Slashdot Mirror

AmiMoJo writes "Hackers have discovered the root password for Vodafone femtocells, devices that provide the user with a mobile phone signal piggybacked onto their home broadband. The root password was 'newsys.' Once root access is obtained, phones can be forced to connect to the cell and private keys captured, allowing the user to spoof the victim's phone and potentially make calls or send texts on their account, not to mention eavesdrop."

minutetraders sends word of an announcement from Google. Quoting: "Starting this coming Sunday, July 17, the iriver Story HD e-reader will be available for sale in Target stores nationwide and on Target.com. The iriver Story HD is the first e-reader integrated with the open Google eBooks platform." It appears iriver has released source for the GPL components on the device, unlike the last time around.

CWmike writes "Microsoft disabled the search tool on its Safety & Security Center on Saturday after attackers poisoned results with links to pornographic URLs. The company restored the website's search field early Monday afternoon ET. Alex Eckelberry, the general manager of GFI Software's security group and CEO of Sunbelt Software, said search poisoning is not unusual — but this is different. 'This is crafty,' Eckelberry said. 'This isn't normal search poisoning. It's poisoning the results with actual searches. Users were getting back a prior search as a search result.'"

When someone offers you the once in a lifetime chance to see something as historic as the final Space Shuttle Flight: You go. As a child I assembled a puzzle of the Challenger illuminated by those bright xenon lights, and dreamt of space flight. And last week I went to see the last launch the world will ever see of a Space Shuttle. Atlantis. STS-135. What follows is the story of my brief stay at the Kennedy Space Center.

My flight was uneventful. Despite spending more time getting my luggage and rental car in Orlando than I actually spent FLYING from Detroit, I checked into an Orlando hotel with enough time to get a few hours sleep before my early morning drive to the Kennedy Space Center. Traffic wasn't bad at all with like 30 hours to go. I got my badge using 2 forms of ID: My Drivers License, and My Michigan Fishing License. This tickled me immensely (I had my passport in my bag just in case. I wasn't taking any chances!). As I drove up the road, I saw the VAB from miles away. I saw it once before when I was in middle school. It was massive then, and even bigger now. I choked up a bit for what wouldn't be the last time.

After several security checkpoints I got parked, and found my way to the Press Site. I was more than bit lost. This place was pure chaos: I was told that 2600 press had been accredited for this event: surpassing the 1500 for the previous mission, and well beyond the sub-1000 that has been typical for launches. It was gonna be insane, and everyone knew it. Every inch of wall had someone leaning or sitting against it. Laptops and Cameras filled every inch of desk and most inches of floor as well.

Over the course of the day, it was increasingly gloomy outside. The skies were dark. The 30% chance of launch kept everyone a bit in the dumps. During a press conference, a series of massive thunderclaps made people on camera jump, and everyone present just sorta accepted that Friday would see a scrub. Various statistics and terms were tossed about by the folks in the press room that all combined to tell a story that it was basically time to call it a day.

I met up with several of the guys from Spacearium: Matt Travis was the guy who helped me get my badge. He's a wiry fellow utterly obsessed with all things space. Strong opinions. Sarcastic. Amazingly dedicated to his work. When sane people were trying to sleep, he was constantly tweeting or posting to his site. He wanted to get the news out a few minutes before his competitors. He is dedicated to his work, and incredibly intense. The sort of fellow you'd much prefer on your side. You should really read his site: he craves the traffic, and he deserves it. He also works on The Ares Institute, Inc which is a non-profit that is trying to get students interested in space projects to get them into math & science. You can donate some cash- they are a non-profit.

Working with Matt were some cool photographers: Aubrey Hatcher normally photographs people. Her portfolio is awesome- If you live near the space coast and need a photographer for a wedding or your kids, you could do no better. I was seriously jealous of her skill. Mike Killian was very clear: he doesn't want to take pictures of weddings: he was all about the machines. As far as I can tell, he basically had been living at KSC taking cool pictures of whatever he could get access to. His pictures put mine to shame. He shot countless images that deserve to be your background image.

Carl Darden works at a small observatory. He and I were noobs together, riding on buses, hanging out with our jaws on the floor. Lloyd Behrendt is the eccentric artist type: he photographs on film and paints the prints for galleries. He's been watching launches forever and had tons of energy.

There were countless other cool people I met too. Several Slashdot readers tapped me on the shoulder, asked me questions, or even shared an umbrella with me while I needed to change a lens in the rain. It's always a wonderful experience to encounter Slashdot readers out in the "real" world. We're a breed apart. We smell our own. A bit of that social dysfunction coupled with passion and knowledge. I spend so much time isolated in Michigan that I often forget how real you guys are, and how we all are sort of a 'type'.

For me, besides the launch, all I wanted was a chance to get close and see Atlantis on the pad. It didn't look like I would get that chance since there was a thousand more people here than they really could handle, the buses were limiting folks. 3 buses lined up, and a hundred photographers laid their expensive gear in a long row to be nuzzled by bomb sniffing dogs. After more than a half our of waiting, the clouds burst. Since I was standing by on the off chance of an empty seat, I grabbed my bag and ran. I couldn't have been wetter if I jumped in a pool by the time I made it back to the press center.

The NASA Tweetup buses left before the photographers. They got to see the gantry retraction. There was palpable bitterness by the reporters I talked to. I think they pretty universally understood the importance of this grassroots thing, but it didn't help things knowing that these upstarts were lollygagging in an air conditioned tent with Elmo, and jumping in front of professional photographer's shots. And they got to see the retraction: a pretty big event around these parts, while the vast majority of the press stood in a downpour waiting to ride a bus with their gear under umbrellas and trash bags.

