Slashdot Mirror

crookedvulture writes "Intel's Next Unit of Computing has finally made its way into the hands of reviewers. The final revision is a little different from the demo unit that made the rounds earlier this year, but the concept remains the same. Intel has crammed what are essentially ultrabook internals into a tiny box measuring 4" x 4" x 2". A mobile Core i3 CPU provides the horsepower, and there's a decent array of I/O ports: USB, HDMI, and Thunderbolt. Users can add their own memory, storage, and wireless card to the system, which will be sold without an OS for around $300. Those extras raise the total price, bringing the NUC closer to Mac Mini territory. The Apple system has a bigger footprint, but it also boasts a faster processer and the ability to accommodate notebook hard drives with higher storage capacities than the mSATA SSDs that are compatible with the NUC. If Intel can convince system builders to adopt the NUC, the future of the PC could be a lot smaller."

Trailrunner7 writes "Facebook this week will begin turning on secure browsing by default for its millions of users in North America. The change will make HTTPS the default connection option for all Facebook sessions for those users, a shift that gives them a good baseline level of security and will help prevent some common attacks. Facebook users have had the option of turning on HTTPS since early 2011 when the company reacted to attention surrounding the Firesheep attacks. However, the technology was not enabled by default and users have had to opt-in and manually make the change in order to get the better protection of HTTPS."

garymortimer writes "Photos provided by the animal rights group show the multicopter smoking on the ground, with its lithium polymer battery supply smoldering. Another photo shows the drone's video camera smashed. The drone, dubbed 'Angel,' was a Cinestar 8 octocopter estimated at $4,000. This wasn't the first time SHARK has been shot out of the sky. This is the fourth drone that the group has lost while investigating pigeon shootings. One drone landed on club property, and is the subject of an ongoing lawsuit."

Nerval's Lobster writes "At the end of October, Hurricane Sandy struck the eastern seaboard of the United States, leaving massive amounts of property damage in its wake. Data center operators in Sandy's path were forced to take extreme measures to keep their systems up and running. While flooding and winds knocked some of them out of commission, others managed to keep their infrastructure online until the crisis passed. In our previous interview, we spoke with CoreSite, a Manhattan-based data center that endured even as much of New York City went without power. For this installment, Slashdot Datacenter sat down with executives from IPR, which operates two data centers—in Wilmington, Delaware and Reading, Pennsylvania—close to Sandy's track as it made landfall over New Jersey and pushed northwest."

concealment writes "On November 27, RapidShare will start putting a tight cap on outbound downloads for its free users. Paid members will still have 30 gigabytes in outbound downloads per day, but everybody else will be capped at one gigabyte. The change is expected to further deter pirates from using RapidShare to distribute copyright material on a large scale."

UnanimousCoward writes "Several outlets are reporting Cisco's intent to acquire Meraki for $1.2 billion. From the article: 'Cisco Systems of San Jose, California, says it is buying Meraki Networks of San Francisco for around $1.2 billion in cash. The news of the deal leaked on Twitter, when Cisco accidentally posted the news on its blog and swiftly removed it, but it was too late. Cisco is hoping to focus on smaller and medium-sized campuses with Meraki and its products.'"

sciencewatcher writes "A 1999 cold case rape and murder in The Netherlands has been solved. Dutch police asked 8000+ men living within 5 kilometers of the crime scene to volunteer their DNA so that the murderer could be traced through (close or distant) family members sharing part of this DNA. As it turned out, the man now in custody turned in his own DNA, resulting in a 100% match. The request of the police was discussed here on Slashdot in September. The percentage of people participating was closing in on 90%; in the midsize town of the victim it was 96%."

cervesaebraciator writes "A 'Coffee Branding Workshop,' sponsored by the World Intellectual Property Organization, was held recently in Arusha City, at which the Director General of the Tanzania Coffee Board presented a paper titled 'Supporting the Coffee Sector with added Value Products Through Intellectual Property and Branding.' The paper encouraged the use of intellectual property claims, including trademarks, copyrights, patents, and designs, as sources of income which can be used to support agriculture in Africa. The Director General claimed that '[Intellectual property rights] are the basis for today's knowledge based economy and international competitiveness.' This is no doubt related to a broader effort to advance western style intellectual property in Africa through claims of the benefits it offers agriculture. Promoting western style intellectual property law as a means of third world development is a popular strategy for WIPO, the only branch of the UN to have significant wealth deriving from contributions independent of Member States. On a related note of interest to Slashdotters, there is a history of tension between WIPO advocates and FOSS advocates." I hope they take advantage of the marketing possibilities offered by civet-processed coffee.

cervesaebraciator writes "Saturday an article was featured on Slashdot which expressed some hope, if just a fool's hope, that a recent Republican Study Committee Brief could be a sign of broader national discussion about the value of current copyright law. When one sees such progress, credit is deservedly given. Unfortunately, others in Washington did not perhaps see this as worthy of praise. The committee's executive director, Paul Teller, sent a memo today disavowing the earlier pro-copyright reform brief. From the memo: 'Yesterday you received a Policy Brief or [sic] copyright law that was published without adequate review within the RSC and failed to meet that standard. Copyright reform would have far-reaching impacts, so it is incredibly important that it be approached with all facts and viewpoints in hand.' People who live in districts such as Ohio's 4th would do well to send letters of support to those who crafted the original brief. I cannot imagine party leadership will be happy with so radical a suggestion as granting copyright protection for the limited times needed to promote the progress of science and useful arts."

YokimaSun writes "Nintendo has today fired the first salvo in the next-gen console wars with the U.S. release of their Wii U console, which is massively more powerful than the Nintendo Wii and also the PS3/Xbox 360 (so they claim). Yet again Nintendo has done a world first and released a gamepad which is also a tablet and should provide us with games that stretch the boundaries even more. Wii games are compatible with the console, as is the Wii remote. The Wii U comes in 2 SKUs: a 32GB Deluxe package, and an 8GB Basics pack. The games lineup is a strong one, with games such as New Super Mario Bros U, Arkham City Armoured Edition, Assassins Creed 3, Call of Duty Black Ops 2, Sonic AllStars Racing, Nintendo Land, Tank Tank Tank, ScribbleNauts Unlimited, Epic Mickey 2 The Power of Two, ESPN Sports Connection, DarkSiders 2, Rabbids Land, Mass Effect 3, Ninja Gaiden 3 Razors Edge, Tekken Tag Tournament 2, Wipeout 3 and Just Dance 4 all available on launch day."

theodp writes "Microsoft's promotion of Julie Larson-Green to lead all Windows software and hardware engineering in the wake of Steven Sinofsky's resignation is reopening the question of what is the difference between Computer Science and Software Engineering. According to their bios on Microsoft's website, Sinofsky has a master's degree in computer science from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and an undergraduate degree with honors from Cornell University, while Larson-Green has a master's degree in software engineering from Seattle University and a bachelor's degree in business administration from Western Washington University. A comparison of the curricula at Sinofsky's and Larson-Green's alma maters shows there's a huge difference between UMass's MSCS program and Seattle U's MSE program. So, is one program inherently more compatible with Microsoft's new teamwork mantra?"

