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Software

Submission + - Microsoft, BSA and Others Push for Appeal on Oracle vs. Google Ruling (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by sl4shd0rk
sl4shd0rk writes: In 2012, Oracle took Google to court over the use of Java in Android. Judge William Alsup brought the ruling that the structure of APIs could not be copyrighted at all. Emerging from the proceedings, it was learned that Alsup himself had some programming background and wasn't bedazzled by by Oracle's thin arguments on the range-checking function. The ruling came, programmers rejoiced and Oracle vowed Appeal. It seems that time is coming now, nearly a year later, as Microsoft, BSA, EMC, Netapp, et al. get behind Oracle to overturn Alsup's ruling citing "destabilization" of the "entire software industry".
Programming

Submission + - Ask slashdot: What programming language should an old hack REALLY dig into? 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: I was a consultant for nearly 20 years and I got into projects where I had to work with a huge variety of software, operating systems, hardware, programming languages, and other assorted technologies. After retiring from that I have spent the last 10 years in a completely different sector. Now I find myself wanting to really focus on coding for personal reasons. You can imagine how out-of-touch I am since I never really was more than a hack to begin with. I can learn syntax and basics in a weekend, question is, what Language should I become native to? Never liked anything 'lower-level' than C, and I don't have the funds to 'buy' my development environment....help me slashdot..you're my only hope...
United Kingdom

Submission + - Unblocking The Pirate Bay The Hard Way Is Fun For Geeks (torrentfreak.com)

Submitted by
TheGift73
TheGift73 writes: "Now that The Pirate Bay is being blocked by ISPs in the UK, millions of people have a new interest in accessing the site, even if they didn’t before. The reasons for this are simple. Not only do people hate being told what they can and can’t do, people – especially geeks – love solving problems and puzzles. Unlocking The Pirate Bay with a straightforward proxy is just too boring, so just for fun let’s go the hard way round."
Australia

Submission + - The Lengthening Arm of Uncle Sam's 'Pirate' Justice (torrentfreak.com)

Submitted by
TheGift73
TheGift73 writes: "Figures....

File-sharing was firmly on the agenda when the head of the US Department of Homeland Security touched down in the Australian capital last week. The four new agreements – promptly signed before Secretary Janet Napolitano flew back out of Canberra – were less about sharing season two of Game of Thrones and more about sharing the private, government held information of Australian citizens with US authorities."
Software

Submission + - TOSAmend: Counteroffer Terms of Service Agreements (owocki.com)

Submitted by BigSlowTarget
BigSlowTarget writes: Are we simply subject to whatever a software provider demands of us in their clickthrough TOS agreement or are they real contracts where we can counteroffer our preferred terms and expect a refund if they are rejected? One blogger has come up with an applet to change TOS agreements and automatically submit the changes for approval (or rejection). Even he is not sure of the legal standing for the offer, but with these contracts so common they have been featured on South Park the issue certainly could be coming to the courts soon.
AMD

Submission + - AMD accidentally leaks 1.7 million DiRT 3 keys (geek.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The free game with every graphics card deal has finally backfired for AMD and Codemasters. Due to a lack of .htaccess, 1.7 million keys for a free copy of DiRT 3 on Steam have been leaked. No word from AMD or Codemasters yet, but I'm sure Valve will block all the codes on Steam soon. One question that remains: if you used one of the codes will Steam ban your account? There could be a few very unhappy gamers later today if that happens.
Security

Submission + - The Hidden Security Risk of Geotags (nytimes.com)

Submitted by pickens
pickens writes: The NY Times reports that security experts and privacy advocates have begun warning consumers about the potential dangers of geotags, which are embedded in photos and videos taken with GPS-equipped smartphones and digital cameras. By looking at geotags of uploaded photos "you can easily find out where people live, what kind of things they have in their house and also when they are going to be away," says one security expert. Because the location data is not visible to the casual viewer, the concern is that many people may not realize it is there; and they could be compromising their privacy, if not their safety, when they post geotagged media online. "I'd say very few people know about geotag capabilities,” says Peter Eckersley, a staff technologist with the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco, “and consent is sort of a slippery slope when the only way you can turn off the function on your smartphone is through an invisible menu that no one really knows about.”

Comment Re:What about RackSpace (Score 1) 3

by Oddscurity (#33101880) Attached to: Amazon EC2/S3 vs. traditional Webhosting?

