Slashdot Mirror

patiwat writes "Newly installed Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva's first act was to send a spam SMS to tens of millions of Thai cell phone subscribers. The message, signed 'Your PM,' urged people to help him solve the Thai political crisis and respond with their postal code at a charge of 3 baht (10 US cents). The new premier was criticized for violating privacy regulations."

belmolis writes "If the CIA is right to attribute recent blackouts to cyberwarfare, cyberwarfare is no longer science fiction but reality. In a recent op-ed piece and a detailed scholarly paper, legal scholar Duncan Hollis raises the question of whether existing international law is adequate for regulating cyberwarfare. He concludes that it is not: 'Translating existing rules into the IO context produces extensive uncertainty, risking unintentional escalations of conflict where forces have differing interpretations of what is permissible. Alternatively, such uncertainty may discourage the use of IO even if it might produce less harm than traditional means of warfare. Beyond uncertainty, the existing legal framework is insufficient and overly complex. Existing rules have little to say about the non-state actors that will be at the center of future conflicts. And where the laws of war do not apply, even by analogy, an overwhelmingly complex set of other international and foreign law rules purport to govern IO.'"

eldavojohn writes "The United States' Department of Energy is stating that corn based fuel is not the future. From the article, "I'm not going to predict what the price of corn is going to do, but I will tell you the future of biofuels is not based on corn," U.S. Deputy Energy Secretary Clay Sell said in an interview. Output of U.S. ethanol, which is mostly made from corn, is expected to jump in 2007 from 5.6 billion gallons per year to 8 billion gpy, as nearly 80 bio-refineries sprout up. In related news, Fidel Castro is blasting the production of corn fuel as a blatant waste of food that would otherwise feed 3 billion people who will die of hunger."

eldavojohn writes "John Dvorak is advising Apple to cease all efforts on the iPhone, citing the mobile handset business as a 'buzz saw waiting to chop up newbies.' With Apple's image as a 'hot company that can do no wrong' on the line, Dvorak warns that the extremely fad-prone marketplace for cell phones will quickly turn the 'hot' iPhone passe'. Unless the company has several new models in the pipeline to release after the original offering, he says, they're likely to fail. 'If it's smart it will call the iPhone a "reference design" and pass it to some suckers to build with someone else's marketing budget. Then it can wash its hands of any marketplace failures.'"

eldavojohn writes "124 bands — including R.E.M., Sarah McLachlan, and Pearl Jam — and 24 music labels are sending a clear message to keep Net traffic neutral. The Rock the Net campaign wants all traffic to be equal instead of allowing providers to charge a fee for certain pages to load faster than others. These musicians are the latest to join the Save the Internet campaign, which has the chair of the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet in its camp. Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., spoke at the campaign's kickoff. I think it's obvious that musicians (especially independents and small labels) will find themselves with the short end of the stick if they are asked to pay a fee to have their music streamed as fast as larger bands or even corporations."

eldavojohn writes "CNN Money is running a story about Siberia's rising tech industry.The movement towards tech is centered in Akademgorodok (Academy Town), with a 15 percent annual increase in the number of firms. Even though the area industry's worth is still fledgling compared to other areas, the growth cannot be ignored. 'President Vladimir Putin has also taken note, backing the construction of a $650 million technology business district with $100 million in state funding for infrastructure. "We simply mustn't waste this chance," Putin declared in Akademgorodok following a 2005 trip to tech-savvy India, "especially as other countries have achieved success without such a strong starting position." High tech is the sort of thing that the Kremlin, realizing that Russia's natural resources can't last forever, would like to develop.'"

patiwat writes "Recalling Ghost in the Shell, scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry in Martinsried have coupled living brain tissue to a semiconductor chip. This technique involves culturing razor-thin slices of the hippocampus region on the chip, enabling them to record neural communication between thousands of nerve cells in the brain tissue slice. The hippocampus is associated with temporary storage of memory. Employing the new technique, the scientists working under the direction of Peter Fromherz were able to visualize the influence of pharmaceutical compounds on the neural network, making the 'brainchip' an exciting test bed for neuropharmaceutical research, with potential for further development in neurochip prosthetics and neurocomputation. The researchers reported this news in the online edition of the Journal of Neurophysiology (May 10, 2006)."

