Slashdot Mirror

CWmike writes with an article in Computerworld about Google axing yet another product. From the article:"Google has decided to retire Desktop, an application it first launched in 2004 that is designed to let people search for files and data stored in their computers' hard drives. It was one of the first products Google aimed against Microsoft and was intended to improve upon the native search functionality found in Windows. Desktop search became an area of competition, as Microsoft responded to the challenge and others such as Yahoo launched their own products. However, Google has decided that, with the popularity of cloud computing and users' increasing comfort with Web apps, the time has come to decommission Desktop, it said in a recent blog post. As of September 14, Google will also end support for Desktop APIs, services, plug-ins and gadgets." From the looks of it the announcement implies that Google Gadgets are getting the axe too, which a few more people might be using.

theodp writes "According to the FTC, 'celebrities have a duty to disclose their relationships with advertisers when making endorsements outside the context of traditional ads, such as on talk shows or in social media.' So, would the ringing endorsement of Zeppelin tour operator Airship Ventures that Sergey Brin gave to his 200,000+ Google+ followers last week fall into that category? 'Since getting to know the folks over at airshipventures.com,' posted Brin, 'I have had the pleasure of flying with them several times and this loop in the south bay is arguably the most scenic. I will probably give it another go when they get back to SF in October.' Forbes calls Brin 'an investor in Airship Ventures,' and others have speculated about a possible Google connection."

First time accepted submitter FlameWise writes "Yesterday, German technology news site Heise changed their social 'like' buttons to a two-click format (Original in German). This will effectively disable unintentional automatic tracking of all page visits by third-party social sites like Facebook, Twitter or Google+. Less than 24 hours later over 500 websites have asked about the technology. Facebook is now threatening to blacklist Heise (Original in German)." As I read the updated story, Facebook has backpedaled a bit, so "blacklist" may no longer be the operative word. An anonymous reader adds a quick explanation of the changed interface: "Instead of enabling Facebook to track a user (arguably without prior consent) by placing a 'like' button on the website in the usual way, a greyed-out like button is shown. If a user wants to share or 'like,' he has to execute an additional click to enable the original Facebook 'like' button and get the desired behavior. This technique obviously has a disadvantage for Facebook, because the behavioral tracking does not work anymore."

First time accepted submitter FlameWise writes "Yesterday, German technology news site Heise changed their social 'like' buttons to a two-click format (Original in German). This will effectively disable unintentional automatic tracking of all page visits by third-party social sites like Facebook, Twitter or Google+. Less than 24 hours later over 500 websites have asked about the technology. Facebook is now threatening to blacklist Heise (Original in German)." As I read the updated story, Facebook has backpedaled a bit, so "blacklist" may no longer be the operative word. An anonymous reader adds a quick explanation of the changed interface: "Instead of enabling Facebook to track a user (arguably without prior consent) by placing a 'like' button on the website in the usual way, a greyed-out like button is shown. If a user wants to share or 'like,' he has to execute an additional click to enable the original Facebook 'like' button and get the desired behavior. This technique obviously has a disadvantage for Facebook, because the behavioral tracking does not work anymore."

First time accepted submitter Mensa Babe writes "Oliver Morgan, the original author of the JavaScript Toolkit, or just 'The Toolkit' as it is known in the JavaScript community, has just announced the release of the long awaited version 1.1.0, with better documentation and added function support. Quoting the project documentation: '[JavaScript] Toolkit offers a large number of integrated methods and utilities to help enrich the javascript object library. Javascript was built originally for browsers and as such lacks a large number of data utility methods with are seen in languages such as Python and Ruby. However times have changed and JavaScript is being used more and more in backend platforms. JS Toolkit aims to bridge that gap and provide everyone a modern developer needs to produce fast, secure and tidy code quick and easily.' The Toolkit fully supports ECMAScript 5 and runs on the most important virtual machines that we have today, including Node.JS, V8, Rhino, RingoJS, and many others. It continues to be actively developed."

First time accepted submitter Mensa Babe writes "Oliver Morgan, the original author of the JavaScript Toolkit, or just 'The Toolkit' as it is known in the JavaScript community, has just announced the release of the long awaited version 1.1.0, with better documentation and added function support. Quoting the project documentation: '[JavaScript] Toolkit offers a large number of integrated methods and utilities to help enrich the javascript object library. Javascript was built originally for browsers and as such lacks a large number of data utility methods with are seen in languages such as Python and Ruby. However times have changed and JavaScript is being used more and more in backend platforms. JS Toolkit aims to bridge that gap and provide everyone a modern developer needs to produce fast, secure and tidy code quick and easily.' The Toolkit fully supports ECMAScript 5 and runs on the most important virtual machines that we have today, including Node.JS, V8, Rhino, RingoJS, and many others. It continues to be actively developed."

