Slashdot Mirror

angry tapir writes "ICANN has been subjected to more criticism over the process of creating new 'dot.word' generic top-level domains. Registry services companies have criticised ICANN for processing the 1900 or so applications for new gTLDs in batches, which means that it will take significantly longer for some new domains to go live than others. The real kicker is the process for choosing who goes in which batch: 'Digital archery' — essentially an applicant nominates a particular time then tries to click a button in a browser as close to that time as possible. I should have taken advantage of all those 'punch the monkey' ads in the good ol' days."

angry tapir writes "It's not unusual for a freelance Web designer or developer to be burnt when a client refuses to pay up, citing one excuse or another. And what can you do about it? If a contract only amounts to a few thousand dollars, litigation to recover your fee can be far too expensive, and an increasingly vituperative exchange of emails is often not enough for client and contractor to come to agreement over who owes whom what. Into this gap steps judge.me: A start-up founded by Peter-Jan Celis that aims to provide internet-based, legally binding arbitration services — a 'small claims court' for the internet — with a particular eye on settling the conflicts that arise over freelance development and Web design."

angry tapir writes "LG Display has introduced a 5-inch full HD LCD panel for smartphone displays — the highest resolution mobile panel to date. The widescreen panel is based on AH-IPS (Advanced High Performance In-Plane Switching) technology and has a 1920-by-1080 pixel resolution or 440 pixels per inch (ppi), according to LG. That compares well to Apple's Retina display, which has 264 ppi on the new iPad and 326 ppi on the iPhone 4S."

angry tapir writes "The Australian federal government is pushing ahead with reforms that could see consumers' information kept on file for up to two years by ISPs. This could include the data retention of personal Internet browsing information which intelligence agencies could access in the event of criminal activities by individuals or organizations."

angry tapir writes "Two U.S. lawmakers have called on the U.S. Department of Justice to reopen its investigation into Google's snooping on Wi-Fi networks in 2010 after recent questions about the company's level of cooperation with federal inquiries. Representatives Frank Pallone Jr., a New Jersey Democrat, and John Barrow, a Georgia Democrat, called on the DOJ to fully investigate Google's actions for potential violations of federal wiretapping laws. In light of a recently released U.S. Federal Communications Commission report on Wi-Fi snooping by Google Street View cars, the DOJ should take a new look at the company's actions, wrote the lawmakers in a letter to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder."

angry tapir writes "The creator of the Bredolab malware has received a four-year prison sentence in Armenia for using his botnet to launch DDoS attacks that damaged multiple computer systems owned by private individuals and organizations. G. Avanesov was sentenced by the Court of First Instance of Armenia's Arabkir and Kanaker-Zeytun administrative districts for offenses under Part 3 of the Article 253 of the country's Criminal Code — intentionally causing damage to a computer system with severe consequences."

angry tapir writes "Western Digital's plan to buy Hitachi Global Storage has run into U.S. FTC resistance: The U.S. FTC will require Western Digital to sell off assets used to manufacture desktop hard drives to a competitor as a condition of its U.S.$4.5 billion acquisition of rival Hitachi Global Storage Technologies, the agency has announced." It looks like Toshiba is the competitor receiving the manufacturing assets. More from the FTC: "Under the proposed settlement order, Toshiba will receive all of the productive assets needed to replicate Hitachi Global Storage Technologies' position in the desktop hard disk drive market. In addition, the settlement order requires Western Digital to provide Toshiba with access to its employees involved in research and development and the production of desktop hard disk drives, and also requires Western Digital to license all intellectual property needed to make and supply desktop hard disk drives to Toshiba. The settlement order also requires Western Digital to be available to supply Toshiba with certain components Toshiba will need to run the desktop hard disk drive business it acquires, and to contract manufacture hard disk drives for Toshiba until Toshiba is able to manufacture them on its own. The FTC also has appointed a monitor to oversee the sale of the assets to Toshiba and to keep the Commission informed about the status of the required divestiture."

angry tapir writes "Intel's experimental solar-powered processor may have started off as a fun project, but the chip maker is now looking to extend the technology to hardware such as graphics processors, memory and floating point units. Intel last year showed the low-power processor — charged only by the light from a reading lamp — running Windows and Linux PCs. Intel is expected to share further details about the processor, which is code-named Claremont, at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference in San Francisco. The company is also expected to reveal information about efforts to integrate wireless capabilities into Atom chips for mobile devices."