In October, Linus Torvalds expressed concerns that udev was making "...changes that were known to be problematic, and are pure and utter stupidity." Several Gentoo developers were also concerned about the removal of features and uncooperative nature of udev maintained by the systemd developers, so they've announced a fork: "After speaking with several other Gentoo developers that share Linus' concerns, I have decided to form a team to fork udev. Our plan is to eliminate the separate /usr requirement from our fork, among other things. We will announce the project later this week." The project name (for now) is udev-ng, and you can grab the code from Github. Update: 11/16 21:29 GMT by U L : One of the developers commented that this isn't yet an official Gentoo project (but hopefully it will be!). There's also an informative flamewar about the fork on debian-devel.

stevegee58 writes "A tumblr blog entitled 'HelloThereRacists' is publicly identifying other online posters who make racist/assassination comments about President Obama. Beyond merely identifying online usernames, the blog's author is uncovering and publishing the real names and locations of offending posters. It's an interesting mess of legal issues. The outed posters are at risk of a Secret Service visit, but the trouble may not end there. The HelloThereRacists blogger himself may have some problems publicly identifying posters, who are frequently underage teenagers." Update: 11/16 19:17 GMT by S : The blog has already been taken down.

OverTheGeicoE writes "The Homeland Security Subcommittee on Transportation Security held a hearing on TSA's recent decision to move X-ray body scanners from major airports to smaller ones, which the subcommittee refers to as a 'Scanner Shuffle.' John Sanders, TSA's assistant administrator for security capabilities, testified that 91 scanners recently removed from major airports were now in storage due to 'privacy concerns.' Although TSA originally planned to relocate the scanners to smaller airports, those plans have been shelved because smaller airports don't have room for them. The subcommitteee is also investigating allegations that the machines' manufacturer, Rapiscan, 'may have falsified tests of software intended to stop the machines from recording graphic images of travelers' (VIDEO). Coincidentally, shares of Rapiscan's parent company, OSI Systems Inc., dropped in value almost 25% today, its biggest intraday decline in about 12 years. If wrongdoing is proven, Rapiscan could face fines, prison terms and a ban on government contracting, according to a former head of federal procurement."

wbr1 writes "I just received an email from Amazon Payments, the Amazon competitor to PayPal, stating among other things, that they were changing and simplifying their policies. It should be no surprise then, that similar to what PayPal and many others have already done, they have added language removing the right to class action lawsuits. See specifically section 11.3 (edited for brevity): '1.3 Disputes. Any dispute or claim relating in any way to your visit to the Site or Seller Central or to products or services sold or distributed by us or through the Site or Seller Central (including without limitation the Service) will be resolved by binding arbitration, rather than in court, except that you may assert claims in small claims court if your claims qualify. The Federal Arbitration Act and federal arbitration law apply to this agreement... ... You and we each agree that any dispute resolution proceedings will be conducted only on an individual basis and not in a class, consolidated, or representative action. If for any reason a claim proceeds in court rather than in arbitration you and we each waive any right to a jury trial. You and we also both agree that you or we may bring suit in court to enjoin infringement or other misuse of intellectual property rights.' This is becoming more and more common, and while the end user normally doesn't make out well in a class-action suit, large settlements do provide a punishment and deterrent to corporations that abuse their power. The question becomes, what do we do to fix this so that consumers are truly protected?"

Nerval's Lobster writes "When Steven Sinofsky stepped down as head of Microsoft's Windows division earlier this week, multiple publications cited friction with other executives as the primary reason behind the departure. Whether or not that's the case—neither Sinofsky nor Microsoft has offered an official explanation, aside from the usual platitudes—someone with connections to Microsoft is claiming that Sinofsky's departure stemmed from a failed attempt to bring additional parts of the company under his control. 'Steven had apparently lost recent battles to bring both Windows Phone and the Developer Division under his control,' Hal Berenson, president of consulting group True Mountain Group and a former Microsoft executive, wrote in a Nov. 13 blog posting. 'I suspect that he saw those [losses] both as a roadblock to where he wanted to take Windows over the next few years, and a clear indication that his political power within Microsoft had peaked.' The departure, he added, was the 'outgrowth of conflict.' Berenson's claim was enough to draw Sinofsky himself into the discussion. In the comments section below the posting, Sinofsky left a short note suggesting that rumors of a multi-product takeover were, frankly, malarkey."

concealment writes with this excerpt from an Associated Press story, as carried by the Houston Chronicle:"In Britain, hundreds of people are prosecuted each year for posts, tweets, texts and emails deemed menacing, indecent, offensive or obscene, and the number is growing as our online lives expand. 'Fifty years ago someone would have made a really offensive comment in a public space and it would have been heard by relatively few people,' said Mike Harris of free-speech group Index on Censorship. People take it upon themselves to report this offensive material to police, and suddenly you've got the criminalization of offensive speech. Figures obtained by The Associated Press through a freedom of information request show a steadily rising tally of prosecutions in Britain for electronic communications — phone calls, emails and social media posts — that are grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene or menacing character — from 1,263 in 2009 to 1,843 in 2011. Justice Igor Judge said in his judgment that the law should not prevent 'satirical or iconoclastic or rude comment, the expression of unpopular or unfashionable opinion about serious or trivial matters, banter or humor, even if distasteful to some or painful to those subjected to it.'"

c0lo writes "Engineers from Google's Books team have released the design plans for a comparatively reasonably priced (about $1500) book scanner on Google Code. Built using a scanner, a vacuum cleaner and various other components, the Linear Book Scanner was developed by engineers during the '20 percent time' that Google allocates for personal projects. The license is highly permissive, thus it's possible the design and building costs can be improved. Any takers?" Adds reader leighklotz: "The Google Tech Talk Video starts with Jeff Breidenbach of the Google Books team, and moves on to Dany Qumsiyeh showing how simple his design is to build. Could it be that the Google Books team has had enough of destroying the library in order to save it? Or maybe the just want to up-stage the Internet Archive's Scanning Robot. Disclaimer: I worked with Jeff when we were at Xerox (where he did this awesome hack), but this is more awesome because it saves books."

Billly Gates writes "IE 10 just hit the final preview yesterday for Windows 7. Windows XP and Windows Vista support has been dropped. Most slashdotters have a complex relationship with Internet Explorer. Many of us hate it but have to use it in the office. Microsoft had tried last year to make IE good again with the release of IE 9 which had some fanfare on slashdot, such as hardware acceleration and better standards compliance. MS even launched a full campaign to get us to switch. IE 10 is supposed to continue the new process and promises to be much faster and support more HTML 5, CSS 3, W3C HTML 5.1 and CSS 3.1 with a score of 320 on HTML5test. As a comparison, last years IE 9 only scored 138. "

Psychotic_Wrath writes "The Salt Lake Police department will be much more transparent with their law enforcement. A program is being rolled out to require officers wear glasses equipped with a camera to record what they see. Of course, there are several officers opposed to this idea, who will resist the change. One of the biggest shockers to me is that the police chief is in strong support of this measure: 'If Chief Burbank gets his way, these tiny, weightless cameras will soon be on every police officer in the state.' With all the opposition of police officers being recorded by citizens that we are seeing throughout the country, it is quite a surprise that they would make a move like this. The officers would wear them when they are investigating crime scenes, serving warrants, and during patrols. Suddenly Utah isn't looking like such a bad place to be. Now we just need to hope other states and departments would follow suit. It sure will be nice when there is video evidence to show the real story."

