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MassDosage writes "Getting Started with Audacity 1.3 by Bethany Hiitola covers the basics of using the Audacity software package for recording and editing audio. This book is written in a tutorial style and stays true to its title by covering Audacity from a newcomer's perspective with lots of diagrams and detailed explanations of how to install and setup Audacity and use its most essential features. This is all very much aimed at people who are new to audio software and are looking for a simple way to get started and be guided through creating and editing an audio recording. On the whole it achieves this but is occasionally let down by overly simplistic content and shoddy editing." Read below for the rest of Mass Dosage's review. Getting started with Audacity 1.3 author Bethany Hiitola pages 220 publisher Packt Publishing rating 6/10 reviewer Mass Dosage ISBN 1847197647 summary Create your own podcasts, edit music and more with this open source audio editor Audacity 1.3 is the latest version of this well known free and open source software program that runs on GNU/Linux, Windows, Macs and any other operating system that an aspiring techy gets the source code to compile on. The author has done a good job of keeping the software's cross-platform nature in mind by minimizing anything operating system specific and describing alternative approaches where necessary. I followed along with the book's examples using Linux and didn't run into any platform-specific issues.

I've personally had a fair amount of experience with many different audio editors over the years but haven't worked that much with Audacity so I was interested in what this book had to offer me. To be honest most of what is covered I had already figured out myself just from playing with Audacity in the past. This book is really targeted at complete newbies — if you've used an audio editor of any form in the past and are comfortable recording or importing audio and applying some basic filters and effects to it, then the very basic, tutorial nature of this book probably won't be of much interest to you. However, for those who don't know much about audio editing and are looking for somewhere to start then this might just be what you're looking for.

It may not be the prettiest audio tool on the planet, but Audacity really is "good enough" for those wanting to do simple editing. The fact that it is totally open and free for anyone to download and use means that the software itself is a great starting point for an aspiring audio editor or creator as the barriers to entry are very low. The first few chapters of the book take one through installing Audacity and explaining how the program works and how its user interface is laid out. The minimal equipment needed to make a vocal recording (i.e. a microphone, soundcard and headphones) is touched on and again it is very clear that there is a low barrier to creating something simple. If you want to make state of the art recordings then you may need to spend a fortune on equipment but for the purposes of getting started one really doesn't need much.

The main example in the book covers creating a podcast from scratch which is a good choice as its something that many casual users are probably interested in. This also provides an opportunity to discuss most of the important aspects of recording audio and doing common tasks like removing noise, splitting up tracks, adding background music, fading sound in and out and applying various effects.This is all done with lots of diagrams and step-by-step explanations of the menu items and buttons to push to achieve this. Strangely enough the author mentions keyboard shortcuts (which is good) but instead of describing probably the most useful shortcut of all (CTRL-S to save) she describes going to the file menu and selecting "Save" each time.

The podcast example is expanded upon to show how audio can be cut, pasted, silenced and made louder or quieter. Noise removal is covered in a bit more depth than the other topics which is a good thing as the filter that is used to do this isn't very user friendly — after selecting the noise profile it vanishes with no information on what to do next. This is also something most users will probably need at some point as are the steps on how to normalize and compress the audio. The effects and filters covered are also the ones that a new user is most likely to want to start playing with. The bare essentials are wrapped up in a chapter explaining how to export audio to MP3 (or other formats) and some suggestions are given as to how to make this publicly available via an RSS feed or by uploading the audio to iTunes. It would have been nice to have some pointers to alternative ways of doing this, especially some more open form of publishing than Apple's proprietary and closed platform. There is even a whole section on how to circumvent Apple's DRM by converting locked iTunes audio files to CD and then importing from there into Audacity which is probably useful to some but feels a bit out of place in a book about an open tool like this.

The book also covers a number of other topics which are assembled somewhat randomly but are generally useful. These include adding background music, time shifting, adjusting pitch and tempo as well as various options for aligning, splitting, joining and moving multiple tracks around. Every effect that ships with Audacity is covered and this is serves as a reference guide for what each of them does. Adding more functionality to Audacity via the use of plugins is touched on but this is really just a teaser and isn't covered in much depth (probably due to the platform-specific nature of their installation).