I got the last daytime bus. we traced the road to the landing pad, passing the crawler parked on the giant rocky road that STS-135, and it's 134 predecessors traced before it. The shuttle loomed on the horizon, and as we parked, I was told that we were to stand on the crawler road. Hallowed ground to me. I stood slack-jawed, staring at this massive icon. The orange tank. The SRBs. And Atlantis itself. It was bigger and smaller than I imagined. I took some pictures that I later downloaded and was very happy with, but the vets complained about the clouds and haze. They spoke about how the story would be the clouds and the gloom and the sadness surrounding the end of the shuttle program.

I had a hard time sharing the pessimism: I was soaked. And giddy. When we got back, I told everyone I met "Did you know there's a Spaceship over there? Outside? Getting Rained on? A SPACESHIP! SERIOUSLY!". And it got better.

After a long walk to the cafeteria and a terrible dinner, Carl and I got in line for a "Sunset" photo opportunity. The bitter vets said that it would be just the same light as the daytime photos I had taken a few hours ago, but I knew this would be the last chance for me to get so close. I missed the first bus and wasn't really expecting to make it as the sun was dropping in the sky. But the long line worked in my favor: I got a seat on the very last bus- sitting near Klaus Wilkens, a photographer who had taken pictures for NASA as far back as Apollo. He told tales of days of old, of Haselblad cameras and film and the migration to digital.

The bus driver told us that the best bug repellent was some hand lotion and gin. I asked everyone I could how many launches they had seen. Some remembered STS-1. A few were around for the Challenger disaster. The knowing smiles were so sincere. They knew this was the end, but they all had a job to do. The NASA folks had a pride about them even tho I imagine almost every one of them is out of a job.

And then we arrived for the last time. There stood Atlantis illuminated by the giant spotlights lights as the sun fell. The cloudy skies didn't matter, everything was cloudy and then dark blues and rapidly turned black. I fired off a few pictures. I tried to take a picture of the shuttle reflected in a puddle but before I could get my exposure right the NASA escort made me get my ankle out of the road. (They are strict out there, but fair). The bugs were unbelievable: Giant hungry beasts out for my blood- I wished I had that Gin and Lotion combination the driver mentioned, if only to drink the gin. Everyone was swatting the monsters and being consumed alive. But it was totally worth it. I got a picture that I will treasure as long as I live. It's pretty close to that picture that I assembled in puzzle form in the 80s at the start of the shuttle program. Sure, other pictures will look more pro, but I took this one with my hands. My eyes. My camera. This really was mine. I was pretty emotional. I was torn when it was time to leave: the bugs were awful, but I wished I could have had a few more minutes in front of this symbol of my childhood. Or maybe a tent.

We had a long night ahead of us still. Tanking wasn't scheduled to start until 1:30am or so. If tanking was delayed, it meant we would all go back to homes and hotels for the night, returning the next day for a saturday launch But if tanking went ahead, it meant we would all be sleeping in our cars or at our desks briefly, waiting for a day that would start at 6am. To kill time we went out to the lagoon shore and Mike shot some beautiful time- lapse photos of the shuttle and the big xenons firing off into the clouds, as well as the giant clock and the VAB. He'll sell you a hi-res copy. It would be worth it it's picture 143-145 in that gallery: everyone buy some prints so he can buy a full frame camera!

I spent much of the evening waiting in the chair reserved in the press site for Make Magazine. I figured Tim O'Reily wouldn't mind to much! NASA confirmed tanking was a go, and I retired to sleep in the back seat of my rental Hyundai Elantra. It was one of the worst nights of sleep I've ever had. My 6 foot tall frame is not designed to sleep in a fetal position in the back seat of a compact car.

I awoke to my phone and a call to hurry! They were boarding the buses to the astrovan loading: the last time the public sees the astronauts before the launch. I hurried over, stopping quickly to set up my tripod on the shore, saving my spot for the launch that I still wasn't really expecting to happen. The storms from yesterday and the lightning and thunder seemed to ominous. I got in line just as the bomb sniffing dogs were doing their thing.

We spent a lot of time waiting for the astronauts. The wire services and more experienced photographers had set up a wall of ladders. I gave Carl my spare camera to take some pictures, but he was unsure how to use it, and ended up shooting over 100 out of focus pictures! While we were waiting people talked about the odds of a launch, and someone said something I hadn't heard: we were a go. That meant that if it was 11:26 right NOW, the weather would not be prohibitive. I started watching the skies more intently, and realized there was a lot more blue than there was at any point yesterday. For the first time, I thought that maybe I could actually see a shuttle launch today.

The astronauts came out and waved in their fashionably orange suits. It lasted just a few seconds, and then they boarded the van and were gone, on their way to space. A hoard of reporters returned to buses. Uhura was there and Carl tried to take her picture with the lens cap on. I couldn't stop laughing.

After that is was a waiting game. There was really nothing for us to do but wait as NASA reported little tidbits of information about the state of the launch. I visited the #NASATweetup tent and saw Seth Green pose in the captains chair of a capsule mock-up. Several people in the press room cited names of numerous celebrities present. I snagged a bottle of water from the Boeing booth. Gotta stay hydrated in all that Florida heat.

The clock left its planned hold at T-Minus 09:00 right as I returned to the tripod I left by the shore at sunrise. I mounted my camera and got everything ready as the clock counted down. The field of people was giddy. A woman nearby me had a radio and was repeating the announcements as NASA made them. There was a constant amplified warnings telling people to stay out of the way of the giant clock so the networks could video it.