Psychotic_Wrath writes "The Salt Lake Police department will be much more transparent with their law enforcement. A program is being rolled out to require officers wear glasses equipped with a camera to record what they see. Of course, there are several officers opposed to this idea, who will resist the change. One of the biggest shockers to me is that the police chief is in strong support of this measure: 'If Chief Burbank gets his way, these tiny, weightless cameras will soon be on every police officer in the state.' With all the opposition of police officers being recorded by citizens that we are seeing throughout the country, it is quite a surprise that they would make a move like this. The officers would wear them when they are investigating crime scenes, serving warrants, and during patrols. Suddenly Utah isn't looking like such a bad place to be. Now we just need to hope other states and departments would follow suit. It sure will be nice when there is video evidence to show the real story."

Psychotic_Wrath writes "The Salt Lake Police department will be much more transparent with their law enforcement. A program is being rolled out to require officers wear glasses equipped with a camera to record what they see. Of course, there are several officers opposed to this idea, who will resist the change. One of the biggest shockers to me is that the police chief is in strong support of this measure: 'If Chief Burbank gets his way, these tiny, weightless cameras will soon be on every police officer in the state.' With all the opposition of police officers being recorded by citizens that we are seeing throughout the country, it is quite a surprise that they would make a move like this. The officers would wear them when they are investigating crime scenes, serving warrants, and during patrols. Suddenly Utah isn't looking like such a bad place to be. Now we just need to hope other states and departments would follow suit. It sure will be nice when there is video evidence to show the real story."

concealment writes "In addition to potentially keeping Google's search and email programs from overheating, the pond also has become home to plenty of algae, which meant Google had to stock it with fish. And since this is the Lowcountry, the food chain didn't stop there. 'So we now have a 4-foot alligator that has taken up residence in our pond as well,' Kava said, clearly amused. He added that government experts have said it'll have to be removed once it grows to six feet long."

Dainsanefh tips this report from Reuters: "Advanced Micro Devices has hired JPMorgan Chase & Co to explore options, which could include a potential sale, as the chipmaker struggles to find a role in an industry increasingly focused on mobile and away from traditional PCs, according to three sources familiar with the situation. ... Some investors believe part or all of AMD could be bought by a technology company that might want to emulate Apple Inc's tight control of software and components, a strategy credited in part for the success of the iPad and iPhone. Microsoft Corp, Google Inc, Samsung Electronics, Intel Corp and even Facebook Inc have been suggested by Wall Street analysts as potential suitors that could benefit from some of AMD's chip business, including its graphics division, PC processors and server chips. Others say AMD's most valuable asset may be its deep bench of engineers or its patents." Update: 11/14 01:44 GMT by S : In an emailed statement, an AMD representative said the company "is not actively pursuing a sale of the company or significant assets at this time."

concealment sends this quote from an article at ReadWriteWeb: "Tech billionaire and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban says he is fed up with Facebook and will take his business elsewhere. He's sick of getting hit with huge fees to send messages to his team's fans and followers. Two weeks ago Cuban tweeted out a screen grab of an offer he'd received from Facebook. The social network wanted to charge him $3,000 to reach 1 million people. Along with the screen grab, Cuban wrote, 'FB is blowing it? This is the first step. The Mavs are considering moving to Tumblr or to new MySpace as primary site.'"

An anonymous reader writes "Back in April, we discussed how the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act says email that has resided on a server for more than six months can be considered abandoned. The recent investigation of General Petraeus brings this issue to light again, and perhaps to a broader audience. Under current U.S. law, federal authorities need only a subpoena approved by a federal prosecutor — not a judge — to obtain electronic messages that are six months old or older. Do you know anyone these days who doesn't have IMAP accounts with 6+-month-old mail on them?"

kkleiner writes "Foxconn, the Chinese electronics manufacturer that builds numerous mobile devices and gaming consoles, previously said the company would be aiming to replace 1 million Foxconn workers with robots within 3 years. It appears as if Foxconn has started the ball in motion. Since the announcement, a first batch of 10,000 robots — aptly named Foxbots — appear to have made their way into at least one factory, and by the end of 2012, another 20,000 more will be installed"

Nerval's Lobster writes "Google is following up last month's Samsung Chromebooks with a new, lower-priced one developed by Acer. Retailing for $199, the 11.6-inch Acer C7 Chromebook features an Intel Celeron 847 processor, 2GB of DDR3 memory, a 320GB hard drive, three USB 2.0 ports and an HDMI port for various cords and auxiliary devices. It's designed for portability, weighing 3.05 pounds and measuring an inch thick. Boot time is reportedly less than 18 seconds. If the new Chromebook has a weakness, it's the advertised 3.5 hours of battery life. That's less than the MacBook Air (which features anywhere from 5-7 hours' battery life, depending on specs) and many of the Windows-backed Ultrabooks, some of which claim up to 11 hours of battery life depending on usage. It's also far less than the posted battery life for tablets such as Apple's iPad and Google's Nexus 7, which are widely viewed as the most prominent competition to laptops in the extra-portable category."

CWmike writes with this excerpt from Computerworld: "Steven Sinofsky, the executive in charge of Microsoft's Windows 8 operating system and the driving force behind the new OS, is leaving the company effective immediately, Microsoft announced late Monday. Sinofsky was also the public face for Windows 8 and its new Metro interface, posting constant updates in a Windows 8 blog that charted its development. His last post, fittingly, was entitled 'Updating Windows 8 for General Availability.' The OS was officially launched at the end of last month. According to the All Things D blog, there was growing tension between Sinofsky and other members of the Microsoft executive team, who didn't see him as enough of a team player. But Microsoft's official position is that the decision was a mutual one. Sinofsky had only good things to say about his former employer." Also at SlashCloud.

Hugh Pickens writes "The NY Times reports that according to a report by the International Energy Agency, the U.S. will overtake Saudi Arabia as the world's leading oil producer by about 2017, will become a net oil exporter by 2030, and will become 'all but self-sufficient' in meeting its energy needs in about two decades — a 'dramatic reversal of the trend' in most developed countries. 'The foundations of the global energy systems are shifting,' says Fatih Birol, chief economist at the Paris-based organization, which produces the annual World Energy Outlook. There are several components of the sudden shift in the world's energy supply, but the prime mover is a resurgence of oil and gas production in the United States, particularly the unlocking of new reserves of oil and gas found in shale rock. The widespread adoption of techniques like hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling has made those reserves much more accessible, and in the case of natural gas, resulted in a vast glut that has sent prices plunging. The agency's report was generally 'good news' for the United States says Michael A. Levi, senior fellow for energy and environment at the Council on Foreign Relations, because it highlights the nation's new sources of energy but Levi cautions that being self-sufficient does not mean that the country will be insulated from seesawing energy prices, since those oil prices are set by global markets. The message is more sobering for the planet, in terms of climate change. Although natural gas is frequently promoted for being relatively low in carbon emissions compared to oil or coal, the new global energy market could make it harder to prevent dangerous levels of warming (PDF). 'The report confirms that, given the current policies, we will blow past every safe target for emissions,' says Levi. 'This should put to rest the idea that the boom in natural gas will save us from that.'" The folks over at The Oil Drum aren't quite so optimistic: shale reserves may have an abysmal EROI. And, of course, Global Warming is a liberal myth.

