Slashdot Mirror

chiguy writes "There's been another break-in at Monster.com. It's surprising that there are still unencrypted passwords stored in database despite the previous hack, as is the decision to not email users — presumably so that no one will make a fuss. From PC World: 'Monster.com user IDs and passwords were stolen, along with names, e-mail addresses, birth dates, gender, ethnicity, and in some cases, users' states of residence. The information does not include Social Security numbers, which Monster.com said it doesn't collect, or resumes. Monster.com posted the warning about the breach on Friday morning and does not plan to send e-mails to users about the issue, said Nikki Richardson, a Monster.com spokeswoman. The SANS Internet Storm Center also posted a note about the break-in on Friday.'"

downundarob writes "Senator Nick Minchin, the Australian Shadow Minister for broadband, communications and the digital economy, has written (or more likely a staffer has written) this interesting article on the Australian Federal Government's continued zeal to enforce ISP-level filtering in Australia. In the article he posits that 'Underlying the Rudd Government's plan to screen the internet is an offensive message: that parents cannot be trusted to mind their children online.' Meanwhile, we wait for filtering trials to start, trials that have been delayed and which have next-to-no support among the industry. Telstra BigPond — Australia's largest ISP — has refused to take part, comparing internet filtering to 'like trying to boil the ocean.' The third largest, iiNet, is prepared to participate to highlight flaws."

CWmike writes "US Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) told Microsoft this week that US citizens should get priority over H-1B visa holders as the software vendor moves forward on its plan to cut 5,000 jobs. 'These work visa programs were never intended to allow a company to retain foreign guest workers rather than similarly qualified American workers, when that company cuts jobs during an economic downturn,' Grassley wrote in a letter sent Thursday to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. The letter asked Microsoft to detail the types of jobs that will be eliminated and how those cuts will affect the company's H-1B workers." Reader theodp adds, "On Friday, Microsoft coincidentally announced it would postpone construction of a planned $500 million data center in Grassley's home state of Iowa, although work on data centers in Chicago and Dublin will continue."

Dutch Gun writes "Microsoft has just laid off the entire Flight Simulator development team. This continues a long-running trend of terminating or severing relationships with game development studios, such as the Bungie split, FASA, or the closure of Ensemble Studios. While one would presume that core Xbox development is not currently in jeopardy after Microsoft spent up to a billion dollars to pay for Xbox 360 repairs and salvage its reputation with gamers, does this signal a reversal from Microsoft's recent focus on internal game development? And what are its plans for Flight Simulator, a twenty-seven-year product with an extremely loyal user-base and a multitude of externally developed add-ons?"

thefickler writes to tell us that YouTube plans on raising revenue by allowing major media players to run their own ads on the video site for, not only their own content, but illegally uploaded content by other users. "The site says CBS is already on board for the scheme, with other giants expected to join. The scheme will allow TV, movie and music companies to upload content and then sell advertising themselves, for example through images or animations which are overlaid on suitable sections of the clips. YouTube will then take a cut of this advertising revenue."

Elektroschock writes "According to Russian media, the Russian Government is going to develop a National Operating System (Google translation; Russian original) to lower its dependencies on foreign software technology licensing. The Russian plan will base its efforts on Linux and expects a worldwide impact. Microsoft is also involved in the roundtable process that led to the recommendation. The Chinese government successfully lowered its Microsoft licensing costs through an early investment in a national Linux distribution. I wonder if other large markets, such as the European Union, will also develop their own Linux distributions or join in the Russian initiative."

GamesIndustry is running a brief story about comments from Ubisoft's CEO indicating that the company is gearing up for a new generation of consoles within two to three years. "The French publisher is increasing headcount to work on future technology, with mergers also on the cards to increase development and technology resources. 'We want to take advantage of a company that could bring more technology to us, or new brands,' said CEO Yves Guillemot. 'So we have now enough to help us to grow the company for not only next year but to get ready for the coming of the next generation consoles that are probably going to happen 2011, 2012.'" Guillemot also provided some details about the release plans for some of their upcoming games.

synodinos writes "Adobe has announced plans to publish the Real-Time Messaging Protocol specification, which is designed for high-performance transmission of audio, video, and data between Adobe Flash Platform technologies. This move that has followed the opening of the AMF spec has been received with varying degrees of enthusiasm from the RIA community."