johkir writes "SeaMonkey has been released. Mozilla.org's open source internet suite features a state-of-the-art web browser and powerful email client, as well as a WYSIWYG web page composer and a feature-rich IRC chat client. For web developers, mozilla.org's DOM inspector and JavaScript debugger tools are included as well. It also has a few nifty features, of particular interest: drag&drop reordering of tabs, support for a common inbox for multiple email accounts, SVG, , and phishing detection."

coaxial asks: "So it's that time again to consider taking the GRE. While there are many resources on the web about the general test (mostly vocabulary building), the computer science subject test seems to be lacking. This is a shame, since this test covers pretty much everything in the undergrad curriculum. So I ask the grad student readers of Slashdot: what resources, besides the one book I've found, did they use."

NBrooke271 writes "Max Ary, former Director of the Kansas Cosmosphere, has been hit with an eleven-count federal indictment, charging that he sold NASA space artifacts on loan to the museum, including an astronaut's in-flight T-shirt, a control panel from Air Force One and an Apollo 12 water valve for a personal profit of around $180,000. 'Mr. Ary, on behalf of the Cosmosphere, continued to sign documents reporting and verifying to NASA that the watch was still in its possession and collection,' said U.S. Attorney Eric Melgren. Ary currently serves as the Executive Director of Omniplex Science Museum in Oklahoma City, where he has taken a leave of absence. Read official statements from the Cosmosphere, the Omniplex, and Ary's attorney regarding the indictment."

sinnergy writes "One of the Midwest's only remaining "hacker" cons, Notacon, will be happening April 8-10, 2005 in Cleveland. As an interesting subtext, an extraordinary amount of interest in independent media coverage for this event has been occurring. One project includes Jason Scott's Notacon Radio project. The Packet Sniffers are doing their own Notacon TV project. In addition, numerous other online media outlets, oline radio shows and bloggers have really picked up on the idea of events like these being truly valuable to the geek community. Even the local geek radio show is keen on the idea. Richard Thieme, one of the event's selected speakers, has promoted the hacker con as being one of the final bastions of open speech. Is this the birth of a new trend or is this simply geeks doing what they always do... spreading the word about something new and different going on in their world?"

TedCheshireAcad writes "Microsoft has apparently settled its antitrust case with the state of Arizona by offering $104 million in product vouchers. Arizona consumers in the state from 1996 to 2002 will get $15 for their past operating system purchases and $9 for past application purchases. Public schools in Arizona will get 50% of unclaimed vouchers and 50% of vouchers that have been claimed but not redeemed for software products. I remember when lawsuits were settled with money, not monopoly propogation."

Willy K. writes "Technology comes to the rescue when disaster strikes and your pitcher runneth dry. These Cornell students have rigged up beer pitchers that wirelessly advertise to the central serving station when they are empty, prompting alert wait staff to bring another round." Add a few steins and you're all set.

Porthos asks: "Like many in the Slashdot community (though not all), I'm kind of bored at work. With tech work, there's always something more interesting than what I'm doing because I only have a few years experience and a Bachelor's degree. I want to go to grad school to study Computer Forensics, but I haven't a clue about where to start. Have any Slashdot readers taken this path? Are there any major universities that cater to this field? I know that some organizations, such as the FBI, have teams dedicated to Computer Forensics, but what is the rest of the forensics job market like?"

Rathumos writes "The network security world has been waiting patiently for a definitive study of internet worms and defenses against them. Defense and Detection Strategies against Internet Worms by Dr. Jose Nazario has arrived to fill that space with a clear and concise analysis of the current state of worm defense." Read on for the rest of Rathumos' review. Defense and Detection Strategies against Internet Worms author Jose Nazario pages 322 publisher Artech House rating 10 reviewer Duncan Lowne ISBN 1580535372 summary This book provides a solid approach toward detection and mitigation of worm-based attacks.

Publishing a book on a subject as dynamic as internet worms can never result in a complete volume. The near-weekly outbreaks of modified versions of old worms and completely new designs is enough to frustrate the efforts of even the most prolific anti-virus software developers, let alone those who try to provide an overview of their study.

Nevertheless, Nazario accomplishes a clear and concise summary of the state of worms today. Seeded by a paper ('The Future of Internet Worms', Nazario, Anderson, Connelly, Wash) written in 2001, Defense and Detection Strategies against Internet Worms encourages the reader to focus on the directions worm development might take in the future, with a specific view toward anticipation of, and prepartion for, future attacks.