Emscripten is an LLVM-based compiler from dozens of languages to JavaScript (previously demoed as a repl and used to port Doom to the browser), and some recent changes have made it a bit faster, and allowed it to compile itself. Some highlights include a redundant variable eliminator, parallelization of the optimizier and compiler, and a new relooper. From the developer's weblog: "With all of the emscripten optimization passes now in JavaScript, I then worked on parallelizing that. ... The speedup can be close to linear in the number of cores. ... For the LLVM to JS compiler, I made the emscripten compiler parallel as well: It splits up the LLVM IR into 3 main parts: type data, function data, and globals. The function data part is unsurprisingly by far the largest in all cases I checked (95% or so), and it can in principle be parallelized - so I did that. Like in the optimizer, we use a Python process pool which feeds chunks of function data to multiple JavaScript compiler instances. There is some overhead due to chunking, and the type data and globals phases are not parallelized, but overall this can be a close to linear speedup. ... [On the new relooper] Note that this update makes Emscripten a 'self-hosting compiler' in a sense: one of the major optimization passes must be compiled to JS from C++, using Emscripten itself. Since this is an optimization pass, there is no chicken-and-egg problem: We bootstrap the relooper by first compiling it without optimizations, which works because we don't need to reloop there. We then use that unoptimized build of the relooper (which reloops properly, but slowly since it itself is unoptimized) in Emscripten to compile the relooper once more, generating the final fully-optimized version of the relooper, or 'relooped relooper' if you will."

Emscripten is an LLVM-based compiler from dozens of languages to JavaScript (previously demoed as a repl and used to port Doom to the browser), and some recent changes have made it a bit faster, and allowed it to compile itself. Some highlights include a redundant variable eliminator, parallelization of the optimizier and compiler, and a new relooper. From the developer's weblog: "With all of the emscripten optimization passes now in JavaScript, I then worked on parallelizing that. ... The speedup can be close to linear in the number of cores. ... For the LLVM to JS compiler, I made the emscripten compiler parallel as well: It splits up the LLVM IR into 3 main parts: type data, function data, and globals. The function data part is unsurprisingly by far the largest in all cases I checked (95% or so), and it can in principle be parallelized - so I did that. Like in the optimizer, we use a Python process pool which feeds chunks of function data to multiple JavaScript compiler instances. There is some overhead due to chunking, and the type data and globals phases are not parallelized, but overall this can be a close to linear speedup. ... [On the new relooper] Note that this update makes Emscripten a 'self-hosting compiler' in a sense: one of the major optimization passes must be compiled to JS from C++, using Emscripten itself. Since this is an optimization pass, there is no chicken-and-egg problem: We bootstrap the relooper by first compiling it without optimizations, which works because we don't need to reloop there. We then use that unoptimized build of the relooper (which reloops properly, but slowly since it itself is unoptimized) in Emscripten to compile the relooper once more, generating the final fully-optimized version of the relooper, or 'relooped relooper' if you will."

First time accepted submitter RNLockwood writes "Political.com reports that several petitions to secede from the Union have been created at the White House site, We The People, for many states; all since Obama's re-election. Texas and Louisiana lead the list with Texas needing only 7,000 more signatures to qualify for a White House response, probably less now as more Americans have become aware of the petitions. It would be interesting to see a comparison done of these petitions and the Post Election Racist Tweets Map."

benrothke writes "Advanced persistent threat (APT) is one of the most common information security terms used today and it is an undeniably real and dangerous menace. Wikipedia notes that APT's usually refer to a group, such as a foreign government, with both the capability and the intent to persistently and effectively target a specific entity. The term is commonly used to refer to cyber threats, in particular that of Internet-enabled espionage using a variety of intelligence gathering techniques to access sensitive information, but applies equally to other threats such as that of traditional espionage or attack. Every organization of size and scope is a target, and many of the world's largest firms and governments have been victims. In Reverse Deception: Organized Cyber Threat Counter-Exploitation, Dr. Max Kilger and his co-authors provide an effective counterintelligence approach in which to deal with APT. The good news is that the authors provide an effective framework. The bad news is that creating an effective defense is not an easy undertaking." Keep reading below for the rest of Ben's review. Reverse Deception: Organized Cyber Threat Counter-Exploitation author Sean Bodmer, Dr. Max Kilger , Gregory Carpenter , Jade Jones pages 464 publisher McGraw-Hill Osborne Media rating 9/10 reviewer Ben Rothke ISBN 978-0071772495 summary Excellent reference in which to deal with advanced persistent threats When it comes to APT, the de facto perpetrator is China. The book shows how to pursue and hopefully prosecute the perpetrator. But that begs the questions, how many firms can realistically defend themselves against an adversary like China, RBN or nation state?

In the introduction, the authors note that deception is about behavior, both induced in the adversary and undertaken by the deceiver to exploit it. To deceive, the authors write, it is not sufficient to induce belief in the adversary; it is necessary also to prepare and execute the exploitation of resultant behavior. Once again, preparation and execution against a nation state is not a small endeavor.

Chapter 1 (available free here) sets the stage for the rest of the book and provides an overview of the topic and some examples of advanced and persistent threats, including Stuxnet, Operation Aurora, the RBN and more.

Being the biggest of all APT, China takes center stage in chapter 2 – What is Deception? That is nothing new as China has successful used deception for the last 2,000 years. China is referenced heavily in the book due to their extreme confidence and success in executing deception.

Chapter 3 – Cyber Counterintelligence(CI) details how to use CI to find the cyber-adversaries. The chapter provides both the basic investigative and operational techniques and tools, in addition to detailing how to use legal counsel to ensure that what you are doing is legal.

Chapter 5 gets into much more of the details around the legal issues, and what you can and can't do to your adversary. The chapter provides an excellent overview of how to quantify which persistent threats are the most dangerous. It provides nine areas to rank, in order to use as a metric to weight each and every threat.

By the time the reader gets to chapter 4 on profiling, they will likely be overwhelmed by the amount of work necessary to implement an effective cyber CI program, which is indeed the case. The amount of time to develop an APT program is for the most part unfeasible for most organizations. While the book does not get into the budgetary issues; CIO's, CISO's and other IT managers will likely have a difficult time getting any sort of budget to fund an APT program.