I was a bit disappointed in the book as I didn't learn as much as I would have liked, this is really more of a "how to do the basics" and doesn't provide much depth on Audacity or audio concepts in general. It would have been nice if the book had wrapped up with some pointers for those wanting to know more or go further with their audio editing skills. The overall tone of the book is friendly which suits its "for beginners" approach but at times it is let down by not sounding very authoritative or convincing. The bad grammar and silly typos that weren't caught by the editors don't help much in this regard either. Give it a go if you're the type of person who needs a tutorial guide to get started, otherwise you can probably figure out most of the topics covered by just playing with the software yourself.

You can purchase Getting Started with Audacity 1.3 from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

zacharye writes "Google and Motorola Mobility have announced an agreement whereby Google will acquire Motorola for $12.5 billion. The acquisition price equates to $40 per share of Motorola stock, or a premium of 63% over Friday's closing price. The move is considered to be an effort that will better-align Google to compete with Apple's iPhone, which currently owns two-thirds of profits among the world's top-8 smartphone vendors..." That's one way to stop royalty payments.

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

Fudge Factor 3000 writes "Apple and Exxon are fighting it out to be the company with the largest market cap. Tuesday, Apple pulled ahead. It is hard to believe a tech company can beat out an oil giant, but is the market cap really the measure of the size/influence of a company? It is certainly the simplest metric to consider. Ars is running an excellent article on how to measure the size of a company. They discuss different metrics such as cash balance, revenue, number of employees, etc."

According to the San Francisco Appeal, the cellphone service shut-down that the BART system imposed Thursday (by disabling transponders which allow cellphone communications in the underground portion of the system), besides drawing rebukes from various civil liberties groups, has generated plans for a protest Monday organized by Anonymous.

itwbennett writes "Researchers at UC San Diego and Cornell University have developed software that they say can detect variations in flash behavior that are unique to each chip. The system uses 'physically unclonable functions' (PUFs), or variations in manufacturing that are unique to each element of each flash chip. Swanson described one PUF that his team has worked with, called Program Disturb. It uses a type of manufacturing flaw that doesn't affect normal operation but causes problems under test conditions." Related: from last October, another description of such error-based identity assignment.

quarterbuck writes "The Wall Street Journal has a review of the Telikin, an all-in-one desktop, with a touch screen, that starts at $699 and comes from a small Philadelphia-area start-up called Venture 3 Systems. It is much simplified (e.g., no PowerPoint editing), and the hardware is thought through (two microphones), but the review claims that the software is still buggy." I only wish it was based on a revenue stream derived from a cancellable subscription.

1729 writes "Yesterday, in an effort to disrupt rumored protests at Bay Area Rapid Transit stations, BART officials disabled cell phone and internet access within most of the BART system by shutting down the antennas that enable reception in the underground stations."

An anonymous reader writes "Last week Slashdot had the story that the web had turned 20 years old. Of course, patents also last 20 years, which has resulted in some asking what would have happened if Tim Berners-Lee had patented the web? Thankfully, he didn't (and wouldn't). But we'd be living in a very different (and probably less interesting) world if he had."

An anonymous reader writes "Yesterday a partially-redacted document briefly appeared on the FCC website, accidentally posted by a law firm working for AT&T on the $39 billion T-Mobile deal (somewhere there's a paralegal looking for work today). While AT&T engaged in damage control, telling reporters that the document contained no new information, a review of the document shows that's simply not true. Data in the letter undermines AT&T's primary justification for the massive deal, while highlighting how AT&T is willing to pay a huge premium simply to reduce competition and keep T-Mobile out of Sprint's hands."