At 31 seconds, that clock stopped. The entire crowd freaked out. We heard word that there was a fault warning on a retraction. Everyone started grumbling and freaking out, assuming that this was the end of our day. But a moment or two later the clock started: You have never heard a cheer like this. A thousand strangers chanted together with the countdown. And then it happened.

The massive clouds of smoke billowed out the sides of the tower poking out above the trees. The shuttle rising slowly, and then faster. And then the noise shaking your guts from over 3 miles away. As the shuttle gets higher you see this column of fire pushing it up faster and faster.

And then it was gone: lost in the clouds. The last time human eyes will see a shuttle leave a launchpad. I held down the remote trigger on my camera the whole time: there was no way I was going to witness this event through the eyepiece of a gadget. You'll see better pictures in magazines, but I've never taken a picture of a rocket before, and I was happy that it wasn't a blurry mess. My memory will fade but those pictures won't.

Everyone cheered. Yelled. Whooped. The excitement was unbelievable. I actually teared up, but I'm pretty sure nobody noticed me wiping my eyes with my shirt. The folks closest to me know that this isn't exactly an uncommon event for me, but I felt it all come back: A little kid alone in his basement building a puzzle of the shuttle, dreaming of space. Watching my dad play a silly Apollo moon lander simulation game on a monochrome Compaq 8086 PC luggable. Seeing Challenger through the library window on a day when I was to young to understand what it meant for 7 people to die in the name of science exploration. I learned about computers because of all this stuff. The Space Shuttle was an honest to god spaceship. It filled the gap between science fiction and science reality.

I don't know what's next for NASA. For manned spaceflight. For the Kennedy Space Center itself. Times are changing: with the rise of Space-X and the constant budget concerns, it's unclear which of our hopes and dreams will actually come to fruition. But I was a little kid who dreamt of the shuttle. I have a 3 year old now, and I told him before I left that I was going to go see a Spaceship, and I think he thought I was lying. He knows the Millennium Falcon is a spaceship, but that it's also pretend. Atlantis was real. I saw it with my own eyes with a tower of fire underneath it. It shook my body and I hope my sons have something to inspire them the same way.

We're going to pay the Russians to put our guys in space now. And when we do finally get back up there on our own, it won't be the same it'll be just a capsule. I understand the economics and science of the decision but we have a giant metal statue on an island off New York City that challenged the world to come here and be free. But that giant tower just stands there silently. For the last 30 years we've had another giant metal statue that we strapped a huge fuel tank and 2 rockets to, and we shot it up into space over a hundred times. If the Statue of Liberty reminds us of our freedoms and opportunities in this country, the Space Shuttle shows us what we can do with them. But only if we were willing to put down the puzzle, and crack open a textbook. Learn some math. Some science. And dream big.

Here's me, in 8th grade with my brother from my first visit to Kennedy space center some 25 years ago.

Here are my photos of the trip where you can find higher res versions of everything on this page, plus a hundred or so more. Thanks again to Matt Travis from Spacearium for getting me there. Hopefully I'll see you again someday. Thanks to Mike, Carl, Aubrey and Lloyd for being good company and answering my dumb questions about F-Stops and rules. And thanks to the countless NASA folks who were nothing but friendly and pleasant, even when lines, weather and crowds made things tough. I saw nothing but class the entire time.

An anonymous reader writes "A federal jury in Texas has decided against Apple in a patent infringement lawsuit and ordered it to pay $8 million to Personal Audio LLC, a patent licensing company (aka troll). The lawsuit started in 2009. Last year Apple's three fellow defendants (Sirius XM Radio, Coby Electronics and Archos) settled. Apple said the patents were invalid and not infringed. The patent holder demanded $84M and will now get about 10% of that amount. Juries in East Texas frequently rule in favor of patent holders. In the same district court Lodsys has already filed four lawsuits. In one of them it targets seven app developers and Apple has moved to intervene. The first two developers were already given a deadline: they must answer Lodsys's complaint by July 21, unless they request an extension."

Narmacil writes "U.S. Team RoMeLa has swept Robocup 2011, winning first place in both the kid size and teen size divisions. (Video) CHARLI, America's first full size autonomous humanoid, managed to also make the high score record for the teen size division. DARWIN, the kid-sized robot, beat the Darmstadt Dribblers, the previous world champs, and continued on to the finals to win out." There must be joy in Blacksburg today.

morgan_greywolf writes with this snippet from Wired:"You're never too young (or too old) to start learning the joys of electronics. You don't need to know how to solder, or even how to plug circuit components into a breadboard. As long as you're past the 'I'm going to stick this up my nose' phase, this homemade playdough circuit project is a great way to introduce kiddos and adults alike to basic circuits and electricity."

mdsolar writes "Renewable energy production has surpassed nuclear energy production in the U.S. according to the latest issue of Monthly Energy Review (PDF) published by the Energy Information Administration. ... During the first three months of 2011, energy produced from renewable energy sources (biomass/biofuels, geothermal, solar, hydro, wind) generated 2.245 quadrillion Btus of energy equating to 11.73 percent of U.S. energy production. During this same time period, renewable energy production surpassed nuclear energy power by 5.65 percent. In total, energy produced from renewables is 77.15 percent of that from domestic crude oil production."

ktetch-pirate writes "On this day, 10 years ago, Bram Cohen released the first bittorrent client to the public. Most P2P protocols have had a rapid rise and then a drop-off as the subsequent 'best thing' has come out, but after 10 years, nothing has bested bittorrent, and it still remains king of the P2P castle. Just when will it be replaced?"

ktetch-pirate writes "On this day, 10 years ago, Bram Cohen released the first bittorrent client to the public. Most P2P protocols have had a rapid rise and then a drop-off as the subsequent 'best thing' has come out, but after 10 years, nothing has bested bittorrent, and it still remains king of the P2P castle. Just when will it be replaced?"

