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PC Makers In Desperate Need of a Reboot
Posted by News Fetcher on August 27 '12 at 11:00 AM

By samzenpus from Slashdot's road-less-traveled department:
nmpost writes in with a story about how hard it is to be a successful PC company in today's world. "Hewlett-Packard Co. used to be known as a place where innovative thinkers flocked to work on great ideas that opened new frontiers in technology. These days, HP is looking behind the times. Coming off a five-year stretch of miscalculations, HP is in such desperate need of a reboot that many investors have written off its chances of a comeback. Consider this: Since Apple Inc. shifted the direction of computing with the release of the iPhone in June 2007, HP's market value has plunged by 60 percent to $35 billion. During that time, HP has spent more than $40 billion on dozens of acquisitions that have largely turned out to be duds so far. HP might have been unchallenged for the ignominious title as technology's most troubled company if not for one its biggest rivals, Dell Inc. Like HP, Dell missed the trends that have turned selling PCs into one of technology's least profitable and slowest growing niches. As a result, Dell's market value has also plummeted by 60 percent, to about $20 billion, since the iPhone's release."

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New Face Paint Protects Soldiers Against Bomb Blasts
Posted by News Fetcher on August 27 '12 at 10:30 AM

By samzenpus from Slashdot's not-in-the-face department:
Zothecula writes "For millennia, face paint has helped soldiers avoid being seen by enemy forces. Recently, however, a team of scientists from the University of Southern Mississippi announced that a new type of face paint may soon also be able to protect against the heat of bomb blasts and other explosions. Additionally, a clear version of the paint could be used by civilian firefighters."

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Voyage to the ATX Hackerspace in Austin, Texas (Video)
Posted by News Fetcher on August 27 '12 at 10:15 AM

By Roblimo from Slashdot's where-to-go-if-you-need-a-laser-cutter-at-3-a.m. department:
The place is big. It has lots of tools. And bats. And the people there not only make things, but play games and just plain hang out. Some are making a TARDIS they hope to take to Burning Man. Others are college student roboteers, working on their entry in a regional IEEE robotics contest. They're cutting, shaping, drilling, soldering, programming, talking, and generally having a great time. Timothy says they're Texas-friendly, too, so go ahead and stop on by if you're in the neighborhood. They're open 24/7, so whenever you have an urge to make something, ATX Hackerspace is ready to help you satisfy that urge.

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Experts Develop 3rd-Party Patch For New Java 0day
Posted by News Fetcher on August 27 '12 at 09:30 AM

By samzenpus from Slashdot's patch-it-up department:
tsu doh nimh writes "A new exploit for a zero-day vulnerability in Oracle's Java JRE version 7 and above is making the rounds. A Metasploit module is now available to attack the flaw, and word in the underground is that it will soon be incorporated into BlackHole, a widely used browser exploit pack. KrebsOnSecurity.com talked to the BlackHole developer, who said the Java exploit would be worth at least $100,000 if sold privately. Instead, this vulnerability appears to have been first spotted in targeted/espionage attacks that used the exploit to drop the remote control malware Poison Ivy, according to experts from Deep End Research. Because Oracle has put Java on a quarterly patch cycle, and the next cycle is not scheduled until October, experts have devise and are selectively releasing an unofficial patch for the flaw."

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The Pirate Bay Launches Free VPN
Posted by News Fetcher on August 27 '12 at 08:45 AM

By samzenpus from Slashdot's vpn-ahoy department:
bs0d3 writes "The Pirate Bay team is going to be making the RIAA angry, with the launch of a new ad supported VPN service. PrivitizeVPN is available for free from thepiratebay. Instead of earning revenue through subscription as ipredator does, PrivitizeVPN comes packaged to install babylon search bar (adware). PrivitizeVPN appears to be available for windows users only at the moment. The Pirate Bay staff has a long history of promoting services that have no logs; e.g. , you can't get in trouble if your anonymized ip is subpoenaed by government officials. Although PrivitizeVPN is being released silently, with no press coverage, no official statement, and no comments from The Piratebay of any kind, people are assuming that PrivitizeVPN will have the same familiar data protection policies. A backup download location has been setup here for people who have limited access to thepiratebay domain."