snydeq writes "Apple has much to learn about securing an operating system, and it could learn how from Microsoft, Roger Grimes writes in the wake of further evidence that Macs are more vulnerable to attack than Windows machines. 'It's taken Microsoft 10 years to turn security from a weakness into a strength. Apple can use the lessons learned by Microsoft to manage a quick turnaround. Apple has already hired one of Microsoft's former security leaders, Window Snyder, and it has adopted a modified form of Microsoft's Security Development Lifecycle programming practices. Apple has the benefit of seeing how Microsoft fixed its past mistakes.'"

bonch writes "The FTC is investigating claims that Google prevented Android smartphone vendors from using competing services (covered previously), whether Google preferentially places its own services above others on the search results page, and whether Google scraped content from competitors for use in its own services. FTC lawyers are also asking how Android may be helping Google maintain its massive web search lead. Google denies all allegations and blames jealous rivals for the growing number of probes. The European Commission's own antitrust probe is ongoing."

nonprofiteer writes "Scotland Yard confirms that it's using facial recognition technology to identify rioters in London. 'A law enforcement official, who spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity, said that facial recognition is one of many tools police are using to hunt suspects still at large.' Meanwhile, the vigilante group trying an amateur stab applying facial recognition to the riot photos abandoned the project because the results sucked. This is the big test of the surveillance state that London has become. Are all those cameras effective, or just taking a toll on privacy without bringing added security?"

nonprofiteer writes "Scotland Yard confirms that it's using facial recognition technology to identify rioters in London. 'A law enforcement official, who spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity, said that facial recognition is one of many tools police are using to hunt suspects still at large.' Meanwhile, the vigilante group trying an amateur stab applying facial recognition to the riot photos abandoned the project because the results sucked. This is the big test of the surveillance state that London has become. Are all those cameras effective, or just taking a toll on privacy without bringing added security?"

swandives writes "LinkedIn will make changes to a 'social advertising' feature that has been criticized for using members' names and photographs in advertisements on its website. Amid mounting criticism, the social networking service says it has been 'listening' to its users and 'could have communicated' its intentions with the new ad feature more clearly. As a result, it said, it will change how the advertisements appear. If a LinkedIn user 'follows' a company or service on LinkedIn, the ad feature can display the user's name and photo in advertisements for that company. LinkedIn said its goal was to deliver more useful ads, but some LinkedIn users complained it was a privacy violation, particularly because they have to opt out of the feature rather than opt in. It will be interesting to see whether the changes affect stocks, especially since the network's IPO in May, when shares closed at more than double the initial price, prompting concerns over another dot-com bubble."

An anonymous reader writes "Last year we learned that the miracle material graphene could be made from common table sugar, and now researchers at Rice University have taken the discovery one step further by literally baking it from a box of girl scout cookies. A group of graduate students led by chemist James Tour recently teamed up with Houston Girl Scout troop 25080 to perform the feat using a single box of Trefoil cookies — which could potentially yield $15 billion worth of graphene."

hypnosec writes "A German technology researcher on Wednesday showed global mobile makers and technology firms how General Packet Radio Service can easily be tapped, intercepted, and decrypted with an average mobile phone and a few applications. According to the New York Times, Karsten Nohl, a computer engineer and mobile security researcher, demonstrated to fellow researchers gathered to attend Chaos Communication Camp, a Berlin-based hackers event, how to intercept the voice or data messages sent between mobile devices over GPRS easily, owing to weak protection provided by mobile network carriers for data information. Nohl, in collaboration with his colleague Luca Melette, tapped the information within a radius of five kilometers using a seven-year-old inexpensive mobile phone from Motorola." Computerworld also has an informative, link-laden account. If you are attending this year's CCC (only every four years, sadly), feel free to drop a line (with the submissions form) about cool projects you encounter there.

