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Submission + - FBI Reports US Agencies Hacked by Anonymous (reuters.com)

Submitted by Rambo Tribble
Rambo Tribble writes: Reuters is reporting that the FBI has issued a warning to several U.S. Government agencies that the Anonymous collective has hacked their systems. Included in the list of compromised agencies are the U.S. Army, Department of Energy, Department of Health and Human Services, and potentially many more agencies. The avenue of attack: Adobe Cold Fusion.

Submission + - Puzzled Scientists Say Strange Things Are Happening on the Sun

Submitted by Hugh Pickens DOT Com
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes: Robert Lee Hotz reports in the WSJ that solar activity is stranger than in a century or more, with the sun producing barely half the number of sunspots as expected and its magnetic poles oddly out of sync. Based on historical records, astronomers say the sun this fall ought to be nearing the explosive climax of its approximate 11-year cycle of activity—the so-called solar maximum. But this peak is "a total punk," says Jonathan Cirtain. "I would say it is the weakest in 200 years," adds David Hathaway, head of the solar physics group at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center. Researchers are puzzled. They can't tell if the lull is temporary or the onset of a decades-long decline, which might ease global warming a bit by altering the sun's brightness or the wavelengths of its light. To complicate the riddle, the sun also is undergoing one of its oddest magnetic reversals on record with the sun's magnetic poles out of sync for the past year so the sun technically has two South Poles. Several solar scientists speculate that the sun may be returning to a more relaxed state after an era of unusually high activity that started in the 1940s (PDF). "More than half of solar physicists would say we are returning to a norm," says Mark Miesch. "We might be in for a longer state of suppressed activity." If so, the decline in magnetic activity could ease global warming, the scientists say. But such a subtle change in the sun—lowering its luminosity by about 0.1%—wouldn't be enough to outweigh the build-up of greenhouse gases and soot that most researchers consider the main cause of rising world temperatures over the past century or so. “Given our current understanding of how the sun varies and how climate responds, were the sun to enter a new Maunder Minimum, it would not mean a new Little Ice Age," says Judith Lean. "t would simply slow down the current warming by a modest amount."

Comment What lessons have been learned? -None (Score 1) 195

by NSN A392-99-964-5927 (#45061359) Attached to: Probe of Einstein's Brain Reveals Clues To His Genius

When you have dead tissue, whether it be the brain, a finger, an arm or a leg it contains no 'Life Force' Menos.

Trying to dig into dead tissue explains nothing. It is wishful thinking.

I know a few top Neurologist's in the United Kingdom and they agree that they still do not understand 99.9% of the brain and these professors have been at it for 40 years plus.

Comment The UK 1 camera for 12 people. (Score 2) 154

The UK is far worst with 1 CCTV camera for every 12 people.. take a look at this recent article http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2359825/One-CCTV-12-people-Surveillance-soars-care-homes-hospitals-schools.html

On top of that we also have ANPR (Automatic Number Plate Recognition); facial recognition systems in some shops bars etc!

It does make me wonder though; what would happen when someone develops some malware that affects CCTV and similar systems? I think it is only a matter of time... just look at Stuxnet.

Submission + - Introducing the NSA-Proof Crypto-Font (vice.com) 1

Submitted by Daniel_Stuckey
Daniel_Stuckey writes: At a moment when governments and corporations alike are hellbent on snooping through your personal digital messages, it'd sure be nice if there was a font their dragnets couldn't decipher. So Sang Mun built one.

Sang, a recent graduate from the Rhode Island Schoold of Design (RISD), has unleashed ZXX—a "a disruptive typeface" that he says is much more difficult to the NSA and friends to decrypt. He's made it free to download on his website, too.

"The project started with a genuine question: How can we conceal our fundamental thoughts from artificial intelligences and those who deploy them?" he writes. "I decided to create a typeface that would be unreadable by text scanning software (whether used by a government agency or a lone hacker)—misdirecting information or sometimes not giving any at all. It can be applied to huge amounts of data, or to personal correspondence."

He named it after the Library Congress's labeling code ZXX, which archivists employ when they find a book that contains "no linguistic content."