angry tapir writes "An independent scientific committee will this week make a recommendation to the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) radio telescope project's board of directors in London about whether the array's core should be based in Western Australia or South Africa. A further month of negotiations is likely before the countries are officially notified about whether they have won the $2.5 billion project. Once built, the SKA will be able to survey the sky 10,000 times faster than existing technology. Scientists hope the SKA will provide answers about how galaxies evolve, how the first black holes and stars were formed, and whether there is any other life in space. Cio.com.au has posted an interview with the head of Australia's bid for the project, Dr Brian Boyle."

angry tapir writes "Legislation to pave the way for an R18+ (adults only) classification of video games has just been introduced into the Australian parliament by the minister for home affairs. The state and territories will still have to pass complementary legislation, however. Currently the highest rating for a game in Australia is MA15+, with games that didn't meet the criteria being refused classification, leading to content being gutted prior to release or games just not being released. The legislation marks a victory for a long campaign by gamers (notably lobby group Grow Up Australia). The current legislation, which will take effect on January 1 next year providing it makes it through the lower and upper houses, merely introduces an R18+ classification, falling short of the complete classification overhaul proposed by the Australian Law Reform Commission."

New submitter Dedokta writes "The Australian Federal Court has overturned the injunction placed on the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 and ordered Apple to pay court costs. Apple has applied for an appeal with the Supreme Court, but Samsung is now free to sell the Galaxy Tab within Australia. Samsung is not off the hook yet, however; the full case to see if they have indeed infringed upon Apple patents is still to be heard early next year."

An anonymous reader writes "A new paper argues that China's cyber-warfare capability is actually pretty poor. '[China has] evinced little proficiency with more sophisticated hacking techniques. The viruses and Trojan Horses they have used have been fairly easy to detect and remove before any damage has been done or data stolen. There is no evidence that China's cyber-warriors can penetrate highly secure networks or covertly steal or falsify critical data,' the paper reads (PDF). 'They would be unable to systematically cripple selected command and control, air defense and intelligence networks and databases of advanced adversaries, or to conduct deception operations by secretly manipulating the data in these networks.'"

angry tapir writes "Australian academic supercomputing consortium iVEC has acquired another major supercomputer, Fornax, to be based at the University of Western Australia, to further the country's ability to conduct data-intensive research. The SGI GPU-based system, also known as iVEC@UWA, is made up of 96 nodes, each containing two 6-core Intel Xeon X5650 CPUs, an NVIDIA Tesla C2050 GPU, 48 GB RAM and 7TB of storage. All up, the system has 1152 cores, 96 GPUs and an additional dedicated 500TB fabric attached storage-based global filesystem. The system is a boost to the Australian-NZ bid to host the Square Kilometer Array radio telescope."

An anonymous reader writes "Thousands of PC users are being called on to donate their spare CPU cycles to help create a massive grid computing engine to process terabytes of radio astronomy data as part of theSkyNet project. It will be used for, among other things, processing the huge amount of data expected to flow off Australia's forthcoming Square Kilometre Array telescope." One can only assume that "other things" will include achieving sentience and finding John Connor.

angry tapir writes "Australia's federal Opposition will look to create a national government-funded 'electronic pigeon hole' for all Australians in an effort to cut the costs of 'snail mail' communication, if they are returned to power at the next election. According to Opposition communications minister Malcolm Turnbull, the pigeon hole would effectively act as a life-long single source of storage for communications between each citizen and government. The service would be free for Australians in exchange for their agreeing to no longer receive paper-based communications from government agencies and other related organizations."

angry tapir writes "The Chinese city of Kunming has stopped 22 fake Apple stores from illegally using the company's iconic trademarks after Apple lodged a complaint with authorities. Kunming authorities found 20 unauthorized Apple resellers. Currently, 11 of those resellers are being investigated. Two other stores were discovered for related violations. Slashdot first discussed the mushrooming of fake Apple Stores in July."

angry tapir writes "The Australian Academic and Research Network (AARNet) has announced a wide range of initiatives around network upgrades, collaboration, and mobility as part of a new five-year plan. The plan includes delivering a 100Gbps backbone to its education and research customers, to ensure sufficient 'headroom' for major projects such as the Square Kilometre Array radio telescope."

angry tapir writes "Meet the Firefly. Israeli defense contractor Rafael Armament Development Authority calls it a 'revolutionary concept in tactical intelligence,' but really it's a wireless camera that's shot 500 feet in the air by a grenade launcher. And if a couple of hackers at the Defcon hacking convention get their way, soon anyone will be able to buy this type of military grade technology for only US$500."