The thing is that any comparison you can make without knowing the use case will simply be inaccurate. I'm sure that a regular webhost that charges a fixed amount for a decent bit of space and bandwidth will be the most economical up to a certain point. If beyond that a dedicated or virtual dedicated server is more interesting than the cloud offering, that depends on what kind of bandwidth is expected, how cpu and disk intensive this site is, and so on.

Simply put you're asking people to make a recommendation based on too little information. What's the use case? Expected number of page views per minute? Things like that matter.
The Internet

Submission + - BIND to remove DNS Neutrality (circleid.com)

Submitted by alphatel
alphatel writes: In a recent post, Paul Vixie, founder of ISC and author of MAPS (the original email RBL), has proposed a new method for BIND which "rates" domains. Opening with "Most new domain names are malicious", DNS queries would be sent to 'cooperating good guys' which can be used to filter out entire blocks of TLDs or country codes. In this new "Response Policy Zone" (DNS RPZ) method, all queries which fail to meet an unknown standard are redirected. As most people are familiar, elsewhere almost always winds up being the DNS host's advertising channel rather than the trash heap. Those fighting for net neutrality have denounced the change but ISC is already publishing a patch and would "like to hear from content providers who want to be listed by ISC as having reputation content available in this format, and also recursive DNS vendors whose platforms can subscribe to reputation feeds in this format. An online registry will follow."
Government

Submission + - Appelbaum detained at U.S. border, questioned abou (cnet.com)

Submitted by suraj.sun
suraj.sun writes: Appelbaum detained at U.S. border, questioned about Wikileaks

A security researcher involved with the Wikileaks Web site — Jacob Appelbaum, a Seattle-based programmer for the online privacy protection project called Tor — was detained by U.S. agents at the border for three hours and questioned about the controversial whistleblower project as he entered the country on Thursday to attend a hacker conference. He was also approached by two FBI agents at the Defcon conference after his presentation on Saturday afternoon about the Tor Project.

Appelbaum, a U.S. citizen, arrived at the Newark, New Jersey, airport from Holland flight Thursday morning, was taken into a room, frisked and his bag was searched.

Officials from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the U.S. Army then told him he was not under arrest but was being detained. They asked questions about Wikileaks, asked for his opinions about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and asked where Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is, but he declined to comment without a lawyer present, according to the sources. He was not permitted to make a phone call, they said.

After about three hours, Appelbaum was given his laptop back but the agents kept his three mobile phones, sources said.

CNET News: http://news.cnet.com/8301-27080_3-20012253-245.html

Submission + - Verizon Changing Users Router Passwords 2

Submitted by
Kohenkatz
Kohenkatz writes: "I have Verizon FIOS at home and my Verizon-supplied Actiontec router had the password "password1" that the tech assigned to it when he set it up three years ago. I received an email from Verizon that said "we have identified that your router still had a password of either password1 or admin1 and we have changed it to your serial number." I checked and it actually had been changed. I believe this to be in response to the Black Hat presentation (http://it.slashdot.org/story/10/07/16/122259/Millions-of-Home-Routers-Are-Hackable) about the hackability of home routers. I am upset about this because Verizon should not have any way to get into my router and change the settings, especially because I own the router, not them! I looked in the router's settings and I see port 4567 goes to the router and is labeled "Verizon FIOS Service". Is this port for anything useful other than Verizon changing settings on my router? What security measures does Verizon have to protect that port from unauthorized access?"
Google

Submission + - Google SSL Blocked by Schools Across the World (blogspot.com) 2

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Over the past several weeks, the rolling out of Google SSL search has been getting attention here at slashdot, but also some not-so-pleasant obstacles have been in the making much to the frustration of school students and teachers alike. All of this is due to the fact that many content filter vendors have decided to block all google ssl traffic.

While this is being worked on by google to appease these vendors, my question to slashdot is this, "Is it the right of a company to restrict SSL traffic so they can snoop your data, or is it the right of an individual to be entitled to encrypted internet facilities? Also, is the search data you create your data, or your company's?" IANAL but this all seems at odds with the Data Protection Act as some local governments here and here possibly use the very same filtering service for their government employees (as well as the one I work for), and it would also seem to go against the spirit of FIPS (though I appreciate Federal standards are separate from schools in the states).

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