Slashdot Mirror

Kevin Kelly has for decades been involved in some of the most interesting projects I know about, and in his roles as founding editor (and now editor at large) of Wired Magazine and editor of The Whole Earth Catalog has helped spread the word about many others. Kelly is probably as close to a Rennaisance man as it's possible to be in the 21st century, having more-than-passing interest and knowledge in a range of topics from genetic sequencing and other ways that we can use measurement in pursuit of improved health to how technology is used and reused in real life. Among other projects, he's also the founder of CoolTools, which I consider to be (unsurprisingly) the closest current equivalent to the old Whole Earth Catalogs. (Disclaimer: I've had a few reviews published there, too.) (He's also one of the founders of The WELL, now part of Salon.) Kelly is also Secretary of the Board of Directors of the Long Now Foundation, the group which for years has been designing a clock to ring on 10,000 years in the future. Below, ask questions of Kelly, bearing in mind please the Slashdot interview guidelines: ask as many questions as you want, but please keep them to one per comment. He'll get back soon with his answers.

msmoriarty writes "Bing is a still a money loser for Microsoft, and the calls for the company to sell it off are growing. But according to long-time Microsoft watcher Mary-Jo Foley, dumping Bing is just not going to happen. 'While the world sees Bing as a distant No. 2 search engine, Microsoft brass and bean counters see Bing as a reusable component and asset that will be built into more and more products. Those who think Microsoft will discard Bing or sell it to the highest bidder are dead wrong — that won't happen now or any time soon.'"

jfruhlinger writes "'Netflix Customers, Say Hello to Blockbuster' is the subject line of an email making the rounds trying to convince customers to switch services in the wake of Netflix's contentious price hike. The bankrupt video store chain is now owned by DirectTV and has its own streaming service. How did Blockbuster even get these email addresses? Are its services really going to be cheaper and/or better than Netflix's in the long run? Is 'You'll hate us less than Netflix' really a viable business model?" Relatedly, reader assertation asks, "Can anyone suggest a streaming movie service that has a selection comparable to Netflix and will run on a computer using GNU/Linux?"

darthcamaro writes "No big surprise, but Microsoft has now officially extended their patent, interoperability and Linux resale deal with SUSE. This was the deal that Novell had originally signed. Now, with the Attachmate sale, Microsoft is bringing the deal back to SUSE. The deal is being extended until 2016 and Microsoft is set to invest another $100 million into SUSE Linux Enterprise Server certificates. This is on top of the $300-million-plus they've already brought since 2006."

Trailrunner7 writes "Reports that Iran had recovered from the infection of the Stuxnet worm may have been overblown, as a new report suggests the country is being forced to replace thousands of expensive centrifuges damaged by the worm. The report from the website DEBKAfile cites 'intelligence sources' in claiming that Stuxnet was not purged from Iran's nuclear sites and that the country was never able to return its uranium enrichment efforts to 'normal operation.' Instead, the country has said in recent days that it is installing newer and faster centrifuges at its nuclear plants and intends to speed up the uranium enrichment process, according to the country's foreign ministry."

itwbennett writes "Slashdot readers will recall that back in February, Heathrow airport required full body scanning for select individuals. Now we learn that the airport is installing facial recognitions scanners. The scanners will be used to capture passengers' faces before entering security checks and again before boarding. The stated goal is to prevent illigal immigration."