Allakhazam spoke with Salim Grant, lead designer for Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, about a variety of new content coming to the fantasy MMO. Grant says that the update will be free, and it will include two new dungeons, a revamp of the buff system, and balance changes. "Both of these dungeons are going to have a group component and a raid component that you unlock. As we get closer to releasing these dungeons we will be releasing new features like AA, item enhancement, and increasing our level cap. ... We will also be merging as many buffs as we can into a single buff with one icon to help make going through your buffs a little easier. These buffs will be upgrades to their previous buffs as well. Some classes like Dread Knight will be getting something kind of different that plays off of their DC ability and we have a cool ability planned for rogues. Necros and druids will see upgrades to their pets as well. We are also using this chance to hopefully fix some of the power issues we have with our game. The way some of our formulas work is not very expansive and we are looking to fix some of these things while making some of our stat mods a little more valuable."

An anonymous reader writes "Placing humans on Mars will be an extraordinary feat in itself, not to mention even living in such a harsh environment. To help train future astronauts to sustain life on Mars, the Mars Society has created the Mars Desert Research Station. The Mars Desert Research Station (MDRS) is one of four planned simulated Mars habitats (or Mars Analogue Research Station Programme) maintained by the Mars Society. Crews sign up for two week shifts during the winter months (it's too hot in the summer for pleasant simulation). Crews are not paid during their time at the station, but do get valuable experience."

KentuckyFC writes "While preparing for the job of US Secretary of Energy in the incoming Obama administration (and being director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and a Nobel Prize winner to boot), Steven Chu has somehow found time to make a major breakthrough in the world of atom interferometry. One measure of an interferometer's sensitivity is the area that its arms enclose. Chu and colleagues have found a way to increase this area by a factor of 2,500 by canceling out the noise introduced by lasers, which work as beam splitters sending atoms down different arms (abstract). One thing this makes possible is the use of different types of atoms in the same interferometer, allowing a new generation of tests of the equivalence principle. (This is the assumption that the m in F=ma and the m's in F= Gm1.m2/r^2 are the same thing). Let's hope he's got equally impressive breakthroughs planned for his encore as US Secretary of Energy."

Jonah Bomber writes with this excerpt from Information Week: "In addition to Google's announcements about the elimination of 100 recruiting positions and the shutdown of offices in Austin, Texas; Trondheim, Norway; and Lulea, Sweden, the company said it would close Dodgeball, Google Catalog Search, Google Mashup Editor, Google Notebook, and Jaiku. It also said it's discontinuing the ability to upload videos to Google Video. ... Jaiku, however, will live on as an open source project. Gundotra said that Google engineers have been porting the microblogging service to Google App Engine and that when the migration is completed, the company plans to make the code available under the Apache license."

danboid writes "I'm an IT technician at a large school near Manchester, England. We currently have two separate networks (one for pupils, one for staff) each with its own Windows Server 2003 Active Directory box handling authentication and storing users' files. We're planning on restructuring the network soon and we'd like to be able to replace the two aging AD servers with a single, more powerful Linux server running an open source OpenLDAP implementation. The main contenders for this purpose seem to be Fedora Directory Server, OpenDS, and Apache Directory Server; but I've been unable to find meaningful comparisons among the three. I'd like to hear which solution Slashdot readers recommend. What is your experience with ease of implementation / maintenance? Any stories of similar (un)successful migrations? Any other tips for an organization wanting to drop AD for a FOSS equivalent?"

