Slashdot Mirror

New submitter jools33 writes "The BBC has a fascinating story about how a mathematical formula revolutionized the world of finance — and ultimately could have been responsible for its downfall. The Black-Scholes mathematical model, introduced in the '70s, opened up the world of options, futures, and derivatives trading in a way that nothing before or since has accomplished. Its phenomenal success and widespread adoption lead to Myron Scholes winning a Nobel prize in economics. Yet the widespread adoption of the model may have been responsible for the financial crisis of the past few years. It's interesting to ponder how algorithms and formulas that we work on today could fundamentally influence humanity's future."

First time accepted submitter a90Tj2P7 writes "Apple is building a 21,468 square foot private restaurant in Cupertino so employees can talk shop over lunch without being overheard. Apple's director of real estate facilities, Dan Wisenhunt, stated that: 'We like to provide a level of security so that people and employees can feel comfortable talking about their business, their research and whatever project they're engineering without fear of competition sort of overhearing their conversations.'"

redletterdave writes "On Thursday, researchers at MIT announced a breakthrough in glass-making technology, which basically involves a new way to create surface textures on glass to eliminate all of the drawbacks of glass, including unwanted reflections and glare. The research team wanted to build glass that could be adaptable to any environment: Their 'multifunctional' glass is not only crystal clear, but it also causes water droplets to bounce right off its surface, 'like tiny rubber balls.' The glass is self-cleaning, anti-reflective, and superhydrophobic. The invention has countless applications, including TV screens, as well as smartphone and tablet displays that benefit from the self-cleaning ability of the glass by resisting moisture and contamination by sweat."

yoink! writes "It looks like Google is selling off SketchUp or, conversely, Trimble is acquiring it. Despite several indications there will continue to be a free version of the 3D modelling software, users are unsure about what this will mean for the SketchUp community at large as indicated by the comments on the official Google SketchUp Blog post. They are, however, rejoicing that they will be freed from Groups for SketchUp discussions."

betterunixthanunix writes "Another remailer has been compromised by the FBI, who made a forensic image of the hard disk of a remailer located in Austria. The remailer operator has reissued the remailer keys, but warns that messages previously sent through the remailer could be decrypted. The operator also warns that law enforcement agents had an opportunity to install a back door, and that a complete rebuild of the system will take some time."

DesScorp writes "James Lovelock, the scientist that came up with the 'Gaia Theory' and a prominent herald of climate change, once predicted utter disaster for the planet from climate change, writing 'before this century is over billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable.' Now Lovelock is walking back his rhetoric, admitting that he and other prominent global warming advocates were being alarmists. In a new interview with MSNBC he says: '"The problem is we don't know what the climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago. That led to some alarmist books — mine included — because it looked clear-cut, but it hasn't happened," Lovelock said. "The climate is doing its usual tricks. There's nothing much really happening yet. We were supposed to be halfway toward a frying world now," he said. "The world has not warmed up very much since the millennium. Twelve years is a reasonable time it (the temperature) has stayed almost constant, whereas it should have been rising — carbon dioxide is rising, no question about that," he added.' Lovelock still believes the climate is changing, but at a much, much slower pace."

redletterdave writes "Chinese scientists have cloned a genetically modified sheep containing a 'good' type of fat found naturally in nuts, seeds, fish and leafy greens that helps reduce the risk of heart attacks and cardiovascular disease. The gene, which is linked to the production of polyunsaturated fatty acids, was inserted into a donor cell taken from the ear of a Chinese Merino sheep. The cell was then inserted into an unfertilized egg and implanted into the womb of a surrogate sheep. With any luck, this process could be replicated in the future to clone more animals for safe and healthy consumption."

redletterdave writes with an amusing tale of missent email. From the article: "On Friday, more than 1,300 employees of London-based Aviva Investors walked into their offices, strolled over to their desks, booted up their computers and checked their emails, only to learn the shocking news: They would be leaving the company. The email ordered them to hand over company property and security passes before leaving the building, and left the staff with one final line: 'I would like to take this opportunity to thank you and wish you all the best for the future. 'This email was sent to Aviva's worldwide staff of 1,300 people, with bases in the U.S., UK, France, Spain, Sweden, Canada, Italy, Ireland, Germany, Norway, Poland, Switzerland, Belgium, Austria, Finland and the Netherlands. And it was all one giant mistake: The email was intended for only one individual."

MikeatWired writes "In a somewhat startling decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has ruled that several employees at an executive recruitment firm did not exceed their authorized access to their company's database when they logged into the system and stole confidential data from it. The appellate court's decision affirms a previous ruling made by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. The government must now decide if it wants to take the case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. The judge wrote that the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, under which they were charged, applies primarily to unauthorized access involving external hackers. The definition of 'exceeds authorized access' under the CFAA applies mainly to people who have no authorized access to the computer at all, the judge wrote. The term would also apply to insiders who might have legitimate access to a system but not to specific information or files on the system Applying the language in the CFAA any other way would turn it into a 'sweeping Internet-policing mandate,' he wrote."

techgeek0279 writes "The Cybram 001 Cybernetic Brain Artery Model simulates the functioning of the cerebral blood vessels, so doctors can practice performing actual operations on the brain. Developed through joint research by Fuyo and the Saitama Medical University International Medical Center, the life size plastic body contains a blood vessel system that runs from the groin to the cerebral artery, as well as a circulation pump and pressure control circuit used to realistically simulate blood flow and pressure in the body."