Part of the issue is that many firms don't have an effective IPS in place to they won't even know they are being attacked. In the majority of cases, the APT intrusion is not even discovered by the firm, rather an outside entity who notifies them. What is worse is the fact that in many cases, APT malware has been on the victim network often for years undetected.

In addition, in the same way in which people who are scammed once are often repeatedly scammed again; companies that are victims of an APT will often be repeat victims since the perpetrators may share that information with others.

A few of the authors have military and law enforcement background, which adds to their expertise and insights.

The book is meant to be used to pursue and prosecute the perpetrators of APT. With the exception of the military and a few Fortune 50 companies, the odds of effectively prosecuting APT perpetrators is quite small. Notwithstanding that difficulty, organizations misunderstand that they are under attack, and at least have some plan to assess their vulnerabilities.

This book is mainly an introduction to the topic, but does not provide a comprehensive strategy on how to implement an APT program. Such a reference would need to be at least a few times larger than this work.

There is a web site for the book, but it does not really do more than redirect you to Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Matthijs Koot has a detailed review of the book where he took the time to detail the hyperlinks to source the books web page should have had.

Reverse Deception: Organized Cyber Threat Counter-Exploitation may be overkill for most organization, but is nonetheless a necessary read to truly understand the danger.

For anyone looking to understand what APT's are and how to deal with them, the book provides a comprehensive and unparalleled overview of the topic by experts in the field.

If nothing else, the book provides the reader with an appreciation for how dedicated the perpetrators behind APT are. They are smart, sophisticated, have governments and military agencies on their side and they are numerous. One of the many challenges of dealing with the Chinese APT is that China can easily throw tens of thousands of highly-trained and sophisticated attackers at a target in the US, while the target may only be able to muster a few people to provide a cyber-defense.

One of the most important things to take from the book is the third word in the title – organized. Those carrying out APT are highly organized, prepared and meticulous. They often do things in a slow methodical manner to avoid detection. The book provides a detailed methodology to deal with such adversaries.

The downside is that the victim companies themselves lack that organization. Defending against APT requires much more than simply reading this invaluable text. It requires management support, budget, effective tools and a highly trained staff to correctly use those tools. The great advice in the book won't be of assistance if the team deployed does not know how to correctly use them.

While you will likely be outnumbered and outgunned when it comes to APT defense, Reverse Deception: Organized Cyber Threat Counter-Exploitation is a fascinating reference that ensures you won't go down without a fight.

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

You can purchase Reverse Deception: Organized Cyber Threat Counter-Exploitation from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

benrothke writes "Advanced persistent threat (APT) is one of the most common information security terms used today and it is an undeniably real and dangerous menace. Wikipedia notes that APT's usually refer to a group, such as a foreign government, with both the capability and the intent to persistently and effectively target a specific entity. The term is commonly used to refer to cyber threats, in particular that of Internet-enabled espionage using a variety of intelligence gathering techniques to access sensitive information, but applies equally to other threats such as that of traditional espionage or attack. Every organization of size and scope is a target, and many of the world's largest firms and governments have been victims. In Reverse Deception: Organized Cyber Threat Counter-Exploitation, Dr. Max Kilger and his co-authors provide an effective counterintelligence approach in which to deal with APT. The good news is that the authors provide an effective framework. The bad news is that creating an effective defense is not an easy undertaking." Keep reading below for the rest of Ben's review. Reverse Deception: Organized Cyber Threat Counter-Exploitation author Sean Bodmer, Dr. Max Kilger , Gregory Carpenter , Jade Jones pages 464 publisher McGraw-Hill Osborne Media rating 9/10 reviewer Ben Rothke ISBN 978-0071772495 summary Excellent reference in which to deal with advanced persistent threats When it comes to APT, the de facto perpetrator is China. The book shows how to pursue and hopefully prosecute the perpetrator. But that begs the questions, how many firms can realistically defend themselves against an adversary like China, RBN or nation state?

In the introduction, the authors note that deception is about behavior, both induced in the adversary and undertaken by the deceiver to exploit it. To deceive, the authors write, it is not sufficient to induce belief in the adversary; it is necessary also to prepare and execute the exploitation of resultant behavior. Once again, preparation and execution against a nation state is not a small endeavor.

Chapter 1 (available free here) sets the stage for the rest of the book and provides an overview of the topic and some examples of advanced and persistent threats, including Stuxnet, Operation Aurora, the RBN and more.

Being the biggest of all APT, China takes center stage in chapter 2 – What is Deception? That is nothing new as China has successful used deception for the last 2,000 years. China is referenced heavily in the book due to their extreme confidence and success in executing deception.

Chapter 3 – Cyber Counterintelligence(CI) details how to use CI to find the cyber-adversaries. The chapter provides both the basic investigative and operational techniques and tools, in addition to detailing how to use legal counsel to ensure that what you are doing is legal.

Chapter 5 gets into much more of the details around the legal issues, and what you can and can't do to your adversary. The chapter provides an excellent overview of how to quantify which persistent threats are the most dangerous. It provides nine areas to rank, in order to use as a metric to weight each and every threat.

By the time the reader gets to chapter 4 on profiling, they will likely be overwhelmed by the amount of work necessary to implement an effective cyber CI program, which is indeed the case. The amount of time to develop an APT program is for the most part unfeasible for most organizations. While the book does not get into the budgetary issues; CIO's, CISO's and other IT managers will likely have a difficult time getting any sort of budget to fund an APT program.

Part of the issue is that many firms don't have an effective IPS in place to they won't even know they are being attacked. In the majority of cases, the APT intrusion is not even discovered by the firm, rather an outside entity who notifies them. What is worse is the fact that in many cases, APT malware has been on the victim network often for years undetected.

In addition, in the same way in which people who are scammed once are often repeatedly scammed again; companies that are victims of an APT will often be repeat victims since the perpetrators may share that information with others.

A few of the authors have military and law enforcement background, which adds to their expertise and insights.

The book is meant to be used to pursue and prosecute the perpetrators of APT. With the exception of the military and a few Fortune 50 companies, the odds of effectively prosecuting APT perpetrators is quite small. Notwithstanding that difficulty, organizations misunderstand that they are under attack, and at least have some plan to assess their vulnerabilities.

This book is mainly an introduction to the topic, but does not provide a comprehensive strategy on how to implement an APT program. Such a reference would need to be at least a few times larger than this work.

There is a web site for the book, but it does not really do more than redirect you to Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Matthijs Koot has a detailed review of the book where he took the time to detail the hyperlinks to source the books web page should have had.

Reverse Deception: Organized Cyber Threat Counter-Exploitation may be overkill for most organization, but is nonetheless a necessary read to truly understand the danger.

For anyone looking to understand what APT's are and how to deal with them, the book provides a comprehensive and unparalleled overview of the topic by experts in the field.

If nothing else, the book provides the reader with an appreciation for how dedicated the perpetrators behind APT are. They are smart, sophisticated, have governments and military agencies on their side and they are numerous. One of the many challenges of dealing with the Chinese APT is that China can easily throw tens of thousands of highly-trained and sophisticated attackers at a target in the US, while the target may only be able to muster a few people to provide a cyber-defense.