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Google Distances Android From Samsung Patent Verdict
Posted by News Fetcher on August 27 '12 at 08:00 AM

By samzenpus from Slashdot's arms-length department:
Nerval's Lobster writes "On August 24, a California court ruled in favor of Apple in its patent-infringement case against Samsung, hitting the latter with a $1.05 billion fine. Tech pundits spent the weekend chattering about the possible repercussions of the decision, which Samsung will surely appeal. One of the biggest issues under discussion: how Apple's victory will affect Google Android, the operating system that powers the majority of Samsung's mobile devices, and itself a player in the patent-infringement actions shaking the tech world. For its part, Google made every effort to create some distance between Android and the smoking ruins of Samsung's case. 'The court of appeals will review both infringement and the validity of the patent claims' the company wrote in a widely circulated statement. 'Most of these don't relate to the core Android operating system, and several are being re-examined by the US Patent Office.' Google didn't end there. 'The mobile industry is moving fast and all players—including newcomers—are building upon ideas that have been around for decades,' the statement continued. 'We work with our partners to give consumers innovative and affordable products, and we don't want anything to limit that."

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Would You Pay an Internet Broadband Tax?
Posted by News Fetcher on August 27 '12 at 07:15 AM

By samzenpus from Slashdot's show-me-the-money department:
An anonymous reader writes "Remember the Internet Tax Freedom Act? The whole point was to prevent the government from ever taxing the Internet. But that's the proposal from the FCC — and backed by companies like Google, AT&T and Sprint. Would you pay a buck or two extra for fast access — or vote for someone who thinks you should? 'If members of Congress understood that the FCC is contemplating a broadband tax, they'd sit up and take notice,' said Derek Turner, research director for Free Press, a consumer advocacy group that opposes the tax."

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VMware To Join OpenStack Foundation
Posted by News Fetcher on August 27 '12 at 06:45 AM

By samzenpus from Slashdot's welcome-to-the-club department:
hypnosec writes "OpenStack Foundation, backed by virtualization players like Rackspace, Red Hat and IBM, is going to get a unexpected new member – Vmware. According to a post on the OpenStack Foundation Wiki, the agenda of the Board of Directors meeting on August 28 includes the Gold membership of VMware as one of the topics. VMware is not the only one applying for Gold membership as Intel and NEC are also standing in line for their memberships as well."

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Stanford Researchers Discover the 'Anternet'
Posted by News Fetcher on August 27 '12 at 06:30 AM

By samzenpus from Slashdot's ant-power department:
stoilis writes "A collaboration between Deborah Gordon, a Stanford ant biologist, and Balaji Prabhakar, a computer scientist, has revealed that the behavior of harvester ants, as they forage for food, mirrors the protocols that control traffic on the Internet. From the article: 'Prabhakar wrote an ant algorithm to predict foraging behavior depending on the amount of food – i.e., bandwidth – available. Gordon's experiments manipulate the rate of forager return. Working with Stanford student Katie Dektar, they found that the TCP-influenced algorithm almost exactly matched the ant behavior found in Gordon's experiments.

"Ants have discovered an algorithm that we know well, and they've been doing it for millions of years," Prabhakar said.' The abstract is published in the Aug. 23 issue of PLoS Computational Biology."

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Dropbox Adds Two-Factor Authentication
Posted by News Fetcher on August 27 '12 at 05:45 AM

By samzenpus from Slashdot's checking-it-twice department:
angry tapir writes "File-sharing service Dropbox is now offering two-factor authentication, a system that makes it much harder for hackers to capture valid credentials for a person's account. Dropbox, one of the most widely used web-based storage services, said last month it planned on introducing two-factor authentication after user names and passwords were stolen from another website and used to access accounts."

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What Developers Can Learn From Anonymous
Posted by News Fetcher on August 27 '12 at 05:00 AM

By samzenpus from Slashdot's pay-attention department:
snydeq writes "Regardless of where you stand on Anonymous' tactics, politics, or whatever, I think the group has something to teach developers and development organizations,' writes Andrew Oliver. 'As leader of an open source project, I can revoke committer access for anyone who misbehaves, but membership in Anonymous is a free-for-all. Sure, doing something in Anonymous' name that even a minority of "members" dislike would probably be a tactical mistake, but Anonymous has no trademark protection under the law; the organization simply has an overall vision and flavor. Its members carry out acts based on that mission. And it has enjoyed a great deal of success — in part due to the lack of central control. Compare this to the level of control in many corporate development organizations. Some of that control is necessary, but often it's taken to gratuitous lengths. If you hire great developers, set general goals for the various parts of the project, and collect metrics, you probably don't need to exercise a lot of control to meet your requirements."