benrothke writes "While Julius Caesar likely never said 'Et tu, Brute?' the saying associated with his final minutes has come to symbolize the ultimate insider betrayal. In The CERT Guide to Insider Threats: How to Prevent, Detect, and Respond to Information Technology Crimes, authors Dawn Cappelli, Andrew Moore and Randall Trzeciak of the CERT Insider Threat Center provide incontrovertible data and an abundance of empirical evidence, which creates an important resource on the topic of insider threats. There are thousands of companies that have uttered modern day versions of Et tu, Brute due to insidious insider attacks and the book documents many of them." Read on for the rest of Ben's review. The CERT Guide to Insider Threats: How to Prevent, Detect, and Respond to Information Technology Crimes author Dawn Cappelli, Andrew Moore, Randall Trzeciak pages 432 publisher Addison-Wesley Professional rating 10/10 reviewer Ben Rothke ISBN 978-0321812575 summary Definitive resource on insider threats The book is based on work done at the CERT Insider Threat Center, which has been researching this topic for the last decade. The data the threat center has access to is unparalleled, which in turn makes this the definitive book on the topic. The threat center has investigated nearly 1,000 incidents and their data sets on the topic are unrivaled. With that, the book truly needs to be on the desktop of everyone tasked with data security and intellectual property protection.

The book provides a unique perspective on insider threats as the CERT Insider Threat Center pioneered the study of the topic, and has exceptional and empirical data to back up their findings. While there are many books on important security topics such as firewalls, encryption, identity management and more; The CERT Guide to Insider Threats is the one of the first to formally and effectively tackle the extraordinary devastating problem of trusted insiders who misappropriate data.

In the introduction, the authors write that a common misconception is that insider threat risk management is the responsibility of IT and information security staff members exclusively. The reality is that it is the responsibility of senior management to ensure that there is an overarching program to deal with insider threats at the enterprise level. Surpassingly and shockingly, far too few organizations have insider threat programs in place, and the book has scores of stories and case studies on those organizations that have become victims. While senior management created information security solutions to secure the perimeter; they were oblivious to the data leakage emanating from the interior network.

The authors reiterate that it is critical that all levels of management recognize and acknowledge the threat posed by insiders and take appropriate steps to mitigate malicious insiders. While it is impossible to stop every attack, what management can certainly do is build resiliency into their organizations infrastructure and business processes. This enables the organization to detect the attacks earlier and minimize the financial and operational impact. The book provides the specific details on how an organization can precisely do that.

In 9 detailed chapters and 6 appendices, the book provides a comprehensive and exhaustive analysis of the problem and menace of insider threats. After completing the book, one is well-prepared to initiate an insider threat program. The book provides examples of insider crimes from nearly every industry segment and ample data to share with management to convince them that the threats, both to their intellectual property and corporate profits, are very real.

After a high-level overview of the topic in chapter 1, the next chapter gets into the details of insider IT sabotage. While some think that stopping IT sabotage is next to impossible, the authors detail and have identified distinct patterns in nearly every IT sabotage case. The book details those patterns and also presents mitigation strategies, both technical and non-technical, to deal with those threats.

The chapter provides fascinating insights into how these crimes are carried out. The authors note that by their very nature, these attacks require technical sophistication and privileged access and are usually carried out by sysadmins, DBA's and programmers. A surprising CERT finding is that the majority of the attacks occur after the insider has been terminated or quit the organization. Part of the problem is that many organizations don't have a process in place to immediately terminate access when a worker resigns or is fired. In addition, 25% of the cases were carried out by full-time contractors.

Chapter 3 provides an intriguing look at the issue of insider theft of intellectual property (IP). Any firm that has a sizable amount invested in their IP (i.e., anything you can put on a USB stick) needs to take this chapter to heart. One of the many misconceptions CERT research has uncovered on this topic is that sysadmins are indeed not the biggest threat to IP, even though they have complete access to networks, systems and data.

According to the CERT data, they have not found a single case in which a sysadmin stole IP. Rather the biggest threat to IP is insider theft by scientists, engineers, programmers or salespeople. Also, CERT found that about a third of the IP cases were carried out for the benefit of a foreign government of organization, with China having more cases of IP theft than the other 9 countries combined.

Given the nature of China and its appetite for data theft, the book is surprisingly silent on specific suggestions in which to deal with threats from China. I would have liked to have seen at least a chapter dedicated to this topic.

The chapter continues and provides detailed lists of issues leading to job dissatisfaction that can lead a trusted employee or contractor to commit IP theft, and provides detailed steps on what companies can do to stop it.

Chapter 4 details everything you need to know about insider fraud. A fascinating statistic detailed is that the average insider fraud crime spans about 15 months, with half of the crimes lasting 5 months or more. The authors write that insider fraud is typically a long and ingoing crime. All of this is happening, over the course of months and years, and the organizations being pilfered are oblivious to it.

The book is worth reading for chapter 6 alone, which details best practices for the prevention and detection of insider threats. The best practices in chapter 6 give the reader a framework for establishing an insider threat program. Many of the best practices detailed are elements of a good security program, so they should not be news to anyone. Some of the best practices include: security awareness training, physical security controls, separation of duties, and perhaps the most blatantly obvious suggestion of them all: deactivate access following termination.