Last week we discussed news that Diablo 3 will include a real-money auction house for items and require a permanent connection to the internet even for single-player games. Fan reaction has been loud and varied, with many decrying the restrictive DRM. Blizzard exec Robert Bridenbecker said he was surprised by the outrage at the online requirement, saying, "it really is just the nature of how things are going, the nature of the industry. When you look at everything you get by having that persistent connection on the servers, you cannot ignore the power and the draw of that." Some other developers came out in support of the scheme; id Software's Tim Willits said always-on would be "better for everybody" in the end. Max Schaefer, one of the makers of Diablo 3 competitor Torchlight 2, said he understands why they did it, even though Torchlight 2 is not doing the same: "... it seems that most of what they are doing is related to trying to keep a truly secure, cheat-free economy in Diablo III. Whatever you do, you have to make sacrifices. We sacrifice a cheat-free environment to give players the most options, they are sacrificing options and flexibility for security of the economy like you would in an MMO. I understand their approach and sympathize with the technical difficulties of what they are trying to do."

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

hypnosec writes "A fake iPhone 5, inspired by the leaked images of the device, has been discovered to be on sale in China. The quality of the hiPhone 5 varies with the price, with the most premium version of the device being available for 800 yuan or £76. The device reportedly comes in red and pink. Chinese media is reporting that the fake iPhone 5 is thinner than the iPhone 4 and comes with round edges. Other reports are claiming that the device is extremely light and almost feels like that one is holding a plastic toy. The reports are likely based on some images that were leaked by the supply chain." Since they're going to the trouble of building counterfeit stores, the knock-off phones shouldn't surprise anyone.

An anonymous reader writes "When Gizmodo ran photos of Apple's iPhone 4 months before Apple even officially acknowledged it existed, the blogosphere exploded with excitement. But when details leaked explaining how Gizmodo came to find itself in possession of a pre-release iPhone 4, that excitement quickly turned into indignation, and for some, anger. Now, Gimzodo and Gizmodo editor Jason Chen have been let off the hook by the San Mateo DA's office."

nonprofiteer writes "A bunch of vigilantes are organizing a Google Group dedicated to using recently revealed facial recognition tools to identify looters in the London riots. While Vancouver discussed doing something similar after the Stanley Cup riots, the city never actually moved forward on it. Ring of Steel London, though, is far more likely to incorporate FRT into its investigative work." A related article points out how development of face-recognition technology has been kept under wraps by some organizations, but we're getting to the point where it'll soon be ubiquitous.

Trepidity writes "Controversy continues over the seemingly unstoppable trend of 'gamification' (something we've discussed previously). The University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business held a Gamification Symposium entitled 'For The Win' this week, indicating apparent academic respectability. But in the opening panel debating definitions of 'gamification,' one participant, game scholar Ian Bogost, defined it as 'bulls***.' Elsewhere, Jon Radoff responds that it may not be BS, but is too focused on superficial behaviorism rather than deeper gameplay. For my part, I wonder if by claiming gamification is a completely new thing, rather than just a new word, we're missing out on important past lessons, like the very strange history of Soviet gamification."

Orome1 writes "Google Image Search has for some time been littered with images that lure users to compromised sites that serve as doorway pages to other malicious sites. Part of the problem is that these compromised sites often use the WordPress publishing platform, which is infamous for the great number of security bugs that make it such a preferred target. This fact has been proven once again by security researcher Denis Sinegubko, who has pinpointed 4,358 WordPress blogs hijacked by unknown attackers and pumped full of popular search keywords and images, which redirect users to sites that try to scare them into buying a fake AV solution."

In an interview with AllthingsD, the head of Nokia's US operations declared that Nokia will be focusing exclusively on Windows Phone devices in North America. Reasons cited include the low profit margins of the ubiquitous low-end Series 40 devices and lackluster sales of Symbian based devices. This also means that the N9 won't be making it to North America either.

astroengine writes "Early Tuesday morning, the Sun unleashed a powerful X-class flare. The X7 flare is the most energetic explosion to come from the Sun since December 2006. Although the flare was directed away from the Earth, a minor proton storm was detected and some radio communications have been disrupted due to higher-than-normal rates of ionization in the Earth's ionosphere. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory captured the whole event, imaging the flaring site and multi-million degree post-flare plasma."

bizwriter writes with a news piece in bnet about the continuing battle between Samsung and Apple. From the article: "In a stunning and painful decision for Samsung, Apple got a German court to issue a preliminary injunction against the Galaxy Tab. According to patent analyst and blogger Florian Mueller, that means Samsung cannot ... sell its tablet in the entire European Union, except for the Netherlands."