An anonymous reader writes "Paul Tyma describes a simple, elegant, and hilarious method that Mailinator (hypothetically, of course) used to mess around with people who scraped its webpages in order to block its alternate domains. Quoting: 'Remember all that script-detecting code from the anti-abuse system? Well, what if I put that in here too, I thought. Let's "detect" when a script is hitting our weensy alternate-domain page. ... And what if after about 30 page hits from the same script (or so), stop displaying actual alternate domains and start sprinkling in some other things. Hmm... but what other things? I know — how about "gmail.com". Or, um, "hotmail.com". Or maybe, "yahoo.com."'"

smitty777 writes "You may have already noticed some of the changes in Google as part of their multi-month design slam. These design changes include information architecture focus, seamless device integration, and simplifying a number of elements. According to the official Google blog, the changes over the next few months will affect Google Search, Maps and Gmail. The black navigation bar in place right now is also part of the Google +Project."

An anonymous reader writes "Tomorrow all of the Star Wars books that have not previously been released as ebooks are being released. This includes the Zahn books that started the Star Wars book explosion, as well as older books such as Alan Dean Foster's Splinter of the Mind's Eye, which was written prior to certain revelations in The Empire Strikes Back."

An anonymous reader writes with the claim (illustrated with what seems like damning screen-shot evidence) that "Google is using Gmail's priority inbox to give special treatment to its own daily deal emails over all the rest."

mdsolar writes "A berm holding the flooded Missouri River back from a Nebraska nuclear power station collapsed early Sunday, but federal regulators said they were monitoring the situation and there was no danger. The Fort Calhoun Nuclear Station shut down in early April for refueling, and there is no water inside the plant, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission said. Also, the river is not expected to rise higher than the level the plant was designed to handle. NRC spokesman Victor Dricks said the plant remains safe."

theodp writes "Two more software products will be going to Google Software Heaven shortly. On Friday, Google issued a death certificate for Google Health (date of death = Jan. 1, 2012), and added that the lights will go out on Google PowerMeter on Sep. 16, 2011. 'We've observed that Google Health is not having the broad impact that we hoped it would,' said Google. 'There has been adoption among certain groups of users like tech-savvy patients and their caregivers, and more recently fitness and wellness enthusiasts. But we haven't found a way to translate that limited usage into widespread adoption in the daily health routines of millions of people.' Regarding PowerMeter, Google's 'Green Energy Czar' had this to say: 'We're pleased that PowerMeter has helped demonstrate the importance of this access and created something of a model. However, our efforts have not scaled as quickly as we would like, so we are retiring the service.' Google added that the White House will carry on the fight after being inspired by success stories like the Harker School (tuition: $36,435), which used grant money to acquire off-the-shelf sub-metering technology that revealed their energy bill could be reduced by not air conditioning the gym from 9pm-3am."

mdsolar tips an article at the NY Times which begins: "Pictures of the Fort Calhoun nuclear power plant north of Omaha, Neb., show it encircled by the swollen waters of the Missouri River, which reached a height of nearly 1,007 feet above sea level at the plant yesterday. The plant's defenses include new steel gates and other hard barriers protecting an auxiliary building with vital reactor controls, and a water-filled berm 8 feet tall that encircles other parts of the plant. Both systems are designed to hold back floodwaters reaching 1,014 feet above sea level. Additional concrete barriers and permanent berms, more sandbags and another power line into the plant have been added. The plant was shut down in April for refueling and will remain so until the flood threat is passed. 'Today the plant is well positioned to ride out the current extreme Missouri River flooding while keeping the public safe,' Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokesman Victor Dricks said on an agency blog this week. But a year ago, those new defenses were not in place, and the plant's hard barriers could have failed against a 1,010-foot flood, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission contends in a yearlong inspection and enforcement action against the plant's operator, the Omaha Public Power District."

Hugh Pickens writes "Christopher Mims writes at MIT Technology Review that Mika Mobile, developer of Battleheart, a big hit on both the iOS and Android platforms, says that 'a polished, high quality product is more likely to be embraced on Android than on iOS because the quality bar on the android market is so pathetically low.' Evidence to that effect comes from the fact that 'on iOS, user reviews for Battleheart average 4.5 stars (4000 total ratings), which is quite good. On Android it's a stunning 4.8, with 1000 ratings,' writes the developer. 'So not only is it reviewed more highly, it's also reviewed more often, with a huge percentage of android users taking the time to rate the app. I think the lack of competition makes quality apps really stand out, and generates a lot of enthusiasm from app-starved android users." Mika Mobile adds that the most frustrating part about developing for Android is dealing with the deluge of support e-mail, most of which is related to download and installation problems which have nothing to do with the app itself, and everything to do with the Android OS and market having innate technical problems. 'Do some googling for "can't download apps from android market" or similar wording, and you'll see that this is a widespread chronic issue for all devices and all OS versions,' writes the developer. 'Based on the amount of e-mails I get every day, download problems effect 1-2% of all buyers, or in more practical terms, somewhere between two and three s**t-loads.'"

mask.of.sanity writes "The noose is tightening on hacker group LulzSec, according to a coordinated group of like-minded users, some from LulzSec-Exposed that claim to have uncovered the identity of LulzSec members and supplied them to the FBI. An arrest Monday of a UK teenager was rumoured to be former hacker scene member Ryan Clearly, and the trackers, which includes a former FBI agent, say this arrest is the first of many. They refused to disclose the identities of LulzSec chief, saying it would cause the members to burn the evidence of attacks and scatter."

