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Submission + - musl libc hits 1.0 milestone 3

Submitted by dalias on Thursday March 20, 2014 @05:07AM

dalias writes: The musl libc project has released version 1.0, the result of three years of development and testing. Musl is a lightweight, fast, simple, MIT-licensed, correctness-oriented alternative to the GNU C library (glibc), uClibc, or Android's Bionic. At this point musl provides all mandatory C99 and POSIX interfaces (plus a lot of widely-used extensions), and well over 5000 packages are known to build successfully against musl.

Several options are available for trying musl. Compiler toolchains are available from the musl-cross project, and several new musl-based Linux distributions are already available (Sabotage and Snowflake, among others). Some well-established distributions including OpenWRT and Gentoo are in the process of adding musl-based variants, and others (Aboriginal, Alpine, Bedrock, Dragora) are adopting musl as their default libc.

Firefox 2.0 Update To Remove Phishing Detection 351

Posted by kdawson on Sunday December 07, 2008 @03:50PM from the way-past-time-to-update dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Computerworld and others are reporting that Firefox 2.0.0.19, the last security update to be released before 2.0 goes end-of-life, will remove the phishing detection at the request of Google. The browser is using an older version of the Safe Browsing protocol that Google will discontinue. According to the latest NetApplications report, about 25% of all Firefox users were still on version 2.0. This move ought to result in an increased adoption of Firefox 3.0 and other browsers, unless it goes unnoticed by most users."

Now From Bruce Schneier, the Skein Hash Function 139

Posted by timothy on Friday October 31, 2008 @10:49AM from the renaissance-man dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Bruce Schneier and company have created a new hash function called Skein. From his blog entry: 'NIST is holding a competition to replace the SHA family of hash functions, which have been increasingly under attack. (I wrote about an early NIST hash workshop here.) Skein is our submission (myself and seven others: Niels Ferguson, Stefan Lucks, Doug Whiting, Mihir Bellare, Tadayoshi Kohno, Jon Callas, and Jesse Walker). Here's the paper."

How To Deploy a Game Console In the Office? 310

Posted by Soulskill on Saturday October 25, 2008 @01:21PM from the early-and-often dept.

SkydiverFL writes "Does anyone have an idea for a good solution for using a game console (Xbox 360, PS3, etc.) with a laptop and / or external monitor? I am planning to set up each of my developers at the office with a shiny new Xbox 360, surround headphones, and Gold memberships. The only catch is that I have to do it 'gracefully.' I would be grateful for any input on the technical setup and politics (how to get it in and how to work through the politics)." Read on for further details on the situation.

Publishing a Commercial iPhone Game, Start To Finish 38

Posted by timothy on Thursday October 16, 2008 @02:04PM from the alger-would-be-proud dept.

Niklas Wahrman writes with this "motivational story on how a student and part-time developer was able to take an idea and turn it into an Android project and then port to iPhone for commercial release in less than a year. In the article, he focuses on how to get a game done — a problem many independent developers face. During the development of the game, Asterope, he took a lot of screenshots from many of the development stages that show how the game gradually came to life."

Mega-D Botnet Overtakes Storm, Accounts for 32% of Spam 115

Posted by CmdrTaco on Saturday February 02, 2008 @03:23PM from the yes-tell-me-more-about-how-my-junk-is-small dept.

Stony Stevenson writes "The new Mega-D Botnet has overtaken the notorious Storm worm botnet as the largest single source of the world's spam according to security vendor Marshal. This botnet currently accounts for 32 percent of all spam, 11 percent more than the Storm botnet which peaked at 21 percent in September 2007. It started about 4 months ago but has been steadily increasing since then. It is also using news headlines to trick victims into opening the spam, a technique synonymous with the Storm worm."

Undocumented Bypass in PGP Whole Disk Encryption 316

Posted by Zonk on Thursday October 04, 2007 @01:06PM from the seems-to-defeat-the-purpose dept.

A non-mouse Coward writes "PGP Corporation's widely adopted Whole Disk Encryption product apparently has an encryption bypass feature that allows an encrypted drive to be accessed without the boot-up passphrase challenge dialog, leaving data in a vulnerable state if the drive is stolen when the bypass feature is enabled. The feature is also apparently not in the documentation that ships with the PGP product, nor the publicly available documentation on their website, but only mentioned briefly in the customer knowledge base. Jon Callas, CTO and CSO of PGP Corp., responded that this feature was required by unnamed customers and that competing products have similar functionality."

