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Cellphones

Submission + - Burning Man goes open source for cell phones (networkworld.com)

Submitted by coondoggie
coondoggie writes: Today I bring you a story that has it all: a solar-powered, low-cost, open source cellular network that's revolutionizing coverage in underprivileged and off-grid spots. It uses VoIP yet works with existing cell phones. It has pedigreed founders. Best of all, it is part of the sex, drugs and art collectively known as Burning Man.
Security

Submission + - New QuickTime Flaw Bypasses ASLR, DEP (threatpost.com)

Submitted by Trailrunner7
Trailrunner7 writes: A Spanish security researcher has discovered a new vulnerability in Apple's QuickTime software that can be used to bypass both ASLR and DEP on current versions of Windows and give an attacker control of a remote PC. The flaw apparently results from a parameter from an older version of QuickTime that was left in the code by mistake.

The flaw was discovered by Ruben Santamarta of Wintercore, who said that the vulnerability can be exploited remotely via a malicious Web site. On a machine running Internet Explorer on Windows 7, Vista or XP with QuickTime 7.x or 6.x installed, the problem can be exploited by using a heap-spraying technique. In his explanation of the details of the vulnerability and the exploit for it, Santamarta said that he believes the parameter that is at the heart of the problem simply was not cleared out of older versions of the QuickTime code.

"The Quicktime plugin is widely installed and exploitable through IE; ASLR and DEP are not effective in this case and we will likely see this in the wild," said HD Moore, founder of the Metasploit Project.
Politics

Submission + - Judge Quashes Subpoena of UVA Research Records (washingtonpost.com)

Submitted by esocid
esocid writes: An Albemarle County Circuit Court judge has set aside a subpoena issued by Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli to the University of Virginia seeking documents related to the work of climate scientist and former university professor Michael Mann. Judge Paul M. Peatross Jr. ruled that Cuccinelli can investigate whether fraud has occured in university grants, as the attorney general had contended, but ruled that Cuccinelli's subpoena failed to state a "reason to believe" that Mann had committed fraud. He also set aside the subpoena without prejudice, meaning Cuccinelli can rewrite it to better explain why he wants to investigate, but seemed skeptical about the underlying claim of fraud. The ruling is a major blow for Cuccinelli, a global warming skeptic who had maintained he was investigating whether Mann committed fraud in seeking government money for research that showed the earth has experienced a rapid, recent warming. Mann, now at Penn State University, worked at U-Va. until 2005.

"The Court has read with care those pages and understands the controversy regarding Dr. Mann's work on the issue of global warming. However, it is not clear what he did was misleading, false or fraudulent in obtaining funds from the Commonwealth of Virginia," Peatross wrote. The ruling also limited Cuccinelli to asking about only one of the five grants issued, which was the only one using state funds.
Nintendo

Man Fined $1.5 Million For Leaked Mario Game 287

Posted by Soulskill from the sorry-about-your-luck dept.
An anonymous reader writes "A Queensland man will have to pay Nintendo $1.5 million in damages after illegally copying and uploading one of its recent games to the internet ahead of its release, the gaming giant says. Nintendo said the loss was caused when James Burt made New Super Mario Bros Wii available for illegal download a week ahead of its official Australian release in November of last year. Nintendo applied for and was granted a search order by the Federal Court, forcing Burt to disclose the whereabouts of all his computers, disks and electronic storage devices in November. He was also ordered to allow access, including passwords, to his social networking sites, email accounts and websites."
Idle

Submission + - WTF? USPTO Awards LOL Patent to IBM

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: Among the last batch of patents granted in 2009 was one for IBM's Resolution of Abbreviated Text in an Electronic Communications System. The invention of four IBMers addresses the hitherto unsolvable problem of translating abbreviations to their full meaning — e.g., 'IMHO' means 'In My Humble Opinion' — and vice versa. From the patent: "One particularly useful application of the invention is to interpret the meaning of shorthand terms...For example, one database may define the shorthand term 'LOL' to mean 'laughing out loud.'" USPTO records indicate the patent filing was made more than a year after Big Blue called on the industry to stop what it called 'bad behavior' by companies who seek patents for unoriginal work. Yet another example of what USPTO Chief David Kappos called IBM's apparent schizophrenia on patent policy back when he managed Big Blue's IP portfolio.
Google

Submission + - review: Google Chrome on Linux (linuxcrunch.com)

Submitted by omlx
omlx writes: I have read a good review about Google chrome on Linux. The summary of it that although Google Chrome is in a beta stage, it is fast, stable, and has a simple, clean, and effective GUI design. In other side, Google Chrome has a small numbers of extensions; doesn't support RSS, lake of integration with KDE, and it doesn't support complex scripts very well.
Personally, I didn't succeed to play flash player on Google Chrome beta 1 (I am using OpenSUSE 11.2) and I wonder how will be the quality of Google Chrome OS specially it bases on Linux and Google Chrome.