OverTheGeicoE writes "The Wall Street Journal reports that Google+ has added 20 million users in just 3 weeks. According to the article, no other site has recorded such high growth in such a short time period. Twitter did something similar once, but in months, not weeks. It's especially surprising considering that access to Google+ is by invitation only. Why is Google+ growing so quickly?" A recent article at O'Reilly Radar offers a possible answer to this, calling Google+ "the rapidly growing seed of a web-wide social backbone," but one that requires openness from Google to really flourish and supplant Facebook. The growth of Google+ will be helped by their acquisition of Fridge, a startup company focused on group sharing. Meanwhile, recruiters and marketers are already eyeballing the growing social network and licking their chops.

angry tapir writes "Anonymous has released a document marked 'restricted' from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The 36-page document, which is dated Aug. 27, 2007, appears to be budget and equipment outlays for what was termed a new 'HQ ISAF JOINT CIS CONTROL CENTRE.' NATO's press office could not be immediately reached. Anonymous claimed on its 'AnonymousIRC' Twitter handle that it has 1GB of material from NATO but said that most would not be published because it would be 'irresponsible.'"

angry tapir writes "Anonymous has released a document marked 'restricted' from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The 36-page document, which is dated Aug. 27, 2007, appears to be budget and equipment outlays for what was termed a new 'HQ ISAF JOINT CIS CONTROL CENTRE.' NATO's press office could not be immediately reached. Anonymous claimed on its 'AnonymousIRC' Twitter handle that it has 1GB of material from NATO but said that most would not be published because it would be 'irresponsible.'"

angry tapir writes "The W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) is seeking to invalidate a pair of Apple patents so the underlying technologies can be used as part of a royalty-free HTML5 stack. The patented technologies are core components to the W3C's Widget Access Request Policy, which specifies how mobile applications can request sensitive material. It is one of a number of specifications that are closely tied to the W3C's next generation standard for Web pages and applications, HTML5."

angry tapir writes "The W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) is seeking to invalidate a pair of Apple patents so the underlying technologies can be used as part of a royalty-free HTML5 stack. The patented technologies are core components to the W3C's Widget Access Request Policy, which specifies how mobile applications can request sensitive material. It is one of a number of specifications that are closely tied to the W3C's next generation standard for Web pages and applications, HTML5."

angry tapir writes "Industries that rely on fair use exceptions to U.S. copyright law have weathered the recent slow economy better than other businesses, according to a new study released by a tech trade group. The fair use industries, including consumer device makers, software developers, search engines and news organizations, had US$4.5 trillion in revenue in 2009, up from $3.4 trillion in 2002, according to the study, commissioned by the Computer and Communications Industry (CCIA) Association. Fair use businesses make up about 17 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product, according to the study. The study shows the importance of fair use exceptions in copyright law, said Ed Black, CCIA's president and CEO."

angry tapir writes "Industries that rely on fair use exceptions to U.S. copyright law have weathered the recent slow economy better than other businesses, according to a new study released by a tech trade group. The fair use industries, including consumer device makers, software developers, search engines and news organizations, had US$4.5 trillion in revenue in 2009, up from $3.4 trillion in 2002, according to the study, commissioned by the Computer and Communications Industry (CCIA) Association. Fair use businesses make up about 17 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product, according to the study. The study shows the importance of fair use exceptions in copyright law, said Ed Black, CCIA's president and CEO."

angry tapir writes "The forthcoming $2.1 billion Square Kilometre Array (SKA) radio telescope could generate more data per day than the entire internet when it comes online in 2020, according to the director of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR), Professor Peter Quinn. SKA — which Australia with New Zealand and South Africa are competing to host, and which will help the search for Earth-like planets, alien life forms, dark matter and black holes — will be 10,000 times more powerful than any telescope currently used. Slashdot has previously discussed the proposal to use 'Skynet' — a grid-computing-based solution for processing and storage."

angry tapir writes "The forthcoming $2.1 billion Square Kilometre Array (SKA) radio telescope could generate more data per day than the entire internet when it comes online in 2020, according to the director of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR), Professor Peter Quinn. SKA — which Australia with New Zealand and South Africa are competing to host, and which will help the search for Earth-like planets, alien life forms, dark matter and black holes — will be 10,000 times more powerful than any telescope currently used. Slashdot has previously discussed the proposal to use 'Skynet' — a grid-computing-based solution for processing and storage."

angry tapir writes "The forthcoming $2.1 billion Square Kilometre Array (SKA) radio telescope could generate more data per day than the entire internet when it comes online in 2020, according to the director of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR), Professor Peter Quinn. SKA — which Australia with New Zealand and South Africa are competing to host, and which will help the search for Earth-like planets, alien life forms, dark matter and black holes — will be 10,000 times more powerful than any telescope currently used. Slashdot has previously discussed the proposal to use 'Skynet' — a grid-computing-based solution for processing and storage."