First time accepted submitter josn writes "Today I found out that Moonlight's Tricorder app, which I always install on Android devices, is gone. Google received a DMCA letter from CBS. I think it is a shame that CBS thinks it needs to kill a free and open source project giving a ad-less app. I, for one, sent a message to CBS explaining that this fan-supported app is not bad, but good for them, and asked them to reconsider. I hope, especially for the author, who must have spent a lot of time on this app, that they do."

First time accepted submitter oker writes "Yesterday Google announced Apps Engine would soon become a fully supported product. Unfortunately it also means a new pricing model, which is less appealing since free quotas have been lowered and you need to pay at least $9 per month if you go for the paid version."

First time accepted submitter oker writes "Yesterday Google announced Apps Engine would soon become a fully supported product. Unfortunately it also means a new pricing model, which is less appealing since free quotas have been lowered and you need to pay at least $9 per month if you go for the paid version."

adeelarshad82 writes "German paper Der Freitag claims it has uncovered a batch of online unredacted diplomatic cables that came from WikiLeaks. Editor Steffen Kraft said he found a 'password protected csv file' that contained a 1.73GB cache of diplomatic cables from WikiLeaks. Its pages contained 'named or otherwise identifiable "informers" and "suspected intelligence agents" from Israel, Jordan, Iran, and Afghanistan.'"

David Gerard writes "Eric Schmidt has revealed that Google+ is an identity service, and the 'social network' bit is just bait. Schmidt says 'G+ is completely optional,' not mentioning that Google has admitted that deleting a G+ account will seriously downgrade your other Google services. As others have noted, Somewhere, there are two kids in a garage building a company whose motto will be 'Don't be Google.'"

theodp writes "Among the first three schools using Chromebooks for Education is the Merton Community School District, which decided to go Chromebook after the Wisconsin Dept. of Public Instruction (WDPI) issued a news release (created using PDFMaker for Word) announcing that all Wisconsin schools can have access to Google Apps for Education by simply downloading a Google Consent Form (Microsoft Word format, oddly) from the WDPI website, completing & signing it, and submitting it to Google. And to help get the schools going, a separate Wisconsin Google Apps for Education website aims to jumpstart things with weekly webinars, the first of which — Getting started with the Google Apps for Education Control Panel — shows school officials how they can sandbox 'Naughty Students' and filter objectionable content. While Google illustrates how a list of 'custom objectionable words' can be used to flag and/or block students' e-mail with some cute examples — different spellings of 'booger' and a regex to block variants like 'b00g3r' — things get considerably nastier in the real world, as this NSFW custom objectionable word list used by the North Canton City Schools shows."

theodp writes "Among the first three schools using Chromebooks for Education is the Merton Community School District, which decided to go Chromebook after the Wisconsin Dept. of Public Instruction (WDPI) issued a news release (created using PDFMaker for Word) announcing that all Wisconsin schools can have access to Google Apps for Education by simply downloading a Google Consent Form (Microsoft Word format, oddly) from the WDPI website, completing & signing it, and submitting it to Google. And to help get the schools going, a separate Wisconsin Google Apps for Education website aims to jumpstart things with weekly webinars, the first of which — Getting started with the Google Apps for Education Control Panel — shows school officials how they can sandbox 'Naughty Students' and filter objectionable content. While Google illustrates how a list of 'custom objectionable words' can be used to flag and/or block students' e-mail with some cute examples — different spellings of 'booger' and a regex to block variants like 'b00g3r' — things get considerably nastier in the real world, as this NSFW custom objectionable word list used by the North Canton City Schools shows."

According to the New York Post — among many others — Amazon is expected to launch its long-anticipated color tablet in late September or October, and the device is slated to sell for 'hundreds less' than the iPad, which implies a price of $300 or less. MSNBC says much the same, but adds some (their words) "generic looking mockups" to illustrate. I expect millions of Kindle owners will happily skip the added weight and shorter battery life of a full-fledged tablet, but it's good to have options.

After 14 years and over 15,000 stories posted, it's finally time for me to say Good-Bye to Slashdot. I created this place with my best friends in a run down house while still in college. Since then it has grown to be read by more than a million people, and has served Billions and Billions of Pages (yes, in my head I hear the voice). During my tenure I have done my best to keep Slashdot firmly grounded in its origins, but now it's time for someone else to come aboard and find the *future*. Personally I don't have any plans, but if you need to get ahold of me for any reason, you can find me as @cmdrtaco on twitter or Rob Malda on Google+. You could also update my mail address to be malda at cmdrtaco dot net. Hit the link below if you want to read some nostalgic saccharine crap that I need to get out of my system before I sign off for the last time.

