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Comment Re:They didn't 'hack' a website. (Score 1) 245

The speech by Hillary Clinton took place on Wednesday, May 23rd at a Gala event at the Special Operations Command in Tampa, FL. Her speech was transcribed by the State Department (as all of her speeches are), and the transcription is hosted at the State Department's website.

I've re-hosted the original article by Karen DeYoung and Ellen Nakashima of the Washington Post.

I can't say i'm surprised The Washington Post completely misinterpreted a government official's speech, but the conclusions these writers jumped to, and i fell for, certainly carry more brevity than the conclusions found in your everyday newspaper article.

This is why i usually prefer CSPAN. But i will certainly look a bit more into detail about each article i find interesting before i post it here.

Sorry about that, folks.

Submission + - US State Department Hacks Al-Qaeda Websites in Yemen (washingtonpost.com)

shuttah writes: "In the growing Al-Qaeda activity in Yemen, Secretary of State Hilary Clinton revealed today that "cyber experts" had recently hacked into web sites being used by an Al-Qaeda affiliate, substituting the group’s anti-American rhetoric with information about civilians killed in terrorist strikes. Also this week, a statement from the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs revealed the presence an Al-Qaeda video calling for "Electronic Jihad." Was this act of Infomation Warfare a strategic response?

While Yemen is no stranger to Al-Qaeda activity, the terrorist group's presence has become more visible with a recent suicide bombing killing 100 military troops in its capital Sanaa."

Comment Wrong. (Score 1) 131

"This code takes out nuclear reactors and "researchers ask programmers for help"? Really?!"

No, no DuQu does not, and has never attempted to, 'take out nuclear reactors.' That was a different piece of malware.

It would benefit us all - as well as yourself - if before you commented you educated yourself on the subject of the submitted story.

NASA

Submission + - NASA considering moving GALEX astrophysics satellite to private ownership (spaceflightnow.com)

hogghogg writes: "The GALEX spacecraft (surveying the Universe in ultraviolet wavelengths at which the atmosphere is close to opaque) is coming to the end of its budget life, but it hasn't finished imaging the entire sky and is still (fairly) functional. A group at Caltech wants to keep it running, so NASA is considering transfer of ownership under the Stevenson-Wydler Technology Innovation Act which "allows the transfer of government-owned excess research equipment to educational institutions and non-profit organizations". Many NASA missions are terminated for budget reasons at the end of a prescribed period, even while the hardware is still highly functional. Although this is the first-ever transfer from NASA of a functioning satellite, maybe this is just the start for a class of privately run astronomical and Earth-observing facilities in space?"

Comment Typos & Streaming (Score 1) 1

Sorry, guys. I got really excited after reading this entry on Cringely's blog and realize there are a few typos in there. My apologies. Anyway, the 1996 "Triumph of the Nerds - The Rise of Accidental Empires" television series "Official Website" is uploaded onto YouTube via the links below. You can also buy the series on the PBS website here.

The follow-up series, 1998's "Nerds 2.0.1 - A Brief History of the Internet" ("official" website) is uploaded onto Google Video via the links below, too. You can buy a copy or two of this follow-up series on Amazon in glorious VHS format.

Triumph of the Nerds - The Rise of Accidental Empires
Part 1 - "Impressing Their Friends"
Part 2 - "Riding The Bear"
Part 3 - "Great Artists Steal"

Nerds 2.0.1 - A Brief History of the Internet
Part 1 - Networking the Nerds
Part 2 - Serving the Suits
Part 3 - Wiring the World

Books

Submission + - Accidental Empires To See Reboot, via the Internet (cringely.com) 1

shuttah writes: Robert X. Cringely, author of the 1992 influential book Accidental Empires, will be republishing & updating (including pictures & new chapters) the now twenty year-old book via the launch of a new blog also by the author.

Cingeley tell us — "So next month I’ll be starting a second blog with its own URL just for Accidental Empires. I, Cringely will continue right here as ever (no changes at all), but on the book blog I will over several months publish — a chapter or so at a time — the entire 100,000-word book for the world to read, free of charge."

The book was also the basis for Cringley's 1996 TV miniseries "Triumph of the Nerds" released by PBS.

User Journal

Journal Journal: Comments on Slashdot - A Whole New Low 1

Can someone tell me what has happened to my favorite part of Slashdot; the comments on posted articles? In the last two months, it seems as though comments have taken a huge, huge drop in quality. I realize in the past it was bad but as i said, in the passed several months it's almost like i'm on a completely different website altogether.

Is there any particular reason for this?

And most importantly... what can i do to help get rid of them?

Comment Re:Look at the credits for Adobe Reader. (Score 4, Insightful) 236

I agree 110%.

It's a blatant and inexcusable display of negligence on Adobe's part to schedule an update over a month after telling us that a REMOTE EXECUTION EXPLOIT is confirmed, and is being exploited in the wild. Again, with confirmation. To add to that, this isn't even something where you can advise everyone to turn off javascript and pray everyone follows your instructions while keeping an eye on traffic. It's nothing short of nightmare to be honest. The fact that this software is installed on everything from a consumer's new laptop or desktop, to a hell of a lot of government agencies doesn't sit well with me either.

Comment Get the FUD Out of Here. (Score 5, Interesting) 57

I'm doubting this story.