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The Sweet Mystery of Science
Posted by News Fetcher on August 27 '12 at 04:15 AM

By timothy from Slashdot's the-leaven-is-the-best-part department:
Hugh Pickens writes "Biologist David P. Barash writes in the LA Times that as a scientist he has been participating in a deception for more than four decades — a benevolent and well intentioned deception — but a deception nonetheless. 'When scientists speak to the public or to students, we talk about what we know, what science has discovered,' writes Barash. 'After all, we work hard deciphering nature's secrets and we're proud whenever we succeed. But it gives the false impression that we know pretty much everything, whereas the reality is that there's a whole lot more that we don't know.' Teaching and writing only about what is known risks turning science into a mere catalog of established facts, suggesting that 'knowing' science is a matter of memorizing says Barash. 'It is time, therefore, to start teaching courses, giving lectures and writing books about what we don't know about biology, chemistry, geology, physics, mathematics.' Barash isn't talking about the obvious unknowns, such as 'Is there life on other planets?' Looking just at his field, evolutionary biology, the unknowns are immense: How widespread are nonadaptive traits? To what extent does evolution proceed by very small, gradual steps versus larger, quantum jumps? What is the purpose of all that 'junk DNA"? Did human beings evolve from a single lineage, or many times, independently? Why does homosexuality persist? According to Barash scientists need to keep celebrating and transmitting what they know but also need to keep their eyes on what science doesn't know if the scientific enterprise is to continue attracting new adherents who will keep pushing the envelope of our knowledge rather than resting satisfied within its cozy boundaries."

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Saudi Aramco Reveals Cyber Attack Hit 30,000 Workstations
Posted by News Fetcher on August 27 '12 at 01:15 AM

By timothy from Slashdot's running-windows-for-workstations-I-guess department:
An anonymous reader writes "Saudi Aramco, the world's biggest oil producer, has resumed operating its main internal computer networks after a virus infected about 30,000 of its workstations in mid-August. The group, calling itself the 'Cutting Sword of Justice,' claimed to have hacked Aramco systems in several countries before sending a virus across 30,000 computers, achieving a 75 percent infection rate of all the company's systems. It refuted suggestions that a nation state was behind the attack."

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Russia's Former KGB Invests In Political Propaganda Spambots
Posted by News Fetcher on August 26 '12 at 10:15 PM

By timothy from Slashdot's in-post-soviet-russia department:
An anonymous reader writes "The newspaper Kommersant [Google translation] reports that the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (formerly part of the KGB) has invested 30 million roubles (USD $940,000) on 'blog and social network intelligence' programs. A small part of that money is used for surveillance and analytics, but 22 million roubles (USD $690,000) is invested in 'mass distribution of messages in social networks with a view to the formation of public opinion.' Which presumably can be rephrased as 'launching massive pro-Kremlin astroturfing propaganda spambots in order to stifle and undermine political dissent.' The brazen Russian government acknowledgement of this investment indicates that the Kremlin does not think of such activities to be in any way illegal or unethical. No words whether these spambots would respect any anti-spam laws or the Terms and Conditions of victim websites. But hey, now you can accuse anyone you disagree with online of being a 'KGB bot'!"

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New Flat Lens Focuses Without Distortion
Posted by News Fetcher on August 26 '12 at 07:15 PM

By timothy from Slashdot's ok-now-let-me-choose-my-frames department:
yahyamf writes "Applied physicists at Harvard have created an ultrathin, flat lens that focuses light without the distortions of conventional lenses. 'Our flat lens opens up a new type of technology,' says principal investigator Federico Capasso. 'We're presenting a new way of making lenses. Instead of creating phase delays as light propagates through the thickness of the material, you can create an instantaneous phase shift right at the surface of the lens. It's extremely exciting.'" And by "ultrathin," they mean it — 60 nanometers thin. The big advantage for this technology, aimed at telecommunications signals, is that "the flat lens eliminates optical aberrations such as the 'fish-eye' effect that results from conventional wide-angle lenses. Astigmatism and coma aberrations also do not occur with the flat lens, so the resulting image or signal is completely accurate and does not require any complex corrective techniques."