It was the summer of '97 and I was a college kid working part time as a programmer at an ad agency. I wrote a simple CMS: practically my first perl program (I was so happy to not have to write in anything Microsoft!). I got an old DEC Alpha Multia in exchange for some freelance Java work. I stuffed it under my desk at work and registered the domain name in October. Jeff "Hemos" Bates chipped in on the registration fee. Within months we were serving thousands of people per day on a system that looked remarkably similar to the Slashdot you see today. It was simple: I just was sharing stories that I stumbled on with a small group of friends.

When I wrote the essay "Simple Solutions" a few months later, we doubled in traffic almost overnight. New hardware had to be purchased. Soon we exceeded the bandwidth capacity of our ISP and had to start co-locating. This meant banner ads. I barely made it through the end of college, working night and day on a site that was growing so fast, it was all I could do to keep up. We started making a little money and I eventually was able to quit my job and dedicate myself full-time to Slashdot. I barely graduated. Soon my friends followed me, eventually forming our company Blockstackers.

As my little hobby became a full blown business, it became clear that we needed help. The burden of running Sales and Marketing and HR it was to much for us. Slashdot was sold to Andover in '99. Since Slashdot was founded, my business card has read Blockstackers, Andover, Andover.net, VA Linux Systems, VA Software, OSDN, OSTG, SourceForge, and finally Geeknet. My title has changed several times: from my first card which read "Lies and Misinformation", until today when my title read "Editor-in-Chief of Slashdot.org". During that entire time, my job has been some version of the same thing: Make Slashdot Great. I always did my best, and I'd like to think that I got it right more often than not.

In the last 14 years, Slashdot has covered so many amazing events: The explosion of Linux. The rise of Google. The return of Apple. The Dot Com Bubble. The DMCA. 9/11. Wars. Elections. Numerous successful Shuttle Launches and one Disaster. Scientific Breakthroughs galore. Cool toys. Web2.0! Social Networking. Blogging! Podcasting! Micro-Blogging! The Lord of the Rings being filmed and an entire trilogy of new Star Wars. OMG Ponies!! So many moments that I could run this paragraph for hours with moments where we shared something important, meaningful, or just stupid. But the most important to me was my marriage proposal to Kathleen. Slashdot has posted Over 114,000 stories so far. And there will be many more to come. I just won't be the one picking them.

Slashdot has been read by kernel engineers and billionaires. By sys-admins and CEOs. By high school kids and government bureaucrats. But what brings so many of them together is that we are nerds. It never ceases to amaze me the similarities that I find between us all when I climb out of my dungeon and go meet readers. From the inside of some of the most wonderful places on earth, to conference halls with useless wireless connections, to cube farms, you guys always reminded me of why I started this thing in the first place. We share something important and unquantifiable.

The internet has changed dramatically since I started here, and that's part of my reason for leaving. For me, the Slashdot of today is fused to the Slashdot of the past. This makes it really hard to objectively consider the future of the site. While my corporate overlords and I haven't seen eye to eye on every decision in the last decade, I am certain that Jeff Drobick and the other executives at Geeknet will do their best. I am unquestionably confident in the abilities of the Slashdot editors and engineers- some of whom have been here just short of forever. They have proven themselves in the best and worst of conditions to be capable and dedicated.

As part of my resignation, after this story appears I will lose the ability to post. For me, this is the most bitter pill to swallow. Posting stories has always been my favorite part of the job. I created Slashdot to share these stories with my friends from IRC and school. It was never 'work'. Now I will have to go cold turkey. I'm walking away from the soapbox I built. I wish I could continue to post stories forever, but those closest to me know that if I maintained the ability to post, I'd never move on. I'll continue to read Slashdot and hopefully my occasional story submissions will make the cut. My old mantra: News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters still holds true here today. Nobody does it better.

As for what's next, I really don't know. I don't have a job lined up. I have no plans. I'm gonna spend some time with my boys and my wife. Read some books that have been on my shelf forever. Maybe it's time to write a book of my own.

If you want to get ahold of me, my email is now malda at cmdrtaco dot net. Geeknet has graciously agreed to continue to forward malda at slashdot dot org forever, but you should still update your address books if you care. I'm available on twitter as @cmdrtaco and Google+. My homepage hasn't been updated in a decade, but it's still CmdrTaco.net. And since I'm going to have to find a job in a few months, I'm on LinkedIn as well.

Thanks to everyone who helped build Slashdot over the years: the list is far to long to fit in this textfield but you know who you are, and you all know that I've got your back in a knife fight. Lastly, thanks to every Slashdot reader for giving me your time all these years. I hope I've wasted it efficiently and enjoyably.

Pants are optional.