Admittingly, the following two clues as to who the author(s) of Conficker are, are circumstantial, but i would like to offer them to you guys for consideration since this behavior from Conficker has been observed and documented -

1.

"Once Conficker [A] infects a system, it includes a keyboard layout check, via the GetKeyboardLayout API, to determine whether the victim is currently using the Ukrainian keyboard layout. If so, [A] will exit without infecting the system. This suicide exit scheme has been observed in other malware-related software, such as Baka Software's Antivirus XP Trojan installer."

The suggestion is that Conficker's author(s) were trying to avoid violating the local laws of their native country. Presumably Ukraine (who's laws concerning computer crime seem to have several loopholes).

Source

2.

In a honeynet, there was a connection observed of the [B] variant of Conficker using variant [A]'s protocol to take over a machine already infected with Variant [A]... so it was Conficker trying to replace variant [A] with Variant [B]. For several reasons (located in the source link below), it is suggested the packet captured was an instance of Conficker testing it's own robust nature to not be taken over by another author or virus.

The significance of this is the "hybrid" packet described above came from an address owned by, again, Baka Software in the Ukraine.

Source

Android

Submission + - Linaro releases Ice Cream Sandwich builds for iMX5 (linaro.org)

b0101101001010000 writes: "We've just released preview ICS builds of Freescale's iMX53, ST Ericsson's Snowball, Samsung's Origen and TI's Panda boards (AOSP supports Panda out of the box, this just contains a kernel that based on Linus' HEAD). This should give Android platform developers on these platforms a good base to work from."

Comment Re:Please Clarify Your Post Title (Score 3, Interesting) 122

Interesting.

I don't think the immediate characterization of Huawei as a puppet to Beijing is altogether justified, seeing how here in America we have SPECIFIC branches of the government - like the CIA - making donations to stateside companies - like Facebook.

The CIA donates to a social network (facebook) = China blocks the network (Facebook).

Then America calls it censorship.

But when Beijing donates ($8 Million) to Huawei and America blocks it...

America says it's National Security?

Comment Please Clarify Your Post Title (Score 2) 122

Huawei and ZTE have not done any industrial espionage that we know of (or espionage of any kind, for that matter). Nor is the investigation by the House of Representatives’ intelligence committee, in fact, concerned with any espionage done by either Huawei or ZTE. Also, it should be noted that Huawei have opened their hardware to inspection by the British government. Inaccurate post titles like these come at the expense of discussion, since less and less people are actually reading the stories posted here. As was previously posted, the concern here is what malevolent capabilities a Huawei network would give groups like the People's Liberation Army with whom they have alleged ties to.
Communications

Ham Radio Licenses Top 700,000, An All-Time High 358

Velcroman1 writes "The newest trend in American communication isn't another smartphone from Apple or Google but one of the elder statesmen of communication: Ham radio licenses are at an all time high, with over 700,000 licenses in the United States, according to the Federal Communications Commission. Ham radio first took the nation by storm nearly a hundred years ago. Last month the FCC logged 700,314 licenses, with nearly 40,000 new ones in the last five years. Compare that with 2005, when only 662,600 people hammed it up and you'll see why the American Radio Relay League — the authority on all things ham — is calling it a 'golden age' for ham. 'Over the last five years we've had 20-25,000 new hams,' said Allen Pitts, a spokesman for the group."

Comment Suggestion... (Score 2) 478

There is nothing stopping you from using a GNU System with the linux kernel, or concocting a mix of the linux kernel with GNU & non-GNU software. I whole-heartily share your concern about privacy in the smartphone world, and that is why i would suggest using the Geeksphone with either a linux distribution or Replicant.

I would also suggest using webDAV at home or setup remotely, and configure your calendar, contacts, bookmarks and other file-syncing that way (of course encrypting everything before it hits the wire).

Additionally, in September RMS wrote a great piece on Android that might be of interest to you. Also, this little nugget from Firefox developers doing a pseudo-Q/A on Reddit (i know, i'm sorry) regarding your privacy in the browser might also be of concern to you.

Comment I Started Using Tumbleweed A Week Ago... (Score 3, Interesting) 174

...(for desktop use) and am using OpenSUSE not out of preference, but just to get myself familiar with other systems. Alsa worked flawlessly (as opposed to Alsa having minor issues in my previous distro, Debian Testing/Wheezy). I haven't gotten the hang of YaST for package management just yet, but zypper... the command line front-end to YaST, is very powerful. You add a switch and a URL to the zypper command to add repositories, and there are a multitude of command shortcuts available for software installation. I've been using zypper a lot since installation, and as a Debian user for three years i can say it's certainly giving APT a run for it's money. The software available for OpenSUSE is great, but the whole PORTAL documentation way of organizing it has been a little difficult to get used to at times. Again, i've just been using this for a week so that may not be the most educated judgement. Anyway, default repositories are - SUSE Updates, debug, source, OSS Software, and non-OSS Software (OSS = Open Source Software). Additionally, the Packman repository for OpenSUSE makes available pre-built RPM's for another large assortment of software. They currently don't have a US mirror, but being in New York and using the UK mirror... the speeds are fine. What's interesting to me is OpenSUSE is using systemd (by Lennart Poettering who also did Pulseaudio and avahi). Anyway, have a lot of fun. Hope i don't sound like too much of a salesman here.

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