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The Media

Taylor Momsen Did Not Write This Slashdot Headline 192

Posted by CmdrTaco from the seo-can-rot-in-hell dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "David Carr writes that headlines in newspapers and magazines were once written with readers in mind, to be clever or catchy or evocative, but now headlines are just there to get the search engines to notice. Hence the headline for this story that includes a prized key word for one of the 'Gossip Girls' — just the thing to push this Slashdot summary to the top of Google rankings. 'All of the things that make headlines meaningful in print — photographs, placement, and context — are nowhere in sight on the Web,' writes Carr. Headlines have become, as Gabriel Snyder, the recently appointed executive editor of Newsweek.com, says, 'naked little creatures that have to go out into the world to stand and fight on their own.' In this context, 'Jon Stewart Slams Glenn Beck' is the ideal headline, guaranteed to pull in thousands of pageviews. And while nobody is suggesting that the Web should somehow accommodate the glories of The New York Post's headlines in that paper's prime, some of its classics would still work. 'Remember "Headless Body in Topless Bar," perhaps the most memorable New York Post headline ever? It's direct, it's descriptive, and it's oh-so-search-engine-friendly. And not a Taylor Momsen in sight.'"
Moon

Decades-Old Soviet Reflector Spotted On the Moon 147

Posted by Soulskill from the always-in-the-last-place-you-look dept.
cremeglace writes "No one had seen a laser reflector that Soviet scientists had left on the moon almost 40 years ago, despite years of searching. Turns out searchers had been looking kilometers in the wrong direction. On 22 April, a team of physicists finally saw an incredibly faint flash from the reflector, which was ferried across the lunar surface by the Lunokhod 1 rover. The find comes thanks to NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which last month imaged a large area where the rover was reported to have been left. Then the researchers, led by Tom Murphy of the University of California, San Diego, could search one football-field-size area at a time until they got a reflection."
Networking

Nmap 5.20 Released 36

Posted by Soulskill from the more-and-better dept.
ruphus13 writes "Nmap has a new release out, and it's a major one. It includes a GUI front-end called Zenmap, and, according to the post, 'Network admins will no doubt be excited to learn that Nmap is now ready to identify Snow Leopard systems, Android Linux smartphones, and Chumbies, among other OSes that Nmap can now identify. This release also brings an additional 31 Nmap Scripting Engine scripts, bringing the total collection up to 80 pre-written scripts for Nmap. The scripts include X11 access checks to see if X.org on a system allows remote access, a script to retrieve and print an SSL certificate, and a script designed to see whether a host is serving malware. Nmap also comes with netcat and Ndiff. Source code and binaries are available from the Nmap site, including RPMs for x86 and x86_64 systems, and binaries for Windows and Mac OS X. '"
Security

Submission + - NSA Wages Cyberwar Against US Armed Forces Teams

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "A team of Army cadets spent four days at West Point last week struggling around the clock to keep a computer network operating while hackers from the National Security Agency tried to infiltrate it with methods that an enemy might use. The NSA made the cadets' task more difficult by planting viruses on some of the equipment, just as real-world hackers have done on millions of computers around the world. The competition was a final exam for computer science and information technology majors, who competed against teams from the Navy, Air Force, Coast Guard and Merchant Marine as well as the Naval Postgraduate Academy and the Air Force Institute of Technology. Ideally, the teams would be allowed to attack other schools' networks while also defending their own but only the NSA, with its arsenal of waivers, loopholes, special authorizations is allowed to take down a US network. NSA tailored its attacks to be just "a little too hard for the strongest undergraduate team to deal with, so that we could distinguish the strongest teams from the weaker ones." The winning West Point team used Linux, instead of relying on proprietary products from big-name companies like Microsoft or Sun Microsystems. "It seems weird for the Army with its large contracts to be using Linux, but it's very cheap and very customizable," says Cadet Brian McCord. It is also much easier to secure because "you can tweak it for everything you need" and there are not as many known ways to attack it, he said."

Comment Buy the patch, make the drop (Score 1) 837

by jonathanhowell (#27731003) Attached to: Handmade vs. Commercially Produced Ethernet Cables
Forget about that crimper. Bulk patch cables are easy & cheap to come by, they work and they're disposable.

Instead of making the run one long patch cable though, I'd have you run CAT5(e) or 6 cable between your points and install CAT5(e) or 6 jacks at each end. This has the benefit of looking neater, is easier to troubleshoot & repair and is easier to install. You just need some standard tools & a 110 punch-down tool to put it all together.

- Jonathan
Space

Submission + - Stephen Hawking Hospitalized

Submitted by jonathanhowell
jonathanhowell writes: Reuters is reporting that physicist icon Stephen Hawking has been rushed into hospital.

"Hawking, 67, who is wheelchair-bound and almost completely paralyzed by a wasting illness, was taken to a local hospital in Cambridge, where he is a professor of applied mathematics.

"Professor Hawking is very ill and has been taken by ambulance to Addenbrooke's Hospital," the statement said."
Toys

Submission + - Nanoglue being used to make Spidermans web-shooter (computerworld.com.au)

Submitted by Stony Stevenson
Stony Stevenson writes: A team of US researchers is using the super-adhesive properties of nanoglue to create a super-sticky web-shooting device much like the comic-book hero Spiderman's, an announcement sure to prick the ears of Peter Parker aficionados the globe over. The nanoglue is also being trialed in the production of computer chip circuitry and is expected to miniaturize the process, meaning faster and more powerful chips.

From the article: "If we can find a way to create threads and/or intertwined bundles using the molecules in a scalable fashion, while retaining the adhesive properties, then creating web-shooters similar to Spiderman's is a real possibility," Ramanath said. "There are ways in which molecular threads/bundles can be created in large quantities. The challenge will be, however, to simultaneously engineer adhesion on certain surfaces (and not others, since we want the suit only to form on the desired surface) and also with each other during the thread formation."
Privacy

Submission + - British civil liberties film is released

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: BBC News has an article about a British film likely to attract the attention of civil liberties supporters. The film, "Taking Liberties", is a documentary about erosion of civl liberties in present-day Britain. From the article:

Director Chris Atkins wants Taking Liberties to shake the British public out of their apathy over what he sees as the dangerous erosion of traditional rights and freedoms. "This film uses shock tactics. We needed to be unashamedly populist... Once you give up traditional liberties such as free speech and the right to protest you are not going to easily get them back," says Atkins.
The film can be seen at cinemas in major cities. Will the film lead to privacy reforms in Britain, or will most of the viewing population just shrug and go home?
Security

Submission + - Phrack reborn : #64 is in the wild (phrack.org)

Submitted by
The Circle of Lost Hackers
The Circle of Lost Hackers writes: "The oldest electronic magazine Phrack, that everyone announced dead last year, has released a new issue. As usual, the magazine features breaking advances on the topic of computer security, hardware hacking, exploits writing, kernel modifications, automatic vulnerability auditing, cryptanalysis, and more. The issue also comes with its amount of underground scene files, remembering the good old school Phrack issues of the 80', where body/mind experiences, and international hacking scenes with their relations to the intelligent services are discussed."

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