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).

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).

An anonymous reader writes "For all the stories of patent trolls and copyright trolls, there haven't been too many stories of either being sanctioned for abusive or extortion-like practices... until now. The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (one level below the Supreme Court) has approved over $600,000 in sanctions against a lawyer for a patent troll, saying that filing over a hundred lawsuits, each of which was followed up almost immediately with offers to settle at fees much cheaper than it would cost to fight, has the 'indicia of extortion.' Now if only judges started doing that more often."

An anonymous reader writes "For all the stories of patent trolls and copyright trolls, there haven't been too many stories of either being sanctioned for abusive or extortion-like practices... until now. The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (one level below the Supreme Court) has approved over $600,000 in sanctions against a lawyer for a patent troll, saying that filing over a hundred lawsuits, each of which was followed up almost immediately with offers to settle at fees much cheaper than it would cost to fight, has the 'indicia of extortion.' Now if only judges started doing that more often."

MikeChino writes "King Abdullah of Jordan (who was once an extra in an episode of Star Trek: Voyager) has given the green light to a $1.5 billion Star Trek theme park that will boldly take Jordan where no Gulf state has gone before. While the theme park will not be powered by dilithium crystals, it will utilize green technology in order to lower its carbon footprint — all of its electricity will be generated by renewable sources." Just a few weeks ago Sheikh Hamad Bin Hamdan Al Ahyan carved his name in the desert so it could be seen from space. It looks like Sci-fi has finally made it to the Middle East. I can't wait for them to discover Firefly.

CWmike writes "After the hacking gang Anonymous took credit for defacing Syria's Ministry of Defense website, a Syrian group retaliated on Monday by posting gruesome photos on Anonymous' embryonic social network. The defacement of AnonPlus — the site Anonymous set up last month when it was booted off Google+ — did not include the name of the group responsible. The University of Toronto's Citizen Lab, however, credited the AnonPlus defacement to the 'Syrian Electronic Army' in a message posted to Twitter. 'In response to your hacking to the website of the Syrian Ministry of Defence, the Syrian people have decided to purify the internet of [y]our pathetic website,' the defacement read."

jrepin tips news that the Khronos Group has announced the release of the OpenGL 4.2 specification. Some of the new functionality includes: "Enabling shaders with atomic counters and load/store/atomic read-modify-write operations to a single level of a texture (These capabilities can be combined, for example, to maintain a counter at each pixel in a buffer object for single-rendering-pass order-independent transparency); Capturing GPU-tessellated geometry and drawing multiple instances of the result of a transform feedback to enable complex objects to be efficiently repositioned and replicated; Modifying an arbitrary subset of a compressed texture, without having to re-download the whole texture to the GPU for significant performance improvements; Packing multiple 8 and 16 bit values into a single 32-bit value for efficient shader processing with significantly reduced memory storage and bandwidth, especially useful when transferring data between shader stages."

adeelarshad82 writes "The patent system is certainly complex, especially when it comes to smartphones. The Financial Times estimates that as many as 250,000 patents are at stake in a smartphone. Industry titans like Microsoft, Nokia, and Apple have tens of thousands of patents each, but Google's portfolio is reportedly on the low end — 'under 1,000.' Taking advantage of the opportunity, Apple has its patent strategy aimed squarely at the number one rival to its iOS mobile operating system, Android, which is now embedded in 40 percent of all U.S. smartphones compared to Apple's 26.6 percent. Apple's lawyers have been aggressively suing Android manufacturers HTC and Samsung for various technologies, from the 'look and feel' to how it connects to broadband networks. A recently published article takes a deep dive into the lawsuits' possible outcomes and their effect on end users."