After 14 years and over 15,000 stories posted, it's finally time for me to say Good-Bye to Slashdot. I created this place with my best friends in a run down house while still in college. Since then it has grown to be read by more than a million people, and has served Billions and Billions of Pages (yes, in my head I hear the voice). During my tenure I have done my best to keep Slashdot firmly grounded in its origins, but now it's time for someone else to come aboard and find the *future*. Personally I don't have any plans, but if you need to get ahold of me for any reason, you can find me as @cmdrtaco on twitter or Rob Malda on Google+. You could also update my mail address to be malda at cmdrtaco dot net. Hit the link below if you want to read some nostalgic saccharine crap that I need to get out of my system before I sign off for the last time.

It was the summer of '97 and I was a college kid working part time as a programmer at an ad agency. I wrote a simple CMS: practically my first perl program (I was so happy to not have to write in anything Microsoft!). I got an old DEC Alpha Multia in exchange for some freelance Java work. I stuffed it under my desk at work and registered the domain name in October. Jeff "Hemos" Bates chipped in on the registration fee. Within months we were serving thousands of people per day on a system that looked remarkably similar to the Slashdot you see today. It was simple: I just was sharing stories that I stumbled on with a small group of friends.

When I wrote the essay "Simple Solutions" a few months later, we doubled in traffic almost overnight. New hardware had to be purchased. Soon we exceeded the bandwidth capacity of our ISP and had to start co-locating. This meant banner ads. I barely made it through the end of college, working night and day on a site that was growing so fast, it was all I could do to keep up. We started making a little money and I eventually was able to quit my job and dedicate myself full-time to Slashdot. I barely graduated. Soon my friends followed me, eventually forming our company Blockstackers.

As my little hobby became a full blown business, it became clear that we needed help. The burden of running Sales and Marketing and HR it was to much for us. Slashdot was sold to Andover in '99. Since Slashdot was founded, my business card has read Blockstackers, Andover, Andover.net, VA Linux Systems, VA Software, OSDN, OSTG, SourceForge, and finally Geeknet. My title has changed several times: from my first card which read "Lies and Misinformation", until today when my title read "Editor-in-Chief of Slashdot.org". During that entire time, my job has been some version of the same thing: Make Slashdot Great. I always did my best, and I'd like to think that I got it right more often than not.

In the last 14 years, Slashdot has covered so many amazing events: The explosion of Linux. The rise of Google. The return of Apple. The Dot Com Bubble. The DMCA. 9/11. Wars. Elections. Numerous successful Shuttle Launches and one Disaster. Scientific Breakthroughs galore. Cool toys. Web2.0! Social Networking. Blogging! Podcasting! Micro-Blogging! The Lord of the Rings being filmed and an entire trilogy of new Star Wars. OMG Ponies!! So many moments that I could run this paragraph for hours with moments where we shared something important, meaningful, or just stupid. But the most important to me was my marriage proposal to Kathleen. Slashdot has posted Over 114,000 stories so far. And there will be many more to come. I just won't be the one picking them.

Slashdot has been read by kernel engineers and billionaires. By sys-admins and CEOs. By high school kids and government bureaucrats. But what brings so many of them together is that we are nerds. It never ceases to amaze me the similarities that I find between us all when I climb out of my dungeon and go meet readers. From the inside of some of the most wonderful places on earth, to conference halls with useless wireless connections, to cube farms, you guys always reminded me of why I started this thing in the first place. We share something important and unquantifiable.

The internet has changed dramatically since I started here, and that's part of my reason for leaving. For me, the Slashdot of today is fused to the Slashdot of the past. This makes it really hard to objectively consider the future of the site. While my corporate overlords and I haven't seen eye to eye on every decision in the last decade, I am certain that Jeff Drobick and the other executives at Geeknet will do their best. I am unquestionably confident in the abilities of the Slashdot editors and engineers- some of whom have been here just short of forever. They have proven themselves in the best and worst of conditions to be capable and dedicated.

As part of my resignation, after this story appears I will lose the ability to post. For me, this is the most bitter pill to swallow. Posting stories has always been my favorite part of the job. I created Slashdot to share these stories with my friends from IRC and school. It was never 'work'. Now I will have to go cold turkey. I'm walking away from the soapbox I built. I wish I could continue to post stories forever, but those closest to me know that if I maintained the ability to post, I'd never move on. I'll continue to read Slashdot and hopefully my occasional story submissions will make the cut. My old mantra: News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters still holds true here today. Nobody does it better.

As for what's next, I really don't know. I don't have a job lined up. I have no plans. I'm gonna spend some time with my boys and my wife. Read some books that have been on my shelf forever. Maybe it's time to write a book of my own.

If you want to get ahold of me, my email is now malda at cmdrtaco dot net. Geeknet has graciously agreed to continue to forward malda at slashdot dot org forever, but you should still update your address books if you care. I'm available on twitter as @cmdrtaco and Google+. My homepage hasn't been updated in a decade, but it's still CmdrTaco.net. And since I'm going to have to find a job in a few months, I'm on LinkedIn as well.