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

An anonymous reader writes "A Wikipedian, Greg Maxwell, has released 33GiB of scientific publications [note: torrent] from the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society in response to the arrest of Aaron Swartz for, effectively, downloading too many articles from JSTOR. The release consists of 18,592 scientific articles previously released at $8-$19 each and all published prior to 1923 and so public domain."

jonathanmayer writes "Last week the Stanford Security Lab reported some surprising results on how advertising networks respond to opt outs and Do Not Track. This week we made a new discovery in the online advertising ecosystem: Epic Marketplace, a member of the self-regulatory Network Advertising Initiative, is history stealing with unprecedented scale and sophistication. And Epic is snooping some remarkably sensitive information, including pages from the FTC, IRS, NIH, Mayo Clinic, and more. Epic has written a response defending its practices."

castrox writes with an in-depth followup to a story we discussed in June: "Sharing links online, particularly links to copyrighted material, may render you extradited to the United States of America. 'In May, American law enforcement officials opened up yet another front in this war by seeking the extradition of Richard O'Dwyer. The 23-year-old British college student is currently working on his BS in interactive media and animation. Until last year, he ran a "link site" that helped users find free movies and TV shows, many of them infringing. American officials want to try him on charges of criminal copyright infringement and conspiracy.' The case is unique because the site, which the accused Englishman ran, was not located in the US in any way. Does this set a new precedent of things to come? The agency responsible for the extradition request is Immigrations and Customs Enforcement."

idontgno writes "It keeps getting better and better for Sony and its business units. Reuters reports that Sony's insurer, Zurich American, is suing to avoid paying out on Sony's legal liability which may arise from its spectacular online security breaches a few months ago."

idontgno writes "It keeps getting better and better for Sony and its business units. Reuters reports that Sony's insurer, Zurich American, is suing to avoid paying out on Sony's legal liability which may arise from its spectacular online security breaches a few months ago."

idontgno writes "It keeps getting better and better for Sony and its business units. Reuters reports that Sony's insurer, Zurich American, is suing to avoid paying out on Sony's legal liability which may arise from its spectacular online security breaches a few months ago."

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

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

puppetman writes "Ars Technica has an article relating the recent release of Peter Adekeye, a former Cisco employee who was arrested in Canada on trumped-up charges that appear to have been fabricated by Cisco. Slashdot covered the story back in April, 2011, during which time Mr Adekeye was still being detained. In the ruling, the judge squashed the US extradition request, rebuked both the Canadian and American authorities for 'an appalling abuse of process,' and goes as far as to say that the criminal proceeding was launched on behalf of Cisco, to mirror the civil proceedings that Mr Adekeye had launched against the powerful Cisco." The full judgement (PDF) is quite readable and damning.

sperlingreich writes "Last week, after movie streaming service Netflix raised its prices by 60%, the company's customers took to blogs and social networks in revolt, threatening to cancel their subscriptions. However, between the cost of mailing DVDs and paying increased licensing fees for content, a Netflix rate hike was inevitable. Is it still a great movie bargain? What alternative services are there?"

In an interview with Forbes, Activision CEO Bobby Kotick spoke about the rise and fall of the Guitar Hero franchise, saying "it became unsuccessful because it didn't have any nourishment and care." He then revealed that after effectively canceling the franchise last year, the company is looking for ways to resurrect it. "We said you know what, we need to regain our audience interest, and we really need to deliver inspired innovation. So we're going to take the products out of the market, and we're not going to tell anybody what we're doing for awhile, but we're going to stop selling Guitar Hero altogether. And then we're going to go back to the studios and we're going to use new studios and reinvent Guitar Hero. And so that's what we're doing with it now." Kotick also addressed Activision's lack of foresight regarding DJ Hero: "...in hindsight, if you step back – and it really would have been a simple thing to do – we should have said, 'Well, how many people really want to unleash their inner DJ?'"

Lennie sends this quote from an announcement at the Mozilla blog: "Recently there has been a lot of discussion about enterprises and rapid releases. Online life is evolving faster than ever and it's imperative that Mozilla deliver improvements to the Web and to Firefox more quickly to reflect this. This has created challenges for IT departments that have to deliver lots of mission-critical applications through Firefox. Mozilla is fundamentally about people and we care about our users wherever they are. To this end, we are re-establishing a Mozilla Enterprise User Working Group as a place for enterprise developers, IT staff and Firefox developers to discuss the challenges, ideas and best practices for deploying Firefox in the enterprise."