An anonymous reader writes "Microblogs, targeted advertising, social news, online video, streaming music, and enterprise social networking are among the technologies that will probably fail in 2009, according to a new report from Internet Evolution. The report cites revenue figures, failed or non-existent business models, and an overabundance of 'me-too' start-ups, combined with the current recession, as reasons the aforementioned technologies might not survive the year. 'Whereas the past couple of years have been defined by overcrowding and overfunding in the Web 2.0 space, and an onslaught of startups with no purpose or plan to make money, this recessionary year is likely to see more due diligence on the part of VCs, allowing strong companies and technologies to emerge from the smoldering pile of dead ones.'"

BobB-nw writes "The U.S. federal government is accelerating its efforts to secure the Internet's routing system, with plans this year for the Department of Homeland Security to quadruple its investment in research aimed at adding digital signatures to router communications. DHS says its routing security effort will prevent routing hijack attacks as well as accidental misconfigurations of routing data. The effort is nicknamed BGPSEC because it will secure the Internet's core routing protocol known as the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP). (A separate federal effort is under way to bolster another Internet protocol, DNS, and it is called DNSSEC.) Douglas Maughan, program manager for cybersecurity R&D in the DHS Science and Technology Directorate, says his department's spending on router security will rise from around $600,000 per year during the last three years to approximately $2.5 million per year starting in 2009."

An anonymous reader writes "Germany's Minister for Families has announced a legislative initiative to force ISPs to implement a government-mandated block list (in English), which will be updated daily. The BKA (Germany's equivalent of the FBI) will be in charge of generating and maintaining the list. As usual, this is being brought in under the 'fight child porn' guise. The minister is quoted as saying: 'We must not water down the problem' in reply to being challenged that this law and technology could be used to censor other content. She then went on to say: 'I can't know what wishes and plans future governments will develop.' She has agreed the principle of the legislation with the interior minister and the technology minister, which in German coalition government terms means it's pretty much a done deal."

An anonymous reader writes "The European Parliament has signed up to a plan to introduce computerized biometric passports including people's fingerprints as well as their photographs, despite criticism from civil liberties groups and security experts who argue that the move is flawed on technical grounds. (Back in 2005 Sweden and Norway began deploying biometric passports.)"

heybus writes "Economist Dean Baker, best known for calling the housing bust and warning of the ensuing economic collapse, has just published his recommendations for how to allocate President-elect Obama's estimated $800 billion economic stimulus plan. Among other things, Baker calls for juicing the economy with $2 billion worth of government spending to support the development of free and open source software. Baker's idea is similar to the New Deal federal arts and writers' projects: the government would fund projects as long as they produce freely available code. In addition to employing programmers, 'the savings [to consumers] in the United States alone could easily exceed the cost of supporting software development.'"

The Opposable Thumbs blog reports that Guitar Hero III has reached a financial milestone, becoming the first individual video game to reach $1 billion in total sales. The number is even higher if you consider the rest of the franchise. In addition to helping drive the video game industry during tough economic times (much like the Wii), it's helping other industries as well: "... aside from the fact that Guitar Hero: Aerosmith had sold three times as many copies as the band's last album during their respective first weeks, musicians whose music is featured in the game has seen a rise in music sales to the tune of 15-843 percent." And CVG notes, "... two-thirds of non-musicians exposed to music games plan to start playing a real instrument in the next couple of years." Also, Rock Band creator Harmonix may be looking into a partnership with the record labels to sell music for use outside of the games.

It has taken Graham Parker almost his entire life, but today after 26 years he has finally solved his Rubik's Cube. Way back in 1983 when Graham bought the toy, Yuri Andropov was leader of the Soviet Union, and CDs were just starting to fill shelves. The 45-year-old from Portchester, Hampshire, says, "I cannot tell you what a relief it was to finally solve it. It has driven me mad over the years - it felt like it had taken over my life. I have missed important events to stay in and solve it and I would lie awake at night thinking about it. I have had wrist and back problems from spending hours on it but it was all worth it. When I clicked that last bit into place and each face was a solid color, I wept." Mr. Parker plans on spending the next 26 years untying a knot in his laces.