Sunday, October 23, 2011

[Slashdot] Stories for 2011-10-23

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Slashdot Daily Newsletter

In this issue:
* Anonymous Hackers Take Down Child Porn Websites
* Ask Slashdot: What To Tell High-Schoolers About Computer Science?
* Siri Envy? Iris Brings Some Voice-Assistant Features to Android
* Meet Siri's Little Brother, Trapit
* Feds Take USAjobs.gov Back From Monster, Performance Tanks
* DARPA Proposes Ripping Up Dead Satellites To Make New Ones
* Microsoft's Office365 Limits Emails To 500 Recipients
* The Kindle is Getting Support For HTML5
* Tipping Point For Open Access CS Research?
* Lost Hour-Long Jobs Interview Found
* German Satellite To Fall From Sky
* XML Encryption Broken, Need To Fix W3C Standard
* German Paleontologists Find a 'Near-Perfect' Dinosaur Fossil
* Kobo To Release Android Tablet E-Reader
* Web Apps Language Opa Gets a Web-Based IDE
* New JBOSS Worm Infecting Unpatched Servers

+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Anonymous Hackers Take Down Child Porn Websites
| from the value-to-society dept.
| posted by timothy on Saturday October 22, @09:31 (Crime)
| with 406 comments
| https://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/10/22/1325238/anonymous-hackers-take-down-child-porn-websites?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email
+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

chrb writes "According to Security News Daily, Anonymous has [0]taken
down more than 40 darknet-based child porn websites over the last week.
Details of some of the hacks have been released [1]via pastebin
#OpDarknet, including personal details of some users of a site named
'Lolita City,' and DDoS tools that target Hidden Wiki and Freedom Hosting
��� alleged to be two of the biggest darknet sites hosting child porn."

Discuss this story at:
https://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/10/22/1325238/anonymous-hackers-take-down-child-porn-websites?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email#commentlisting

Links:
0. http://www.securitynewsdaily.com/anonymous-hackers-child-porn-sites-1260/
1. http://pastebin.com/u/opdarknet

+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Ask Slashdot: What To Tell High-Schoolers About Computer Science?
| from the like-whatever-you-want-man dept.
| posted by timothy on Saturday October 22, @11:36 (Education)
| with 248 comments
| https://ask.slashdot.org/story/11/10/22/1535215/ask-slashdot-what-to-tell-high-schoolers-about-computer-science?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email
+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

First time accepted submitter lsllll writes "I got drawn (without my
intention) into three 20 minute sessions, talking to high school students
about computer science and programming, and am wondering what are some of
the things I should talk to them about. I have previously done the same
thing for a forty minute period, and all the students wanted to talk
about game programming. My only game programming experience dates back to
the late '80s and programming a few games (some which ran on top of
Novell's network) in Turbo Pascal. Since then I have done lots of
database design, web interface programming, and systems configuration and
integration. I am pretty fluent with Windows and Linux, but my
contemporary programming skills are somewhat limited to Coldfusion, PHP,
Javascript, SQL and bash scripts. Should I talk to them about different
aspects of computer science, what it's like to work full-time in the
computer industry, or do I make the sessions just question and answer,
since 20 minutes might not allow me to talk and do question and answer?"

Discuss this story at:
https://ask.slashdot.org/story/11/10/22/1535215/ask-slashdot-what-to-tell-high-schoolers-about-computer-science?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email#commentlisting

+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Siri Envy? Iris Brings Some Voice-Assistant Features to Android
| from the backhanded-compliment dept.
| posted by timothy on Saturday October 22, @19:40 (Android)
| with 177 comments
| https://apple.slashdot.org/story/11/10/22/2219258/siri-envy-iris-brings-some-voice-assistant-features-to-android?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email
+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Of all the upgrades that distinguish the new iPhone 4S from its
predecessors, probably the feature that's gotten the most attention is
the voice-based personal assistant app called Siri, which allows a user
to accomplish certain tasks almost entirely by voice. A few days ago, as
reported by TechCrunch, a team of Android developers has come up with an
[0]Android equivalent to Siri called Iris (spell that backwards), and
that it [1]took them only 8 hours to have a working, if imperfect, app to
play with and [2]submit to the Android Market. This [3]quick video review
of Iris says the app is unpolished, but shows promise. For now, it
generates some accurate results, and some amusing ones.