One of the most important things to take from the book is the third word in the title – organized. Those carrying out APT are highly organized, prepared and meticulous. They often do things in a slow methodical manner to avoid detection. The book provides a detailed methodology to deal with such adversaries.

The downside is that the victim companies themselves lack that organization. Defending against APT requires much more than simply reading this invaluable text. It requires management support, budget, effective tools and a highly trained staff to correctly use those tools. The great advice in the book won't be of assistance if the team deployed does not know how to correctly use them.

While you will likely be outnumbered and outgunned when it comes to APT defense, Reverse Deception: Organized Cyber Threat Counter-Exploitation is a fascinating reference that ensures you won't go down without a fight.

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

You can purchase Reverse Deception: Organized Cyber Threat Counter-Exploitation from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

miller60 writes "The new Top500 list of the world's most powerful supercomputers is out, and the new champion is Titan, the new and improved system that previously ruled the Top500 as Jaguar. Oak Ridge Labs' Titan knocked Livermore Labs' Sequoia system out of the top spot, with a Linpack benchmark of more than 17 petaflops. Check out the full list, or an illustrated guide to the top 10."

Nerval's Lobster writes "The use of a Red Team and penetration testing can strengthen an organization's security posture. But how does a Red Team member actually think like an attacker, and use that mindset to exploit security vulnerabilities? Gillis Jones works for WhiteHat Security, where his job rests within the TRC (Threat Research Center). It's here that he performs hands-on site assessments, which involve manually confirming all the issues reported by an automatic scan of a particular Website or application. His job includes checking the application's POST and GET requests for reflection of any inputs. He also checks for Cross-Site Scripting (XSS), which includes stored, reflected, and DOM XSS vulnerabilities. Those checks let him determine the Website’s basic security posture. If user input isn’t encoded or sanitized, that’s a good indicator of other problems. And if that’s the case, then Jones (or someone like him) will move on to checking for SQL Injection (SQLi) vulnerabilities and other issues."

hypnosec writes "Kim Dotcom has revealed that Megaupload's successor, Mega, which is reportedly launching on January 20, 2013, will be operating through a new domain name: Mega.co.nz. Through a tweet Dotcom announced that Mega has found a new home and that the new domain name is protected by the law. Dotcom also revealed that lobbyists won't be able to do anything about this, as 'judges are not influenced by politics in New Zealand.' Recent announcements about Mega's domain — Me.ga — didn't go as planned following a decision by the Government of Gabon to suspend the domain name. Dotcom had announced at the time that despite the blockage, Mega would launch as planned."

Lasrick writes "Blake Clayton has an excellent piece on the cyber threat to the global oil supply. His description of the August attack on Saudi Aramco, which rendered thirty thousand of its computers useless, helps make his point. From the article: 'The future of energy insecurity has arrived. In August, a devastating cyber attack rocked one of the world’s most powerful oil companies, Saudi Aramco, Riyadh’s state-owned giant, rendering thirty thousand of its computers useless. This was no garden-variety breach. In the eyes of U.S. defense secretary Leon Panetta, it was “probably the most destructive attack that the private sector has seen to date.”'"

Hugh Pickens writes "Megan Garber writes that in the age of the quantified self, biases are just one more thing that can be measured, analyzed, and publicized. The day after Barack Obama won a second term as president of the United States, a group of geography academics took advantage of the fact that many tweets are geocoded to search Twitter for racism-revealing terms that appeared in the context of tweets that mentioned 'Obama,' 're-elected,' or 'won,' sorting the tweets according to the state they were sent from and comparing the racist tweets to the total number of geocoded tweets coming from that state during the same time period. Their findings? Alabama and Mississippi have the highest measures followed closely by Georgia, Louisiana, and Tennessee forming a fairly distinctive cluster in the southeast. Beyond that cluster North Dakota and Utah both had relatively high scores (3.5 each), as did Missouri, Oregon, and Minnesota. 'These findings support the idea that there are some fairly strong clustering of hate tweets centered in southeastern U.S. which has a much higher rate than the national average,' writes Matthew Zook. 'But lest anyone elsewhere become too complacent, the unfortunate fact is that most states are not immune from this kind of activity. Racist behavior, particularly directed at African Americans in the U.S., is all too easy to find both offline and in information space.'"

Penurious Penguin writes "The Wall Street Journal, in correspondence with Chevron representatives, reveals that back in 2010, Stuxnet reached Chevron, where it managed to infect — but not significantly affect — the oil giant's network. According to a Chevron representative speaking to CNET, the issue was 'immediately addressed ... without incident.' The Stuxnet worm is believed to be the work of the U.S. and Israel, and this report is confirmation that it struck well wide of its intended targets. Chevron's general manager of the earth sciences department, Mark Koelmel, said to CIO Journal, 'I don't think the U.S. government even realized how far it had spread ... I think the downside of what they did is going to be far worse than what they actually accomplished.'"

drinkypoo writes "We've been following the story that Apple was ordered by a UK court to post an apology to Samsung both in newspapers and on Apple's UK website. After originally posting a non-apology and then hiding a real one, Apple finally complied. Now, PJ over at Groklaw reports on the ruling from the UK court itself, which condemns Apple's conduct in this matter. 'Since Apple did not comply with the order in its estimation, adding materials that were not ordered and in addition were "false," the judges ordered Apple to pay Samsung's lawyers' fees on an indemnity basis, and they add some public humiliation.' The judge wrote, 'Finally I should mention the time for compliance. Mr Beloff, on instructions (presumably given with the authority of Apple) told us that "for technical reasons" Apple needed fourteen days to comply. I found that very disturbing: that it was beyond the technical abilities of Apple to make the minor changes required to own website in less time beggared belief. ... I hope that the lack of integrity involved in this incident is entirely atypical of Apple.'"

drinkypoo writes "We've been following the story that Apple was ordered by a UK court to post an apology to Samsung both in newspapers and on Apple's UK website. After originally posting a non-apology and then hiding a real one, Apple finally complied. Now, PJ over at Groklaw reports on the ruling from the UK court itself, which condemns Apple's conduct in this matter. 'Since Apple did not comply with the order in its estimation, adding materials that were not ordered and in addition were "false," the judges ordered Apple to pay Samsung's lawyers' fees on an indemnity basis, and they add some public humiliation.' The judge wrote, 'Finally I should mention the time for compliance. Mr Beloff, on instructions (presumably given with the authority of Apple) told us that "for technical reasons" Apple needed fourteen days to comply. I found that very disturbing: that it was beyond the technical abilities of Apple to make the minor changes required to own website in less time beggared belief. ... I hope that the lack of integrity involved in this incident is entirely atypical of Apple.'"

drinkypoo writes "We've been following the story that Apple was ordered by a UK court to post an apology to Samsung both in newspapers and on Apple's UK website. After originally posting a non-apology and then hiding a real one, Apple finally complied. Now, PJ over at Groklaw reports on the ruling from the UK court itself, which condemns Apple's conduct in this matter. 'Since Apple did not comply with the order in its estimation, adding materials that were not ordered and in addition were "false," the judges ordered Apple to pay Samsung's lawyers' fees on an indemnity basis, and they add some public humiliation.' The judge wrote, 'Finally I should mention the time for compliance. Mr Beloff, on instructions (presumably given with the authority of Apple) told us that "for technical reasons" Apple needed fourteen days to comply. I found that very disturbing: that it was beyond the technical abilities of Apple to make the minor changes required to own website in less time beggared belief. ... I hope that the lack of integrity involved in this incident is entirely atypical of Apple.'"

