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Yesterday's News

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Games: The Real MIT Blackjack Mastermind

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday April 02, @08:29PM
from the king-of-counting dept.
Movies
Wade Roush writes "21, the top movie at the box office last weekend, has everyone talking about the real identities of the MIT blackjack team members fictionalized in the movie and in the 2002 book, Bringing Down the House, on which the film is based. Last week a number of stories pointed to former MIT student and Las Vegas resident John Chang as the model for the Micky Rosa character, the club mastermind played in the movie by Kevin Spacey. But Boston-area Internet entrepreneur and real estate developer Bill Kaplan is saying that if anyone is the basis for Micky Rosa, it's him. Turns out Kaplan now battles the "e-mail churn" problem as CEO of Newton, MA, startup FreshAddress, which helps companies correct the outdated e-mail addresses in their customer databases."

Science: Scientists Discover Teeny Tiny Black Hole

Posted by Zonk on Wednesday April 02, @07:04PM
from the for-relative-terms-of-teeny-and-tiny dept.
Space
AbsoluteXyro writes "According to a Space.com article, NASA scientists have discovered the smallest known black hole to date. The object is known as 'XTE J1650-500'. Weighing in at a scant 3.8 solar masses and measuring only 15 miles across, this finding sheds new light on the lower limit of black hole sizes and the critical threshold at which a star will become a black hole upon its death, rather than a neutron star. XTE J1650-500 beats out the previous record holder, GRO 1655-40, by about 2.5 solar masses."

Technology: Feds Overstate Software Piracy's Link To Terrorism

Posted by Zonk on Wednesday April 02, @06:23PM
from the gotta-make-a-point dept.
Software
Lucas123 writes "Attorney General Michael Mukasey claims that terrorists sell pirated software as a way to finance their operations, without presenting a shred of evidence for his case. He's doing it to push through a controversial piece of intellectual property legislation that would increase IP penalties, increase police power, set up a new agency to investigate IP theft, and more. 'Criminal syndicates, and in some cases even terrorist groups, view IP crime as a lucrative business, and see it as a low-risk way to fund other activities,' Mukasey told a crowd at the Tech Museum of Innovation last week."

Your Rights Online: US Army "Scams" Service Members to Test Their Spam Gullibility

Posted by Zonk on Wednesday April 02, @05:44PM
from the i-think-they-call-that-trial-by-fire dept.
Privacy
9gezegen writes "An offer for free tickets to theme parks for service members turned out to be an email scam, a ploy that was in actuality a security exercise run by the Army. Involved servicemen and DoD civilians received an email, allegedly coming from the 'Army Family and Morale, Welfare and Recreation Command Office,' and directed them to a phishing site which asked for personal information. After rebuttal and warning by Army MWR, the website revealed that it was a security exercise after all. Army MWR later verified the exercise and announced they were not informed beforehand."

Ask Slashdot: Should IT Shops Let Users Manage Their Own PCs?

Posted by Zonk on Wednesday April 02, @05:02PM
from the hairy-question dept.
Security
An anonymous reader writes "Is letting users manage their own PCs an IT time-saver or time bomb waiting to happen? 'In this Web 2.0 self-service approach, IT knights employees with the responsibility for their own PC's life cycle. That's right: Workers select, configure, manage, and ultimately support their own systems, choosing the hardware and software they need to best perform their jobs.'" Do any of you do something similar to this in your workplace? Anyone think this is a spectacularly bad idea?

Technology: Microsoft's Vista Blogger Quits

Posted by Zonk on Wednesday April 02, @04:21PM
from the community-and-communication dept.
Microsoft
Preedit writes "Nick White, the in-house Microsoft blogger who wrote about all things Vista, has resigned. White is leaving Redmond to join the blog-centric marketing and public relations firm BuzzCorps. White did not provide a reason for his decision. InformationWeek, however, notes that his position could not have been easy. White's posts often elicited hundreds of responses from Vista users complaining about the OS's numerous glitches and quirks. The story further notes that White is the sort of young, blogosphere-savvy manager that Microsoft needs if it hopes to outrun Google, and his departure raises questions about the company's ability to retain Web 2.0 talent."

Book Reviews: A Practical Guide to Ubuntu Linux

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday April 02, @03:43PM
from the read-all-about-it dept.
r3lody writes "Finding a single book that encompasses what you want to learn can be difficult. Most cover a few portions of a subject in depth and skim over (or omit) others. Other books will cover each topic at about the same level: high enough to give an impression of what can be done, but not with enough depth to do it without a lot of effort. In A Practical Guide to Ubuntu Linux, Mark G. Sobell has created a single volume that gives the reader enough information to effectively install, configure and run workstations and servers using Ubuntu Linux. He has come the closest I have seen to containing all of the necessary information without being too shallow. Granted, to include everything you would want to know about Ubuntu Linux would take several books of this size, but this particular one provides most users the best bang for the buck. A DVD with the Gutsy Gibbon release of Ubuntu in a directly bootable form is included with the book." Read below for the rest of Ray's review.

