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Books

Submission + - Will Your Books and Music Die With You?

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: Many of us will accumulate vast libraries of digital books and music over the course of our lifetimes, reports the WSJ, but when we die, our collections of words and music may expire with us. 'I find it hard to imagine a situation where a family would be OK with losing a collection of 10,000 books and songs,' says author Evan Carroll of the problems created for one's heirs with digital content, which doesn’t convey the same ownership rights as print books and CDs. So what's the solution? Amazon and Apple were mum when contacted, but with the growth of digital assets, Dazza Greenwood of MIT's Media Lab said it's time to reform and update IP law so content can be transferred to another’s account or divided between several people.
Government

Submission + - Why WikiLeaks Is Worth Defending, Despite All Its Flaws (gigaom.com)

Submitted by
SomePgmr
SomePgmr writes: "By now, anyone with even a passing interest in the WikiLeaks phenomenon is familiar with most of the elements of its fall from grace: the rift between founder Julian Assange and early supporters over his autocratic and/or erratic behavior, the Swedish rape allegations that led to his seeking sanctuary in Ecuador, a recent childish hoax the organization perpetrated, and so on. Critics paint a picture of an organization that exists only in name, with a leadership vacuum and an increasingly fractured group of adherents. Despite its many flaws, however, there is still something worthwhile in what WikiLeaks has done, and theoretically continues to do. The bottom line is that we need something like a âoestateless news organization,â and so far it is the best candidate we have."
Open Source

Submission + - How Open Source Hardware Is Driving the 3D-Printing Industry (readwriteweb.com)

Submitted by
TheNextCorner
TheNextCorner writes: "Open source software has been a key player in all kinds of disruptive technologies — from the Web to big data. Now the nascent and growing open source hardware movement is helping to power its own disruptive revolution.

The potential of 3D printing to transform the way we get things — the market is predicted to hit $3.1 billion in the next four years. But not much of that attention has focused on the unique role of open source hardware in enabling 3D printing to realize its promise."
Medicine

Submission + - FDA Approves HIV Home-Use Test Kit

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "The LA Times reports that the Food and Drug Administration has approved the first over-the-counter HIV test kit, allowing people to test themselves in private at home and get preliminary results in less than 30 minutes. The test which works by detecting antibodies in a swab from the gums, should not be considered final — in trials, the test failed to detect HIV in 1 in every 12 patients known to be infected, and returned false positives in 1 in 5,000 cases. The new at-home test, called OraQuick, will be sold in supermarkets and pharmacies and manufacturer, OraSure, has not said how much the test will cost, only that it will be more than the $18 cost for the professional kit. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that of the 1.2 million people in the US with HIV, 1 in 5 is not aware of the infection and that a disproportionate number of the 50,000 new cases of HIV each year is linked to people who have not been tested. Chip Lewis, a spokesman for Whitman-Walker Health, which provides AIDS care in Washington, says at-home testing could reach some people who didn't want to go to a clinic but removing medical professionals from the process could cause problems. "It's not like a home pregnancy test," says Lewis. "You need really a lot of information about how to read the test, how to use the test properly.""
Earth

Submission + - Scientists Solve Mystery of Ireland's Moving Boulders

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "How has a 78-ton boulder traveled 130 meters inland from the sea since 1991? Live Science reports that geologists have puzzled for years over the mysterious boulders that litter the desolate coastline of Ireland's Aran Islands that somehow move on their own when no one is looking. The sizes of the boulders in the formations range "from merely impressive to mind-bogglingly stupendous," writes geoscientist Rónadh Cox. While some researchers contend that only a tsunami could push these stones, new research finds that plain old ocean waves, with the help of some strong storms, do the job with some boulders moving inland at an average rate of nearly 10 feet (3 meters) per decade with one rock moving 3.5 meters vertically and 69 meters horizontally in one year. The team compared modern high-altitude photos of the coastline to a set of meticulous maps from 1839 that identified the location of the boulders' ridges — nearly 100 years after the most recent tsunami to hit the region, which struck in 1755. The Aran cliffs rise nearly vertically out of the Atlantic, leaving very deep water close to the shore. As waves slam into the sheer cliff, that water is abruptly deflected back out toward the oncoming waves. This backflow may amplify subsequent waves resulting an occasional storm wave that is much larger than one would expect. "There's a tendency to attribute the movement of large objects to tsunami," says Cox. "We're saying hold the phone. Big boulders are getting moved by storm waves.""
Government