Lennie sends this quote from an announcement at the Mozilla blog: "Recently there has been a lot of discussion about enterprises and rapid releases. Online life is evolving faster than ever and it's imperative that Mozilla deliver improvements to the Web and to Firefox more quickly to reflect this. This has created challenges for IT departments that have to deliver lots of mission-critical applications through Firefox. Mozilla is fundamentally about people and we care about our users wherever they are. To this end, we are re-establishing a Mozilla Enterprise User Working Group as a place for enterprise developers, IT staff and Firefox developers to discuss the challenges, ideas and best practices for deploying Firefox in the enterprise."

An anonymous reader writes "Backblaze, the cloud-based backup provider, has revealed how it continues to undercut its competitors: by building its own 135TB Storage Pods which cost just $7,384 in parts. Backblaze has provided almost all of the information that you need to make your own Storage Pod, including 45 3TB hard drives, three PCIe SATA II cards, and nine backplane multipliers, but without Backblaze's proprietary management software you'll probably have to use FreeNAS, or cobble together your own software solution... A couple of years ago they showed how to make their first-generation, 67TB Storage Pods"

Early this morning Atlantis landed at KSC in Florida. I've been following the trip intently ever since my trip to Florida to see the launch of the very last Shuttle. This really is the end of an era. Thanks go out to the thousands of NASA employees who made this happen, many of whom have been laid off. A number of them emailed me directly showing me pictures and sharing stories. I wish you all the best. As for America, here's hoping that we return to space soon.

raceBannon writes "The authors, Steve Winterfield and Jason Andress, cover everything you will want to consider when thinking about how to use cyberspace to conduct warfare operations. The primary concepts have been bouncing around US military circles for over a decade but they have never been collected into one tome before. Clarke and Knake's book, Cyber War: The Next Threat to National Security and What to Do about It, discusses how weak the US network defenses are and offers suggestions about how to improve. Carr's book, Inside CyberWarfare: Mapping the Cyber Underworld, presents threat examples and nation state capabilities. Libicki's book, Cyberdeterrence and Cyberwar, attacks cyberwar from a policy viewpoint and does not really address operational considerations. Stiennon's book, Surviving Cyberwar, is a good place to start if you are new to the subject and is almost a prerequisite for this book." Read on for the rest of raceBannon's review. Cyber Warfare: Techniques, Tactics and Tools for Security Practitioners author Jason Andress and Steve Winterfield pages 289 publisher Syngress rating 10 reviewer raceBannon ISBN 1597496375 summary A consolidation of the current thinking around the topic of cyber warfare. Although the content has been around for a while, it is striking how little the main concepts have changed. In a world where new innovations completely alter the popular culture every eighteen months, the idea that Cyber Warfare's operational principals remain static year after year is counter-intuitive. After reading through the various issues within though, you begin to understand the glacial pace. These difficult concepts spawn intractable problems and the authors do a good job of explaining them.

I do have a slight issue with the subtitle though: "Techniques, Tactics and Tools for the Security Practitioners." The way I read this book, the general purpose (GP) Security Practitioner will not find this book very useful except as background information. Aside from the chapters on Logical Weapons, Social Networking and Computer Network Defense, most of the material has to do with how a nation state, mostly the US, prepares to fight in cyber space. There is overlap for the GP security practitioner, but this material is covered in more detail in other books.

The book is illustrated. Some of the graphics are right out of military manuals and have that PowerPoint Ranger look about them. Some are screenshots of the various tools presented. Others are pictures of different equipment. One graphic stood out for me in the Cyberspace Challenges chapter (14). The graphic in question is a neat Venn Diagram that encapsulates all of the Cyber Warfare issues mentioned in the book, categorizes the complexity of each issue and shows where they overlap in terms of Policy, Processes, Organization, Tech, People and Skills. My only ding on the diagram is that in the same chapter, the authors discuss how much each issue might cost to overcome. It would have been very easy to represent that information on the Venn diagram and make it more complete.