Technology: Firefox 3 Beta 5 Released

Posted by Zonk on Wednesday April 02, @03:02PM
from the another-toy-for-the-weekend dept.
Mozilla
bunratty writes "Firefox 3 Beta 5 was released today. This last beta release sports performance-boosting improved connection parallelism. Not only has 'the memory leak' been fixed: Firefox now uses less memory than other browsers. This is not only according to Mozilla developers, but CyberNet and The Browser World as well. As for the Acid3 test, Firefox 3 Beta 5 scores only 71/100 compared to 75/100 for Safari 3.1 and 79/100 for the latest Opera 9.5 snapshot. The final release of Firefox 3 is expected in June."

Linux: Novell Rises to Second Highest Linux Contributor

Posted by Zonk on Wednesday April 02, @02:20PM
from the putting-yourself-out-there dept.
Software
eldavojohn writes "Which companies contribute the most to the Linux kernel? Well, The Linux Foundation released their results and Novell's contributions have gone up 250% (from 3.6% of all contributions to 14.4% of all contributions) to put them at #2 behind Red Hat. This chart also illustrates just how widely Linux is modified by the community and not just a handful of developers/companies. You can find more coverage on blogs and the original report."

Technology: US Cyber Command Wants Greater Attack Mentality

Posted by Zonk on Wednesday April 02, @01:41PM
from the cyber-decker-hacker-commands dept.
The Military
superglaze writes "Lieutenant General Robert J Elder, Jr, a senior figure in US Air Force Cyber Command (AFCYBER), has told ZDNet UK that communication issues are hampering the division's co-ordination. 'IT people set up traditional IT networks with the idea of making them secure to operate and defend,' said Elder. 'The traditional security approach is to put up barriers, like firewalls — it's a defense thing — but everyone in an operations network is also part of the [attack] force. We're trying to move away from clandestine operations. We're looking for real physics — a bigger bang resulting in collateral damage.'"

Interviews: Ask Skewz.com Founder About Detecting Media Bias

Posted by Roblimo on Wednesday April 02, @01:00PM
from the only-a-journalist-who-agrees-with-me-about-everyting-is-totally-unbiased dept.
Media
Skewz.com is not the Microsoft-funded Blews experiment that is supposed to help detect rightness and leftness in stories based on blogs that link to them. Instead of detecting blog links, Skewz relies on readers to submit and rate stories, and even tries to pair stories that have "liberal" and "conservative" biases so that you can get multiple takes on the same event or pronouncement. The Skews About page explains how it works. The site has drawn a fair amount of "media insider" attention, including a writeup on the Poynter Institute website. But what does all this mean? Where is it going? Can Skews.com help us sort our news better and make more informed decisions? We don't know. But if you post a question here for founder Vipul Vyas, maybe he'll have an answer for you. (Please try to follow the usual Slashdot interview rules.)

Technology: Will Twitter Join Podcasting on the 'Net Sidelines'?

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday April 02, @12:00PM
from the no-i-need-to-know-the-minutia-of-everyone's-day dept.
The Internet
Ian Lamont writes "Twitter has established itself in some quarters as a must-have communications tool, and its power to connect and even incite people is hard to deny. But does Twitter have long-term, mainstream potential? Or does a poor revenue model and strong competition mean that it's destined to be a sideline Internet technology, much like podcasting has failed to live up to early hype?"

Apple: 5.1 Sound Card Delivers 3 Streams of iTunes

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday April 02, @11:11AM
from the that's-a-whole-lotta-streams dept.
Networking (Apple)
An anonymous reader writes "How do you distribute simultaneous streams of DRM-protected iTunes from a single computer to multiple rooms of the house? Autonomic Controls demonstrated a unique solution at the recent Electronic House Expo (EHX). The company's Media Control Server EX software turns a PC with a 5.1 sound card into a three-zone music distribution server. (Add a second card for six outputs). At EHX, the solution was demonstrated with a multiroom audio system from NuVo, whose keypads could be used to browse and select songs, playlists, genres, artists, etc. The Autonomic software merges WMA and iTunes files into a single library for easy access." I have mixed feelings about this: on one hand, this is a really clever idea and a cool hack. On the other hand, the fact that DRM makes something like this necessary is truly infuriating.