Feed What's Next, Ad-Supported Coffee? Actually, Yes (techdirt.com)

From feed by techdirtfeed on Tuesday May 15, 2007 @03:12AM

Ad-supported business models have been popular for a long time, but people still seem confused about when they make sense. For things like content or services with little marginal cost, the ad-supported model can be a good fit. On the other hand, it doesn't really work for physical goods, like computers, despite many attempts at pulling this off. Now a company in Japan is experimenting with an ad-supported coffee vending machine. If the buyer is willing to watch a 30-second ad, they can get a free cup of coffee. The cup will have an ad as well. The problem is that advertisers aren't likely to get much value out of this 30-second spot, such that it's worth subsidizing someone's java fix. It'd be pretty easy for a customer to just ignore the ad while waiting for their fill up. The one context where it might make sense is in an office where the employer already subsidizes its employees' coffee, and is looking to defray some of the costs by selling ads. Still, this might just annoy workers, and the lost productivity from spending time in front of the vending machine would probably cancel out any advertising revenue. Perhaps instead of an ad, the machine could use the time to play a daily motivational speech from the company's boss.

Feed Hundreds Click on Google Ad Promising to Infect Their PCs (wired.com)

From feed by wiredfeed on Tuesday May 15, 2007 @02:52AM

A surprising number of web surfers click on a security researcher's advertisement touting a "drive-by download" with a viral payload.

HBO Exec Proposes DRM Name Change 544

Posted by Zonk on Thursday May 10, 2007 @03:07PM from the that's-all-that's-in-the-way dept.

surfingmarmot writes "An HBO executive has figured out the problem with DRM acceptance — it's the name. HBO's chief technology officer Bob Zitter now wants to refer to the technology as Digital Consumer Enablement. Because, you see, DRM actually helps consumers by getting more content into their hands. The company already has HD movies on demand ready to go, but is delaying them because of ownership concerns. Says Zitter, 'Digital Consumer Enablement would more accurately describe technology that allows consumers "to use content in ways they haven't before," such as enjoying TV shows and movies on portable video players like iPods. "I don't want to use the term DRM any longer," said Zitter, who added that content-protection technology could enable various new applications for cable operators.'"

Microsoft Patches 19 Flaws, 6 in Vista 307

Posted by Zonk on Wednesday May 09, 2007 @12:23PM from the many-patches-makes-os-work dept.

Cheesy Balogna writes "Microsoft has just released seven advisories — all rated critical — with patches for at least 19 vulnerabilities affecting the Windows operating system, the widely deployed Office productivity suite and the dominant Internet Explorer browser. Six of the 19 vulnerabilities affect Windows Vista. 'There are patches for 7 different vulnerabilities that could lead to code execution attacks against Word, Excel and Office. Users of Microsoft Exchange are also urged to pay attention to one of the critical bulletins, which cover 4 different flaws. A cumulative IE update addresses six potentially dangerous bugs. There are the six that apply to IE 7 on Windows Vista. The last bulletin in this month's batch apples to CAPICOM (Cryptographic API Component Object Model) and could also put users at risk of complete system hijack attacks.'"

Sun Joins Mac Open Office Development 171

Posted by kdawson on Thursday May 03, 2007 @09:18AM from the bye-bye-X11 dept.

widhalmt writes "In a blog post, a developer at Sun Microsystems announces that Sun will help with porting Open Office to Mac OS X. The open source office suite is well known on Linux and Windows, but does not have a native version on Mac OS. For a long time Sun did not want to join the development of that port but now they will actively push it."

Submission + - Web Spider Sued By Colorado Woman

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 16, 2007 @05:59PM

An anonymous reader writes: The Internet Archive is beind sued by a Colorado woman for spidering her site. Suzanne Shell posted a notice on her site saying she wasn't allowing it to be crawled. When it was, she sued for civil theft, breach of contract, and violations of the Racketeering Influence and Corrupt Organizations act and the Colorado Organized Crime Control Act. A court ruling last month granted the Internet Archive's motion to dismiss the charges, except for the breach of contract claim. If Shell prevails on that count, sites like Google will have to get online publishers to "opt in" before they can be crawled, radically changing the nature of Web search.

Office 2007 UI License 281

Posted by kdawson on Wednesday November 22, 2006 @09:15AM from the guidelines-available-but-not-to-you dept.

MikeWeller writes, "Microsoft has recently announced a new licensing program for the Office 2007 user interface. This page links to the license and an MSDN Channel9 interview about the program (featuring a lawyer). The program 'allows virtually anyone to obtain a royalty-free license to use the new Office UI in a software product. There's only one limitation: if you are building a program which directly competes with Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, or Access (the Microsoft applications with the new UI), you can't obtain the royalty-free license.' What does this mean for OpenOffice? Will traditional menus/toolbars hold up to an ever-increasing number of features, or will OO be forced to take on a new UI paradigm? With the gap between OO and MS Office widening, how is this going to affect users trying to move between the two platforms?" You need to sign the license before you can get the 120-page UI implementation guidelines, which are confidential.

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