Thanks to everyone who helped build Slashdot over the years: the list is far to long to fit in this textfield but you know who you are, and you all know that I've got your back in a knife fight. Lastly, thanks to every Slashdot reader for giving me your time all these years. I hope I've wasted it efficiently and enjoyably.

Pants are optional.

theodp writes "CNET reports that rather than backing down after complaints about its insistence that Google+ user accounts be opened under a real name, Google has upped the ante and will pin 'verification badges' on users in an effort to assure people that 'the person you're adding to a circle is really who they claim to be.' In a Friday night post, Google employee Wen-Ai Yu explained that the Google+ team is initially 'focused on verifying public figures, celebrities, and people who have been added to a large number of Circles, but we're working on expanding this to more folks.'"

In his first accepted submission, bs0d3 writes "A judge in Argentina ordered ISPs to block two websites — leakymails.com and leakymails.blogspot.com. According to Google, many ISPs have simply blocked the IP 216.239.32.2 instead of using a targeted DNS filter. Over a million blogs are hosted by Blogger at this IP. Freedom of speech advocate Jillian York wrote, 'IP blocking is a blunt method of filtering content that can erase from view large swaths of innocuous sites by virtue of the fact that they are hosted on the same IP address as the site that was intended to be censored. One such example of overblocking by IP address can be found in India, where the IP blocking of a Hindu Unity website (blocked by an order from Mumbai police) resulted in the blocking of several other, unrelated sites."

Hugh Pickens writes "Google search anthropologist Dan Russell says that 90 percent of people in his studies don't know how to use CTRL/Command + F to find a word in a document or web page. 'I do these field studies and I can't tell you how many hours I've sat in somebody's house as they've read through a long document trying to find the result they're looking for,' says Russell, who has studied thousands of people on how they search for stuff. 'At the end I'll say to them, "Let me show one little trick here," and very often people will say, "I can't believe I've been wasting my life!"' Just like we learn to skim tables of content or look through an index or just skim chapter titles to find what we're looking for, we need to teach people about this CTRL+F thing, says Alexis Madrigal. 'I probably use that trick 20 times per day and yet the vast majority of people don't use it at all,' writes Madrigal. 'We're talking about the future of almost all knowledge acquisition and yet schools don't spend nearly as much time on this skill as they do on other equally important areas.'"

Hugh Pickens writes "Google search anthropologist Dan Russell says that 90 percent of people in his studies don't know how to use CTRL/Command + F to find a word in a document or web page. 'I do these field studies and I can't tell you how many hours I've sat in somebody's house as they've read through a long document trying to find the result they're looking for,' says Russell, who has studied thousands of people on how they search for stuff. 'At the end I'll say to them, "Let me show one little trick here," and very often people will say, "I can't believe I've been wasting my life!"' Just like we learn to skim tables of content or look through an index or just skim chapter titles to find what we're looking for, we need to teach people about this CTRL+F thing, says Alexis Madrigal. 'I probably use that trick 20 times per day and yet the vast majority of people don't use it at all,' writes Madrigal. 'We're talking about the future of almost all knowledge acquisition and yet schools don't spend nearly as much time on this skill as they do on other equally important areas.'"

An anonymous reader sends this snippet from an AFP report: "California-based rocket maker SpaceX said that it will make a test flight in late November to the International Space Station, now that NASA has retired its space shuttle program. 'SpaceX has been hard at work preparing for our next flight — a mission designed to demonstrate that a privately-developed space transportation system can deliver cargo to and from the International Space Station (ISS),' the company, also called Space Exploration Technologies, said in a statement. The mission is the second to be carried out by SpaceX, one of a handful of firms competing to make a spaceship to replace the now-defunct US shuttle, which had been used to carry supplies and equipment to the orbiting outpost. 'NASA has given us a November 30, 2011 launch date, which should be followed nine days later by Dragon berthing at the ISS,' the company said." SpaceX has an information sheet for the Dragon capsule, as well as an interesting post about the costs involved in their launches.

An anonymous reader writes "The Dutch site webwereld.nl has found incorrect evidence submitted by Apple (Google translation of Dutch original) in the EU design-right case against Samsung. In the ex-parte case, a German judge recently issued a temporary injunction against the sale of the Galaxy Tab 10.1 in the whole EU except the Netherlands. The faulty evidence is a side-by-side picture of an iPad 2 and the Galaxy Tab. The Tab is scaled to fit the iPad2, and the aspect ratio is changed from 1.46 to 1.36, which more closely matches the iPad 2 aspect ratio of 1.3, according to webwereld.nl."