One last observation about the graphics that I really liked is the author's use of "Tip" and "Note" boxes throughout the book. Scattered throughout the chapters are grayed-out text boxes that talk about some technology or procedure that is related to the chapter information but not directly. For example, in the Social Engineering chapter (7), the authors placed a "Note" describing the various Phishing forms. You do not need the information to understand the chapter but having it nearby provides the reader with a nice example to solidify the main arguments. The book is full of these examples.

The first three chapters are my favorites. Winterfield and Andress do agood job of wrapping their heads around such entangled concepts as the definition of cyber warfare, the look of a cyber battle space and an international view of current doctrine It is fascinating.

In the middle of the book, the authors take on the task of describing the Computer Network Operations (CNO) Spectrum; a spectrum that ranges from the very passive form of Computer Network Defense (CND) through the more active forms of Computer Network Exploitation (CNE) and Computer Network Attack (CNA). It is indeed a spectrum too because the delineation between where CND, CNE and CNA start and stop is not always clean and precise. There is overlap. And somewhere along that same spectrum is where law enforcement organizations and counter-intelligence groups operate. You can get lost fairly quickly without a guide and the authors provide that function admirably. The only thing missing from these chapters is a nice diagram that encapsulates the concept.

Along the way the reader gets a nice primer on the legal issues surrounding Cyber Warfare, the ethics that apply, what it takes to be a cyber warrior and a small glimpse over the horizon about what the future of Cyber Warfare might bring. In the end, Winterfield and Andress get high marksfor encapsulating this complex material into an easy-to-understand manual; a foundational document that most military cyber warriors should have at their fingertips and a book that should reside on the shelf of anybody interested in the topic.

Full Disclosure: One of the authors, Steve Winterfield, used to work for me when he and I were both in the US Army wrestling with all of these ideas right after 9/11. I ran the Army Computer Emergency Response Team (ACERT) and Steve ran the Army's Southern Regional CERT (RCERT South). He and I have been friends ever since and he even quoted me in one of the back chapters.

You can purchase Cyber Warfare: Techniques, Tactics and Tools for Security Practitioners from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

raceBannon writes "The authors, Steve Winterfield and Jason Andress, cover everything you will want to consider when thinking about how to use cyberspace to conduct warfare operations. The primary concepts have been bouncing around US military circles for over a decade but they have never been collected into one tome before. Clarke and Knake's book, Cyber War: The Next Threat to National Security and What to Do about It, discusses how weak the US network defenses are and offers suggestions about how to improve. Carr's book, Inside CyberWarfare: Mapping the Cyber Underworld, presents threat examples and nation state capabilities. Libicki's book, Cyberdeterrence and Cyberwar, attacks cyberwar from a policy viewpoint and does not really address operational considerations. Stiennon's book, Surviving Cyberwar, is a good place to start if you are new to the subject and is almost a prerequisite for this book." Read on for the rest of raceBannon's review. Cyber Warfare: Techniques, Tactics and Tools for Security Practitioners author Jason Andress and Steve Winterfield pages 289 publisher Syngress rating 10 reviewer raceBannon ISBN 1597496375 summary A consolidation of the current thinking around the topic of cyber warfare. Although the content has been around for a while, it is striking how little the main concepts have changed. In a world where new innovations completely alter the popular culture every eighteen months, the idea that Cyber Warfare's operational principals remain static year after year is counter-intuitive. After reading through the various issues within though, you begin to understand the glacial pace. These difficult concepts spawn intractable problems and the authors do a good job of explaining them.

I do have a slight issue with the subtitle though: "Techniques, Tactics and Tools for the Security Practitioners." The way I read this book, the general purpose (GP) Security Practitioner will not find this book very useful except as background information. Aside from the chapters on Logical Weapons, Social Networking and Computer Network Defense, most of the material has to do with how a nation state, mostly the US, prepares to fight in cyber space. There is overlap for the GP security practitioner, but this material is covered in more detail in other books.