Discuss this story at:
https://apple.slashdot.org/story/11/10/22/2219258/siri-envy-iris-brings-some-voice-assistant-features-to-android?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email#commentlisting

Links:
0. http://gizmodo.com/5851896/iris-for-android-kind-of-like-siri-but-for-android
1. http://techcrunch.com/2011/10/17/iris-is-sort-of-siri-for-android/
2. http://blog.dexetra.com/iris-improved-goes-live-on-android-market
3. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iy5_4LNbrwo&feature=related

+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Meet Siri's Little Brother, Trapit
| from the ai-always-knows-what-you-want dept.
| posted by timothy on Saturday October 22, @05:48 (AI)
| with 165 comments
| https://search.slashdot.org/story/11/10/21/2229245/meet-siris-little-brother-trapit?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email
+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[0]waderoush writes "Virtually overnight, Siri, the personal assistant
technology in Apple's new iPhone 4S, has brought state-of-the-art AI to
the consumer mainstream. Well, it turns out there's more where that came
from. [1]Trapit, a second spinoff of SRI International's groundbreaking
CALO project (Cognitive Assistant that Learns and Organizes), is
[2]preparing for a public beta launch this fall. The Web-based news
aggregator lets users set up persistent 'traps' or filters on specific
topics. Over time, the traps learn to include more articles that match
users' interests and exclude those that don't. Philosophically, it's the
exact opposite of social-curation news apps like Flipboard or Pulse,
since it uses adaptive learning and sense-making technologies to learn
what users like, not what their friends like. 'Just as Siri is
revolutionizing the human-computer interaction on the mobile device,
Trapit will revolutionize Web search as we know it today,' the company
asserts."

Discuss this story at:
https://search.slashdot.org/story/11/10/21/2229245/meet-siris-little-brother-trapit?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email#commentlisting

Links:
0. mailto:wroush@xconomy.com
1. http://trap.it/
2. http://www.xconomy.com/national/2011/10/21/from-the-lab-that-brought-you-siri-its-trapit-a-personalized-discovery-engine/?single_page=true

+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Feds Take USAjobs.gov Back From Monster, Performance Tanks
| from the regression-testing dept.
| posted by timothy on Friday October 21, @21:13 (Government)
| with 160 comments
| https://tech.slashdot.org/story/11/10/21/2340216/feds-take-usajobsgov-back-from-monster-performance-tanks?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email
+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

dcblogs writes "Complaints about the performance of USAjobs.gov, the
government's central website for job applicants, are piling up after the
[0]U.S. took control this month of the site from Monster.com. The
government's [1]official Facebook page has seen nothing but negative
comments from users about lag time, search engine failures, and other
problems since the U.S. Office of Personnel Management built a new site.
The government employs more than 2.6 million people. Linda Rix, the
co-CEO of Avue Technologies Corp., a federal contractor who has tested
the site, said this about the federal effort: 'They are a personnel
management agency, they are not a technology company, and this clearly
demonstrates that they don't have the technology skills to be able to do
this.'" They're working on it, though ��� one of their recent Facebook
updates says, "Quick update: The three new blade servers have increased
our capacity and the system is running smoothly."

Discuss this story at:
https://tech.slashdot.org/story/11/10/21/2340216/feds-take-usajobsgov-back-from-monster-performance-tanks?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email#commentlisting

Links:
0. http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9221069/USAjobs.gov_struggles_after_feds_take_it_back_from_Monster.com_
1. http://www.facebook.com/USAJOBS

+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| DARPA Proposes Ripping Up Dead Satellites To Make New Ones
| from the james-cameron-needs-to-get-on-this dept.
| posted by timothy on Saturday October 22, @08:28 (Space)
| with 143 comments
| https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/11/10/22/0420236/darpa-proposes-ripping-up-dead-satellites-to-make-new-ones?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email
+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[0]Hugh Pickens writes "DARPA reports that more than $300 billion worth
of satellites are in the geosynchronous orbit, many retired due to
failure of one component even if 90% of the satellite works just as well
as the day it was launched. DARPA's Phoenix program seeks to develop
technologies to cooperatively [1]harvest and re-use valuable components
such as antennas or solar arrays from retired, nonworking satellites in
GEO and demonstrate the ability to [2]create new space systems at greatly
reduced cost. However, satellites in GEO are not designed to be
disassembled or repaired, so it's not a matter of simply removing some
nuts and bolts, says David Barnhart. 'This requires new remote imaging
and robotics technology and special tools to grip, cut, and modify
complex systems.' For a person operating such robotics, the complexity is
similar to trying to assemble via remote control multiple Legos at the
same time while looking through a telescope."