angry tapir writes "The forthcoming $2.1 billion Square Kilometre Array (SKA) radio telescope could generate more data per day than the entire internet when it comes online in 2020, according to the director of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR), Professor Peter Quinn. SKA — which Australia with New Zealand and South Africa are competing to host, and which will help the search for Earth-like planets, alien life forms, dark matter and black holes — will be 10,000 times more powerful than any telescope currently used. Slashdot has previously discussed the proposal to use 'Skynet' — a grid-computing-based solution for processing and storage."

angry tapir writes "Lots of people are familiar with open source software. Open source hardware, however, is still more of niche category. The Uzebox is an open source, 'retro minimalist' 8-bit games console, licensed under version 3.0 of the GNU GPL. 'The console uses an overclocked ATmega644 microcontroller and classic Super Nintendo controllers, supports 256 colors and 4 sound channels and has an SD card interface from which games can be loaded from.'"

angry tapir writes "Lots of people are familiar with open source software. Open source hardware, however, is still more of niche category. The Uzebox is an open source, 'retro minimalist' 8-bit games console, licensed under version 3.0 of the GNU GPL. 'The console uses an overclocked ATmega644 microcontroller and classic Super Nintendo controllers, supports 256 colors and 4 sound channels and has an SD card interface from which games can be loaded from.'"

angry tapir writes "Many people dislike sitting through a meeting being driven with presentation software. Microsoft's PowerPoint is perhaps the best known and most hated of the slide presentation programs out there, but few would take a political stand over it. However, that's exactly what Switzerland's Anti-PowerPoint Party (APPP) seeks to do. From the article: 'According to the APPP, the use of presentation software costs the Swiss economy 2.1 billion Swiss francs (US$2.5 billion) annually, while across the whole of Europe, presentation software causes an economic loss of €110 billion (US$160 billion). APPP bases its calculations on unverified assumptions about the number of employees attending presentations each week, and supposes that 85 percent of those employees see no purpose in the presentations.'"

daria42 writes "Remember how Australia's planning to censor its Internet? Well, it looks as though the country's second-largest ISP, Optus, has made a stumble right out of the gate. Optus today confirmed you could circumvent its filtering technology simply by setting your PC to use a different DNS server than the default. Yup, it's really that easy. Oops." And why would anyone want to change their DNS settings? angry tapir writes "While the Australian Government has extolled the virtues of its currently under construction National Broadband Network (NBN) in delivering e-health and government agency services to every Australian, adult content will be the major driver of consumer adoption."

daria42 writes "Remember how Australia's planning to censor its Internet? Well, it looks as though the country's second-largest ISP, Optus, has made a stumble right out of the gate. Optus today confirmed you could circumvent its filtering technology simply by setting your PC to use a different DNS server than the default. Yup, it's really that easy. Oops." And why would anyone want to change their DNS settings? angry tapir writes "While the Australian Government has extolled the virtues of its currently under construction National Broadband Network (NBN) in delivering e-health and government agency services to every Australian, adult content will be the major driver of consumer adoption."

angry tapir writes "Citigroup suffered about US$2.7 million in losses after hackers found a way to steal credit card numbers from its website and post fraudulent charges. Citi acknowledged the breach earlier this month, saying hackers had accessed more than 360,000 Citi credit card accounts of U.S. customers. The hackers didn't get into Citi's main credit card processing system, but were reportedly able to obtain the numbers, along with the customers' names and contact information, by logging into the Citi Account Online website and guessing account numbers."

angry tapir writes "Citigroup suffered about US$2.7 million in losses after hackers found a way to steal credit card numbers from its website and post fraudulent charges. Citi acknowledged the breach earlier this month, saying hackers had accessed more than 360,000 Citi credit card accounts of U.S. customers. The hackers didn't get into Citi's main credit card processing system, but were reportedly able to obtain the numbers, along with the customers' names and contact information, by logging into the Citi Account Online website and guessing account numbers."

angry tapir writes "After two years of protracted negotiations Telstra, the Australian Federal Government and the NBN Co have come to definitive agreements on the structural separation of Telstra and the use of its network assets in Australia's 1Gbps National Broadband Network (NBN). Australia's second largest telco, Optus, has also reached an $800m agreement with the NBN Co for the migration of its hybrid coaxial cable (HFC) customers to the fibre-optic-based NBN."