Submission + - Aurora Attackers Were Looking for Google's Surveillance Database

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: When in early 2010 Google shared with the public that they had been breached in what became known as the Aurora attacks, they said that the attackers got their hands on some source code and were looking to access Gmail accounts of Tibetan activists. What they didn't make public is that the hackers have also accessed a database containing information about court-issued surveillance orders that enabled law enforcement agencies to monitor email accounts belonging to diplomats, suspected spies and terrorists. Whether this was the primary goal of the attacks as well as how much information was exfiltrated is unknown. current and former U.S. government officials interviewed by the Washington Post say that the database in question was possibly accessed in order to discover which Chinese intelligence operatives located in the U.S. were under surveillance.
Ubuntu

Submission + - Chinese open source community is brought into the global Ubuntu community (canonical.com)

Submitted by GovCheese
GovCheese writes: Canonical, the software company that manages and funds Ubuntu, announced that the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology will base their national reference architecture for standard operating systems on Ubuntu, and they will call it Kylin. Arguably China is the largest desktop market and the announcement has important implications. Shuttleworth's phrasing of, “The release of Ubuntu Kylin brings the Chinese open source community into the global Ubuntu community,” will irk many who already feel Shuttleworth controversial, but the partnership further cements Ubuntu as an open-source influencer. This is a win for Ubuntu. Is it a win for the open-source community?
Privacy

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."

Comment Re:So you're saying, (Score 1) 284

by NSN A392-99-964-5927 (#42957033) Attached to: Monsanto's 'Terminator' Seeds Set To Make a Comeback

Well DUH! Whenever some CEO says "We won't do it" as soon as something they planned (read: quietly announced to test the waters) caused a public outcry, it only means "we're waiting for you to be occupied with something else".

They invested money inventing it, it benefits them, they won't just "forget" about it. They wait for YOU to forget about it.

I know someone in the mid-west United States Missouri who is the daughter of the brain-child of a filthy rich Monsanto monster. His daughter suffers from serious health issues. There are also a lot of freedom on information requests on Monsanto in the UK but with a bit of luck from honest people and health risks.... this is where the the UK/USA stands and we will not be defeated by lies and cover ups!

Small Speech;

Ladies and Gentlemen; Our rights;

1, To defend the Magna Carta https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magna_Carta
2, The people of America are here to defend the Constitution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_United_States

Messing with our rights is unfair and actually highly unacceptable in any way shape or form; be it by bad diplomacy, wars, and the amount of other PR (Public Relations can be drummed up in the name of democracy to justify your actions). We do not want wars, we want peace.

If you do not mind we get on with all people from all religions and we understand that we are 'Friends Together'.

Comment If you use Windows 8 (Score 0) 185

by NSN A392-99-964-5927 (#42954749) Attached to: You Can Navigate Between Any Two Websites In 19 Clicks Or Fewer

You certainly cannot do this but waste half of your life trying to undo the metro system and have to do some registry changes and even that does not work to get rid of the offending system. There was a report on slashdot about M$ blaming manufacturers about the failure of Windows 8.

Here are some links below that will help you out;

http://www.classicshell.net/

http://windowssecrets.com/forums/showthread.php/149299-Method-to-hide-the-Charms-Bar

But that only helps so far as the damn thing does keep on appearing the only thing you can do after booting up is to run the metro killer

http://www.softpedia.com/get/Tweak/System-Tweak/Metro-Killer.shtml

The metro system is that intrusive that one might want to think about downgrading and you can get help with that from;

http://forums.mydigitallife.info/threads/36726-UpDown8-Windows-8-Upgrade-Downgrade-Helper

hope that helps and if all else fails just get hirens boot cd; reformat and start over from scratch

Official untouched links to windows iso's Digital River here http://www.mydigitallife.info/download-windows-7-iso-official-32-bit-and-64-bit-direct-download-links

Comment Sat on the fence (Score 1) 1

In reality, when it comes around to Microsoft and Google nothing will ever be settled. They will always be fighting to gain market share.

Back when google launched it was a friendly search engine many many years ago and friendly, but now it is just an appalling spy machine for government agencies as is microsoft and microsoft are controlled by the gov and are complicit with cofee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Online_Forensic_Evidence_Extractor
or https://www.microsoft.com/government/en-us/pages/default.aspx

What I am saying is Google and M$ will prostitute themselves without a care in the world as long as they can rake in some cash from users and this goes all the way up to the highest governmental level in the advent of SOPA PIPA etc.

It is my prediction that Google will merge "" with microsoft within the next two years and Yahoo will side or merge with facebook.

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