Hugh Pickens writes "Coffee is the world's favorite beverage and the second-most traded commodity after oil. Now Nick Collins reports that rising global temperatures and subtle changes in seasonal conditions could make 99.7 per cent of Arabica-growing areas unsuitable for the plant before the end of the century and in some areas as soon as 2020. Even if the beans do not disappear completely from the wild, climate change is highly likely to impact yields. The taste of coffee, a beverage of choice among Slashdot readers, will change in future decades. 'The worst case scenario, as drawn from our analyses, is that wild Arabica could be extinct by 2080,' says Justin Moat. 'This should alert decision makers to the fragility of the species.'" Read more, below. Hugh Pickens continues: "Arabica is one of only two species of bean used to make coffee and is by far the most popular, accounting for 70 per cent of the global market, including almost all fresh coffee sold in high street chains and supermarkets in the US and most of Europe. A different bean known as Robusta is used in freeze-dried coffee and is commonly drunk in Greece and Turkey, but Robusta's high caffeine content makes it much less pleasant to most palates. In some areas, such as the Boma Plateau in South Sudan, the demise could come as early as 2020, based on the low flowering rate and poor health of current crops. The researchers used field study and 'museum' data (including herbarium specimens) to run bioclimatic models for wild Arabica coffee, in order to deduce the actual (recorded) and predicted geographical distribution for the species. 'Arabica can only exist in a very specific pace with a very specific number of other variables,' says Aaron Davis, head of coffee research at the Royal Botanic Gardens. 'It is mainly temperature but also the relationship between temperature and seasonality – the average temperature during the wet season for example.'"

pigrabbitbear writes with an update to the story, based on a DigiTimes report, that iPhone maker Foxconn would be opening a new factory in the U.S. "Foxconn makes a lot of stuff, but as it's one of Apple primary manufacturing partners, lots of people jumped to the salacious conclusion that a U.S.-based Foxconn factory could finally produce an American-made iPhone. Foxconn denied the DigiTimes report today. A company spokeswoman told CNET that the company actually 'already has multiple facilities based in the U.S.' but that 'there are no current plans to expand our operations there at this time.' Foxconn doesn't make iPhones in the existing U.S. factories, and they don't plan to."

sciencehabit writes "It's a good 130 years too late to answer that question empirically, but at least symbolically Charles Darwin has won support from more than 4000 voters in the 10th congressional district of Georgia, thanks to an initiative headed by James Leebens-Mack, a plant biologist at the University of Georgia in Athens. Like many others, Leebens-Mack was deeply troubled by a speech his Congressman, Paul Broun (R-GA), gave at an Athens church in October deriding teachings on evolution, embryology, and the big bang theory as 'lies straight from the pit of Hell.' Broun, a medical doctor, is a member of the U.S. House of Representative's Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, and chair of its Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight. Leebens-Mack says the 'protest vote should make it clear to future opponents that there are a lot of people in the district who are not happy with antiscience statements.'"

New submitter TurinX writes "Unsurprisingly, IBM's Chief Patent Counsel, Manny Schecter, thinks the patent system isn't broken. He says, 'Patent disputes like [the Apple-Samsung case] are a natural characteristic of a vigorously competitive industry. And they're nothing new: Similar skirmishes have historically occurred in areas as diverse as sewing machines, winged flight, agriculture, and telegraph technology. Each marked the emergence of incredible technological advances, and each generated similar outcries about the patent system. We are actually witnessing fewer patent suits per patent issued today than the historical average.'" Regarding software patents, he argues, "If patent litigation caused by the U.S. patent system stifled innovation, U.S. software companies would not be the most successful in the world." His recommendation is that we should be patient and "let the system work." Schecter's editorial at Wired is one of a series of expert opinions on the patent system; we've already discussed Richard Stallman's contribution.

MassDosage writes "In a remarkable show of good timing Presentation Patterns turned up on my desk for review within days of me having been asked to give a presentation at a large tech conference. So I decided to read the book as I worked on my presentation and apply any lessons learned as I worked my way through it. The word "patterns" in the book's title will be known to most software developers as a reference to the seminal 'Gang of four' software design patterns book which codified common solutions to software problems. The concept of patterns originated in building architecture with the idea being that by categorizing and naming solutions to problems, a common vocabulary could be built up that allowed practitioners in a certain field to communicate more effectively. This was hugely successful and has spawned the idea of looking for patterns in many other areas which is where this book comes in." Read on for the rest of Mass Dosage's review. Presentation Patterns: Techniques for Crafting Better Presentations author Neal Ford, Matthew McCollough, Nathaniel Schutta pages 265 publisher Addison-Wesley rating 7.5/10 reviewer Mass Dosage ISBN 978-0-321-82080-8 summary Techniques for Crafting Better Presentations Presentation Patterns aims to apply patterns to the task of creating and delivering presentations and for the most part it succeeds. The format of the book is slightly biased towards those in the software industry as the authors all have software backgrounds. However after reading the introduction which explains the rationale behind patterns in general, as well as the specifics of how they are covered, this book should be useful to anyone interested in improving their presentation skills. The book is divided into chapters which follow the timeline of creating a presentation — starting with patterns on preparing a presentation (e.g. "Know your audience" and "Narrative Arc) through to actually building a presentation (e.g. "Defy defaults" and "Infodeck") and ending with patterns related to the final delivery of the presentation (e.g. "Seeding satisfaction" and "Breathing room"). This temporal categorization of patterns is logical and worked very well for me as I could read through a section and apply it to the part of the presentation I was working on at the time before moving on to the next section.

Each pattern is described using a standard format which includes: other names for the pattern; a definition of the pattern; a motivation for why it is relevant; a discussion of where it is applicable as well as the consequences of using it; and a list of related patterns. Because each individual pattern is described in the same way it's easy to compare them and see why and how they should be applied. While patterns give advice on things that one should do, just as important is advice on what not not to do. The authors include plenty of this in the form of "antipatterns" which are described in the same way as patterns, the only difference being that they are things to avoid in a presentation, some examples being "Ant fonts" and "Disowning your topic".

Scattered throughout the book are anecdotes from the authors that describe real world situations where certain patterns were useful and some additional back stories to how they were discovered or applied. These add some welcome variety to the text while also showing that this isn't pure theory but has been derived out of the actual experiences of the authors (all of whom are regulars on the presentations circuit). Presentation Patterns can be read from beginning to end but after an initial read it will probably be even more useful as a reference — particularly by those who present regularly as they can look up information on a specific pattern that is of interest at a particular time.