Submission + - Federal court tosses Colorado's Amazon tax (denverpost.com)

Submitted by suraj.sun
suraj.sun writes: A federal court has thrown out a 2010 Colorado law, which had already been temporarily blocked in federal court last year, meant to spur online retailers like Amazon to collect state sales tax(http://www.denverpost.com/dnc/ci_20316979). "I conclude that the veil provided by the words of the act and the regulations is too thin to support the conclusion that the act and the regulations regulate in-state and out-of-state retailers even-handedly," U.S. District Judge Robert Blackburn wrote in his opinion. The law and the rules to carry it out "impose an undue burden on interstate commerce" and are unconstitutional, the judge wrote. The tax mainly affected online sales of out-of-state companies that have in-state affiliates(http://www.bizjournals.com/denver/news/2012/04/03/colorados-amazon-tax-struck-down.html?page=all), usually generating sales through links on their websites.
Book Reviews

Submission + - Cyber Warfare

Submitted by raceBannon
raceBannon writes: The authors, Steve Winterfield and Jason Andress, cover everything you will want to consider when thinking about how to use cyberspace to conduct warfare operations. The primary concepts have been bouncing around US military circles for over a decade but they have never been collected into one tome before. Clarke and Knake’s book, “Cyber War: The Next Threat to National Security and What to Do about It,” discusses how weak the US network defenses are and offers suggestions about how to improve. Carr’s book, “Inside CyberWarfare: Maping the Cyber Underworld,” presents threat examples and nation state capabilities. Libicki’s book, “Cyberdeterrence and Cybrewar,” attacks cyberwar from a policy viewpoint and does not really address operational considerations. Stiennon’s book, “Surviving Cyberwar,” is a good place to start if you are new to the subject and is almost a prerequisite for this book.

Full Disclosure: One of the authors, Steve Winterfield, used to work for me when he and I were both in the US Army wrestling with all of these ideas right after 9/11. I ran the Army Computer Emergency Response Team (ACERT) and Steve ran the Army’s Southern Regional CERT (RCERT South). He and I have been friends ever since and he even quoted me in one of the back chapters.

Although the content has been around for a while, it is striking how little the main concepts have changed. In a world where new innovations completely alter the popular culture every eighteen months, the idea that Cyber Warfare’s operational principals remain static year after year is counter-intuitive. After reading through the various issues within though, you begin to understand the glacial pace. These difficult concepts spawn intractable problems and the authors do a good job of explaining them.

I do have a slight issue withthe subtitle though: “Techniques, Tactics and Tools for the Security Practitioners.” The way I read this book, the general purpose (GP) Security Practitioner will not find this book very useful except as backgroundinformation. Aside from the chapters on Logical Weapons, Social Networking and Computer Network Defense, most of the material has to do with how a nation state, mostly the US, prepares to fight in cyber space. There is overlap for the GP security practitioner, but this material is covered in more detail in other books.

The book is illustrated. Some of the graphics are right out of military manuals and have that PowerPoint Ranger look about them. Some are screenshots of the various tools presented. Others are pictures of different equipment. One graphic stood out for me in the Cyberspace Challenges chapter (14). The graphic in question is a neat Venn Diagram that encapsulates all of the Cyber Warfare issues mentioned in the book, categorizes the complexity of each issue and shows where they overlap in terms of Policy, Processes, Organization, Tech, People and Skills. My only ding on the diagram is that in the same chapter, the authors discuss how much each issue might cost to overcome. It would have been very easy to represent that information on the Venn diagram and make it more complete.

One last observation about the graphics that I really liked is the author’s use of “Tip” and “Note” boxes throughout the book. Scattered throughout the chapters are grayed-out text boxes that talk about some technology or procedure that is related to the chapter information but not directly. For example, in the Social Engineering chapter (7), the authors placed a “Note” describing the various Phishing forms. You do not need the information to understand the chapter but having it nearby provides the reader with a nice example to solidify the main arguments. The book is full of these examples.

The first three chapters are my favorites. Winterfield and Andress do agood job of wrapping their heads around such entangled concepts as the definition of cyber warfare, the look of a cyber battle space and an inernational view of current doctrine It is fascinating.