Hugh Pickens writes "Blake Snow writes that evidence suggests that a small but increasing number of users — at least in North America, where Facebook use is especially saturated — may be shunning the site with Facebook losing nearly 6 million users, falling from 155.2 million at the start of May to 149.4 million at the end of the month, the first time the US has lost users in the past year. Some users complain they're spending so much time on Facebook that they're short-changing the rest of their lives. 'I figured out that I wouldn't look back as an old man and wish I had spent more time on Facebook,' says David Cole, an IT manager from Boston, adding that he believes the popular social-networking site is a useful tool, but not a replacement for what he calls 'realbook' experiences. Kip Krieger, a college student from Virginia, says Facebook has become predictable. 'It's really gotten to a point where I know pretty much what my friends are going to post. They usually just write the same thing over and over again, and I am getting sick of that.' Still there are a lot more satisfied customers of Facebook than disgruntled ones, so are Facebook shunners a tiny minority or part of a growing trend? 'Having that connection with others is a very powerful thing,' says Toby Bushman who felt so much pressure that she decided to rejoin Facebook, and is glad she did. 'It makes me feel like I'm a part of something bigger and more grand than just my life as a stay-at-home mother.'"

Jim Hall writes "Many of us in IT recognize that software patents are a bad idea — you can patent just about anything if you put "on a computer" at the end of it. But now we can finally do something about it. Congress is considering the America Invents Act — your Representatives are very interested in hearing from you. Also, the USPTO is inviting public comments to change the system (you need to file by June 29, 2011.) I've written a blog post about software patents with more, starting with a primer of copyright and patents."

Jim Hall writes "Many of us in IT recognize that software patents are a bad idea — you can patent just about anything if you put "on a computer" at the end of it. But now we can finally do something about it. Congress is considering the America Invents Act — your Representatives are very interested in hearing from you. Also, the USPTO is inviting public comments to change the system (you need to file by June 29, 2011.) I've written a blog post about software patents with more, starting with a primer of copyright and patents."

Glyn Moody writes "Linus is widely recognised for initiating two major developments: Linux and Git (it's an interesting discussion which of the two in the long term will be regarded as more important). But there's a third, which people tend to overlook: he also pioneered the key ideas behind what later came to be called open innovation. As more and more companies open up to embrace customer-generated ideas, and the idea spreads to other areas like open government, perhaps it's time to add open innovation to the list of Linus' achievements."

mdsolar writes "The Mafia has been involved with waste disposal for forever but they seem to be getting very interested in nuclear waste disposal these days. In Europe they scuttle ships containing nuclear waste in the sea. Now in Japan, their Asian counterparts are angling for disposal contracts resulting from the Fukushima nuclear disaster."

mdsolar writes with this excerpt from the NY Times: "For centuries thinkers have assumed that the uniquely human capacity for reasoning has existed to let people reach beyond mere perception and reflex in the search for truth. Rationality allowed a solitary thinker to blaze a path to philosophical, moral and scientific enlightenment. Now some researchers are suggesting that reason evolved for a completely different purpose: to win arguments. Rationality, by this yardstick (and irrationality too, but we'll get to that) is nothing more or less than a servant of the hard-wired compulsion to triumph in the debating arena."

FizzaNawaz writes "On Monday, the Obama administration is preparing announce the next steps that the US will take to build its 21st century electric grid, and IT is expected to play a big part in the plans. The White House is hosting a 90-minute media event called 'Building the 21st Century Electric Grid' and is releasing a new report on what it will take for lawmakers and the private sector to come together to solve this aspect of the energy challenge."

An anonymous reader writes "A day after Apple filed a motion to intervene in Lodsys's lawsuit against seven app developers (EFF comments), Lodsys has filed its third lawsuit this year. The latest complaint targets ten companies including Adidas, Best Buy, Best Western, Black and Decker. Lodsys sues them over two patents, one of which it also asserts against app developers in court as well as its now famous letters (an example of which has meanwhile been published as a result of Apple's intervention). The ten new assertions relate to web surveys, feedback-soliciting FAQs, and live interactive chat."

An anonymous reader writes "A day after Apple filed a motion to intervene in Lodsys's lawsuit against seven app developers (EFF comments), Lodsys has filed its third lawsuit this year. The latest complaint targets ten companies including Adidas, Best Buy, Best Western, Black and Decker. Lodsys sues them over two patents, one of which it also asserts against app developers in court as well as its now famous letters (an example of which has meanwhile been published as a result of Apple's intervention). The ten new assertions relate to web surveys, feedback-soliciting FAQs, and live interactive chat."

bizwriter writes "Google announced that it will support authorship HTML tags, a way to associate Web content with the individuals who create it. Suddenly, search engines know when one person was responsible for a body of work, no matter where content appears on the Web. If Google incorporates this into page relevance and ranking, as it is considering, the result could change the balance of power between those who create and those who publish."

mdsolar writes "In the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan, [German Chancellor] Merkel announced that her country would close all of its 17 existing reactors by 2022. Other nations, including Japan, Italy, and Switzerland, have announced plans to pare back nuclear power, but none have gone as far as Germany, the world's fourth-largest economy. Merkel vows to replace nuclear power with alternatives that do not increase greenhouse gases or shackle the economic growth. Could the US do the same? An increasing number of reports suggest it is not beyond the realm of possibility, and Germany could provide a road map."