Another fascinating fact detailed in the book is that almost all insiders involved in acts of IT sabotage displayed behavioral indicators prior to committing their crimes. Some of those indicators include: conflicts with coworkers or supervisors, improper use of data assets, sanctions and rule violations. Organizations that act on these precursors can prevent the insider crimes from taking place.

Aside from its lack of coverage on how to specifically deal with the China threat, the only other lacking in the book is that in all of the examples and case studies, even those whose breaches are publicly known, organizations are not mentioned by name.

According to author Dawn Cappelli, Technical Manager at the CERT Insider Threat Center, they took that approach based on interviews for approximately 230 of their cases, with prosecutors, investigators, victim organization, or convicted insiders. In those interviews they guaranteed confidentiality of the information they obtained. Therefore, CERT considers the success of their research directly related to their reputation in the community for being trustworthy for maintaining confidentiality. While there reasoning makes sense, anonymous case studies are often unsatisfying

Insider threats are pervasive and indisputable. Organizations such as the CERT Insider Threat Center and individuals like Antonio Rucci provide vital services evangelizing about this critical topic. This entertaining video of Rucci from DEFCON 17 is a great primer on the topic.

Most of the firms who fall victim to insider threats are oblivious to them as they occur. The book details effective and operational security practices which can help every organization create an insider threat program to counterattack the majority of insider attacks.

When it comes to insider threats, the only way to avert them is to have a prevention program in place. In The CERT Guide to Insider Threats: How to Prevent, Detect, and Respond to Information Technology Crimes, the authors have created an invaluable guidebook, with myriad details in which to enable the reader do that. The facts around insider threats speak for themselves. Anyone charged with protection of corporate data should ensure this book is on their required reading list. If not, and they fall victim to an insider attack, they have no one to blame but themselves.

Ben Rothke is the author of Computer Security: 20 Things Every Employee Should Know.

You can purchase The CERT Guide to Insider Threats: How to Prevent, Detect, and Respond to Information Technology Crimes from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

rbarreira writes "The source code for the original Prince of Persia game has been released on github by its author, Jordan Mechner. This release comes three weeks after Jordan announced the find of a box containing old floppy disks that had been forgotten in the back of a closet for 20+ years. A 'digital archeology' effort was launched to recover the contents of the floppy disks, with the help of Jason Scott from textfiles.com. Some photos from the 'copy party' have also been posted."

redletterdave writes "The outbreak of a new livestock disease in western Europe last year, particularly harmful to offspring, could move further into areas surrounding the worst affected countries in the next cycle of new births, scientists say. The Schmallenberg virus — named after the German town where it was first detected in November — infected sheep and cows on at least 2,600 farms in eight EU countries last year, most likely between August and October. Thought to have been spread for hundreds of miles across Europe by biting midges and warm late summer winds, the virus has since been confirmed in Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, France, Italy, Spain and Britain. 'It is certainly a warning for the whole world in the sense that, unfortunately, new threats may emerge,' said Alberto Laddomada, a former virologist who heads the animal health unit at the European Commission. 'This virus has spread very, very quickly in the European Union amongst an animal population of many millions.'"

fishmike writes "NOAA has made sea floor maps and other data on the world's coasts, continental shelves and deep ocean available for easy viewing online. Anyone with Internet access can now explore undersea features and obtain detailed depictions of the sea floor and coasts, including deep canyons, ripples, landslides and likely fish habitat. The new online data viewer compiles sea floor data from the near shore to the deep blue, including the latest high-resolution bathymetric (sea bottom) data collected by NOAA's Office of Coast Survey primarily to support nautical charting."

redletterdave writes "In March, a 51-year-old Reddit user named 'Black Visions' wrote his last post on Reddit. He had been writing frequently about depression and suicide, but in his last post where he also threatened his own suicide, others decided to egg him on even further. That turned out to the be the last straw: Seattle news soon reported Jerry had jumped eight stories from a hotel room in the Double Tree in Tukwila, Washington. Reddit announced on Wednesday that the user's sister Sandy has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against nine Reddit users who egged him on, and Reddit has also been subpoenaed in identifying the information of another three individuals."

redletterdave writes "Not 24 hours after Sony announced it would slash about 10,000 jobs by the end of the year, the Japanese electronics maker announced on Tuesday that it has again doubled its annual net loss to a record $6.4 billion. The new annual estimate is Sony's fourth revision of its original forecast. The company had already more than doubled its loss forecast for fiscal 2011 on April 5 to $2.9 billion, blaming floods in Thailand, poor foreign exchange rates, and a failed partnership with Samsung... Kazuo Hirai, the company's new president and CEO hired 10 days ago, will take 'painful steps' to revive Sony, and will unveil a 'revival strategy' at a Thursday press briefing."

rullywowr writes "A customer with a defective Blu-Ray disc returns to the Best Buy store where he purchased it. After having his driver's license scanned into the system, he is now banned from returning/exchanging goods for 90 days. This is becoming one of the latest practices big-box stores are using to limit fraud and abuse of the return system — for example, the people who buy a giant TV before the big game and then return it on Monday. Opponents feel this return-limiting concept has this gone too far, including the harvesting of your personal data."

