[Slashdot] Stories for 2007-12-24
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Slashdot Daily Newsletter
In this issue:
* Circuit City Rewards Execs As Stock Tanks
* Apple Lawyering Up On “Fake Steve Jobs”
* Flash Vulnerabilities Affect Thousands of Sites
* Mastering POSIX File Capabilities
* Tcl/Tk 8.5.0 Released
* Clinton Would Crack Down On Game Content
* Chuck Norris Sues Publisher, Tears Don’t Cure Cancer
* Head Tracking w/ the Wiimote
* Australia Plans to Censor the Internet
* Deluge Anonymizing Browser Now Includes Bittorrent
* 44 Conjectures of Stephen Wolfram Disproved
* Afterlife Will Be Costly For Digital Films
* Inside a Modern Malware Distribution System
* Email In the 18th Century
+—————————–
| Circuit City Rewards Execs As Stock Tanks |
| from the corporate-cranial-rectal
| posted by kdawson on Saturday December 22, @20:22 (The Almighty B|
| http://slashdot.org/article.pl
+—————————–
jamie tipped us to Dean Baker’s Beat the Press blog, where Baker comments
on a [0]followup to Circuit City’s firing of all its highest-paid
salespeople last March ([1]Slashdot discussion here). Circuit City’s
stock has cratered in the meanwhile, and their response has been to offer
$1 million retention bonuses to executive VPs. Baker points out that each
one of these bonuses represents 35 years’ salary for one of the fired
salespeople.
Discuss this story at:
http://slashdot.org/comments
Links:
0. http://www.prospect.org/csnc
1. http://slashdot.org/article.pl
+—————————–
| Apple Lawyering Up On “Fake Steve Jobs” |
| from the end-of-the-blog-as-we-know-it dept. |
| posted by kdawson on Saturday December 22, @22:25 (Censorship) |
| http://yro.slashdot.org
+—————————–
An anonymous reader sends us to The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs for a
developing situation. Daniel Lyons, a.k.a. Fake Steve Jobs, made a post
earlier today revealing that [0]Apple was offering him some money (in the
wake of the [1]ThinkSecret shutdown) to close down his blog. He said he
was interested in taking it. A few hours later, Lyons posted again
revealing that [2]Apple’s lawyers had contacted him angrily, saying the
details of the deal were supposed to remain private. Fake Steve replied
‘we either deal out in the open, completely transparently, or we don’t
deal.’ A third post gives details of Apple’s lawyers’ next response,
[3]going totally medieval on him. Since then the situation has [4]calmed
down a bit.
Discuss this story at:
http://yro.slashdot.org
Links:
0. http://fakesteve.blogspot.com
1. http://apple.slashdot.org
2. http://fakesteve.blogspot.com
3. http://fakesteve.blogspot.com
4. http://fakesteve.blogspot.com
+—————————–
| Flash Vulnerabilities Affect Thousands of Sites |
| from the waves-of-shock dept. |
| posted by kdawson on Sunday December 23, @00:26 (Security) |
| http://it.slashdot.org/article
+—————————–
An anonymous reader writes sends us to The Register for this security
news. The problem is compounded by the fact that some of the most popular
Web development tools for generating SWF produce files containing the
recently disclosed vulnerabilities. “Researchers from Google have
documented [0]serious vulnerabilities in Adobe Flash content which leave
thousands of websites susceptible to attacks that steal the personal
details of visitors. A web search reveals more than 500,000 vulnerable
applets on major corporate, government and media sites. Removing the
vulnerable content will require combing through website directories for
SWF files and then testing them one by one. Updates in the Adobe software
that renders SWF files in browsers are also likely, but they probably
wouldn’t quell the threat completely… No patch in sight from Adobe,
that’s the price to pay for depending on proprietary solutions.”
Discuss this story at:
http://it.slashdot.org/comment
Links:
0. http://www.theregister.co.uk
+—————————–
| Mastering POSIX File Capabilities |
| from the wee-dram-of-privilege dept. |
| posted by kdawson on Sunday December 23, @02:54 (Operating System|
| http://linux.slashdot.org
+—————————–
An anonymous reader passes along an IBM DeveloperWorks article on POSIX
file capabilities, which have recently become available in the Linux
kernel; they are expected in the mainline kernel by 2.6.24. POSIX file
capabilities parcel out root user powers into smaller privileges. The
article details [0]how to program using file capabilities and how to
switch on the ability of a system’s setuid root binaries to use file
capabilities.