The book is illustrated. Some of the graphics are right out of military manuals and have that PowerPoint Ranger look about them. Some are screenshots of the various tools presented. Others are pictures of different equipment. One graphic stood out for me in the Cyberspace Challenges chapter (14). The graphic in question is a neat Venn Diagram that encapsulates all of the Cyber Warfare issues mentioned in the book, categorizes the complexity of each issue and shows where they overlap in terms of Policy, Processes, Organization, Tech, People and Skills. My only ding on the diagram is that in the same chapter, the authors discuss how much each issue might cost to overcome. It would have been very easy to represent that information on the Venn diagram and make it more complete.

One last observation about the graphics that I really liked is the author's use of "Tip" and "Note" boxes throughout the book. Scattered throughout the chapters are grayed-out text boxes that talk about some technology or procedure that is related to the chapter information but not directly. For example, in the Social Engineering chapter (7), the authors placed a "Note" describing the various Phishing forms. You do not need the information to understand the chapter but having it nearby provides the reader with a nice example to solidify the main arguments. The book is full of these examples.

The first three chapters are my favorites. Winterfield and Andress do agood job of wrapping their heads around such entangled concepts as the definition of cyber warfare, the look of a cyber battle space and an international view of current doctrine It is fascinating.

In the middle of the book, the authors take on the task of describing the Computer Network Operations (CNO) Spectrum; a spectrum that ranges from the very passive form of Computer Network Defense (CND) through the more active forms of Computer Network Exploitation (CNE) and Computer Network Attack (CNA). It is indeed a spectrum too because the delineation between where CND, CNE and CNA start and stop is not always clean and precise. There is overlap. And somewhere along that same spectrum is where law enforcement organizations and counter-intelligence groups operate. You can get lost fairly quickly without a guide and the authors provide that function admirably. The only thing missing from these chapters is a nice diagram that encapsulates the concept.

Along the way the reader gets a nice primer on the legal issues surrounding Cyber Warfare, the ethics that apply, what it takes to be a cyber warrior and a small glimpse over the horizon about what the future of Cyber Warfare might bring. In the end, Winterfield and Andress get high marksfor encapsulating this complex material into an easy-to-understand manual; a foundational document that most military cyber warriors should have at their fingertips and a book that should reside on the shelf of anybody interested in the topic.

Full Disclosure: One of the authors, Steve Winterfield, used to work for me when he and I were both in the US Army wrestling with all of these ideas right after 9/11. I ran the Army Computer Emergency Response Team (ACERT) and Steve ran the Army's Southern Regional CERT (RCERT South). He and I have been friends ever since and he even quoted me in one of the back chapters.

You can purchase Cyber Warfare: Techniques, Tactics and Tools for Security Practitioners from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

moonbender writes "The Linux kernel has received birthday wishes from an unexpected direction — a video animation from Microsoft. Quoting The H: 'The video picks up on the strained relationship between Microsoft and Linux by displaying the phrase "Microsoft Vs. Linux" and then showing Tux, the Linux mascot, turning his back on the offer of a birthday cake from Microsoft. After a brief outline of the history between Microsoft and Linux, the video ends with a conciliatory gesture: Tux accepts the birthday cake in his igloo and the video ends with "Happy Birthday" and the editing of the initial phrase to "Microsoft and Linux?' The Linux Foundation has more stuff celebrating the kernel's 20th birthday."

theodp writes "ZDNet reports that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's office issued a fact sheet during her visit to India confirming that the U.S. and India will be working together to develop an open source version of the Data.gov project, which was launched in 2009 by off-to-Harvard Federal CIO Vivek Kundra to serve as a central repository of data collected by the US government. The Hindu Business Line notes that Clinton was also pressed to exempt Indian techies in the States on H-1B or L1 visas from U.S. social security taxes, an exemption that, if granted, could reportedly result in savings of at least a billion dollars for the country's software industry."