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Tata Intends To Sell Air-Powered Car In India
Posted by News Fetcher on August 26 '12 at 04:15 PM

By timothy from Slashdot's wish-my-car-sucked-too department:
Diggester writes "Tata Motors (an Indian car manufacturer) is changing things up with the first car to run on air, the Airpod. The Airpod's technology was originally created in France at Motor Development International but has since been bought by Tata in hopes of bringing it to the Indian consumer car market. With virtually zero emissions and at the cost of about a penny per kilometer, it is definitely one of the most environmentally and economically friendly vehicles in the world. The tank holds about 175 liters of compressed air that can be filled at special stations or by activating the on-board electric motor to suck air in from the outside. Costing about $10,000, this car could beat out most smart cars from the market." If flying cars aren't available, sucking cars seem like a nice stop-gap.

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Arctic Sea Ice Hits Record Low Extent
Posted by News Fetcher on August 26 '12 at 03:00 PM

By timothy from Slashdot's from-some-angles-at-least department:
mdsolar writes "Arctic sea ice has hit a record low extent for the period of satellite observation. Further, this record has been set in August when the minimum annual sea ice extent (and the prior record) has always come in September. Further still, the ice is still retreating as rapidly as it was in June and July when normally the decrease of sea ice extent slows in August. It is thus possible the the final minimum sea ice extend for 2012 will be seen in October rather than September as has always occurred in the past. More than one monitoring effort agree on the existence of a new record."

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A (Mostly) 3-D Printed Race Car Hits 140 Km/h
Posted by News Fetcher on August 26 '12 at 01:45 PM

By timothy from Slashdot's yeah-but-only-in-metric-kilometers department:
An anonymous reader writes with an excerpt from a story describing the efforts of a 16-person team called "Group T" competing in the Formula Student 2012 challenge. They've created a car called the "Areion," described as the world's first 3D printed race car. "The Areion is not wholly 3D printed but most of it actually is. It was tested on Hockenheim race circuit and
went from zero to 100km/h in just four seconds. Maximum speed Areion achieved on the same circuit was 141km/h."

The car features an electric drive train and bio-composite materials, and was created using a printing system called Materialise.

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Hackers Dump Millions of Records From Banks, Politicians
Posted by News Fetcher on August 26 '12 at 12:15 PM

By timothy from Slashdot's no-such-thing-as-the-afl-cia department:
hypnosec writes "TeamGhostShell, a team linked with the infamous group Anonymous, is claiming that they have hacked some major U.S. institutions including major banking institutions, accounts of politicians and has posted those details online. The dumps comprising of millions of accounts has been let loose on the web by the hacking collective. The motivation behind the hack, the group claims, is to protest against banks, politicians and the hackers who have been captured by law enforcement agencies."

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Ask Slashdot: How Did You Become a Linux Professional?
Posted by News Fetcher on August 26 '12 at 10:45 AM

By timothy from Slashdot's slide-your-pedigree-through-the-slot-worm department:
First time accepted submitter ternarybit writes "By 'Linux professional,' I mean anyone in a paid IT position who uses or administers Linux systems on a daily basis. Over the past five years, I've developed an affection for Linux, and use it every day as a freelance IT consultant. I've built a breadth of somewhat intermediate skills, using several distros for everything from everyday desktop use, to building servers from scratch, to performing data recovery. I'm interested in taking my skills to the next level — and making a career out of it — but I'm not sure how best to appeal to prospective employers, or even what to specialize in (I refuse to believe the only option is 'sysadmin,' though I'm certainly not opposed to that). Specifically, I'm interested in what practical steps I can take to build meaningful skills that an employer can verify, and will find valuable. So, what do you do, and how did you get there? How did you conquer the catch-22 of needing experience to get the position that gives you the experience to get the position? Did you get certified, devour books and manpages, apprentice under an expert, some combination of the above, or something else entirely?"

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