redletterdave writes "A new study suggests people who had certain kinds of dental X-rays in the past may be at an increased risk for meningioma, the most commonly diagnosed brain tumor in the U.S. Dr. Elizabeth Klaus, the study's lead author and a professor at the Yale School of Medicine, discovered that dental X-rays are the most common source of exposure to ionizing radiation — which has been linked to meningiomas in the past — and that those diagnosed with meningiomas were more than twice as likely as a comparison group to report ever having had bitewing images taken. And regardless of the age when the bitewings were taken, those who had them yearly or more frequently were between 40 percent and 90 percent higher risk at all ages to be diagnosed with a brain tumor."

redletterdave writes "Sony will cut about 10,000 jobs, which equates to about six percent of its global workforce, by the end of the year. The move comes after the Tokyo-based electronics firm more than doubled its loss forecast on April 5 to $2.9 billion, and the recent hiring of a new CEO, Kazuo Hirai, on April 1. Hirai looks to downsize Sony and pivot the company in a new direction to get out of the red for the first time in four years. The company will reportedly sell off its chemical products division, cutting about 3,000 workers in the process, and also make cuts within its small and midsize LCD operations. Sony did not say if it would cut these jobs in Japan, abroad, or both."

New submitter artciousc writes with news that Amazon is dodging taxes in the UK. From the article: "Regulatory filings by parent company Amazon.com with the U.S. securities and exchange commission show the tax inquiry into the UK operation, which sells nearly one in four books sold in Britain, focuses on a period when ownership of the British business was transferred to a Luxembourg company." Clever trick there: "The UK operation avoids tax as the ownership of the main Amazon.co.uk business was transferred to a Luxembourg company in 2006. The UK business is now owned by Amazon EU Sarl and the UK operation is classed only as an 'order fulfilment' business." The HMRC is investigating the legality.

redletterdave writes "While the movie and music industries would have you think that torrents are a threat to their business, thousands of independent artists heartily disagree. That's why more than 5,000 musicians, actors, writers, filmmakers and artists have signed up to be promoted by The Pirate Bay, the world's largest torrent site. Earlier this year, following the seizures of many popular file-sharing domains like MegaUpload, The Pirate Bay introduced a new promotion platform for artists called 'The Promo Bay,' which let independent artists reach tens of millions of people by offering favorable advertising spots on the The Pirate Bay's homepage. The response to The Pirate Bay's promotion platform has been overwhelming: the company announced on Thursday that it has already received more than 5,000 applications, and has managed to be a quality platform for driving significant interest to independent artists."

New submitter si622test1 writes "A judge has determined that the ex-astronaut-turned-politician who was sued by California Republicans for putting 'astronaut' as his occupation while running for Congress will be allowed to do so, saying that Hernandez is an astronaut for 'more than the time spent riding a rocket.'"

redletterdave writes "As expected, Yahoo began laying off more than 2,000 employees on Wednesday morning — roughly 14 percent of the company's total workforce — in its effort to slim down and pivot its focus in a new direction. The mass layoff marks the sixth time in four years — and under three different CEOs, no less — that Yahoo has dumped employees, but this one will the company's biggest in its 17-year history. Scott Thompson, Yahoo's CEO, sent an apologetic letter to all his employees this morning explaining the changes."

redletterdave writes about more movies being made available on Youtube's rental service. From the article: "Google announced a new deal with Paramount Pictures on Tuesday, which will make more than 500 movie titles available for rental on YouTube and the new Google Play platform. The deal was made even though Google is still embroiled in a four-year-old legal battle over copyrights with Paramount's parent company, Viacom. The latest deal means Google has rental deals with five of the six major Hollywood studios, including Paramount, Warner Bros., Disney, Universal Pictures, and Sony Pictures. The lone exception is 20th Century Fox, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. Google will only make these titles available for rent; the search giant has not yet made a decision to sell any movies it licenses, despite pressure from major Hollywood studios looking to compensate for poor DVD sales."

The Bad Astronomer writes "Astronomers have used two big telescopes to create an infrared survey of the Milky Way that is the largest of its kind: the resulting image has an incredible 150,000 megapixels containing over a billion stars. Something that large is difficult to use, so they also made a pan-and-zoom version online which should keep you occupied for quite some time. These data will be used to better understand star formation in our Milky Way, and how far more distant galaxies and quasars behave." The interactive image is powered by IIPImage which happens to be Free Software and is cool in its own right (right click the image to get help — it has a full set of keybindings for navigation).

redletterdave writes "Popular photo-sharing app Instagram, which has been one of the most popular social start-ups despite only being housed on a single platform (iOS), was finally released onto the Android ecosystem on Tuesday. The app, which boasts more than 10 million users and plenty of ways to stylize and share photos, is available as a free download from Google Play."

fishmike writes with this excerpt from a Reuters report: "American high school students are terrible writers, and one education reform group thinks it has an answer: robots. Or, more accurately, robo-readers — computers programmed to scan student essays and spit out a grade. The theory is that teachers would assign more writing if they didn't have to read it. And the more writing students do, the better at it they'll become — even if the primary audience for their prose is a string of algorithms. ... Take, for instance, the Intelligent Essay Assessor, a web-based tool marketed by Pearson Education, Inc. Within seconds, it can analyze an essay for spelling, grammar, organization and other traits and prompt students to make revisions. The program scans for key words and analyzes semantic patterns, and Pearson boasts it 'can "understand" the meaning of text much the same as a human reader.' Jehn, the Harvard writing instructor, isn't so sure. He argues that the best way to teach good writing is to help students wrestle with ideas; misspellings and syntax errors in early drafts should be ignored in favor of talking through the thesis."