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

OhPlz writes "Back in 2006, a resident of New Hampshire's second largest city was arrested while at the police station attempting to file a complaint against officers. His crime? He had video tape evidence of the officers' wrongdoings. According to the police, that's wiretapping. After world wide attention, the police dropped the charges. His complaint was found to be valid, but the evidence never saw the light of day. Well, guess what? Round two. There are differing reports, but again the police arrested Mr. Gannon and again, they seized his video camera. This time it's 'falsifying evidence' because he tried to hand off the camera, most likely to protect its contents. If there's the potential of police wrongdoing, how is it that the law permits the police to seize the evidence?"

SpuriousLogic writes with this excerpt from a Reuters report: "A Manhattan federal judge set a Sept. 15 deadline for Google, authors and publishers to come up with a legal plan to create the world's largest digital library, expressing frustration that the six-year-old dispute has not been resolved. At a hearing on Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Denny Chin said if the dispute is not 'resolved or close to resolved in principle' by mid-September, he will set a 'relatively tight schedule' for the parties to prepare for a possible trial. ... Citing antitrust and copyright concerns, Chin had on March 22 rejected a $125 million settlement. He said it went 'too far' in allowing Google to exploit digitized copyrighted works by selling subscriptions to them online and engaging in 'wholesale copying of copyrighted works without permission.'"

An anonymous reader writes "A couple weeks ago, Slashdot wrote about a lawyer named Michael Pascazi, who was trying to trademark Bitcoin. Techdirt picked up on the story, including Pascazi's evidence of the trademark. Pascazi has now sent Techdirt a bogus DMCA takedown request over the post, claiming that the header and footer in his stationery, which appears via an embed on the story, violates his copyright. He appears to be claiming that simply posting any version of his stationery is a copyright violation. It's not clear if the content in question is even copyrightable, and if it is, how Techdirt's use isn't fair use."

thebchuckster writes with a photo gallery in International Business Times. From the article "NASA's Dawn, locked in orbit around Vesta, has sent back the first ever close-up image of the asteroid 'So far, the images received to date reveal a complex surface that seems to have preserved some of the earliest events in Vesta's history, as well as logging the onslaught that Vesta has suffered in the intervening eons,' said Dawn principal investigator Christopher Russell."

Nominei and suraj.sun write in with news about a nationwide raid of Anonymous members. CBS reports that raids occurred in California, New Jersey, Florida, and New York. At least 12 arrests were made with 15 warrants executed. Surely this has nothing at all to do with their recent infiltration of a certain company.

An anonymous reader writes "Girish Ramakrishnan has written a Lighthouse plugin that lets one run Qt applications on the console. Old timers would recall the April Fool's story. Except it's for real this time." It's more of a neat hack than anything since it doesn't support things like mouse events yet.

siliconbits writes "After having hacked Rupert Murdoch's flagship news website, thesun.co.uk, and redirecting its readers to a spoof front page and pilfering its email servers, Anonymous' unofficial mouthpiece, Sabu, has revealed that the group is 'sitting on [the sun's & NOTW's] emails' with a press release from Anonymous & possibly more coming in a few hours. While that website has already been taken down, the email bounty is likely to be potentially more damaging with Sabu releasing details of two of the Sun's top three employees, Rebekah Wade and Bill Akass, the former editors of the Sun and News of the World respectively as well as Lee Wells & Danny Rogers, Editorial Support Manager at News International and Sun Online Editorial Manager respectively, as a taster of what's coming next."

Med-trump writes "Neanderthals, whose ancestors left Africa about 400,000 to 800,000 years ago, evolved in what is now mainly France, Spain, Germany and Russia, and are thought to have lived until about 30,000 years ago. Now scientists have identified a piece of Neanderthal DNA (called a haplotype) in the human X chromosome and conclude that this haplotype is present because of mating between our ancestors and Neanderthals. The study was published in the latest issue of the journal Molecular Biology and Evolution."

