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Submission + - Attacked By Anonymous, HBGary Pulls Out of RSA (itworld.com)

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes: HBGary Federal cancelled a talk the company's CEO Aaron Barr was planning to give at the BSides San Francisco conference on his investigation of WikiLeaks. 'I was receiving death threats,' Barr said in an interview Tuesday. 'There was lots of talk that was being made of in the Anonymous IRC channels of harassing us at our booth and sending people to heckle [HBGary speakers at the conference].' The company has also decided to pull its booth from the RSA Conference floor after it was vandalized on Sunday, said Jim Butterworth, HBGary's vice president of services. 'We... came back the next morning and it was very apparent that the group responsible for the activities in the news had decided to make another statement,' he said.

Comment Re:China the new global superpower, and US decline (Score 1) 613

by daseinw (#34775866) Attached to: First Pictures of Chinese Stealth Fighter

The U.S. is in decline because a lot of people think the problem is overspending on the military. It's not.

No less a person than Donald Rumsfield (Secretary of Defense under both Gerald Ford and George W. Bush) would seem to disagree with you:

"According to some estimates we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions," Rumsfeld admitted.

$2.3 trillion -- that's $8,000 for every man, woman and child in America. To understand how the Pentagon can lose track of trillions, consider the case of one military accountant who tried to find out what happened to a mere $300 million.

"We know it's gone. But we don't know what they spent it on," said Jim Minnery, Defense Finance and Accounting Service.

Here's the source: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/01/29/eveningnews/main325985.shtml
Medicine

Submission + - Researchers Find 70-Year-Olds Are Getting Smarter 1

Submitted by
Pickens
Pickens writes: "AlphaGalileo reports that researchers from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden have found in a forty year study of 2,000 seniors that today's 70-year-olds do far better in intelligence tests than their predecessors making it more difficult to detect dementia in its early stages. "Using the test results, we've tried to identify people who are at risk of developing dementia," says Dr. Simona Sacuiu. "While this worked well for the group of 70-year-olds born in 1901-02, the same tests didn't offer any clues about who will develop dementia in the later generation of 70-year-olds born in 1930." The study started in 1971 with an examination of 70-year-olds who were then regularly followed over a period of 30 years. The 70-year-olds born in 1930 and examined in 2000 performed better in the intelligence tests than their predecessors born in 1901-02 and examined in 1971. "The improvement can partly be explained by better pre- and neonatal care, better nutrition, higher quality of education, better treatment of high blood pressure and other vascular diseases, and not least the higher intellectual requirements of today's society, where access to advanced technology, television and the Internet has become part of everyday life," says Sacuiu."
Bug

Submission + - Stuxnet Infects 30000 Industrial Computers in Iran (computerworld.com)

Submitted by eldavojohn
eldavojohn writes: The BBC and AFP are releasing more juicy details about the now infamous Stuxnet worm that Iranian officials have confirmed infected 30,000 industrial computers inside Iran following those exact fears. The targeted systems that the worm is designed to infect are Siemens SCADA systems. Talking heads are speculating that the worm is too complex for an individual or group causing blame to be placed on Israel or even the United States — although the US official claims they do not know the origin of the virus. Iran claims it did not infect or place any risk to the new nuclear reactor in Bushehr which experts are suspecting was the ultimate target of the worm.

Submission + - PS3 Jailbreaks Galore Released 1

Submitted by YokimaSun
YokimaSun writes: Following up on yesterdays story about the PS3 being hacked by one of its own Official Controllers, theres now a guide in English that details how to Mod a Sixaxxis Controller, but thanks to the very latest releases, if you dont like soldering you can now use an Ipod, a Pandora Console or even a Dingoo Console. Finally Jaicrab has released a USB Firmware Loader which will come in handy once the first Custom Firmware for the PS3 is released. Maybe then we will get region free Blueray, PS1 and PS2 Games.
Cellphones