CWmike writes "A new document in a year-old patent lawsuit filed by Oracle against Google over Android intellectual property suggests Oracle could be seeking huge damages from Google. The damages owed to Oracle, if granted by federal Judge William Alsup for the US District Court for Northern California, would 'far exceed any money Google has ever earned with Android' and could lead to a rewrite of Android's Dalvik virtual machine, considered integral to Android and used by Android device manufacturers and potentially thousands of Android app developers, wrote one blogger, Florian Mueller, who writes about intellectual property issues involving the software industry."

aabelro writes "Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! have decided to propose a common markup vocabulary, Schema.org, based on the Microdata format, simplifying the job of webmasters who want to give meaning to their web pages' content." Manu Sporny, chair of the W3C group that created RDFa, added his (personal) dissenting opinion about Schema, calling it a 'false choice,' and saying, "The entire Web community should decide which features should be supported – not just Microsoft or Google or Yahoo."

geegel writes "YouTube has announced that it will introduce a Creative Commons license option and also provide remixing capabilities in its video editor. 'You can now access an ever-expanding library of Creative Commons videos to edit and incorporate into your own projects. ... You’ll also be able to mark any or all of your videos with the Creative Commons CC-BY license that lets others share and remix your work, so long as they give you credit.'"

AmiMoJo writes "Google announced on its blog that it is dropping support for Firefox 3.5, Internet Explorer 7 and Safari 3 from the 1st of August. In these older browsers you may have trouble using certain features in Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Talk, Google Docs and Google Sites, and eventually these apps may stop working entirely."

An anonymous reader writes "One researcher has decided he wants to make Skype open source by reverse engineering the protocol the service uses. In fact, he claims to have already achieved that feat on a new skype-open-source blog. The source code has been posted for versions 1.x/3.x/4.x of Skype as well as details of the rc4 layer arithmetic encoding the service uses. While his intention may be to recreate Skype as an open source platform, it is doubtful he will get very far without facing an army of Microsoft lawyers. Skype is not an open platform, and Microsoft will want to keep it that way."

D H NG writes "Google announced that it recently uncovered a campaign to collect users' passwords. The campaign, apparently originating from China, affected what seem to be the personal Gmail accounts of hundreds of users including, among others, senior US government officials, Chinese political activists, officials in several Asian countries (predominantly South Korea), military personnel and journalists. Google said it detected and has disrupted this campaign and has notified victims and secured their accounts, as well as notified the relevant government authorities."

dcollins writes "Germany on Monday announced plans to become the first major industrialized power to shut down all its nuclear plants in the wake of the disaster in Japan, with a phase-out due to be wrapped up by 2022... Germany has 17 nuclear reactors on its territory, eight of which are currently off the electricity grid... Already Friday, the environment ministers from all 16 German regional states had called for the temporary order on the seven plants to be made permanent... Monday's decision is effectively a return to the timetable set by the previous Social Democrat-Green coalition government a decade ago. And it is a humbling U-turn for Merkel, who at the end of 2010 decided to extend the lifetime of Germany's 17 reactors by an average of 12 years, which would have kept them open until the mid-2030s."

Kilrah_il writes "In 2008 Google found correlation between seasonal flu activity and certain search term, a finding that allowed it to track flu activity better and more rapidly than previous methods. Now, Google is offering a new tool, Google Correlate, that allows researched to do the same for other trends. 'Using Correlate, you can upload your own data series and see a list of search terms whose popularity best corresponds with that real world trend.' Of course, Google reminds us that correlation does not imply causation."

mdsolar writes "Japan's atomic energy specialists are discussing a plan to make the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant a storage site for radioactive waste from the crippled station run by Tokyo Electric Power Co."

RickJWagner writes "I'm pretty certain this is the definitive guide to Apache Camel, destined to be referred to as 'The Camel Book' by Camel users for a long time. It covers Camel inside and out, upside and down, 550 pages worth of gritty detail that takes the reader from level zero to monitoring of your production applications. If you use Camel, or think you might want to, you need to pick up a copy of this book." Read below for the rest of Rick's review. Camel In Action author Claus Ibsen, Jonathan Anstey pages 552 publisher Manning Publications rating 9/10 reviewer RickJWagner ISBN 1935182366 summary A Camel tutorial full of small examples showing how to work with the integration patterns. If you haven't used Camel, it's known as an "Integration Framework", a phrase that I like to equate to "ESB Lite". By that I mean if you want to route messages or transform them, this is a tool you might consider. Still not quite sure what I'm describing? Here's a couple of examples. If you want to read messages from a JMS queue, use the contents to invoke a web service and put the results of the web service call in a database, Camel's a good tool. If you want to read in a flat file, split it into individual lines, take a part from each line to call a web service, Camel's a good tool. Camel does all this and more, acting as a sort of universal router and message transformer. Camel aims to implement the famed "Enterprise Integration Patterns", which are easily understandable descriptions of processing snippets that provide functionality in likely scenarios when you're using messaging. If you're brand new to this type of programming, I'd encourage you to use Google to check out "Enterprise Integration Patterns"-- you'll quickly get a feel for the workspace Camel lives in.