An anonymous reader writes "After last week's news that GNU Hurd is coming, Phoronix set out to install Debian GNU Hurd and to provide GNU Hurd vs. Linux benchmarks. Linux was mostly faster than The Hurd while also having much better hardware support, multi-core SMP support, and other modern functionality."

Dogs have been trained to sniff out a wide range of things: explosives, cancer, and even DVDs, but Rapports Opus may be the only one trained to sniff for sperm. Rapports put his year of intense, and most likely embarrassing training to work recently by helping catch a 23-year-old man accused of rape. From the article: "The dog found traces of semen on the scene of the crime and after being sent for analysis these were found to match the 23-year-old's DNA. 'The technical evidence is very good,' concluded prosecutor Mårten Alvinsson, who spoke to Sydöstran."

GillBates0 writes "CNN has a nice story about how online collaboration swiftly helped form a centrally organized online disaster effort during Wednesday's Mumbai attacks. India accounts for almost one-fifth of the world's cell phone subscribers. At a time when chaos reigned, and voice calls were jammed, a loose collaboration of techies, laymen, and good samaritans quickly collaborated online via social media, Wikipedia, Google docs and other online resources to coordinate blood donors, assistance, rides, and other services to help the victims of the attack."

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

halfaperson writes "In an interview with LinuxFr.org, Lennart Poettering speaks freely about his creations, PulseAudio, Avahi and systemd among other things. Naturally, what has stirred up most of the discussions online is Lennart's opinions on BSD. Following the recent proposal to make Gnome a Linux-exclusive desktop, Lennart explains that he thinks BSD support is holding back a lot of Free Software development. He says this while also taking a stab at Debian kFreeBSD: 'Debian kFreeBSD is a toy OS, people really shouldn't misunderstand that.'"

guusbosman writes "Yesterday a district court in Washington, D.C. issued its ruling in a case that boiled down to the definition of 'strictly random.' In the 2011 drawing of the U.S. 'Green Card Lottery,' a computer programming error was made and two weeks after the official drawing of the lottery the Department of State closed the website and voided the results. A lawsuit sought an injunction claiming that, while the process was not mathematically random, it was random in the dictionary definition of 'without definite aim, direction, rule or method.' The court, analyzing language from the State Department's regulations, and examples from laws on casinos and the like, rejected that and came out in favor of a mathematical definition of randomness. The lottery is voided and the results of the new drawing came out today at noon EST."

Joining the likes of THQ, Electonic Arts, and Sony, Ubisoft has now announced plans to launch the "Uplay Passport," a $10 fee charged to buyers of used games if they want to play them online. They say the program "will begin in the coming months and will be included in many of Ubisoft's popular core games. In each new copy of a Uplay Passport-enhanced game will be a one-time use registration code that, when redeemed, provides access to Uplay Passport content and features. The code can be found on the insert card inside the game box. Gamers can identify Uplay Passport-enhanced games by looking for the logo on the back of the box."

Joining the likes of THQ, Electonic Arts, and Sony, Ubisoft has now announced plans to launch the "Uplay Passport," a $10 fee charged to buyers of used games if they want to play them online. They say the program "will begin in the coming months and will be included in many of Ubisoft's popular core games. In each new copy of a Uplay Passport-enhanced game will be a one-time use registration code that, when redeemed, provides access to Uplay Passport content and features. The code can be found on the insert card inside the game box. Gamers can identify Uplay Passport-enhanced games by looking for the logo on the back of the box."

danomac writes "Apple is testing out new chip suppliers, trying to find a supplier other than Samsung. Apple is currently suing Android phone manufacturers, and Samsung is included in the lawsuit. 'Apple faces several hurdles should it want to make a switch to TSMC, including patents and chip design issues as well as a push by Samsung to retain the business. ... Analysts and other sources had previously said TSMC, the world's largest contract chip maker, was set to become a supplier of a next-generation processor chip to Apple, likely starting next year. However the chip may not be called the A6, as some reports have indicated, the sources said. TSMC is an obvious candidate to win processor business from Apple as it has budgeted $7.8 billion this year to update technology and add capacity. It also has experience with the architecture of British chip designer ARM Holdings Plc, widely used by Apple to make power-efficient mobile chips."