Discuss this story at:
http://linux.slashdot.org
Links:
0. http://www.ibm.com/developerwo
+—————————–
| Tcl/Tk 8.5.0 Released |
| from the slap-and-tickle dept. |
| posted by kdawson on Sunday December 23, @05:26 (Upgrades) |
| http://it.slashdot.org/article
+—————————–
[0]dkf writes “[1]Tcl/Tk 8.5 has been released for all major platforms
after 5 years of development. There are many new goodies in it, including
significant speedups through an advanced bytecode engine, stronger
localization of applications, integrated arbitrary-precision arithmetic,
a whole bunch of brand new skinnable widgets, anti-aliased text support
on all platforms, and a new code-module management system to make
maintenance of installations a snap. More in-depth information about the
features of both this release and Tcl/Tk in general is available at the
[2]official Tcl/Tk website. [3]Mark Roseman’s blog has a first-look
review.”
Discuss this story at:
http://it.slashdot.org/comment
Links:
0. mailto:donal.k.fellows [Email address: donal.k.fellows #AT# man.ac.uk - replace #AT# with @ ]
1. http://www.tcl.tk/software
2. http://www.tcl.tk/
3. http://blog.markroseman.com
+—————————–
| Clinton Would Crack Down On Game Content |
| from the proud-of-fepa dept. |
| posted by kdawson on Sunday December 23, @07:58 (Democrats) |
| http://games.slashdot.org
+—————————–
[0]thefickler sends us word that Hilary Clinton has taken a public stand
in favor of [1]shielding children from game and other animation content
that she deems inappropriate. Quote: “When I am president, I will work to
protect children from inappropriate video game content.” Politically,
this puts her in company with Republican Mitt Romney on the subject of
game censorship. Her fellow Democrats are [2]content to let the industry
self-regulate.
Discuss this story at:
http://games.slashdot.org
Links:
0. mailto:james.s.byrnes [Email address: james.s.byrnes #AT# gmail.com - replace #AT# with @ ]
1. http://gamepolitics.com/2007
2. http://blog.wired.com/27bstrok
+—————————–
| Chuck Norris Sues Publisher, Tears Don’t Cure Cancer |
| from the but-he-does-cry-a-lot dept. |
| posted by CmdrTaco on Sunday December 23, @09:03 (It’s funny. La|
| http://slashdot.org/article.pl
+—————————–
Google85 writes “[0]Chuck Norris sued publisher Penguin on Friday over a
book he claims unfairly exploits his famous name, based on a satirical
Internet list of “mythical facts” about him. The book capitalizes on
“mythical facts” that have been circulating on the Internet since 2005
that poke fun at Norris’ tough-guy image and super-human abilities, the
suit said.”
Discuss this story at:
http://slashdot.org/comments
Links:
0. http://www.reuters.com/article
+—————————–
| Head Tracking w/ the Wiimote |
| from the this-is-just-to-cool dept. |
| posted by CmdrTaco on Sunday December 23, @10:04 (GameCube (Games|
| http://games.slashdot.org
+—————————–
[0]mrneutron2003 writes “This guy just doesn’t know when to stop.
[1]Johnny Chung Lee graces us with yet another one of his inventive
Wiimote projects. This time it involves using the Wiimote and a pair of
inexpensive LED safety goggles (with the standard LED’s replaced with
InfraRed ones) to allow [2]positional head tracking , achieving an effect
similar to what is experienced with three dimensional displays and CAVE
systems. The video dramatically illustrates the effect. Game developers
take note. This simple little variation on infrared tracking could allow
for some seriously immersive gameplay in the future.” This guy deserves a
medal.
Discuss this story at:
http://games.slashdot.org
Links:
0. http://www.fastsilicon.com/
1. http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~johnny/
2. http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~johnny
+—————————–
| Australia Plans to Censor the Internet |
| from the yeah-good-luck-with-that-mate dept. |
| posted by CmdrTaco on Sunday December 23, @11:10 (Censorship) |
| http://yro.slashdot.org
+—————————–
SenatorLuddite writes “From January 20, 2008 new [0]content laws
introduced by the Federal Government will force sites to verify the age
of users before accessing content intended for mature audiences (MA15+
and R18+). The laws bring internet classification into line with Film and
Book classification laws and completely prohibits X18+ and RC content
from the internet. [1]ACMA (The Australian Communications and Media
Authority) claims that adults will not be affected by the new laws, yet
user-generated and even chatrooms are required to be assessed for
classification and powers are granted to ACMA to send ‘take down’ notices
to offending sites.”