The book begins with a discussion of the departure worms take from traditional computer virii. An outline of the benefits for the black-hat toward a worm-based attack, as well as a brief analysis of the threat model posed by worms, provide ample reason for the computer security professional to take the study of internet worms very seriously.

Beyond this introduction, the book is laid out in four major sections. The first introduces to the reader some background information crucial to the study of worms. The author discusses the history and taxonomy of past worm outbreaks, from their sci-fi origins (think John Brunner's Shockwave Rider) through modern-day outbreaks. A thorough analysis of various worms' traffic patterns is presented, with data broken down by infection rates, number of infected hosts, and number of sources probing specific subnets. Finally, the construction and lifecycle of worms are presented, with particular attention paid to the interaction between the worms' propagation techniques and the progression of their lifecycles.

The second section of the book (ch. 6 - 8) studies the trends exhibited by past worm outbreaks. Beginning with an examination of the processes and mechanisms of infection, it progresses on to a survey of the network topologies generated by a worm's distribution. Specific infection patterns are examined, along with case studies of worm outbreaks that have exhibited such patterns. Further, this section examines the common characteristics of vulnerable targets, from older UNIX and VMS mainframes through desktop systems onward to infrastructure equipment and embedded systems. A discussion of the payload transmission methods that have made recent worm attacks so devastatingly effective, and an explaination of why liberal use of a clue-hammer on users is not by itself enough to control and prevent further outbreaks, complement chapter nine's analysis and speculation of the future of internet worms.

Section three (ch. 9 - 11) focuses on worm detection strategies, and is more distinctly aimed at the already-overworked network security professional. Effective methods of detecting scans and analyzing a worm's scan engine are presented with a focus on timely and efficient protection from further infection. Monitoring techniques for quickly recognizing, analyzing and responding to worm outbreaks leads into a detailed description of well-placed honeypots and dark network monitors ("black holes"). Discussion of the (so-far) most effective method of worm detection, signature analysis, completes the section, and covers host-based and logfile signatures, along with a brief overview of analyzing logfiles using commonly available utilities.

The final section of the book (ch. 12 - 16), per the book's namesake, aims at defense strategies against worm outbreaks. Beginning with the obvious first steps which anyone reading the book ought to have implemented (firewalls, virus detection software, sandboxing, and patching-patching-patching), the section progresses into less widely used but equally important proxy-based defense methods, and continues on to cover slowing down infection rates and fighting back against existing worm networks. For the sake of thoroughness, an overview of the legal implications of attacking worm nodes receives its fair share of attention simply to alert the reader of the potential pitfalls of proactive defense.

Defense and Detection Strategies against Internet Worms is decidedly aimed at the experienced network security professional, but holds a much broader appeal than most technical books. With its thorough historical analysis of worm progression over the past thirty years, anyone with even a remote interest in the past, present or future of the only network security issues to consistently make headlines in the mainstream press will find this both an entertaining and enlightening read. Overall, it makes a valuable addition to any geek's bookshelf.

You can purchase Defense and Detection Strategies against Internet Worms from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

philthedrill writes "CNN is reporting that the sun has fired another large solar flare towards Earth. This one could arrive as early as Thursday (Oct. 30th) afternoon. (insert end-of-the-world statement here)."

Jonboy X writes "CNet has an article detailing the resolution of a long-standing feud between open-source J2EE server vendor JBoss and Sun. It seems they've decided to break down and shell out the clams to be certified by Sun. Quoth Bob Bickel, JBoss's vice president of corporate development and strategy: 'Our core base of developers, a lot of them say they don't give a damn...But the reality is that a lot of big companies who are using this are moving into production.' JBoss gives away its server software and survives on support contracts."