While a lot of the patterns and antipatterns covered are fairly general and not tied to any particular technology, the authors do assume that most presentations will be created and delivered in a digital format. They try to avoid discussing any specific presentation software but in a few cases they go into more depth and describe how a certain technique would be implemented using Microsoft's Power Point and Apple's Keynote software. I'm a Libre Office user but fortunately most of their descriptions were easy enough to translate to another tool . Having said that, these cases are not the norm and if you are looking for a tutorial or manual on how to build presentations using a certain piece of presentation software then this book is not for you. I got the feeling that the authors were aiming for their advice to be timeless and have tried to describe generalities rather than the specifics of a particular tool.

Presentation Patterns is well written and contains lots of good advice, backed up by concrete examples from the authors' past experiences. A wide variety of patterns are covered and the breadth and the depth of these mean that there should be something relevant for most possible usages. Not every pattern is applicable to every type of presentation so it is up to the reader to understand when and where to apply specific patterns. For example, if your presentation is primarily going to be delivered by e-mail and read by people as opposed to you presenting it in person then certain patterns make more sense than others. The patterns are cross-referenced against each other so you can see how using one might influence the use of another. This is slightly annoying at the beginning when you are not familiar with all of them but as you expand your pattern vocabulary it starts to make a lot more sense.

I finished reading this book at around the same time I completed and then delivered my presentation and I definitely learnt some lessons that, when applied, made my presentation better than it would have been without them. At the end of the day most of the content is common sense and probably won't be that surprising to anyone who has given or viewed presentations in the past but it is still useful to have it all written down in one place. I will definitely use the book again, probably not to read it from cover to cover but more as a checklist and refresher of what to aim for and what to avoid when I work on my next presentation. The patterns format might not be for everyone and will take a bit of getting used to by those for whom it is new but on the whole I think it works very well for this material and would recommend it to anyone hoping to improve how they prepare, create, build and deliver presentations.

Full disclosure: I was given a copy of this book free of charge by the publisher for review purposes. They placed no restrictions on what I could say and left me to be as critical as I wanted so the above review is my own honest opinion.

You can purchase Presentation Patterns: Techniques for Crafting Better Presentations from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

MassDosage writes "In a remarkable show of good timing Presentation Patterns turned up on my desk for review within days of me having been asked to give a presentation at a large tech conference. So I decided to read the book as I worked on my presentation and apply any lessons learned as I worked my way through it. The word "patterns" in the book's title will be known to most software developers as a reference to the seminal 'Gang of four' software design patterns book which codified common solutions to software problems. The concept of patterns originated in building architecture with the idea being that by categorizing and naming solutions to problems, a common vocabulary could be built up that allowed practitioners in a certain field to communicate more effectively. This was hugely successful and has spawned the idea of looking for patterns in many other areas which is where this book comes in." Read on for the rest of Mass Dosage's review. Presentation Patterns: Techniques for Crafting Better Presentations author Neal Ford, Matthew McCollough, Nathaniel Schutta pages 265 publisher Addison-Wesley rating 7.5/10 reviewer Mass Dosage ISBN 978-0-321-82080-8 summary Techniques for Crafting Better Presentations Presentation Patterns aims to apply patterns to the task of creating and delivering presentations and for the most part it succeeds. The format of the book is slightly biased towards those in the software industry as the authors all have software backgrounds. However after reading the introduction which explains the rationale behind patterns in general, as well as the specifics of how they are covered, this book should be useful to anyone interested in improving their presentation skills. The book is divided into chapters which follow the timeline of creating a presentation — starting with patterns on preparing a presentation (e.g. "Know your audience" and "Narrative Arc) through to actually building a presentation (e.g. "Defy defaults" and "Infodeck") and ending with patterns related to the final delivery of the presentation (e.g. "Seeding satisfaction" and "Breathing room"). This temporal categorization of patterns is logical and worked very well for me as I could read through a section and apply it to the part of the presentation I was working on at the time before moving on to the next section.

Each pattern is described using a standard format which includes: other names for the pattern; a definition of the pattern; a motivation for why it is relevant; a discussion of where it is applicable as well as the consequences of using it; and a list of related patterns. Because each individual pattern is described in the same way it's easy to compare them and see why and how they should be applied. While patterns give advice on things that one should do, just as important is advice on what not not to do. The authors include plenty of this in the form of "antipatterns" which are described in the same way as patterns, the only difference being that they are things to avoid in a presentation, some examples being "Ant fonts" and "Disowning your topic".

Scattered throughout the book are anecdotes from the authors that describe real world situations where certain patterns were useful and some additional back stories to how they were discovered or applied. These add some welcome variety to the text while also showing that this isn't pure theory but has been derived out of the actual experiences of the authors (all of whom are regulars on the presentations circuit). Presentation Patterns can be read from beginning to end but after an initial read it will probably be even more useful as a reference — particularly by those who present regularly as they can look up information on a specific pattern that is of interest at a particular time.

While a lot of the patterns and antipatterns covered are fairly general and not tied to any particular technology, the authors do assume that most presentations will be created and delivered in a digital format. They try to avoid discussing any specific presentation software but in a few cases they go into more depth and describe how a certain technique would be implemented using Microsoft's Power Point and Apple's Keynote software. I'm a Libre Office user but fortunately most of their descriptions were easy enough to translate to another tool . Having said that, these cases are not the norm and if you are looking for a tutorial or manual on how to build presentations using a certain piece of presentation software then this book is not for you. I got the feeling that the authors were aiming for their advice to be timeless and have tried to describe generalities rather than the specifics of a particular tool.

Presentation Patterns is well written and contains lots of good advice, backed up by concrete examples from the authors' past experiences. A wide variety of patterns are covered and the breadth and the depth of these mean that there should be something relevant for most possible usages. Not every pattern is applicable to every type of presentation so it is up to the reader to understand when and where to apply specific patterns. For example, if your presentation is primarily going to be delivered by e-mail and read by people as opposed to you presenting it in person then certain patterns make more sense than others. The patterns are cross-referenced against each other so you can see how using one might influence the use of another. This is slightly annoying at the beginning when you are not familiar with all of them but as you expand your pattern vocabulary it starts to make a lot more sense.

I finished reading this book at around the same time I completed and then delivered my presentation and I definitely learnt some lessons that, when applied, made my presentation better than it would have been without them. At the end of the day most of the content is common sense and probably won't be that surprising to anyone who has given or viewed presentations in the past but it is still useful to have it all written down in one place. I will definitely use the book again, probably not to read it from cover to cover but more as a checklist and refresher of what to aim for and what to avoid when I work on my next presentation. The patterns format might not be for everyone and will take a bit of getting used to by those for whom it is new but on the whole I think it works very well for this material and would recommend it to anyone hoping to improve how they prepare, create, build and deliver presentations.

Full disclosure: I was given a copy of this book free of charge by the publisher for review purposes. They placed no restrictions on what I could say and left me to be as critical as I wanted so the above review is my own honest opinion.

You can purchase Presentation Patterns: Techniques for Crafting Better Presentations from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.