The book is exhaustive in it's coverage of Camel. It shows the reader how to configure Camel using both Java code and Spring configuration snippets. It's meant to be progressive in nature, showing the reader simple uses to start with, then progressing to more advanced scenarios as the book gets into the latter chapters. (More about this later, it involves my only complaint about the book.) Along the way, the authors address real-world topics like transactions, production monitoring, and deployment to different hosting containers. All told, the book reflects the concerns of someone who has actually used Camel for real-world work, and as such will prove to be an invaluable resource for anyone moving Camel to production.

The source code that goes with the book is clean, easy to read, and above all it works right out of the box. It's all Maven-centric, so if you're not a Maven user yet you will be at least partially practiced in it by the time you're done with this book. The examples are straight out of the chapters, so you can look to the book for a detailed explanation of what you're running. (You can also run what's being described, and monkey with it to learn new things. Very handy.) I offer no improvement for the sample code, it works as advertised.

I was especially impressed by the care the authors took to explain the really nitty-gritty stuff that a real-world user is going to need. Concurrency and transactions fall into this category. All the sample examples in the world won't help you if the book doesn't help you scale you app and make it safe for production use, considerations you sometimes don't find in tech books. They're here, though, and covered in sufficient detail to meet your go-to-production needs.

This is a big book, and the text it contains is as simple as it should be but no simpler. The illustrations are simple and relevant. If you're brand new to Camel and want to read it front to back, be prepared to allocate a good number of hours for this task. This is because there's just a lot of material covered here, none of it fluff. If you're already an established Camel user, this book will serve well as a desktop reference for when you want to venture off into more of Camel's abundant functionality.

So what's not to like? The only criticism I have for this book is that the ordering of the chapters is not quite to my liking. It starts out with the simple canned examples, and they get progressively harder, 'till the reader is finally given the knowledge to write their own applications way out in chapter 11. If you're like me, you like to see an example or two, then you like to start hacking out your own "Hello World" apps to get a feel for how to build the artifacts you need to get things running. I thought chapter 11 was too late in the game for that knowledge. In fairness, if you're a reader who doesn't mind skipping around as you read, then just skip to chapter 11 right away and you needn't worry about this tiny nit.

So who's this book good for? Camel users of all types, from beginners to those who already own running Camel apps will benefit from this book. You won't be sorry-- you'll never wish you'd held out for a better book, because there just flat isn't going to be one, at least not for a long, long time.

You can purchase Camel In Action from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

theodp writes "Via an FOIA request, the Wall Street Journal acquired records of every private aircraft flight recorded in the FAA's air-traffic management system for 2007 through 2010, using them to build a private jet tracker database. Among the high fliers who found their records unblocked were Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, whose 767 and Gulfstream reportedly burned an estimated 52,000 gallons of aviation fuel and $430,000 on two round-trips from the U.S. mainland to Tahiti to catch last summer's total eclipse of the sun. A Google spokeswoman confirmed the pair's jaunt, but added that Page and Brin mitigated the greenhouse gas emissions from their aircraft usage by purchasing an even greater amount of carbon offsets. Tech-boom billionaire Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban seemed unfazed by the prospect of his past plane movements becoming public: 'I have a plane,' Cuban quipped. 'I bought it so I could use it. Shocking, isn't it?'"

mdsolar writes "Energy minister Doris Leuthard is set to propose Switzerland gradually exits nuclear power, two Swiss newspapers reported on Sunday, citing sources close to the government. The multi-party Swiss government was expected to make an announcement on nuclear policy on Wednesday and may recommend an exit. Switzerland's five nuclear reactors generate about 40 percent of the country's electricity."

mdsolar writes "Japan has started the first evacuations of homes outside a government exclusion zone after the earthquake and tsunami crippled one of the country's nuclear power plants. 5100 people are being relocated to public housing, hotels and other facilities in nearby cities."

RedEaredSlider writes "Ford is using Google technology, specifically its Prediction API, to create a new brand of smart cars. The famous American car company announced it's teaming up with Google to use Prediction API in future cars. The API will be able to use historical driving data and turn it into real time predictions, such as where a driver is headed at the time of a departure. From there, an on-board computer might communicate with the driver, and trigger an optimized power-train control strategy. For an electric car, a predicted route of travel could include an area restricted to electric only driving. Thus, a plug-in hybrid would be able to optimize energy and preserve battery by switching to an all electric mode during travel."

Glyn Moody writes "The annual BSA report on software piracy is out, with even bigger numbers: 'The commercial value of software piracy grew 14 percent globally last year to a record total of $58.8 billion.' Yes, they're using the old 'commercial value' trick: 'The commercial value of pirated software is the value of unlicensed software installed in a given year, as if it had been sold in the market.' Except, of course, that the main reason users in developing countries — the main focus of the report — resort to piracy is because they can't afford Western-style pricing. It's also fun to see the BSA trotting out the old 'reducing piracy would generate lots of new jobs and taxes for local governments' — except that it doesn't, because the money not paid for software licences does not disappear, but is just spent elsewhere in the local economy."

RickJWagner writes "Watch out, System Admins. The floodgates to BlackHat Hackerdom are now open. Packt Publishing has just released BackTrack 4: Assuring Security by Penetration Testing, a how-to book based on the freely available BackTrack 4 Linux distribution. The intent of the book is to educate security consultants on the use of this devastatingly complete Hacker's toolkit, and to provide sage words of advice on how to conduct yourself as a penetration testing consultant. On both counts, the authors do well." Keep reading for the rest of Rick's review. BackTrack 4: Assuring Security by Penetration Testing author Shakeel Ali, Tedi Heriyanto pages 392 publisher Packt rating 9/10 reviewer Rick J Wagner ISBN 1849513945 summary Covers the core of BackTrack with real-world examples and step-by-step instructions I have to admit, at first blush I wasn't impressed by the book. I usually start looking a tech book over by thumbing through it, quickly glancing over snippets every chapter or so to get a feel for how the book is written. My initial impression was that the book contained many 2-page introductions to what appeared to be system tools, showing how to invoke them and the type of text output they would produce. Who needs that, I thought? I settled down to read the text front to back, then realized the full horror of what I was reading. More on that later.