Submission + - Facebook is building an Android-based smartphone (bloomberg.com) 1

Submitted by destinyland
destinyland writes: Reports are surfacing of a Facebook-backed smartphone running Google's Android system, built by INQ (who also manufactures a phone for Skype). GigaOm's Om Malik says he's been aware of the project "for quite some time," and Bloomberg News reported that Facebook Inc. will release two AT&T smartphones in 2011, first in Europe and then in America. (Adding that 25% of Facebook users access the social networking site with their wireless devices.) "Like some people would love to have a Hello Kitty phone or a Batman phone, there are undoubtedly buyers waiting with bated breath for a phone that says Facebook on it..." notes one technology blog. "The buying public seems to be entranced with the idea of the phrase 'Facebook phone' so rumors persist."

Submission + - Crimanal action against speed trap tweeter (iol.co.za)

Submitted by martinlp
martinlp writes: Pigspotter is making big news in South Africa. The traffic authorities in Johanessburg, South Africa are looking at taking legal action against Pigspotter, an individual who is tweeting up to the minute information about speed traps in and around the city. He has recently stopped, stating that his Blackberry is going in for repairs but it may be out of fear of getting prosecuted. The police claim he must be getting inside information and suspect that disgruntled traffic officers may be involved. There is also speculation that it is more than one individual that is tweeting.
Security

Submission + - Hole in Linux kernel provides root rights (h-online.com)

Submitted by oztiks
oztiks writes: A vulnerability in the 32-bit compatibility mode of the current Linux kernel (and previous versions) for 64-bit systems can be exploited to escalate privileges. For instance, attackers can break into a system and exploit a hole in the web server to get complete root (also known as superuser) rights or permissions for a victim's system.

According to a report, the problem occurs because the 32-bit call emulation layer does not check whether the call is truly in the Syscall table. Ben Hawkes, who discovered the problem, says the vulnerability can be exploited to execute arbitrary code with kernel rights. An exploit (direct download of source code) is already in circulation; in a test conducted by The H's associates at heise Security on 64-bit Ubuntu 10.04, it opened a shell with root rights.

The kernel developers have remedied the flaw in the repository, and Linux distributors will probably soon publish new kernels to close the hole. Until then, switching off 32-bit ELF support solves the problem if you can do without this function. For instructions, see: "Workaround for Ac1db1tch3z exploit".

Hawkes says the vulnerability was discovered and remedied back in 2007, but at some point in 2008 kernel developers apparently removed the patch, reintroducing the vulnerability. The older exploit apparently only needed slight modifications to work with the new hole.

 
IT

Submission + - T-Mobile Censoring Text Messages Says Lawsuit (wired.com)

Submitted by Tootech
Tootech writes: mobile-marketing company claimed Friday it would go out of business unless a federal judge orders T-Mobile to stop blocking its text-messaging service, the first case testing whether wireless providers can block text messages they don’t like.

EZ Texting claims T-Mobile blocked the company from sending text messages for all of its clients after learning that legalmarijuanadispensary.com, an EZ Texting client, was using its service to send texts about legal medical marijuana dispensaries in California. “T-Mobile subjectively did not approve of one of the thousands of lawful businesses and non-profits served by EZ Texting,” according to New York federal lawsuit.

The suit against T-Mobile, which controls about 15 percent of the U.S. mobile market, comes as the company just announced it was raising its texting prices, which some claim is an abuse of its market share. And the case comes amid a fierce debate surrounding net neutrality, with net giant Google claiming that wireless carriers should not be bound by the same rules as wireline carriers.

Even the New York-based texting service acknowledges that the case raises novel issues. “At the very least, EZ Texting has raised serious questions about the legal ability of a wireless service provider, T-Mobile, to block its customers from exchanging text messages with EZ Texting’s customers,” according to the suit.

A similar text-messaging flap occurred in 2007, but ended without litigation, when Verizon reversed itself and allowed an abortion-rights group to send text messages to its supporters.