In the middle of the book, the authors take on the task of describing the Computer Network Operations (CNO) Spectrum; a spectrum that ranges from the very passive form of Computer Network Defense (CND) through the more active forms of Computer Network Exploitation (CNE) and Computer Network Attack (CNA). It is indeed a spectrum too because the delineation between where CND, CNE and CNA start and stop is not always clean and precise. There is overlap. And somewhere along that same spectrum is where law enforcement organizations and counter-intelligence groups operate. You can get lost fairly quickly without a guide and the authors provide that function admirably. The only thing missing from these chapters is a nice diagram that encapsulates theconcept.

Along the way the reader gets a nice primer on the legal issues surrounding Cyber Warfare, the ethics that apply, what it takes to be a cyber warrior and a small glimpse over the horizon about what the future of Cyber Warfare might bring. In the end, Winterfield and Andress get high marksfor encapsulating this complex material into an easy-to-understand manual; a foundational document that most military cyber warriors should have at their fingertips and a book that should reside on the shelf of anybody interested in the topic.
Firefox

Submission + - Visualizing behavior tracking cookies with Firefox (extremetech.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Using Firefox, and a new (open source) add-on called Collusion, you can see for yourself just how extensive the third-party behavior tracking system is. Just leave the Collusion website open, browse the web for a bit, and then return to see that your favorite websites are letting at least four or five behavior tracking companies follow you around the web.
Open Source

Submission + - How Long Will Oracle Stick With Open Source? (infoworld.com) 1

Submitted by
snydeq
snydeq writes: "The fact that Oracle has handed over the keys to two major open source projects in recent weeks has some questioning the fate of other prominent open source projects Oracle took on in the wake of its 2010 acquisition of Sun. But while OpenOffice.org and Hudson provided little commercial opportunity for Oracle, it appears that Oracle has plans to keep rein on NetBeans, MySQL, and GlassFish contrary to expectations, analysts contend."
AI

Submission + - World's best chess engine plagiarized open source (extremetech.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Rybka, the winner of the last four World Computer Chess Championships, has been found guilty by a panel of 34 chess engine programmers of plagiarizing two open-source chess engines: Crafty and Fruit. The governing body of the WCCC, the International Computer Games Association, is even demanding that Rybka's author — the international chess master and MIT graduate Vasik Rajlich — returns the trophies and prize money that he fraudulently won. Rybka will no longer be allowed to compete in the World Championships, and the ICGA is asking other tournaments around the world to do the same.
Facebook

Submission + - Facebook More Hated Than Banks, Utilities (itworld.com)

Submitted by
jfruhlinger
jfruhlinger writes: "According to the American Customer Satisfaction Index, Facebook raises a lot of ire among its customers — more than Bank of America or AT&T Mobility. This bodes ill for the company — as blogger Chris Nerney points out, many of the others on the most-hated list are utilities and other companies with monopolies, which can hold customers despite bad service. At least Facebook edged out MySpace."
Security

Submission + - Will 2011 be the year of mobile malware? (networkworld.com)

Submitted by alphadogg
alphadogg writes: Perhaps one of the most common predictions of the last six years has been that mobile malicious software will suddenly proliferate, driven by widespread adoption of smartphones with advanced OSes. None of those prognostications have really come to fruition, but it's likely that the coming year will bring a host of new malicious applications. Users — while generally aware of threats aimed at their desktop computers and laptops — have a good chance of being caught flat-footed with their mobile phones.

In the third quarter of this year, up to 80 million smartphones were sold around the world, which accounted for about 20 percent of the total number of mobile phones sold, according to statistics published last month by analyst firm Gartner.

Experts say the threats against those devices are going to come in several categories, including rogue applications. In September, researchers from security vendor Fortinet discovered a mobile component for Zeus, a notorious piece of banking malware that steals account credentials. The mobile component, which targeted Symbian Series 60 devices or BlackBerrys, intercepted one-time passcodes used to verify transactions.

Other threats will include traditional malware, privacy/data collection issues, and social engineering.
Piracy

Submission + - RIAA, MPAA recruit MasterCard as Internet Police (myce.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Two weeks ago, MasterCard felt the wrath of Anonymous Operation Payback-style DDoS attacks after refusing to process payments that were intended to fund WikiLeaks, the website which began leaking confidential US diplomatic cables last month. Now, the company is preparing to head down another controversial path by pledging to deny transactions which support websites that host pirated movies, music, games, or other copyrighted content.

MasterCard lobbyists have also been in talks with entertainment industry trade groups, including the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), and have made it clear that the company will support the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA), sources close to the talks have said.

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