MrSeb writes "A great collective gasp issued from tuned-in Firefox fans when Mozilla announced that it was switching to a Chrome-like release schedule for its browser. Now Mozilla wants to take things one step further and remove Firefox version numbers entirely — from the user-facing parts of the browser, anyway." You can see the Bugzilla entry for this change, and keep up on Mozilla's reasoning and discussion through a thread on the mozilla.dev.usability newsgroup. Mozilla's Asa Dotzler explained, "We're moving to a more Web-like convention where it's simply not important what version you're using as long as it's the latest version. ... The most important thing is confidence that they're on the latest release. That's what the About dialog will give them."

theodp writes "Google has decided to pull the plug on Android App Inventor, which was once touted as a game-changer for introductory computer science. In an odd post, Google encourages folks to 'Get Started!' with the very product it's announcing will be discontinued as a Google product. The move leaves CS Prof David Wolber baffled. ' In the case of App Inventor,' writes Wolber, 'the decision affects more than just your typical early adopter techie. It hurts kids and schools, and outfits like Iridescent, who use App Inventor in their Technovation after-school programs for high school girls, and Youth Radio's Mobile Action Lab, which teaches app building to kids in Oakland California. You've hurt professors and K-12 educators who have developed new courses and curricula with App Inventor at the core. You've hurt universities who have redesigned their programs.' Wolber adds: 'Even looking at it from Google's perspective, I find the decision puzzling. App Inventor was a public relations dream. Democratizing app building, empowering kids, women, and underrepresented groups — this is good press for a company continually in the news for anti-trust and other far less appealing issues. And the cost-benefit of the cut was negligible-believe it or not, App Inventor was a small team of just 5+ employees! The Math doesn't make sense.'"

An anonymous reader writes "Mozilla could be heading into an open confrontation with its rivals Google, Apple and Microsoft as browsers evolve into platforms. Mozilla's director of Firefox engineering John Nightingale gave some insight on the past, present, and future of Mozilla and outlined why Firefox still matters. While Mozilla is accused of copying features from other browsers, the company says the opposite is the case. Nightingale says that a future Firefox will give a user much more control over what he does on the Internet and that Mozilla plans on competing with the ideal of an open web against siloed environments." Chrome may have a nice interface and be a bit faster than Firefox's rendering engine, but if Firefox failed as a project I'd miss its Emacs-like extensibility (something all other browsers lack).

theodp writes "Citing the widespread practice of sharing passwords for expediency's sake, Cisco's Chief Security Officer proclaimed in 2007 that people 'need to be held accountable for their risk-taking,' noting that CEO John Chambers drives home the point that 'information security is everybody's responsibility' at Cisco. But instead of accepting responsibility after a Cisco employee provided his ID and password to ex-Cisco engineer Peter Alfred-Adekeye, the networking giant sic'ed the Feds on Adekeye, who was slapped with a five-count indictment by a Federal grand jury last week. Adekeye's crime, according to the Court filing, was using the login credentials the Cisco employee provided him with 'in excess of the specific use granted by the Cisco employee.' For his five downloads of different versions of Cisco IOS — four of which were launched within a 15-minute period in 2006 — the government is seeking a penalty of 5 years imprisonment for Adekeye, a $250K fine, and 3 years supervised release. It's the latest salvo fired in the war Cisco and US prosecutors have waged against Adekeye since he filed an antitrust suit against Cisco in December 2008."

OverTheGeicoE writes "The German government just finished a 10-month test of millimeter-wave body scanners made by L3 Communications. It appears they are not happy with the results. The devices raise false alarms 7 times out of 10, and are confused by layered clothing, boots, zippers, pleats, and even incorrect posture. Australia recently started a trial, and the second person in at the Sydney airport set off the alarm repeatedly due to sweaty armpits."

GusGous writes "South African newspaper Beeld reports that the first person known to be arrested for jailbreaking the Playstation 3 was arrested in Parktown, Johannesburg today. This raid was conducted by the South African Police Service's Commercial Crime Unit, after receiving criminal complaints from the South African Federation Against Copyright Theft (SAFACT). Members of the police were assisted by the South African Revenue Service (SARS) Computer Forensics Lab. The police confiscated goods of around R100 000 (14000 USD)." See also this story in Afrikaans; Google translation.

An anonymous reader writes "IEEE Spectrum reports that Stanford's CS221 course 'Introduction to Artificial Intelligence' will be offered online for free. Anyone can sign up and take the course, along with several hundred Stanford undergrads. The instructors are Sebastian Thrun, known for his self-driving cars, and Peter Norvig, director of research at Google. Online students will actually have to do all the same work as the Stanford students. There will be at least 10 hours per week of studying, along with weekly graded homework assignments and midterm and final exams. The instructors, who will be available to answer questions, will issue a certificate for those who complete the course, along with a final grade that can be compared to the grades of the Stanford students. The course, which will last 10 weeks, starts on October 2nd, and online enrollment is now open." When asked how they would deal with ten thousand students, Professor Thrun replied: "We will use something akin to Google Moderator to make sure Peter and I answer the most pressing questions. Our hypothesis is that even in a class of 10,000, there will only be a fixed number of really interesting questions (like 15 per week). There exist tools to find them."

hypnosec writes "Google Inc.'s new social networking platform Google+ is one of the first to boast of more than 25 million users in less than one month of the launch. Market research firm comScore in its latest report has revealed that Google+, which was launched to masses in late June, has managed more than 25 million visitors in a month and is recording around a million unique visits every day." I've been using G+ for awhile now, but since the grandparents will never leave Facebook, I'm still stuck with 2 systems.