T Murphy writes "Neonicotinoid pesticides, designed to attack insects such as beetles and aphids, have been shown to harm bees' ability to navigate back to the hive. While initially assumed safe in low enough, non-fatal doses for bees, two papers have shown that may not be the case. Although the studies don't directly study the Colony Collapse Disorder, the scientists believe these pesticides are likely a contributing factor."

redletterdave writes "After the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) won a battle with Apple after alleging the Cupertino-based company was misleading customers about its third-generation iPad, authorities in other countries are now assessing the compatibility of the new iPad with local 4G LTE networks to see if their customers should deserve refunds too. The UK's Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) confirmed on Tuesday that it is investigating complaints of Apple's misleading '4G' claim, while Sweden and Denmark are also reportedly considering investigations, after agencies within both countries received 'several complaints' from customers about 4G connectivity. Even though these countries carry broad LTE coverage, the new iPad isn't supported on any of those networks."

New submitter mike2400 writes "According to the Virginian Pilot, the U.S. is closer to having offshore wind turbines. Gamesa, a Spanish manufacturer, has partnered with Newport News Energy, a subsidiary of Newport News Ship Building and Huntington Ingles Industries, to build the first offshore wind turbine in the U.S. It will be located in the Chesapeake Bay off the shore of Cape Charles, VA, which is located on Virginia's Eastern Shore. The prototype 5 MW unit (the article said 5 kW — that's a typo) should be up and running by next year."

New submitter upontheturtlesback writes "Another example of Star Trek technology becoming a reality. In light of the recent Tricorder X-Prize announcement, Dr. Peter Jansen has openly released the designs for a series of Science Tricorders that he developed while a graduate student at McMaster University. The Science Tricorders are capable of sensing a variety of atmospheric, electromagnetic, and spatial phenomena. Where the Science Tricorder Mark 1 is a relatively easy-to-build proof of concept, the Science Tricorder Mark 2 runs Linux and resembles a cross between a Nintendo DS and scientific instrument with dual OLED touch displays. An exciting video shows them in action, and describes the project goal of creating general scientific tools for learning about and visualizing the world, as well as their importance for science education by helping kids understand abstract concepts like magnetism or polarization visually. The hardware schematics, board layouts, and firmware source are freely available on the Tricorder project website under various open licenses."

Motor writes "A UK judge has jailed a man for 56 days after he posted offensive comments on twitter about a footballer who had a heart attack during a game. He's also been thrown out of his university degree course weeks from graduating. His comments may have been offensive... but do they really justify a prison sentence and ruining his life?"

New submitter multimediavt writes "Ok, here's my problem. I have a lot of personal data! (And, no, it's not pr0n, warez, or anything the MPAA or RIAA would be concerned about.) I am realizing that I need to keep at least one spare drive the same size as my largest drive around in case of failure, or the need to reformat a drive due to corrupt file system issues. In my particular case I have a few external drives ranging in size from 200 GB to 2 TB (none with any more than 15 available), and the 2 TB drive is giving me fits at the moment so I need to move the data off and reformat the drive to see if it's just a file system issue or a component issue. I don't have 1.6 TB of free space anywhere and came to the above realization that an empty spare drive the size of my largest drive was needed. If I had a RAID I would have the same needs should a drive fail for some reason and the file system needed rebuilding. I am hitting a wall, and I am guessing that I am not the only one reaching this conclusion. This is my personal data and it is starting to become unbelievably unruly to deal with as far as data integrity and security are concerned. This problem is only going to get worse, and I'm sorry 'The Cloud' is not an acceptable nor practical solution. Tape for an individual as a backup mechanism is economically not feasible. Blu-ray Disc only holds 50 GB at best case and takes forever to backup any large amount of data, along with a great deal of human intervention in the process. So, as an individual with a large data collection and not a large budget, what do you see as options for now (other than keeping a spare blank drive around), and what do you see down the road that might help us deal with issues like this?"

peetm sends this quote from the BBC: "When the Spanish Civil War began in 1936, both Hitler's Germany and Mussolini's Italy sent troops to help the nationalists under Franco. But with the conflict dispersed across the country, some means of secure communication was needed for the German Condor Legion, the Italians and the Spanish forces under Franco. As a result, a set of modified commercial Enigma machines were delivered by Germany. ... A key figure in trying to understand it was Dilly Knox, a classicist who had been working on breaking ciphers since World War I. He was fascinated by the machine and began studying ways in which an intercepted message might in theory be broken, even writing his own messages, encrypting them and then trying to break them himself. But there was no opportunity to actually intercept a real message since German military signals were inaudible in Britain. However, the signals produced by the machines sent to Spain in 1936 were audible enough to be intercepted and Knox began work. ... Within six or seven months of having his first real code to crack, Knox had succeeded, producing the first decryption of an Enigma message in April 1937."

arnott writes with this excerpt from the Washington Post: "The Obama administration has approved guidelines that allow counterterrorism officials to lengthen the period of time they retain information about U.S. residents, even if they have no known connection to terrorism. The changes allow the National Counterterrorism Center, the intelligence community's clearinghouse for terrorism data, to keep information for up to five years. Previously, the center was required to promptly destroy — generally within 180 days — any information about U.S. citizens or residents unless a connection to terrorism was evident."