adeelarshad82 writes "The patent system is certainly complex, especially when it comes to smartphones. The Financial Times estimates that as many as 250,000 patents are at stake in a smartphone. Industry titans like Microsoft, Nokia, and Apple have tens of thousands of patents each, but Google's portfolio is reportedly on the low end — 'under 1,000.' Taking advantage of the opportunity, Apple has its patent strategy aimed squarely at the number one rival to its iOS mobile operating system, Android, which is now embedded in 40 percent of all U.S. smartphones compared to Apple's 26.6 percent. Apple's lawyers have been aggressively suing Android manufacturers HTC and Samsung for various technologies, from the 'look and feel' to how it connects to broadband networks. A recently published article takes a deep dive into the lawsuits' possible outcomes and their effect on end users."

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."

Last friday Moody's S&P announced that they had downgraded the U.S.'s credit rating (leading to a pretty huge discussion on Slashdot I might add). Since then more interesting news has come out, suraj.sun writes "In a document provided to Treasury on Friday afternoon, Standard and Poor's (S&P) presented a judgment about the credit rating of the U.S. that was based on a $2 trillion mistake. After Treasury pointed out this error — a basic math error of significant consequence — S&P still chose to proceed with their flawed judgment by simply changing their principal rationale for their credit rating decision from an economic one to a political one. S&P incorrectly added that same $2.1 trillion in deficit reduction to an entirely different baseline where discretionary funding levels grow with nominal GDP over the next 10 years. Relative to this alternative baseline, the Budget Control Act will save more than $4 trillion over ten years — or over $2 trillion more than S&P calculated. S&P acknowledged this error — in private conversations with Treasury on Friday afternoon and then publicly early Saturday morning. In the interim, they chose to issue a downgrade of the U.S. credit rating."

mask.of.sanity writes "An Aussie network engineer has published a guide to building a serial cable connector that allows access to a secret kernel debugger hidden within Apple iOS. The debugger was a dormant iOS feature carried over from Apple OS, and seems to serves no function other than to allow hackers to build better exploits. The cable needs an external power source and a jailbroken device to access the debugger." We've mentioned Pollock's serial adapter kit before, modulo the kernel debugging abilities.

An anonymous reader writes "In addition to bringing up the plans for KDE on Wayland, Aaron Seigo just announced at the 2011 Desktop Summit that the KDE 5.0 Frameworks libraries are being planned for development. This central code will be developed in parallel to future KDE SC 4.x releases until it is ready, as to not cause another KDE 4.0 mistake. When the code is ready, key applications will be ported to the new interfaces." (There's another article at IT World.)

An anonymous reader writes "Facebook says it has found the proof that shows Paul Ceglia, a man that claims he owns half of the company over a 2003 contract, is a fraud. Facebook says it has found the original 'authentic contract' between Zuckerberg and Ceglia."

hackingbear writes "In an interview with Chinese official Xinhua news agency, McAfee said no direct evidence suggests a particular nation such as China is behind Operation Shady RAT, a five-year cyber campaign discovered by McAfee. Alperovitch told Xinhua that they 'don't have direct evidence that conclusively points to a particular nation state' behind the scheme. So the same online security industry that has propagated Chinese cyber threats in front of Western media denies they made such suggestion of China, another of their major markets." Also on the Shady RAT front, reader kermidge writes with a post from Hon Lau at Symantec containing details lacking in McAfee's Wednesday report; included are examples of the vectors and commands used, along with cogent commentary.

datapharmer writes "We've all read previous stories on slashdot about Google's driverless car, and some have even pondered if a crash would bring the end to robotic cars. For better or for worse, we will all find out soon, as the inevitable has occurred. The question remains, who is to blame. A Google spokesperson told Business Insider that 'Safety is our top priority. One of our goals is to prevent fender-benders like this one, which occurred while a person was manually driving the car.'"

datapharmer writes "We've all read previous stories on slashdot about Google's driverless car, and some have even pondered if a crash would bring the end to robotic cars. For better or for worse, we will all find out soon, as the inevitable has occurred. The question remains, who is to blame. A Google spokesperson told Business Insider that 'Safety is our top priority. One of our goals is to prevent fender-benders like this one, which occurred while a person was manually driving the car.'"