Submission + - Bruce Schneier on Airport Security (cnn.com)

Submitted by the4thdimension
the4thdimension writes: Bruce Schneier has an opinion piece on CNN this morning that illustrates his view on airport security. Given that he has several books on security, his opinion carries some weight. In the article, Bruce discusses the rarity of terrorism, the pitfalls of security theater, and the actual difficulty surrounding improving security. What are your thoughts? Do you think that we can actually make air travel (and any other kind of travel, for that matter) truly secure?
Cellphones

Submission + - Toshiba Intros Trilingual App For Cellphones (hothardware.com)

Submitted by
MojoKid
MojoKid writes: "Shortly after hearing of a simple two-way Spanish-to-English translator for the iPhone, Toshiba has announced that it has developed a new language translation system that requires no server-side interaction. The app is designed to be operated independently on a smartphone, which will eliminate costly data roaming fees that are generally incurred using systems that require an internet connection to retrieve translations. The system is trilingual in nature and enables users to translate freely between Japanese, Chinese and English."
Microsoft

Submission + - Is OpenOffice.org a Threat? Microsoft Thinks So (computerworlduk.com)

Submitted by Glyn Moody
Glyn Moody writes: Most people regard OpenOffice.org as a distant runner-up to Microsoft Office, and certainly not a serious rival. Microsoft seems to feel otherwise judging by a new job ad on its site for a "Linux and Open Office Compete Lead". According to this, competing with *both* GNU/Linux and OpenOffice.org is "one of the biggest issues that is top of mind" for no less a person than Steve Ballmer. Interestingly, a key part of this position is "engaging with Open Source communities and organizations" — which suggests that Microsoft's new-found eagerness to "engage" with open source has nothing to do with a real desire to reach a pacific accommodation with free software, but is simply a way for it to fight against it from close up, and armed with inside knowledge.
Microsoft

Submission + - A decade of dreadful Microsoft ads (pcpro.co.uk) 1

Submitted by Barence
Barence writes: PC Pro has rounded up the most howlingly awful examples of ads churned out by Microsoft over the past decade. The selection includes the cringeworthy Gates & Seinfeld ads — where Gates looks like he’s delivering his lines with the help of a cattle prod — to the terrible Windows 7 party ads (an "F1 key for social inadequates", according to PC Pro), to the one that got away: an excellent in-house training video produced by The Office's Ricky Gervais.
Microsoft

Submission + - MS Issues Word Patch To Comply With Court Order (itnews.com.au)

Submitted by bennyboy64
bennyboy64 writes: iTnews reports that Microsoft has begun offering what appears to be a patch for its popular Word software, allowing it to comply with a recent court ruling which has banned the software giant from selling copyright infringing versions of the word processing product. The workaround should put an end to a long-running dispute between Canadian i4i and Redmond, although it has hinted that the legal battle might yet take another turn.
Security

Submission + - Tigger.A Trojan Quietly Steals Stock Traders' Data

Submitted by **$tarDu$t**
**$tarDu$t** writes: TechRepublic and Washington Post are outing the Tigger.A trojan that is keeping a low profile while exploiting the MS08-66 vulnerability to quietly steal data from online stock brokerages and their customers. The Post article states, "Among the unusually short list of institutions specifically targeted by Tigger are E-Trade, ING Direct ShareBuilder, Vanguard, Options XPress, TD Ameritrade and Scottrade." Other interesting featurs of this new malware is that it removes a host of other malware, probably to prevent victims from being tipped off that something is awry, and it uses a key code to extract its rootkit on host systems that is almost identical to the key used by the Srizbi botnet.
Government

Submission + - Diebold election audit logs defective (mitchtrachtenberg.com)

Submitted by
mtrachtenberg
mtrachtenberg writes: "Premier Election Solutions' (formerly Diebold) GEMS 1.18.19 election software audit logs don't record the deletion of ballots, don't always record correct dates, and can be deleted by the operator, either accidentally or intentionally. The California Secretary of State's office has just released a report about the situation in Humboldt County, California's November 2008 election, covered earlier in Slashdot.

http://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/elections_vs_premier.htm

Here's the conclusion of the thirteen page report:

GEMS version 1.18.19 contains a serious software error that caused the omission of 197 ballots from the official results (which was subsequently corrected) in the November 4, 2008, General Election in Humboldt County. The potential for this error to corrupt election results is confined to jurisdictions that tally ballots using the GEMS Central Count Server. Key audit trail logs in GEMS version 1.18.19 do not record important operator interventions such as deletion of decks of ballots, assign inaccurate date and time stamps to events that are recorded, and can be deleted by the operator. The number of votes erroneously deleted from the election results reported by GEMS in this case greatly exceeds the maximum allowable error rate established by HAVA. In addition, each of the foregoing defects appears to violate the 1990 Voting System Standards to an extent that would have warranted failure of the GEMS version 1.18.19 system had they been detected and reported by the Independent Testing Authority that tested the system.

"
Microsoft

Submission + - Vortalgate Portugal: no Microsoft, no bidding (www.esop.pt)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Apparently companies using software other than Microsoft's are unable to bid at many Portuguese public tenders. This is due to the usage of the infamous Silverlight 2.0 technology and has triggered a complaint to the European Comission by the Portuguese Open Source Business Association (ESOP).

This case is unofficially known as "Vortalgate" in Portugal as the private company that is causing the problem is called Vortal.

The official press release can be found here:

http://www.esop.pt/?p=92

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