AZA43 writes "A group of U.S. federal cybersecurity experts recently said the Defense Department's network is totally compromised by foreign spies. The experts suggest the agency simply accept that its networks are compromised and will probably remain that way, then come up with a way to protect data on infected machines and networks."

New submitter VoyagerRadio writes "Recently I found myself struggling with a question I should easily have been able to answer: Why would anyone want to use Linux as their everyday desktop (or laptop) operating system? It's a fair question, and asked often of Linux, but I'm finding it to be a question I can no longer answer with the conviction necessary to 'sell' the platform. In fact, I kind of feel like a car salesman who realizes he no longer believes in the product he's been pitching. It's not that I don't find Linux worthy; I simply don't understand how it's ever going to succeed on the desktop with voluntary marketing efforts. What do Linux users need to do to replicate the marketing efforts of Apple and Microsoft and other corporate operating system vendors? To me, it seems you don't sell Linux at all because there isn't supposed to be one dominant distribution that stands out from the rest. Without a specific product to put on the shelf to sell, what in the world do you focus your efforts on selling? An idea?"

New submitter peetm writes "Computing company D-Wave has announced they're selling a quantum computing system commercially, which they're calling the D-Wave One. The D-Wave system comes equipped with a 128-qubit processor designed to perform discrete optimization operations. A qubit is the basic unit of quantum information – analogous to a bit in conventional computing. For a broader understanding of how qubits work, check out Ars Technica's excellent guide."

benrothke writes "The Chicago Manual of Style (CMS), now in its 16th edition, is the de facto style guide for American writers. It deals with aspects of editorial practice, grammar, usage, document preparation and more. It's just one of many style guides for writers. The Microsoft Manual of Style, just released in its 4th edition, attempts to do for the technical writers what the CMS has done for journalists and other writers." Read below for the rest of Ben's review. Microsoft Manual of Style author Microsoft Corporation pages 464 publisher Microsoft Press; rating 10/10 reviewer Ben Rothke ISBN 978-0735648715 summary Invaluable guide to becoming a better technical writer A style guide or style manual is a set of standards for the writing and design of documents, either for general use or for a specific publication, organization or field. The implementation of a style guide provides uniformity in style and formatting of a document. There are hundreds of different style guides available — from the The Elements of Style by Strunk and White, to the Associated Press Stylebook and Briefing on Media Law and many more.

Microsoft's goal in creating this style manual is about standardizing, clarifying and simplifying the creation of content by providing the latest usage guidelines that apply across the genres of technical communications. The manual has over 1,000 items, so that each author does not have to make the same 1,000 decisions.

Anyone who has read Microsoft documentation knows it has a consistent look, feel and consistency; be it a manual for Visual C#, Forefront or Excel. With that, the Microsoft Manual of Style is an invaluable guide to anyone who wants to better the documentation they write.

For example, many writers incorrectly use words such as less, fewer, and under as synonymous terms. The manual notes that one should use less to refer to a mass amount, value or degree; fewer to refer to a countable measure of items, and not to use under to refer to a quantity or number.

Style guides by their very nature of highly subjective and no one is forced to take accept the Microsoft style as dogma. The authors themselves (note that the book was authored by a group of senior editors and content managers at Microsoft, not a single individual) note that they don't presume to say that the Microsoft way is the only way to write. Rather it is the guidance that they follow and are sharing it with the hope that the decisions they have made for their content professionals will help others promote consistency, clarity and accuracy. With that, they certainly have achieved that goal.

The book is made up of two parts; with part 1 comprised of 11 chapters on general topics.

Chapter 1 is about Microsoft style and voice and has basic suggestions around consistency, precision, sentence structure and more. The chapter also has interesting suggestions on writing bias-free text. It notes that writers should do their best to eliminate bias and to depict diverse individuals from all walks of life in their documentation. It's suggested to avoid terms that may show bias with regards to gender, race, culture, ability, age and more. Some examples are to avoid terms such as chairman, salesman and manpower; and use instead moderator, sales representative or workforce.

The manual also notes that writers should attempt not to stereotype people with disabilities with negative connotations. It suggests that documentation should positively portray people with disabilities. It emphasizes that documentation should not equate people with their disability and to use terms that refer to physical disabilities as nouns, rather than adjectives.

The book takes on a global focus and notes that since Microsoft sells its products and services worldwide, content must be suitable for a worldwide audience. For those writing for a global audience, those sections of the manual should be duly considered.

The manual also cautions authors to avoid too many technical terms and jargon. The danger of inappropriate use of technical terms is that people who don't think of themselves as computer professionals consider technical terms to be a major stumbling block to understanding. The manual suggests whenever possible, to use common English words to get the point across, rather than technical one.

The book provides thousands of suggestions on how to write better documentation, including:
do not use hand signs in documentation — nearly every hand sign is offensive somewhere
do not refer to seasons unless you have no other choice – since summer in the northern hemisphere is winter in the southern hemisphere
spell out names of months – as 3/11/2012 can refer to March 11, 2012 in some places and November 3, 2012 in others
use titles, not honorifics, to describe words such as Mr. or Ms. – not all cultures have an equivalent to some that are common in the United States, such as Ms.