I was excited to have a chance to go to the Detroit Maker Faire this year. I've always wanted to attend such a thing, but the stars never aligned. I saw an entire tent filled with DIY 3D Printers making strange objects including the coolest polyhedral dice ever. Utilikilts held in place with suspenders! Haberdashery! Quilting! Blacksmithing! Books! A Cupcake Car! Gomp! Beer! Remote control turtles! A giant hay bailer! Numerous strange pedal powered forms of locomotion, and an entire garrison of Star Wars costumes... Besides, it's not often you have the opportunity to witness a giant steel dragon blow fireballs in a parking lot. I've shared a giant collection of photos if you want to see these things and more for a taste of the inspiring insanity I can't wait for next year... and between now and then I have some projects to tackle.

rennerik writes "A recent study of 100,000 people taking IQ tests compared the scores with which browser the person uses on a regular basis. On average, Internet Explorer users fared the worst, with IE6 users at the bottom of the pile and IE8 users performing slightly better. Firefox, Chrome and Safari fell in the middle with little difference between them. IE with Chrome Frame and Camino landed on top, along with Opera, whose users scored the highest"

An anonymous reader writes "Celebrated online music player Spotify just entered the US market a few weeks ago, and already it's being sued for patent infringement. Welcome to America! The patent in question is a very very broad patent on distribution of music in a digital form, which basically describes how anyone would ever distribute digital music. The company suing, PacketVideo, has no competing product. It just wants money from the company that actually innovated."

leetrout writes "Google has introduced their Page Speed Service which 'is the latest tool in Google's arsenal to help speed up the web. When you sign up and point your site's DNS entry to Google, they'll enable the tool which will fetch your content from your servers, rewrite your webpages, and serve them up from Google's own servers around the world.'"

chrb writes "Xinhua is reporting that a Chinese bullet train has derailed, resulting in two of the train's coaches falling off a bridge. This comes only a few months after officials at the Railways Ministry expressed concerns that builders had ignored safety standards in the quest to build faster trains in record time — a claim that was subsequently retracted."

luceth writes "According to Android Police, the Google Music library manager now supports Linux! Also available in the Linux upload manager is new support for Ogg Vorbis, though they transcode it to 320 Kbps MP3 like they do with FLAC. Still, it will be nice to get some use out of that beta invite."

Suchetha writes "In a posting on his Google+ page Linus Torvalds announced the launch of Linux kernel 3.0. This follows the kernel missing the planned release date of the 19th because of 'a subtle bug.'"

tekgoblin writes "Back in May there was a class action lawsuit filed against the rental company Aaron's, which had secretly installed spying software that would turn on a laptop's webcam, take pictures and then send them back to the company. Overall it seemed like a large invasion of privacy, which should at least warrant an injunction to stop use of the software until the case is settled, right? Not to the judge, who refused to order an injunction on the grounds that the family was no longer in possession of the laptop. As for everyone else still using their Aaron's laptops, the judge had this to say to them (PDF): 'Moreover, it is purely conjecture that the other members of the putative class will be subjected to remote access of personal information.'"

CWmike writes "Apple approved the Google+ app for the iPhone on Tuesday, and posted it to the App Store. It's unclear whether Google has created an iPad-specific app. Two weeks ago, a Google employee said that the company had submitted Google+ to the App Store ... on July 4. According to that timeline, Google's app took twice as long as the majority of submitted apps to win Apple's approval."

An anonymous reader submitted a story about Start G+, a really sweet Chrome plug-in that I've been using for several days to blend Facebook and Twitter into my Google+ Page. It's worth a look. It's a bit buggy, but if it lets you close a tab or two, it's worth it. FTA: "Computer programmer Zane Claes has created Start G+, a Google Chrome extension that adds useful features to the Google+ social network. It lets you easily import your photos from Facebook, as well as post to Facebook and Twitter within Google+. In short, it's designed to make the process of transitioning from Facebook to Google+ as smooth as possible."