T-Mobile, of Bellevue, Washington, said in a statement: “We believe the claims in the lawsuit are meritless.”
Politics

Submission + - Facing oblivion, island nation makes big sacrifice (mongabay.com) 1

Submitted by Damien1972
Damien1972 writes: Kiribati, a small nation consisting of 33 Pacific island atolls, is forecast to be among the first countries swamped by rising sea levels. Nevertheless, the country recently made an astounding commitment: it closed over 150,000 square miles of its territory to fishing, an activity that accounts for nearly half the government's tax revenue. What moved the tiny country to take this monumental action? President Anote Tong, says Kiribati is sending a message to the world: "We need to make sacrifices to provide a future for our children and grandchildren."
Education

Submission + - Learning by Playing

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: This week's NY Times Magazine — a special issue on education and technology — is tailor-made for the Slashdot crowd. For the cover story, Sarah Corbett explores the games-and-education movement, which she notes is alive-and-well at Quest to Learn, a NYC middle-school that aims to make school nothing less than 'a big, delicious video game.' Elsewhere in the issue, Paul Boutin writes about Microsoft's efforts to inspire The 8-Year-Old Programmer with its Kodu Project, and Nicholas Carlson reports on Columbia University's efforts to mix journalism and hard-core computer science with its unique dual-degree master's in journalism and CS. There's also an accompanying timeline that nicely illustrates how learning machines have progressed from the Horn-Book to the iPad. And that's just for starters!

Submission + - Sprint Epic4G 3G upload speeds limited to 150kbps (sprint.com)

Submitted by Miamicanes
Miamicanes writes: Nearly everyone who owns a Sprint Samsung Epic 4G and has benchmarked its 3G performance has discovered that its 3G upload speeds are apparently limited to 150kbps. So far, Sprint has not officially acknowledged it as a problem, nor has it indicated whether this might be a firmware bug, a PRL issue, tower-related, or the result of a deliberate policy to cap 3G upload speeds. Regardless, the problem is causing widespread anger among Epic4G owners, many of whom have bitterly noted the irony of being charged a $10 surcharge so they can endure data transfers that are slower than they had 4 years ago (and a quarter of the speeds enjoyed by Evo owners on the same 3G network).

Comment Re:Oh if you find yourself repeating some code (Score 1) 590

by daseinw (#33492732) Attached to: Programming Things I Wish I Knew Earlier

Sadly, if you're working in Java then you will frequently be forced to write the same 8 damn lines over 70 times, and there will be literally no way to avoid it unless you resort to automatic code generation, which is a fancy name for using a separate program to do the copying-and-pasting for you.

Color me confused. I'm genuinely not understanding you here. If a team member told me he was writing the same 8 lines over 70 times in Java, it would probably a hint to me that he needed to brush up on his understanding of basic object oriented programming. If the code in question is a cohesive unit, there's no reason you can't put it in a class, and re-use that class for all eternity. What did I miss?

Comment Emotional Things I Wish I Knew Earlier (Score 2, Insightful) 590

by daseinw (#33491258) Attached to: Programming Things I Wish I Knew Earlier

we could not figure out whether the author was an incredibly elaborate troll or just a run-of-the-mill idiot.

Reading this comment of his reminds me of something I read recently:
Physicists stand on each other's shoulders. Engineers dig each other's graves.

I've never understood why so many software developers feel the need to disparage one another in an attempt to prove their intelligence/superiority. There are plenty of tough problems out there and we all can learn something from one another, no? I've definitely been guilty of this in my tech career but lately I'm wondering more and more, why does the person who has a different solution always have to be an "idiot?" Why isn't he/she just someone who has a different take on solving this particular problem?

Now, I'm not saying that engineers do this more than any other group but out of all of my friends (some of whom are doctors, lawyers, teachers, etc.) it certainly seems like a more common event among software developers.

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