Science: Youngest Planet Discovered

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday April 02, @10:30AM
from the just-a-two-thousand-year-old-baby dept.
Space
qazsedcft writes "BBC is reporting that Astronomers have discovered what appears to be the youngest planet, being less than 2000 years old. If this proves to be true it could challenge our models of solar system formation."

News: Number of GPL v3 projects tops 2,000

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday April 02, @09:46AM
from the i'm-sure-rms-is-very-happy dept.
GNU is Not Unix
Da Massive writes "The number of open-source projects that use the GNU General Public License Version 3 has grown to more than 2,000, according to Palamida, which sells software and services for tracking open-source code within a customer's code base. "Our database now contains over 2,000 projects that are using the GPL v3. "At this rate the GPL v3 is being adopted by 1,000 projects every 4-5 months, and if the trend continues, the license will be used by 5,000 projects by the end of the year," states a recent posting on Palamida's blog."

Technology: Google Scoops Microsoft w/ Mesh Applications

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday April 02, @08:59AM
from the glimpse-of-the-future dept.
Google
Julie188 writes "Google's offline access for Google Apps is a kick in the shin at Ray Ozzie. Google took a page right out of the Ozzie mesh playbook when it announced the offline access (let's call it Google Docs Unplugged). Google delivered desktop apps from the cloud first and then added unplugged functionality. Microsoft wants to do the same, but in reverse, and faces an infinitely bigger challenge: rebuild Microsoft apps so they can become cloud enabled while pulling its giant channel (and embedded software) along in the process. Good luck with that, Microsoft. But then again, just because Google is making faster progress doesn't mean much. There's no guarantee users will like the unplugged versions of cloud apps."

News: U. Maine Law Students Trying To Shut RIAA Down

Posted by kdawson on Wednesday April 02, @08:14AM
from the corrupt-enterprise dept.
The Courts
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "Remember those pesky student attorneys from the University of Maine School of Law's Cumberland Legal Aid Clinic, who inspired the Magistrate Judge to suggest monetary fines against the RIAA lawyers? Well they're in the RIAA's face once again, and this time they're trying to shut down the RIAA's whole 'discovery' machine: the lawsuits it files against 'John Does' in order to find out their names and addresses. They've gone and filed a Rule 11 motion for sanctions (PDF), seeking — among other things — an injunction against all such 'John Doe' cases, arguing that the cases seek to circumvent the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act which protects student privacy rights, are brought for improper purposes of obtaining discovery, getting publicity, and intimidation, and are in flagrant violation of the joinder rules and numerous court orders. If the injunction is granted, the RIAA will have to go back to the drawing board to find another way of finding out the identities of college students, and the ruling — depending on its reasoning — might even be applicable to the non-college cases involving commercial ISPs."

Your Rights Online: Open Source Patent Donations?

Posted by kdawson on Wednesday April 02, @05:44AM
from the fighting-the-good-fight dept.
Patents
patspam writes "As a software engineer I come up with patentable ideas every now and then, ideas which I'm not interested in pursuing myself but which I'd like to keep out of the hands of private entities/patent trolls in my own personal effort to defeat software patents. Should I patent the ideas and donate them to some sort of open source foundation? Or just blog about the ideas so that the 'prior art' exists in the public domain? What's your strategy for fighting against restrictive software patents?"

IT: Blocking Steganosonic Data In Phone Calls

Posted by kdawson on Wednesday April 02, @03:18AM
from the could-you-repeat-that-please dept.
Encryption
psyced writes "Steganography is a technique to encode secret messages in the background noise of an audio recording or photograph. There have been attempts at steganalysis in the past, but scientists at FH St. Pölten are developing strategies to block out secret data in VoIP and even GSM phone calls by preemptively modifying background noise (link is to a Google translation of the German original) on a level that stays inaudible or invisible, yet destroys any message encoded within. I wonder if this method could be applied to hiding messages in executables, too."

Your Rights Online: Users Know Advertisers Watch Them, and Hate It

Posted by kdawson on Wednesday April 02, @12:50AM
from the someone-to-watch-over-me dept.
Privacy
Chris Blanc tips an Ars writeup on a survey of consumer attitudes toward targeted advertising. The results of the survey, conducted for TRUSTe, confirm that advertisers are in a tough spot. "[The survey company] randomly selected 1,015 nationally representative adults... Although only 40 percent of the group was familiar with the term 'behavioral targeting,' most users were well aware of the practice. 57 percent reported that they weren't comfortable their activities [were being] tracked for advertising purposes, even if the information couldn't be tied to their names or real-life identities. Simultaneously, 72 percent of those surveyed said that they find online advertising annoying when the ads are not relevant to their needs..."
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