Theaetetus writes "In a story on MacCentral, it's revealed that Adobe Systems is dropping support for the Mac in the new version of video editing app Premiere: 'If Apple's already doing an application, it makes the market for a third-party developer that much smaller,' said David Trescot, senior director of Adobe's digital video products group. In response to the news, Apple issued a statement welcoming Premiere customers to make the switch to the Mac and Final Cut Pro."

mbogosian asks: "I am not a sysadmin, nor am I a security expert, but I appreciate those who are. In response to a recent story, I went out and registered two domain names: opentraq.org and opentraq.net. I am hereby throwing down the gauntlet: I am willing to have them resolve to DNS servers belonging to a group of volunteers who wish to start and maintain an Open alternative to security services like BugTraq and others offered at the SecurityFocus website without being encumbered by the OIS Security Vulnerability Reporting And Response Process. I will continue to pay the renewal fees for the names as long as someone wants to continue the the effort. After the project becomes established and is maintained by a reputable (i.e., non-commercial) group of volunteers, I am willing transfer ownership of the domains to that group at no cost. Feel free to contact me if you are interested. Let the discussion begin! " Do you feel such a thing is necessary at this time? Why or why not?

PeterM from Berkeley writes "According to this news story, researchers may have finally developed a vaccine effective against malaria. Malaria kills 1 million people per year and sickens about 300 million, and is one of the big reasons the 3rd world is a mess. And as a bonus, it may be that the same vaccine may also protect against smallpox."

ctar writes "You couldn't ask for a more appropriate or schizophrenic slashdot story...The NYTimes online was the only one carrying the story according to Google News, so this is all you get."

benh57 writes "A student at Berkeley has come up with a novel approach for navigating small handheld displays. In effect the display is a "peephole" into a much larger information area. You see different parts of the display by moving the handheld around - no more tiny scrollbars. Check out the DiVX movies to see it in action. It even works in 3D!"

denisonbigred asks: "With all of the talks about disarming Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, and all of the news coming out about Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups use of technology, I tend to wonder what is being done about the possibility of informational warfare. There must be a few geeks over in Iraq, and angry, subversive, geeks must be at least as dangerous as Iraq's rag-tag army. Is this a legitimate concern, and does anyone know what, if anything, is being done to address it?"

sam_handelman writes "The nytimes has another astrophysics article up. Free subscription etc. It talks about how inflation predicts multiple universes, this week. Dennis Overbye wrote the article, which is nice if lightweight. More info on the theory of inflation. Inflation, which is harebrained on first examination, actually predicts stuff, giving it credibility. Want to be the Right Pinky of God? It may yet be possible."

captainstupid writes "The friendly folks at EPIC have working hard getting a build of the UT2003 demo ready for release. The official word from Mark Rein (VP of Epic games) is that the demo is done and it's being uploaded to the Infrogrames site as we speak. PlanetUnreal has the scoop including snippets from the IRC chat log. The linux demo is on the way as well! Gentlemen! Start your downloads!" With Icewind Dale 2 coming out recently, who has time for a FPS? Update: 09/15 02:00 GMT by T : HyperMagma submitted a link to the Linux version (as found on linuxgames.com) as well -- thanks.

thelenm writes "Fans of The Perl Journal will remember that it was bought by SysAdmin Magazine and recently ceased to exist altogether. Well, it's coming back as a monthly e-zine, which you can subscribe to for $1/month. With their new business model, they need at least 3,000 subscribers to go ahead with publication. The first issue is due out November 1, so subscribe now!"

Etcetera writes "David K. Every (of MacKiDo fame) has written an interesting article at iGeek about Copland vs. NeXT and the decisions that Apple made back in '95-96. Although most agree that bringing Steve Jobs back was a Good Thing, a lot of cool Apple-invented technologies got left by the wayside without a fair shot at proving themselves once NeXT came in. Was it always the right call? Functions as a cautionary tale about management vs. engineering as well."

!splut writes: "New Scientist has a story about a plan for an interesting new alternative power design. Australian company EnviroMission has recieved approval to construct a 130-meter wide, 1-kilometer tall tower that will generate electricity from currents of air heated within a 7-kilometer greenhouse surrounding the tower's base. It is predicted to generate 670-gigawatt hours of energy per year, providing a clean source of energy for some 200,000 homes."

dnxthx writes "According to this ZDNet article the design of the Playstation 3 chip is nearly complete. The PS3 chip will have near "supercomputer capabilities" --- including 1 TFLOP. Reportedly, this chip is being engineered with Linux in mind."

Slashback's updates tonight (below) bring you more information on chemically interesting furniture, old-school electronics in new-tech devices, and Brigham Young's ultra-strong building materials. Welcome to the home, car and wind-farm of the future, please mind your step.

