and global) consumers that meets the new regulatory requirements. Their products include genetic testing for health and ancestry information. The Australian government is planning to revisit the issue later this year and further regulation is anticipated in response to the emergence of direct-to-consumer genetic services.

Submission + - FreeBSD Running On PS3

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: One week after Sony's PlayStation 3 private cryptography key was obtained, FreeBSD is up and running on the PS3. There are still a few problems and rough edges, but they should be ironed out when FreeBSD 9.0 is released:

      Nathan Whitehorn writes:
          "Yesterday, I imported support for the Sony Playstation 3 into our 64-bit PowerPC port, expanding our game console support into the current generation.
            There are still a few rough edges due to missing hardware support, but the machine boots and runs FreeBSD stably. These rough edges should be
            smoothed out in time for the 9.0 release."

Mailing List Announce- http://docs.freebsd.org/cgi/getmsg.cgi?fetch=559737+0+archive/2011/freebsd-current/20110109.freebsd-current
Intel

Submission + - Intel to integrate DirectX 11 in Ivy Bridge chips (idg.com.au)

Submitted by
angry tapir
angry tapir writes: "Intel will integrate DirectX 11 graphics technology in its next generation of laptop and desktop chips based on the Ivy Bridge architecture, a company executive has revealed at CES. AMD has already implemented DirectX 11 in its Fusion low-power chips. Intel expects to start shipping Ivy Bridge chips with DirectX 11 support to PC makers late this year. Ivy Bridge will succeed the recently announced Core i3, i5 and i7 chips, which are based on Intel's Sandy Bridge microarchitecture."
The Media

Submission + - Some Wikileaks Contributions to Public Discourse 3

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "EFF reports that regardless of the heated debate over the propriety of Wikileaks actions, some of the cables have contributed significantly to public and political conversations around the world. The Guardian reported on a cable describing an incident in Afghanistan in which employees of DynCorp, a US military contractor, hired a "dancing boy," an underaged boy dressed as women, who dance for gatherings of men and is then prostituted — an incident that contributed important information to the debate over the use of private military contractors. A cable released by Wikileaks showed that Pfizer allegedly sought to blackmail a Nigerian regulator to stop a lawsuit against drug trials on children. A Wikileaks revelation that the United States used bullying tactics to attempt to push Spain into adopting copyright laws even more stringent than those in the US came just in time to save Spain from the kind of misguided copyright laws that cripple innovation and facilitate online censorship. An article by the New York Times analyzed cables released which indicated the US is having difficulties in fulfilling Obama's promise to close the Guantánamo Bay detention camp and is now considering incentives in return for accepting detainees, including a one-on-one meeting with Obama or assistance obtaining IMF assistance. "These examples make clear that Wikileaks has brought much-needed light to government operations and private actions," writes Rainey Reitman, "which, while veiled in secrecy, profoundly affect the lives of people around the world and can play an important role in a democracy that chooses its leaders.""
Security

Major Security Flaws Discovered In Internet HDTVs 128

Posted by Soulskill from the toasters-soon-to-be-at-risk dept.
wiredmikey writes "Security researchers have discovered several security flaws in one of the best-selling brands of Internet-connected HDTVs, and believe it's likely that similar security flaws exist in other Internet TVs. The security researchers were able to demonstrate how an attacker could intercept transmissions from the television to the network using common 'rogue DNS,' 'rogue DHCP server,' or TCP session hijacking techniques. Mocana was able to demonstrate that JavaScript could then be injected into the normal datastream, allowing attackers to obtain total control over the device's Internet functionality."
IT