Chapter 6 is on procedures and technical content, and explains that consistent formatting of procedures and other technical content helps users find important information quickly and effectively. In the section on security, the style guide notes not to make statements that convey the impression or promise of absolute security. Instead, the writer should focus on technologies or features that help achieve security; and suggests to be careful when using words such as safe, private, secure, protect,and their synonyms or derivatives. It is best to use qualifiers such as helps or can help with these words.

As noted earlier, the style guide is simply a guide, not an absolute. In the book Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation, author Lynne Truss write of terms that are grammatically incorrect, but so embedded into the language, that they are what she terms a lost cause. With that, the style guide has the pervasive use of the term all right, as opposed to alright.

According to dictionary.com, although alright is a common spelling in written dialogue and in other types of informal writing, all right is used in more formal, edited writing. My own preference is that alright is clearer and ultimately more concise. In this guide, I found that Microsoft's preference for all right to be distracting.

Differences aside, part 1 provides vital assistance to any writer that is interested in writing effective content that educates the reader in the clearest manner possible. The book is the collective experience of thousands of writers and their myriad sets of documentation. The book provides page after pages of unique information.

Part 2 is a usage dictionary that is a literal A-Z of technical terms, common words and phrases. The goal of the usage dictionary is to give the reader a predictable experience with the content and to ensure different writers usage a standard usage of the same term. Some interesting suggestions in the usage dictionary are:

access rights – an obsolete term. Use user rights
collaborator – do not use collaborator to describe a worker in a collaborative environment unless you have no other choice as it is a sensitive term in some countries. Specifically, being a collaborator in a third-world country can get one killed.
email – do not use as a verb. Use send instead.
master / slave – do not use as the terminology, although standard in the IT industry, may be insulting to some users. The manual notes that its use is prohibited in a US municipality.
press – differentiate between the terms press, type, enter, and use, and to use press, not depress, hit or strike when pressing a key on the keyboard

Some of the terms suggested are certainly Microsoft centric, such as:
blue screen – they suggest not to use blue screen, either as a noun or a verb to refer to an operating system failure. Use stop or stop error instead
IE – never abbreviate Internet Explorer; always use the full name

Say what you will about Microsoft, but any technical writer who is serious about being a better writer can learn a lot from the writers at Microsoft. Microsoft is serious and passionate about documentation and it is manifest in this style guide.

Microsoft has been criticized for their somewhat lukewarm embrace of open source. With the Microsoft Manual of Style, Microsoft is nearly freely sharing a huge amount of their intellectual capital. At $29 for the paperback and $10 for the Kindle edition, the manual has a windfall of valuable information at a bargain-basement of a price.

This guide is a comprehensive manual for the serious writer of technical documentation, be it a high school student or veteran author. In fact, to describe the guide as comprehensive may be an understatement, as it details nearly every facet of technical writing, including arcane verb uses.

Many authors simply write in an ad-hoc manner. This manual shows that effective writing is a discipline. The more disciplined the writer, the more consistent and better their output. Anyone that wants to be a better writer will undoubtedly find the Microsoft Manual of Style an exceptionally valuable resource.

Ben Rothke is the author of Computer Security: 20 Things Every Employee Should Know.

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

floydman writes "Apple has said it will use its cash to start paying a dividend to shareholders and to buy back some of its shares. The technology giant said it would pay a quarterly dividend of $2.65 per share from July. It will buy back up to $10bn of its own shares starting in the company's next financial year, which begins on 30 September 2012. Apple CEO Tim Cook said, 'We have used some of our cash to make great investments in our business through increased research and development, acquisitions, new retail store openings, strategic prepayments and capital expenditures in our supply chain, and building out our infrastructure. You'll see more of all of these in the future. Even with these investments, we can maintain a war chest for strategic opportunities and have plenty of cash to run our business. So we are going to initiate a dividend and share repurchase program.'"

In 2010, Rutgers University student Dharun Ravi used his computer's webcam to spy on the activities of his gay roommate, Tyler Clementi, and commented about it publicly on Twitter. Days later, Clementi committed suicide. Ravi was indicted on 15 charges, going to trial last month. Now, reader doston sends word that the trial has ended, and Ravi has been found guilty on all 15 charges, though the jury returned a not guilty verdict on aspects of certain charges. "After less than three full days of deliberations, the five men and seven women of the jury found Dharun Ravi, 20 years old, guilty of invading the privacy of his 18-year-old roommate, Tyler Clementi, and his dorm-room date. They also found that Ravi was motivated by bias under a New Jersey hate-crime law that had been largely untested so far. ... The jury had been asked to decide Ravi’s motivations when he trained his webcam on Clementi and his date on two separate occasions in September 2010, in a case that set off a national conversation about cyber-bullying and treatment of gay youth. ... Ravi faces up to 10 years in prison on most serious bias intimidation convictions, but is likely to receive a lesser sentence based on sentencing guidelines because he is a first time offender. The India-born Ravi, who has spent most of his life in the U.S. as a permanent resident, faces the possibility of deportation as a result of his criminal conviction. He rejected a plea deal in December that would have kept him out of prison and offered him assistance with immigration authorities."

First time accepted submitter arnott writes "Science Applications International Corp. said that it will pay $500.4 million in restitution and penalties under a settlement over its CityTime program with New York City. From the article: 'Two former SAIC employees have been charged with conspiring to defraud New York, and New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg (I) has called on the company to reimburse the city for the more than $600 million it spent on the program over an 11-year period.'"