Bratty kids get to sit near the volatile elements. Theodore Gray writes: "About a month ago there was a slashdot lively discussion about my wooden Periodic Table Table. A bunch of slashdot readers sent me elements for it: Thank you slashdot! Two people actually sent me free Ag and Pd, contrary to the jokes in the discussion. I decided the world could stand another periodic table website. Since all the eight dozen other periodic tables on the web have better reference information than mine, I used some Mathematica programs to generate links to many of them for each element. But my site is more beautiful. I'm going for science as art. Mine also has by far the best quality sample photos: High resolution, high quality macro shots of 89 samples so far."

Starts with a crank, too. ripaway writes "With all the recent stories about vaccuum tubes, I find it ironic that I stumbled on this today. Sterephile reports about the Panasonic CQ-TX5500D(link to Japanese site) car stereo that uses a vaccuum tube, with analog vu-meters. It also plays mp3 files 8-) Naturally, this is for the Japan market only."

Sounds like material for a Burning Man tent ... nm1m writes "A superstrong composite developed by Brigham Young University scientists and students has received financing for its first practical application -- mammoth wind turbine towers able to more than triple the electrical output of existing steel models. Read the story here."

We mentioned this interesting lattice-looking material a few weeks ago.

Sucking requires a context to be good or bad. Sun Tzu writes "After the recent discussion on bad software, how about a different reason for why software sucks? Maybe we programmers and users don't have it quite so bad after all."

That dadburn whippersnapper, why when I was a boy ... Junks Jerzey writes "I remember reading about Halcyon Days: Interviews with Classic Computer and Video Game Programmers five years ago in Wired News. Pretty cool stuff, with an introduction by some guy called John Romero. It was available for a long time as a commercial product that used HTML for formatting, but it's now completely online, as reported by the author."

benh57 writes "KDE has finally been ported to Mac OS X, by the Fink team. Source packages and pre-built binaries are now available. Read the announcement and instructions for installing. Woohoo!"

RasputinAXP writes "According to this Yahoo article, Spider-Man picked up an Amazing $114 million dollars at the box office, squishing Harry Potter's $90.3 million like a bug. More coverage is available at Box Office Prophets' new Weekend Wrapup, including analysis."

jgrr asks: "I'd like to be able to take a DVI file and convert it to some less palatable format, like MS Word. Some journals I want to submit papers to accept electronic copies as either MS Word or WordPerfect documents, not as TeX. (These are in ecology and zoology, not math journals). People I ask to look at papers don't use TeX either, and like to make the changes to the text itself, so PDF won't work. I know about latex2rtf, but I use some different packages and BiBTeX, and I'd rather not have to re-write the paper in Word after converting it. It seems like the DVI level is better than the TeX level for this, but I can't seem to find any existing software that does it. Any ideas?"

slinted writes: "Bottomquark recently posted that Nasa scientists are looking for a few good men (5"8' or less) to participate in hypergravity experiments. The experiments entail 7 'habitation sessions,' 5 of which will last up to 22 hours of spinning at up to 2G in a chamber 7.6 feet long and 6 feet wide. Since the experiments are at Ames Research Center, in Mountain View CA, this might be perfect for some techies 'in between projects.'"

sam_handelman writes " The people at Advanced Cell Technology, best known for their expertise in cloning, the same people behind the clonal stem cell kidney recently discussed on slashdot, have developed a way to "trick" an Egg cell into self-fertilizing. If this Zygote (fertilized Egg) were viable, it would be a clone of the mother; the new york times reports a plan to harvest them for stem cells, in order to make stem cells by a means acceptable to religious groups." Essentially, they've been able to force parthogenesis.

kalamazoo904 writes: "Off the Boston Globe and CNN newswires: Everyone's favorite convicted monopoly asked for more time to make up tall tales, but good Judge Kollar-Kotelly would have none of it. Penalty phase proceeds March 11 as planned."

tekniklr writes: "They just released Kernel 2.4.16. Download it here, and you can read the changelog here. This hopefully fixes the error that 2.4.15 had of corrupting filesystems on unmount." Update: 11/26 14:14 GMT by T : p.s. Don't forget to look in the mirrors.

Xaleth Nuada wrote to us about a Wired article that talks a school in Colorado choosing Linux over the traditional choices. The reason? Prohibitive costs for licensing, of course. The school's network is maintained by parental volunteers, and thanks to Linux, can be easily maintained remotely. And for what schools use computers for - primarily the Internet, it's a great solution.