Discuss this story at:
http://yro.slashdot.org
Links:
0. http://www.news.com.au/heralds
1. http://www.acma.gov.au/WEB
+—————————–
| Deluge Anonymizing Browser Now Includes Bittorrent |
| from the how-do-you-spell-that-anyway dept. |
| posted by CmdrTaco on Sunday December 23, @12:27 (The Internet) |
| http://yro.slashdot.org
+—————————–
[0]markybob writes “An open-source bittorrent client, Deluge, now
provides an [1]internal, anonymizing browser to protect its users from
overzealous ISPs. The client runs on Windows, Linux and OS X. From the
site: “Everyone knows that it is common practice for ISPs to do their
best to either block or throttle bittorrent users. We believe that this
is wrong and unethical, as there are many legal uses for bittorrent. If
an ISP is throttling or blocking bittorrent traffic, you can pretty much
bet that they’re tracking which users visit bittorrent-related sites so
that they can better block or throttle those users.” [2]Their forum has
more info”
Discuss this story at:
http://yro.slashdot.org
Links:
0. mailto:markybob [Email address: markybob #AT# gmail.com - replace #AT# with @ ]
1. http://deluge-torrent.org/
2. http://forum.deluge-torrent
+—————————–
| 44 Conjectures of Stephen Wolfram Disproved |
| from the new-kind-of-error dept. |
| posted by kdawson on Sunday December 23, @13:55 (Math) |
| http://science.slashdot.org
+—————————–
Richard Pritches writes in to let us know that MIT errata expert
Evangelos Georgiadis has disproved 44 conjectures set by Dr. Stephen
Wolfram (founder of Mathematica) in A New Kind of Science. The paper was
published in the latest issue of the Journal of Cellular Automata and can
be read [0]in PDF form at Prof Edwin Clark’s [1]collection of reviews of
Wolfram’s ANKS. “The formulas provided by Wolfram for these [44] rules
are not minimal. Moreover for 8 of these cannot be minimal even by simple
inspection since minimal formula sizes for 3-input Boolean functions over
this basis never exceeds 5.”
Discuss this story at:
http://science.slashdot.org
Links:
0. http://www.math.usf.edu/
1. http://www.math.usf.edu/
+—————————–
| Afterlife Will Be Costly For Digital Films |
| from the same-time-next-year dept. |
| posted by kdawson on Sunday December 23, @15:34 (Media) |
| http://slashdot.org/article.pl
+—————————–
[0]Andy Updegrove writes “For a few years now we’ve been reading about
the urgency of adopting open document formats to preserve written
records. Now, a 74 page report from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts
and Sciences warns that [1]digital films are as vulnerable to loss as
digitized documents, but vastly more expensive to preserve — as much as
$208,569 per year. The reasons are the same for video as for documents:
magnetic media degrade quickly, and formats continue to be created and
abandoned. If this sounds familiar and worrisome, it should. We are
rushing pell-mell into a future where we only focus on the exciting
benefits of new technologies without considering the qualities of older
technologies that are equally important — such as ease of preservation —
that may be lost or fatally compromised when we migrate to a new
whiz-bang technology.” Here’s a [2]registration-free link for the NYTimes
article cited in Andy’s post.
Discuss this story at:
http://slashdot.org/comments
Links:
0. http://consortiuminfo.orgstand
1. http://www.consortiuminfo.org
2. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12
+—————————–
| Inside a Modern Malware Distribution System |
| from the enemy-are-as-thick-as-peas-out
| posted by kdawson on Sunday December 23, @16:56 (Security) |
| http://it.slashdot.org/article
+—————————–
[0]Scrabblous sends in this analysis of the [1]Pushdo Trojan downloader’s
backend code and control server. Pushdo is a complex Trojan downloader
that meticulously tracks its victims; much of its innovation is not in
the Trojan itself but in its control infrastructure. Quoting: “The Pushdo
controller also uses the GeoIP geolocation database in conjunction with
whitelists and blacklists of country codes. This enables the Pushdo
author to limit distribution of any one of the [421 different] malware
loads from infecting users located in a particular country, or provides
the ability to target a specific country or countries with a specific
payload. Pushdo keeps track of the IP address of the victim, whether or
not that person is an administrator on the computer, their primary hard
drive serial number…, whether the filesystem is NTFS, how many times
the victim system has executed a Pushdo variant, and the Windows OS
version.”
Discuss this story at:
http://it.slashdot.org/comment
Links:
0. http://isc.sans.org/
1. http://www.secureworks.com
+—————————–
| Email In the 18th Century |
| from the before-morse-code dept. |
| posted by kdawson on Sunday December 23, @18:25 (Communications) |
| http://slashdot.org/article.pl
+—————————–
morphovar forwards a writeup in Low-tech Magazine recounting an almost
forgotten predecessor to email and packet-switched messaging: [0]the
optical telegraph. The article maps out some of the European networks but
provides no details of those built in North America in the early 1800s.
Man-in-the-middle attacks were dead easy. “More than 200 years ago it was
already possible to send messages throughout Europe and America at the
speed of an airplane — wireless and without need for electricity. The
optical telegraph network consisted of a chain of towers… placed 5 to
20 kilometers apart from each other. Every tower had a telegrapher,
looking through a telescope at the previous tower in the chain. If the
semaphore on that tower was put into a certain position, the telegrapher
copied that symbol on his own tower. A message could be transmitted from
Amsterdam to Venice in one hour’s time. A few years before, a messenger
on a horse would have needed at least a month’s time to do the same.”
Discuss this story at:
http://slashdot.org/comments
Links:
0. http://www.lowtechmagazine.com
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