angry tapir writes "After two years of protracted negotiations Telstra, the Australian Federal Government and the NBN Co have come to definitive agreements on the structural separation of Telstra and the use of its network assets in Australia's 1Gbps National Broadband Network (NBN). Australia's second largest telco, Optus, has also reached an $800m agreement with the NBN Co for the migration of its hybrid coaxial cable (HFC) customers to the fibre-optic-based NBN."

angry tapir writes "After two years of protracted negotiations Telstra, the Australian Federal Government and the NBN Co have come to definitive agreements on the structural separation of Telstra and the use of its network assets in Australia's 1Gbps National Broadband Network (NBN). Australia's second largest telco, Optus, has also reached an $800m agreement with the NBN Co for the migration of its hybrid coaxial cable (HFC) customers to the fibre-optic-based NBN."

angry tapir writes "After two years of protracted negotiations Telstra, the Australian Federal Government and the NBN Co have come to definitive agreements on the structural separation of Telstra and the use of its network assets in Australia's 1Gbps National Broadband Network (NBN). Australia's second largest telco, Optus, has also reached an $800m agreement with the NBN Co for the migration of its hybrid coaxial cable (HFC) customers to the fibre-optic-based NBN."

angry tapir writes "Researchers at the PlanetLab global research network have developed a potential replacement for the widely used Unix sudo tool, called Vsys, that will offer administrators far greater control over what end users can and can't access. Vsys is similar to sudo, except it offers finer-grained access to system resources. PlanetLab created Vsys as a way to allow its researchers to access low-level network functionality so they could develop new network technologies — overlay networks, user-level file systems, virtual switches — while their experimental work remained safely isolated from other users."

angry tapir writes "Researchers at the PlanetLab global research network have developed a potential replacement for the widely used Unix sudo tool, called Vsys, that will offer administrators far greater control over what end users can and can't access. Vsys is similar to sudo, except it offers finer-grained access to system resources. PlanetLab created Vsys as a way to allow its researchers to access low-level network functionality so they could develop new network technologies — overlay networks, user-level file systems, virtual switches — while their experimental work remained safely isolated from other users."

angry tapir writes "The Cold War between the USA and the USSR may have ended in 1991, but a new conflict involving the same enemies has emerged on the digital frontier, according to McAfee's US chief security officer. Brett Wahlin, a former North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) counter intelligence agent, told Computerworld Australia that the RSA token hack in March this year – where the token information was used to infiltrate US defense contractor Lockheed Martin – used the same espionage tactics he encountered while serving as an agent from 1987 to 1991 with the US army for NATO."

angry tapir writes "The Cold War between the USA and the USSR may have ended in 1991, but a new conflict involving the same enemies has emerged on the digital frontier, according to McAfee's US chief security officer. Brett Wahlin, a former North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) counter intelligence agent, told Computerworld Australia that the RSA token hack in March this year – where the token information was used to infiltrate US defense contractor Lockheed Martin – used the same espionage tactics he encountered while serving as an agent from 1987 to 1991 with the US army for NATO."

angry tapir writes "Next-generation applications will be location-specific, offering users information and features related to where they are at any given moment, Adobe Systems CTO Kevin Lynch, said at the Open Mobile Summit conference. 'Apps near you,' as he called the idea, would pop up on mobile screens when a user is close to a specific location. Lynch showed the example of someone with a Samsung tablet visiting a museum and being able to download a guide application."

angry tapir writes "Next-generation applications will be location-specific, offering users information and features related to where they are at any given moment, Adobe Systems CTO Kevin Lynch, said at the Open Mobile Summit conference. 'Apps near you,' as he called the idea, would pop up on mobile screens when a user is close to a specific location. Lynch showed the example of someone with a Samsung tablet visiting a museum and being able to download a guide application."

angry tapir writes "WikiLeaks' leaking of classified information should be considered a blessing for the US government, and other governments should take heed of the lessons when it comes to information sharing, according to Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC) research associate, Professor Mike Nelson, who spent four years as Senator Al Gore's science adviser and served as the White House director for technology policy on IT, and was also a member of Barack Obama presidential campaign."

angry tapir writes "WikiLeaks' leaking of classified information should be considered a blessing for the US government, and other governments should take heed of the lessons when it comes to information sharing, according to Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC) research associate, Professor Mike Nelson, who spent four years as Senator Al Gore's science adviser and served as the White House director for technology policy on IT, and was also a member of Barack Obama presidential campaign."

angry tapir writes "The Internet in Syria was back on Saturday, a day after it was reported that two-thirds of Syrian networks had been cut off from the rest of the world in the wake of civil unrest in the country."

angry tapir writes "The Internet in Syria was back on Saturday, a day after it was reported that two-thirds of Syrian networks had been cut off from the rest of the world in the wake of civil unrest in the country."