The book starts out telling you how to find BackTrack 4, how to install it or run it as a live DVD, and how to get the parts working. Suffice it to say this is all easy for anyone who's installed a Linux distribution before.

Next up, the authors cover some solid basics for the would-be security professional. There are other tips throughout the book, too-- what kinds of written agreements you should have, what types of reports you should produce, and generally how you should conduct yourself. Well done, and I'm sure anyone reading this book will have the thought that maybe they'll go into business doing this someday. At least that's what I hope everyone is thinking, because after that the gloves are off and you are shown the dark side of this magnificent machinery.

The authors outline a disciplined framework for penetration testing. By myself, I never would have considered such a thing, but these guys clearly have given this a lot of time and effort. The following chapters are broken out into each phase, and within those chapters the various tools of the trade are grouped. (So you'd find the tools that can provide you with a reverse shell in the 'Target Exploitation' chapter, for example.)

The first phase is Information Gathering, and here the reader is introduced to several tools that can glean information like domain names, IP addresses, host names, and other data that can identify potential targets. The 2-page tool introductions I mentioned earlier contain all the tools that do this kind of work. There's enough introductory material to let you figure out which ones you want to try (it seems each chapter covers at least a dozen tools), and how to get started.

Target Discovery is the next phase, it's all about finding hosts and identifying operating systems. Again, no malicious stuff goes on yet, just methodically gathering information. Par for the course, there are a variety of tools presented to help the user.

Target Enumeration is next. The user is exposed to applications that can help find which ports are open, which services (i.e. MySQL) are running, and even what kinds of VPN are present. By the way, throughout the book the authors throw in brief but relevant snippets concerning the topic at hand. As an example, in this chapter you'll find an example of the TCP protocol (SYN, SYN-ACK, etc.) that will tell you when a port's available and when it's not. There's more of this kind of information throughout the book, too. Some of it I knew (not much, really) and some I didn't, so I felt the book advanced my basic knowledge of IT systems in some ways.

Now that the user has all this useful information, they can proceed on to Vulnerability Mapping. Here the tools are used to help calculate which vulnerabilities might exist in the targeted systems.

The following chapters are where the really bad toys come out. They deal with Target Exploitation, Privilege Escalation, and Maintaining Access. True to their titles, they tell all about how the user can attack the targeted systems, set up shop, and leave a backdoor for returning later.

Of course, no good book on penetration technique would be complete without a chapter on Social Engineering, and so we have one here as well. Hardcore hackers might look down their nose at such a thing, but I imagine this is really one of the more effective avenues of attack.

So, who is this book good for? First, for security professionals. They'll want to get a copy just so they can be sure they understand what they're up against, and how to check their own systems using the same tools the bad guys have. Second, programmers with an active sense of curiosity. I fall into this category. Lastly, the bad guys will probably buy a copy (or pirate one), unfortunately. I hope they're too lazy to read it well and end up getting busted and thrown in the clink. Maybe they can talk ethics in programming with Hans Reiser while they're awaiting parole.

If your livelihood depends on keeping a secure environment, you probably ought to get a copy of this book for your in-house penetration tester. It's an eye-opener.

You can purchase BackTrack 4: Assuring Security by Penetration Testing from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

mdsolar writes "Radioactive byproducts indicate that nuclear chain reactions must have been burning at the damaged nuclear reactors long after the disaster unfolded. Tetsuo Matsui at the University of Tokyo, says the limited data from Fukushima indicates that nuclear chain reactions must have reignited at Fuksuhima up to 12 days after the accident. Matsui says the evidence comes from measurements of the ratio of cesium-137 and iodine-131 at several points around the facility and in the seawater nearby."

An anonymous reader writes "US Patent #5,893,120 has been reduced to mathematical formulae as a demonstration of the oft-ignored fact that there is an equivalence relation between programs and mathematics. You may recognize Patent #5,893,210 as the one over which Google was ordered to pay $5M for infringing due to some code in Linux. It should be interesting to see how legal fiction will deal with this. Will Lambda calculus no longer be 'math'? Or will they just decide to fix the inconsistency and make mathematics patentable?"

CWmike writes "Google patched 27 vulnerabilities in Chrome on Wednesday as it boosted the stable build of the browser to version 11 on Windows, Mac and Linux. The company paid out a record $16,500 in bounties to researchers who reported a majority of the bugs, beating the previous biggest payday by several hundred dollars. While Google listed more than 3,700 changes in Chrome 11, the only one it highlighted was the speech input feature. The combination of Chrome and Google Translate isn't flawless. In several quick tests by Computerworld, the browser and service transcribed most phrases accurately, but in one instance heard 'Good morning, sister ship' when the line was actually 'Good morning, Mr. Smith.'"

Glyn Moody writes "The Presidency of the EU's Law Enforcement Working Party wants to create [PDF] 'a single secure European cyberspace with a certain "virtual Schengen border" and "virtual access points" whereby the Internet Service Providers (ISP) would block illicit contents on the basis of the EU "black-list."' Leaving aside the fact that this won't work for lots of reasons, how seriously can you take anyone talking about 'cyberspace' in 2011?"