Discuss this story at:
https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/11/10/22/0420236/darpa-proposes-ripping-up-dead-satellites-to-make-new-ones?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email#commentlisting

Links:
0. http://hughpickens.com/slashdot/
1. http://www.darpa.mil/NewsEvents/Releases/2011/10/20.aspx
2. http://www.darpa.mil/Our_Work/TTO/Programs/Phoenix.aspx

+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Microsoft's Office365 Limits Emails To 500 Recipients
| from the he's-not-heavy-he's-my-recipient dept.
| posted by timothy on Saturday October 22, @15:21 (Cloud)
| with 136 comments
| https://it.slashdot.org/story/11/10/22/1918258/microsofts-office365-limits-emails-to-500-recipients?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email
+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

suraj.sun writes "ZDNet's Ed Bott warns small businesses that if you sign
up with Microsoft's Office 365, make sure you read the fine print
carefully as an obscure clause in the terms of service [0]limits the
number of recipients you're allowed to contact in a day, which could
affect the business very badly. Office 365's small [1]business accounts
(P1 plan) are limited to 500 recipients per 24 hours and enterprise
accounts are limited to 1500. That's a limitation of 500 recipients
during a single day. And the limitation doesn't apply to unique
recipients. It's not hard to imagine scenarios in which a small business
can bump up against that number."

Discuss this story at:
https://it.slashdot.org/story/11/10/22/1918258/microsofts-office365-limits-emails-to-500-recipients?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email#commentlisting

Links:
0. http://www.zdnet.com/blog/bott/small-businesses-beware-the-office-365-fine-print/4151
1. http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/plans/small-business/email-calendar.aspx

+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| The Kindle is Getting Support For HTML5
| from the that's-right-supporting-of-you-jeff dept.
| posted by timothy on Saturday October 22, @00:02 (Books)
| with 115 comments
| https://news.slashdot.org/story/11/10/22/0011212/the-kindle-is-getting-support-for-html5?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email
+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Nate the greatest writes "It looks like Amazon won't be adopting Epub
after all. [Thursday] [0]Amazon released [1]some technical details on the
new Kindle ebook format, which they are calling [2]Kindle 8. There are a
lot of interesting changes to the file, including new formatting and SVG
images. The new tags are going to open up a whole lot of new
possibilities for making Kindle ebooks."

Discuss this story at:
https://news.slashdot.org/story/11/10/22/0011212/the-kindle-is-getting-support-for-html5?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email#commentlisting

Links:
0. http://www.the-digital-reader.com/2011/10/20/kindle-will-get-more-html5-support-soon/
1. http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/ref=amb_link_357613442_1?ie=UTF8&docId=1000729901&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-5&pf_rd_r=1D0TXFK6EGXH5AQJM9YQ&pf_rd_t=1401&pf_rd_p=1321300302&pf_rd_i=1000729511
2. http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?docId=1000729511

+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Tipping Point For Open Access CS Research?
| from the solidarity-brother dept.
| posted by timothy on Saturday October 22, @10:28 (The Media)
| with 100 comments
| https://news.slashdot.org/story/11/10/22/1339219/tipping-point-for-open-access-cs-research?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email
+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

First time accepted submitter trombonehero writes "Prominent Computer
Science researchers from Google, Microsoft and UC Berkeley are starting
to sign the [0]'Research Without Walls' pledge, promising to never be
involved in peer review for a venue that does not make publications
available to the public for free. [1]Others have made [2]similar pledges
in isolation; could this be the start of something big?"