CWmike writes "It has been years since the banking industry made any large investments in core IT systems, but some of the largest financial services firms in the U.S. are now in the midst of rolling out multi-million dollar projects, say industry experts. About a decade ago, they began replacing decades-old Cobol-based core systems, with open, Web-enabled apps. Now, they are spending more than $100,000,000 to replace aging systems, converting to real-time mobile applications for retail services such as savings and checking accounts and lending systems. The idea behind going real-time: Grab more business — and money — from customers. 'Five of the top 20 banks are engaged in some sort of core banking replacement and we expect to see another three or four in next 12 months,' said Fiaz Sindhu, who leads Accenture's North American core banking practice. 'They're looking at those upgrades as a path to growth.'"

mcgrew writes with this quote from an AP report: "After four years sailing through space, the Dawn spacecraft was expected to slip into orbit late Friday around a giant asteroid to begin a yearlong investigation into the origins of the solar system. It is the first of two scheduled tour stops for the NASA probe that almost never made it to the launch pad. Because of its stunted growth, Vesta holds 'a record of the earliest history of the solar system,' said the mission's lead scientist Christopher Russell of the University of California, Los Angeles." Dawn's mission homepage has all the information and pictures collected so far. On July 9th, it snapped our best look to date at the ~530-kilometer-wide Vesta, from 40,000 kilometers away. When it arrives, it will take observations from successively lower orbits, the final one being only 460km above Vesta's surface. Next May, Dawn will break orbit and head to Ceres. (mcgrew adds, "The submission's title is a nod to Isaac Asimov. Lets hope Dawn doesn't get marooned!")

Time and again, when security breaches reveal large numbers of user passwords, analysis shows there are particular passwords commonly used by a significant percentage of the userbase. Now, an anonymous reader tips news that Hotmail is trying to do something about it. "We will now prevent our customers from using one of several common passwords. Having a common password makes your account vulnerable to brute force 'dictionary' attacks, in which a malicious person tries to hijack your account just by guessing passwords (using a short list of very common passwords). ... Common passwords are not just 'password' or '123456' (although those are frighteningly common), but also include words or phrases that just happen to be shared by millions of people, like 'ilovecats' or 'gogiants.'" This comes alongside a new feature that lets users send a report indicating a friend has had their account hacked.

Time and again, when security breaches reveal large numbers of user passwords, analysis shows there are particular passwords commonly used by a significant percentage of the userbase. Now, an anonymous reader tips news that Hotmail is trying to do something about it. "We will now prevent our customers from using one of several common passwords. Having a common password makes your account vulnerable to brute force 'dictionary' attacks, in which a malicious person tries to hijack your account just by guessing passwords (using a short list of very common passwords). ... Common passwords are not just 'password' or '123456' (although those are frighteningly common), but also include words or phrases that just happen to be shared by millions of people, like 'ilovecats' or 'gogiants.'" This comes alongside a new feature that lets users send a report indicating a friend has had their account hacked.

overThruster writes with a report from TechCentral that "Greg Mahlknecht has built a free map showing the world's submarine telecommunications cable systems. The map, which took Mahlknecht several months to complete, is free of charge and will remain so.'" (At least until it gets shut down as a security threat.)

oxide7 writes "Netflix provoked an unprecedented outpouring of backlash across the Internet as the company unveiled plans to raise prices on its movie-rental services. The company said it would raise the Internet-plus-DVDs-in-the-mail plan from $9.99 per month to $15.98 per month late Tuesday sparking protests and rage across the subscriber base. Netflix brushed off the criticism however. 'We knew there would be some people who would be upset,' company spokesman Steve Swasey said. 'To most people, it's a latte or two,' he added."