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Programming

Submission + - The Most Dangerous Programming Mistakes (infoworld.com)

Submitted by
snydeq
snydeq writes: "Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister discusses the most dangerous programming mistakes, and what can be done to avoid them. 'Even more than input validation errors, this year's top 25 list is rife with application security blunders of all kinds. Some of them sound fairly esoteric, such as "inclusion of functionality from untrusted control sphere." But of all such errors, the highest-ranking one on the list is "missing authentication for critical function" — in other words, the attacker was able to gain access because there was no lock on the door to begin with,' McAllister writes. 'With the pace of Internet attacks accelerating, now is not the time to cut QA staff or skimp on testing and code review.'"
Space

Submission + - Bizarre expanding light halo seen by Hawaii webcam (discovermagazine.com)

Submitted by
The Bad Astronomer
The Bad Astronomer writes: "A webcam mounted at the CFHT observatory in Hawaii caught a strange, expanding halo of light on the night of June 22. Announced on the Starship Asterisk forum, readers quickly honed in on the likely culprit: the terminal charge from the third stage of a Minuteman III missile. Very similar to the Norway Spiral of 2009, and scientific sleuthing at its best!"
Software

Submission + - NYC mayor demands $600M refund on software project (networkworld.com)

Submitted by alphadogg
alphadogg writes: New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg is demanding that systems integrator Science Applications International Corporation reimburse more than $600 million it was paid in connection with the troubled CityTime software project, a long-running effort to overhaul the city's payroll system. "The City relied on the integrity of SAIC as one of the nation's leading technology application companies to execute the CityTime project within a reasonable amount of time and within budget given the system's size and complexity," Bloomberg wrote in a letter Wednesday to SAIC CEO Walter Havenstein. CityTime was launched in 2003 at a budget of $63 million, but costs swelled dramatically as the project stumbled along for nearly a decade.
The Internet

Submission + - 40GB of data that costs the same as a house (pcpro.co.uk) 1

Submitted by
Barence
Barence writes: "PC Pro has an infographic that reveals the extortionate cost of roaming data. They compared the cost of data typically bundled with a fixed-line broadband package (40GB) costing £15, with the cost of buying that data on various mobile tariffs. Buying 40GB of data on a domestic mobile internet tariff from Orange would cost the same as an iMac; buying the same quantity of data on O2's non-Europe roaming tariff would cost £240,000 — or the same as a three-bedroom house."

Comment I was at the event (Score 2, Interesting) 165

by the_scoots (#30786712) Attached to: Adding Up the Explanations For ACTA's "Shameful Secret"

There are some points that were brought up in the meeting that I thought were pretty important. Someone correct me if I'm mistaken on any points, IANAL or too politically savvy. Many of the people who had seen pieces of the draft kept coming back to several points:

- Some speculated that this has more to do with future trade agreements with countries NOT involved in ACTA talks than those in it.The idea was that this would be used to strong arm developing countries into agreeing to the terms to enter into future trade agreements with any ACTA countries in the future.

- Patents are also in ACTA, and could potentially impact international trade of pharmaceuticals. Many public health organizations such as Doctors Without Borders are worried about the impact on getting generic drugs to 3rd world countries.

- While this supposedly won't change any US laws, it will impact future court decisions on infringement cases, which will in effect change the law by setting precedence.

Comment Totally useless (Score 3, Insightful) 157

by linuxgurugamer (#30786514) Attached to: Ubuntu 10.04 Alpha 2 vs. Early Fedora 13 Benchmarks

First off, let me say that I use Ubuntu 9.10 on my system at work. I am also running CentOS on servers, various Ubuntu on servers and a couple of Fedora systems. As you can see, I have experience with all of them.

So why is this review useless? Because they are testing development systems, which are not optimized, have loads of debugging flags set, and essentially are not ready for prime time. Of course it may be running slower!

IMHO, you should ignore benchmarks until the release candidates, at least. I generally ignore benchmarks on unreleased systems. I do, however, like to read and learn about new features which may be present in early releases.
Security

Submission + - Security certificate warnings don't work (goodgearguide.com.au)

Submitted by
angry tapir
angry tapir writes: "In a laboratory experiment, researchers found that between 55 percent and 100 percent of participants ignored certificate security warnings, depending on which browser they were using (different browsers use different language to warn their users). The researchers first conducted an online survey of more than 400 Web surfers, to learn what they thought about certificate warnings. They then brought 100 people into a lab and studied how they surf the Web. They found that people often had a mixed-up understanding of certificate warnings. For example, many thought they could ignore the messages when visiting a site they trust, but that they should be more wary at less-trustworthy sites."
Windows

Submission + - Windows 7 Hits RTM at build 7600.16385 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: 'Microsoft today announced that Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 have hit the Release to Manufacturing (RTM) milestone. The software giant still has a lot of work to do, but the bigger responsibility now falls to OEMs that must get PCs ready, Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) that are testing their new apps, and Independent Hardware Vendors (IHVs) that are preparing their new hardware. The RTM build is 7600, but it is not the same one that leaked less than two weeks ago (7600.16384). We speculated that Microsoft may end up recompiling build 7600 until it is satisfied, but it only took the company one more shot to get it right: 7600.16385 is the final build number. Microsoft refused to share the full build string, but if you trust leaks from a few days ago, it's "6.1.7600.16385.090713-1255," which indicates that the final build was compiled over a week ago: July 13, 2009, at 12:45pm. This would be in line with the rumored RTM date but it is also the day Microsoft stated that Windows 7 had not yet hit RTM. Although the final build had been compiled, Microsoft still had to put it through testing before christening it as RTM.'
Space

Submission + - Total Lunar Eclipse This Weekend

Submitted by SeaDour
SeaDour writes: This Saturday night, March 3rd, a total lunar eclipse will be visible from nearly all inhabited parts of the world. A great shadow will stretch across the surface of the moon, eventually casting it in an eerie red glow as sunlight filters through our atmosphere onto the lunar surface. Viewers in Europe and Africa will have the best vantage point, able to watch the entire eclipse in action, while observers in most of the western hemisphere can see it eclipsed as it rises just after sunset.

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