Discuss this story at:
https://news.slashdot.org/story/11/10/22/1339219/tipping-point-for-open-access-cs-research?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email#commentlisting

Links:
0. http://www.researchwithoutwalls.org/
1. http://www.crypto.com/blog/copywrongs
2. http://benlog.com/articles/2011/09/05/with-freedom-comes-responsibility-open-publishing/

+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Lost Hour-Long Jobs Interview Found
| from the all-the-steve-you-can-handle dept.
| posted by timothy on Saturday October 22, @14:10 (Apple)
| with 99 comments
| https://apple.slashdot.org/story/11/10/22/189241/lost-hour-long-jobs-interview-found?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email
+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

adharma writes "According to [0]Robert Cringely, in 1995 he was granted
an hour long interview with Steve Jobs at NeXT headquarters for
[1]Triumph of the Nerds and promptly lost. Two weeks ago, a 'PAL-VHS,
dubbed on professional equipment from a D1 master' [2]copy of the
interview was found and is in the process of being restored." Cringely
writes there: "What we���ll do with the 64-minute video depends on how good
it looks this week. Maybe we���ll put it up on the Net, maybe we���ll do
something more. I���m open to your ideas."

Discuss this story at:
https://apple.slashdot.org/story/11/10/22/189241/lost-hour-long-jobs-interview-found?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email#commentlisting

Links:
0. http://www.cringely.com/about/
1. http://www.pbs.org/nerds/
2. http://www.cringely.com/2011/10/the-steve-jobs-interview/

+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| German Satellite To Fall From Sky
| from the t-shirt-to-the-1st-reader-with-a-piece dept.
| posted by timothy on Saturday October 22, @12:55 (Space)
| with 92 comments
| https://science.slashdot.org/story/11/10/22/1655220/german-satellite-to-fall-from-sky?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email
+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

BBC News reports that [0]a German satellite is soon to fall from sky.
According to the article: "The Roentgen Satellite (Rosat) is due to come
back to Earth at some stage over the weekend - possibly Sunday. Just as
for NASA's UARS satellite, which plunged into the atmosphere in
September, no one can say precisely when and where Rosat will come in.
What makes the redundant German craft's return interesting is that much
more debris this time is likely to survive all the way to the Earth's
surface. Experts calculate that perhaps as much as 1.6 tonnes of wreckage
- more than half the spacecraft's launch mass - could ride out the
destructive forces of re-entry and hit the planet."

Discuss this story at:
https://science.slashdot.org/story/11/10/22/1655220/german-satellite-to-fall-from-sky?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email#commentlisting

Links:
0. http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/int/news/-/news/science-environment-15402157

+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| XML Encryption Broken, Need To Fix W3C Standard
| from the let's-keep-this-in-the-open dept.
| posted by timothy on Saturday October 22, @02:50 (Security)
| with 76 comments
| https://it.slashdot.org/story/11/10/22/0310230/xml-encryption-broken-need-to-fix-w3c-standard?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email
+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

gzipped_tar writes "Researchers from Ruhr University Bochum demonstrated
the [0]insecurity of XML encryption standard at [1]ACM Conference on
Computer and Communications Security in Chicago this week. 'Everything is
insecure,' is the uncomfortable message from Bochum. As pointed out by
the Ars Technica article, XML Encryption is [2]used widely as part of
server-to-server Web services connections to transmit secure information
mixed with non-sensitive data, based on cipher-block chaining. But it is
apparently too weak, as demonstrated by Juraj Somorovsky and Tibor Jager.
They were able to decrypt data by sending modified ciphertexts to the
server by gathering information from the received error messages. The
attack was tested against a popular open source implementation of XML
Encryption, and against the implementations of companies that responded
to the responsible disclosure ��� in all cases the result was the same: the
attack worked. Fixing the vulnerability will require a revision of the
[3]W3C XML encryption standard, Somorovsky said. The researchers informed
all possibly affected companies through the mailing list of W3C,
following a clear responsible disclosure process."