New submitter Warmlight writes "The BBC reports that 'Bahrain and Belarus have been added to Reporters Without Borders' annual list of "enemies of the internet." They join 10 other nations on the campaign group's register of states that restrict net access, filter content and imprison bloggers. India and Kazakhstan have also joined RWB's list of "countries under surveillance" because of concerns that they are becoming more repressive.' I wonder how ACTA will affect this in the next year? In their report, they say, 'Resistance to ACTA is stronger than ever and the treaty may not see the light of day. Vigilance must be maintained.'"

New submitter es330td writes "I'd like to write a program that takes the old cannon game to another level, but instead of the path being a simple parabolic arc, the projectile will move through a field of objects exerting gravitational attraction (or repulsion) and the player will have to adjust velocity and angle to find the path through the space between launch point and the target.In an ideal world, this would end up as one of these Flash based web playable games, as that would force me to fully flesh it out, debug and complete the app. I doubt this will ever be commercial, so hiring somebody doesn't make sense, and I wouldn't learn anything that way either. I have been programming for almost 20 years, but the bulk of my work has been in corporate programming, primarily web (Cold Fusion, ASP & C#.Net,) or VB6 and then C# Windows GUI interfaces to RDBMS. I have never written a graphics based game, nor have I ever written something using the physics this will require. Once upon a time, I could program in C but I think I would be much better off to work with someone rather than try to roll my own unless good books exist to flatten the learning curve. Any advice on how to proceed?"

redletterdave writes "On Friday, President Barack Obama appointed Todd Park, a 39-year-old former entrepreneur and data scientist, to be the new Chief Technology Officer of the United States. Park takes over for Aneesh Chopra, the first U.S. CTO, who resigned earlier this year. Park was formerly the CTO of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services since 2009, where he helped bring 'big data' to healthcare by helping create an open health care data platform similar to the National Weather Service, which could feed data to commercial websites and applications. Before joining the Obama administration, Park helped co-found AthenaHealth and Castlight Health, and also served as a senior adviser to Ashoka, a global incubator for social entrepreneurs. One of his ventures, Healthpoint Services, won the 2011 Sankalp Award for the 'most innovative and promising health-oriented social enterprise in India.'"

S810 writes "Discovery News is running an article about the U.S. Navy developing a robot capable of 'throwing extinguisher grenades.' From the article: 'SAFFiR would need finger and hand coordination to wrestle fire hoses into place or accurately throw extinguisher grenades. It similarly would need the sure-footed balance of a veteran sailor's sea legs to confidently walk the wave-tossed decks of warships. An infrared camera could allow such a robot to see through smoke-filled hallways, and perhaps it could detect the location of fires through gas sensors. The robot's battery is intended to pack enough energy for half an hour of firefighting action.'"

redletterdave writes "Apple won a major patent for its 'iWallet' technology, which is a digital system that uses near-field communication (NFC) technology to complete credit card transactions and manage subsidiary financial accounts directly on your iPhone. On the home screen for iWallet, users can see their entire credit card profiles, statements, messages from their banks, and even adjust preferences or add additional cards. Within preferences, users can schedule credit card payments and set parental controls on their children, which allows kids to use their iPhones as wallets but limits the extent to which they can use it. Users can track their payments and statements within the iTunes billing system, which keeps the credit card information safe and secure."

S810 writes with an excerpt from an article on the X-37B in at Discovery News: "The military won't say what it has been doing with its experimental miniature space shuttle, but the pilotless spaceship, known as the X-37B, has been in orbit for a year now. The 29-foot robotic spacecraft, also known as the Orbital Test Vehicle, or OTV, was launched on March 5, 2011, on a follow-up flight to extend capabilities demonstrated by a sister ship during a 244-day debut mission in 2010. 'We are very pleased with the results of ongoing X-37B experiments,' Tom McIntyre, with the Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office..."

rullywowr writes "A story run by local new NBC10 of Philadelphia last Friday illuminated the fact that this particular rider of the pubilc bus system is packing a cell phone jammer and is not afraid to use it. Going by the name of 'Eric,' whenever he sees someone being 'rude' on the bus and talking loudly on their cell phone, he screws the antenna on and flips the power switch. Regardless of the steep civil penalites levied by the FCC (up to $16,000 USD), many (such as 'Eric') are still interested by these devices which can be bought on the internet for $40 to over $1000. Opponents of these devices say that not only do they interfere with mobile phones, they often can interfere with 'behind the scenes' communication, Wi-Fi, etc. Despite being illegal, TFA points out that they are readily available on the internet (what else is new?). Do you have an instance where you experienced the positive (or negative) effects of a cell phone jammer?"

nirgle writes "I have been wondering lately if there are any kids interested in programming for its own sake anymore. When I was my nephew's age, computers were still fascinating: There wasn't a laptop on every table, facebook wasn't splattered on every screen, and you couldn't get any question answered in just a couple seconds with Google. When I was 10, I would have done anything for a close programming mentor instead of the 5-foot high stack of books that I had to read cover-to-cover on my own. So I was happy when my nephew started asking about learning to do what "Uncle Jay does." Does the responsibility now shift to us to kindle early fires in computer science, or is programming now just another profession for the educational system to manage?" Another reader pointed out a related post on the Invent with Python blog titled "Nobody wants to learn how to program."