Since last year we've been following the story of how domains are being seized by the U.S. government for allegedly facilitating online piracy. The seizures received a legal challenge back in June from the owners of one such site, and now a U.S. federal court has returned a ruling in the matter: "District Court Judge Paul Crotty decided to deny Puerto 80's request, which means the domain will remain in the hands of the U.S. Government. The Judge argues that seizing Rojadirecta's .com and .org domains does not violate the First Amendment of the Constitution. 'Puerto 80's First Amendment argument fails,' the Judge writes. 'Puerto 80 alleges that, in seizing the domain names, the Government has suppressed the content in the "forums" on its websites, which may be accessed by clicking a link in the upper left of the home page. The main purpose of the Rojadirecta websites, however, is to catalog links to the copyrighted athletic events — any argument to the contrary is clearly disingenuous.' The judge further ruled that the claimed 32% decline in traffic and the subsequent harm to Puerto 80s business is not an issue as visitors can still access the site through foreign domains. Puerto 80's argument, that users may not be aware of these alternatives, was simply waived."

Since last year we've been following the story of how domains are being seized by the U.S. government for allegedly facilitating online piracy. The seizures received a legal challenge back in June from the owners of one such site, and now a U.S. federal court has returned a ruling in the matter: "District Court Judge Paul Crotty decided to deny Puerto 80's request, which means the domain will remain in the hands of the U.S. Government. The Judge argues that seizing Rojadirecta's .com and .org domains does not violate the First Amendment of the Constitution. 'Puerto 80's First Amendment argument fails,' the Judge writes. 'Puerto 80 alleges that, in seizing the domain names, the Government has suppressed the content in the "forums" on its websites, which may be accessed by clicking a link in the upper left of the home page. The main purpose of the Rojadirecta websites, however, is to catalog links to the copyrighted athletic events — any argument to the contrary is clearly disingenuous.' The judge further ruled that the claimed 32% decline in traffic and the subsequent harm to Puerto 80s business is not an issue as visitors can still access the site through foreign domains. Puerto 80's argument, that users may not be aware of these alternatives, was simply waived."

As a kid I had a minor obsession with invisible ink after learning about it in a science club. An impressive stack of vinegar and lemon scented papers filled my desk, but the history of invisible ink is much more interesting than a summer enrichment program. Starting with the Roman general Pliny the Elder using milk from the thithymallus plant, to modern inks which are only visible under UV light, the science of invisible ink has grown quite complex. Some of the oldest CIA documents contain recipes for special inks, and MI6 and their very own "adult" mixture during WW1.

hypnosec writes "Hackers' favorite recent target, Sony, has won an award at the Black Hat conference held in Las Vegas this week. However, much to the embarrassment of the company, the award it nailed was in the category of 'Epic Fail' of the year. The Pwnie awards, which are like Oscar equivalents in the hacker community, gave this 'honor' to Sony following the series of cyberattacks it was subjected to a few months back, which saw the company's PlayStation and PC gaming networks go down, as well as many other services suffering heavily."

telekon writes "Microsoft researcher Danah Boyd argues in this article that 'The people who most heavily rely on pseudonyms in online spaces are those who are most marginalized by systems of power.' This comes in the wake of criticism aimed at Facebook and Google for their stance on anonymity and pseudonymity. A related article from the Atlantic discusses how revolutionary the real name requirement really is."

telekon writes "Microsoft researcher Danah Boyd argues in this article that 'The people who most heavily rely on pseudonyms in online spaces are those who are most marginalized by systems of power.' This comes in the wake of criticism aimed at Facebook and Google for their stance on anonymity and pseudonymity. A related article from the Atlantic discusses how revolutionary the real name requirement really is."