Discuss this story at:
https://it.slashdot.org/story/11/10/22/0310230/xml-encryption-broken-need-to-fix-w3c-standard?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email#commentlisting

Links:
0. http://aktuell.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/pm2011/pm00330.html.en
1. http://www.sigsac.org/ccs/CCS2011/techprogram.shtml#s12
2. http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2011/10/researchers-break-w3c-encryption-standard-for-xml.ars
3. http://www.w3.org/TR/xmlenc-core/

+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| German Paleontologists Find a 'Near-Perfect' Dinosaur Fossil
| from the aber-nicht-ganz-perfekt dept.
| posted by timothy on Saturday October 22, @18:37 (Earth)
| with 65 comments
| https://science.slashdot.org/story/11/10/22/2049258/german-paleontologists-find-a-near-perfect-dinosaur-fossil?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email
+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

First time accepted submitter [0]howzit writes "German paleontologists
have discovered what they believe is the [1]best-preserved dinosaur
skeleton ever found.The flesh-eating member of the theropod subgroup,
which walked on its hind legs, is about 98 percent complete, and also
includes preserved bits of skin. 'The around 135-million-year-old fossil
is of outstanding scientific importance.'"

Discuss this story at:
https://science.slashdot.org/story/11/10/22/2049258/german-paleontologists-find-a-near-perfect-dinosaur-fossil?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email#commentlisting

Links:
0. mailto:sumers@yebo.co.za
1. http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,791496,00.html

+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Kobo To Release Android Tablet E-Reader
| from the cute-name-at-least dept.
| posted by timothy on Saturday October 22, @17:35 (Android)
| with 51 comments
| https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/11/10/22/2047206/kobo-to-release-android-tablet-e-reader?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email
+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

First time accepted submitter Alt-kun writes "Like Amazon last month,
Kobo is now [0]making the jump to an Android-based tablet e-reader.
Priced at $200 and available on October 28th, the Kobo Vox is set to
complete with the Kindle Fire rather than the iPad. While Kobo can't
match up with Amazon's sheer mass of available content, it is partnered
with various major book sellers and has a good-sized base of existing
customers. Also, previous Kobo products have made a point of supporting
open standards for media, and that will presumably continue with the Vox.
For those who aren't familiar with Kobo: they have little presence in the
US, but their e-readers are fairly popular in Canada, Australia, and a
number of other countries."

Discuss this story at:
https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/11/10/22/2047206/kobo-to-release-android-tablet-e-reader?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email#commentlisting

Links:
0. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/technology/tech-news/kobo-enters-tablet-market/article2206310/

+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Web Apps Language Opa Gets a Web-Based IDE
| from the made-easy dept.
| posted by timothy on Saturday October 22, @16:28 (Cloud)
| with 44 comments
| https://developers.slashdot.org/story/11/10/22/2026244/web-apps-language-opa-gets-a-web-based-ide?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email
+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

First time accepted submitter [0]koper writes "The new programming
language [1]Opa makes web programming easier by providing a one-tier
one-language-for-everything approach. Now it [2]goes one step further by
providing a (very-minimalistic for now) [3]web-based IDE that allows
users to compile & deploy Opa programs in one click in your web browser.
Give it a spin!"

Discuss this story at:
https://developers.slashdot.org/story/11/10/22/2026244/web-apps-language-opa-gets-a-web-based-ide?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email#commentlisting

Links:
0. http://adam-koprowski.net/
1. http://opalang.org/
2. http://blog.opalang.org/2011/10/programming-in-cloud-with-opa.html
3. http://opalang.org/opa_in_the_cloud.xmlt

+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| New JBOSS Worm Infecting Unpatched Servers
| from the malware-spreadeth dept.
| posted by timothy on Friday October 21, @21:58 (Security)
| with 43 comments
| https://it.slashdot.org/story/11/10/22/0152232/new-jboss-worm-infecting-unpatched-servers?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email
+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Trailrunner7 writes "There is a [0]new worm circulating right now that is
[1]compromising servers running older versions of the JBoss Application
Server and then adding them to a botnet. The worm also attempts to
install a remote access tool in order to give the attacker control over
the newly infected server. The worm has been circulating for a couple of
days at least, and it's not clear right now how many servers have been
compromised or what the origins of it are. It apparently exploits an old
vulnerability in the JBoss Application Server, which was patched in April
2010, in order to compromise new machines. Once that's accomplished, the
worm begins a post-infection routine that includes a number of different
steps."

Discuss this story at:
https://it.slashdot.org/story/11/10/22/0152232/new-jboss-worm-infecting-unpatched-servers?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email#commentlisting

Links:
0. http://pastebin.com/U7fPMxet
1. https://threatpost.com/en_us/blogs/jboss-worm-exploiting-old-bug-infect-unpatched-servers-102111


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