Submission + - Disempowering the singular sysadmin 3

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Practically every computer system appears to be at the mercy of at least one individual who holds root or whatever other superuser identity can destroy (or subvert, etc.) that system. Each application on a system has the same weakness. However, making a system require multiple individuals for any root operation (think of the classic two-keys to launch a nuke) has shortcomings: simple operations sometimes require root, and would be enormously cumbersome if they needed a consensus of administrators to execute. There is the idea of a Distributed Administration Network, which is like a cluster of independently-administered servers, but this is a limited case for deployment of certain applications... and anyway it is still presumably vaporware. Are there more sweeping yet practical solutions out there for avoiding the weakness of a singular empowered superuser?
Earth

First Measurement of Magnetic Field In Earth's Core 34

Posted by timothy from the best-place-to-try-it dept.
An anonymous reader writes "A University of California, Berkeley, geophysicist has made the first-ever measurement of the strength of the magnetic field inside Earth's core, 1,800 miles underground. The magnetic field strength is 25 Gauss, or 50 times stronger than the magnetic field at the surface that makes compass needles align north-south. Though this number is in the middle of the range geophysicists predict, it puts constraints on the identity of the heat sources in the core that keep the internal dynamo running to maintain this magnetic field."
The Internet

Submission + - UN Wants to Control the Internet (itnews.com.au) 2

Submitted by Dangerous_Minds
Dangerous_Minds writes: News has surfaced in the wake of the Wikileaks story that the United Nations is mulling total inter-government control of the internet. The initiative was spearheaded by Brazil and supported by other countries including India, China, Saudi Arabia and South Africa. Meanwhile, Drew Wilson of ZeroPaid commented that while the Cablegate story may be bad, attempting to destroy Wikileaks would only make matters worse for various governments around the world given what happened when the music industry shut down Napster ten years ago.
Australia

Submission + - ISPes not responsible for infected computers (zdnet.com.au)

Submitted by c0lo
c0lo writes: In a sudden outburst of the common sense, the Australian senate decided that is not for the govt to force the ISP-es disconnecting the infected computers from the Internet.
On top of all, a car analogy that actually makes sense: "It would be like forcing car manufacturers to take responsibility for bad drivers", I[nternet] I[ndustry] A[ssociation] chief Peter Coroneos said".
Social Networks

Open-Source Social Network Diaspora Goes Live 266

Posted by timothy from the go-west-where-the-land-is-free dept.
CWmike writes "Diaspora, a widely anticipated social network site built on open-source code, has cracked open its doors for business, at least for a handful of invited participants. 'Every week, we'll invite more people,' stated the developers behind the project, in a blog item posted Tuesday announcing the alpha release of the service. 'By taking these baby steps, we'll be able to quickly identify performance problems and iterate on features as quickly as possible.' Such a cautious rollout may be necessary, given how fresh the code is. In September, when the first version of the working code behind the service was posted, it was promptly criticized for being riddled with security errors. While Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg may not be worried about Diaspora quite yet, the service is one of a growing number of efforts to build out open-source-based social-networking software and services."
Google

Submission + - Critics Call For Probe Into Google Government Ties (thehill.com)

Submitted by bonch
bonch writes: The National Legal and Policy Center has written to the House Oversight Committee to investigate alleged ties between Google and the Obama administration, specifically with regards to the closure of an FTC probe into Google's wi-fi privacy breach, when the company admitted to having collected users' unencrypted information over the course of three years. The NLPC compares Google's relationship with the administration to that of Halliburton and cites the timing of a $30,000-a-head Democratic fundraiser at Google CEO Marissa Meyer's home less than a week before the FTC ended its inquiry, where Obama made a personal appearance, as well as the fact that U.S. deputy chief technology officer Andrew McLaughlin is a former Google employee. The NLPC further alleges that the FTC is tougher on other companies, issuing fines to Twitter and Sears for their privacy violations while letting Google off the hook after the company promised to improve its privacy practices.
Math

Submission + - Scientists overclock people's brains (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by arshadk
arshadk writes: "Applying a tiny electrical current to the brain could make you better at learning maths, according to Oxford University scientists."
"The effects were not short-lived, either. When the volunteers whose performance improved was re-tested six months later, the benefits appear to have persisted."

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