An anonymous reader submitted a story about Start G+, a really sweet Chrome plug-in that I've been using for several days to blend Facebook and Twitter into my Google+ Page. It's worth a look. It's a bit buggy, but if it lets you close a tab or two, it's worth it. FTA: "Computer programmer Zane Claes has created Start G+, a Google Chrome extension that adds useful features to the Google+ social network. It lets you easily import your photos from Facebook, as well as post to Facebook and Twitter within Google+. In short, it's designed to make the process of transitioning from Facebook to Google+ as smooth as possible."

JustinRLynn writes "A recent Google+ Post by Linus Torvalds indicates that version 3.0 of the Linux kernel will have to wait due to the discovery of a 'subtle pathname lookup bug.' Linus indicates, 'We have a patch, we understand the problem, and it looks ObviouslyCorrect(tm), but I don't think I want to release 3.0 just a couple of hours after applying it.'"

D H NG writes "After being ordered by the Belgian courts to 'remove from its Google.be and Google.com sites, and in particular, cached links visible on Google Web and the Google News service, all articles, photographs and graphics of daily newspapers published in French and German by Belgian publishers,' Google had removed all traces of the newspapers in question from all its search services. The newspapers, however, are crying foul, and alleged that it was done in retaliation for being sued for copyright violations."

ianpm writes "Mark Zuckerberg has decided to leave Google's new social network because he 'doesn't want to be tracked.' In other news, the Internet's irony meter has just exploded. Robert Scoble is now the most followed person on Google+ according to The Inquirer." Most of the article is about the rankings of various G+ users with big followings. I currently have a measly 400 or so. Guess I'll never be as cool as MySpace's Tom.

Several readers submitted stories about Google+ today. CWMike writes in with an article about the lack of developer APIs from Computerworld "Currently, external developers don't have any Google+ APIs or tools to tinker with. A Google spokeswoman said, 'We definitely plan to involve developers and publishers in the Google+ project, but we don't have specific details to share just yet. Please stay tuned.' The spokeswoman declined to say specifically if Google+ will be compatible with the company's OpenSocial set of common APIs for social networking applications." Anita Khanna writes "Facebook is trying real hard to block users migrating to google+. Although the recently announced Google+ social platform is still in private beta, it has generated enough excitement to have Facebook making some preemptive measures. Shortly after the announcement, Facebook made a peculiar change to their TOS that resulted in the ban of popular Chrome extension Facebook Friend Exporter. Over the weekend, another personal data migration tool, Open-Xchange, has also been deactivated." Finally, an anonymous reader notes that Google is requiring real names for profiles, and may have already suspended some users for using aliases.

An anonymous reader writes "I project that Google will easily pass 10 million users tomorrow and could reach 20 million user by this coming weekend if they keep the Invite Button available. As one G+ user put it, it is easy to underestimate the power of exponential growth." I bet if people post in the discussion that they need invites, we can scratch each other's backs here. I've been using Google+ for a few days now (Yes I will put you in a circle ;) and have a lot to love, but unless I can gate twitter and Facebook, the best interface in the world won't help me until I can convince my kids' grandparents to move.

An anonymous reader writes "I project that Google will easily pass 10 million users tomorrow and could reach 20 million user by this coming weekend if they keep the Invite Button available. As one G+ user put it, it is easy to underestimate the power of exponential growth." I bet if people post in the discussion that they need invites, we can scratch each other's backs here. I've been using Google+ for a few days now (Yes I will put you in a circle ;) and have a lot to love, but unless I can gate twitter and Facebook, the best interface in the world won't help me until I can convince my kids' grandparents to move.

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.

ClimateHacker writes "The struggle for freedom is still ongoing in Egypt and one of the many challenges that face the demonstrators in Tahrir Square is the sweltering heat. Skies are mostly clear and temperatures can reach up to 44 degrees Celsius (111 F) with hardly any shade. The risk of life-threatening heat stroke is quite real. I ask clever Slashdotters out there for novel DIY passive and active ambient cooling techniques. Perhaps some ideas could be a model for saving energy on cooling elsewhere."

We've sometimes seen malware sources broken down by country; now a Dutch study attempts to increase the resolution of that information. An anonymous reader writes with some bits gleaned from the recently published study (PDF): "Seoul is the most criminal city on the Internet, followed by Taipei and Beijing. When the population of the top 20 cities is taking into account, Chelyabinsk , in Russia, tops the list, followed by Buenos Aires and Kuala Lampur. These results were found by researchers from the from the University of Twente and Quarantainenet, a security company from the Netherlands. The researchers also found that analyzing attacks' origin at the city level [Original, in Dutch] instead of country level reveals interesting findings. For example, the U.S. ranked #3 in the list of the most criminal countries for the reporting period, while no major U.S. city was found among the most evil ones, while only one European city was listed among the top 20 cities, but 8 EU countries were among the most criminal. It was also observed that the list of criminal cities remains stable over a period time and that when the attack type is taken into account, 50% of the most evil cities remains the same."