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Communications

US House Passes Ban On Caller ID Spoofing 171

Posted by Soulskill from the posted-by-sir-isaac-newton dept.
smarek writes "The 'Truth in Caller ID Act' passed the US House of Representatives on Wednesday. The legislation is trying to outlaw Caller ID spoofing. In some cases, this spoofing has led to individuals giving out information that has led to identity theft. Last year the NYPD discovered over 6,000 victims of Caller ID spoofing, who together lost a total of $15 million. A companion bill has already been passed by the Senate, and the two are on their way to 'informal conference to reconcile any differences.' The bill that results will most likely pass." PCWorld's coverage notes that callers will still be able to block their information entirely, and that the bill may have negative consequences for legitimate phone-related services, such as Google Voice.
Networking

Submission + - What is the Future of Firewalls? 1

Submitted by jlmale0
jlmale0 writes: When I mess with my WAP/router at home or coordinate with the network team at work, it seems like I'm stuck in 1995. We're still manually listing IP address/port combinations for our firewall rules. There's a certain simplicity to this when dealing with a single system, but there are firewalls everywhere these days. What's available for managing complex firewall arrangements? What's being developed? Can I take a visio diagram, run it through a script and get a list of firewall rules? What about a gui that illustrates the current system configuration and then lets me drag and drop systems across firewalls, and have the individual firewall ports automatically configured? What about tying a firewall into an authentication system so that when jdoe logs in, only then are the firewalls opened to pass her traffic? What about managing distributed firewalls so that one repository of rules opens up your system's firewalls, the DMZ firewall, and the public firewall all at once?

Let's get a conversation started. What cool projects do I need to know about? What cool management features would you like to see? What's next for firewall management?

Submission + - Name That Element - Think Heavy (nytimes.com)

Submitted by mr crypto
mr crypto writes: A team of Russian and American scientists has discovered a new element that has long stood as a missing link among the heaviest bits of atomic matter ever produced. The element, still nameless, appears to point the way toward a brew of still more massive elements with chemical properties no one can predict.
Hardware

Submission + - Largest Sodium Sulfur Battery Powers Texas Town (inhabitat.com)

Submitted by separsons
separsons writes: The largest sodium sulfur battery in America, nicknamed "BOB," can provide enough electricity to power all of Presidio, Texas. Until now, the small town relied on a single, 60-year-old transmission line to connect it to the grid, so the community frequently experienced power outages. BOB, or "Big-Old Battery," began charging earlier this week. The house-sized battery can hold four megawatts of power for up to eight hours. Utilities are looking into similar-sized batteries to store power from solar and wind so that renewables can come online before the country implements a smart grid system.

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