IT-Code-News: IT News HeadLines (Slashdot Stories) 15/12/2010

Thursday, December 16, 2010

IT News HeadLines (Slashdot Stories) 15/12/2010

"Tron: Legacy" Director Explains the Tron World
An anonymous reader writes "We only had to wait 28 years for the second installment of "Tron" — the sequel, "Tron: Legacy," comes out on Friday. It is expected to have less awesomely bad 80s graphics and more awesomely awesome millennial CGI. In advance of the opening, Discover has an interview with director Joe Kosinski in which he talks about reinventing the light cycle and explains that the Tron world resembles the Galapagos Islands, where everything evolved in isolation."

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America's Cubicles Are Shrinking
Hugh Pickens writes "In the 1970s, American corporations typically thought they needed 500 to 700 square feet per employee to build an effective office, but the LA Times reports that today's average is a little more than 200 square feet per person, and the space allocation could hit a mere 50 square feet by 2015. 'We're at a very interesting inflection point in real estate history,' says Peter Miscovich who studies workplace trends. 'The next 10 years will be very different than the last 30.' Although cubicles have shrunk from an average of 64 feet to 49 feet in recent years, companies are looking for more ways to compress their real estate footprint with offices that squeeze together workstations while setting aside a few rooms where employees can conduct meetings or have private phone conversations. 'Younger workers' lives are all integrated, not segregated,' says Larry Rivard. 'They have learned to work anywhere — at a kitchen table or wherever.'"

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BSD Coder Denies Adding FBI Backdoor
jfruhlinger writes "Theo de Raadt has made the shocking claim that OpenBSD includes a backdoor that the FBI paid coders to build. Brian Proffitt has tracked down one of the programmers names as being on the FBI payroll (actually, he tracked down two programmers with the same name). Both deny working with the FBI."

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TIME Names Mark Zuckerberg Person of Year
theodp writes "Sorry, Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates — there's a new geek kid in town. TIME magazine has selected Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg as its Person of the Year. Why? 'For connecting more than half a billion people and mapping the social relations among them; for creating a new system of exchanging information; and for changing how we all live our lives,' reasoned TIME At age 26, Zuckerberg is TIME's second-youngest selection, bested only by Charles Lindbergh. So what does Zuckerberg do for an encore — Academy Award, maybe?"

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AMD's New Flagship HD 6970 Tested
I.M.O.G. writes "Today AMD officially introduces their newest flagship GPU, the Radeon HD 6970, hot on the heels of the Radeon HD 6870 released at the end of October, then the NVIDIA GTX 580 in early November, which is Nvidia's current flagship card. Initial testing and overclocking results are publishing at first tier review sites now. While the HD 6970 is a strong performer and the price point is outstanding for consumers, the GTX 580 retains the flagship crown while the AMD 5970 keeps the single card performance crown with its dual GPUs on a single card."

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Yahoo Lays Off 600; Free Beers and Jobs Flow
CWmike writes "Yahoo confirmed on Tuesday that it has laid off 600 people, following news reports often based on Twitter messages from employees who had been let go. The layoffs amount to about 4 percent of the company's global workforce, Yahoo said. The company said affected workers are receiving severance packages and outplacement services. Laid-off workers may find some comfort on Twitter, where they are receiving an outpouring of goodwill. One San Francisco brewery is offering a free beer to people from Yahoo who show their termination letters. People with companies including Aprendi Learning, Tucows.com, DirecTV, Combine Couture, OMGPOP.com, and Uptake.com all posted Twitter messages expressing interest in hiring former Yahoo employees. The site Quora is hosting a thread for companies in the San Francisco area interested in hiring laid-off Yahoo workers. So far, there are 14 posts about jobs with companies including Yammer, Mozilla, and Cloudera."

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GoldenEye Source Conversion Mod Released
tekgoblin writes "Were you a fan of the original GoldenEye on the N64? Well, this Half-Life 2 mod called GoldenEye Source, five years in the making, has just come out of beta and been fully released for free. The game is a creation of fans with the objective to bring the original experiences from GoldenEye on the N64 back to life. I remember spending hours upon hours playing GoldenEye on the N64, and was sad seeing it go."

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Atomic Weight Not So Constant
DangerousBeauty writes "Yahoo has a Canadian Press story up about new changes to the periodic table of elements concerning the weights of specific elements — it seems that the weights fluctuate based on where they are found in nature. Quoting: '"People are probably comfortable with having a single value for the atomic weight, but that is not the reality for our natural world," says University of Calgary associate professor Michael Wieser.' He is is secretary of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry's Commission on Isotopic Abundances and Weights."

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20 Years of Commander Keen
angry tapir writes "This week marks the 20th anniversary of the release of the first Commander Keen game. For those too young to remember, Commander Keen was a series of shareware 2D platform games for the PC released by Apogee Software (aka 3D Realms) developed by no less than id Software — the developers of Wolfenstein 3D, Doom and Quake."

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Amazon Taking Down Erotica, Removing From Kindles
ctmurray writes "The independent writers who publish on Amazon report that erotica books containing incest are being taken down with no explanation by Amazon, and removed from the Kindles of purchasers of the books. Author Selena Kitt writes: 'I want to be clear that while the subject of incest may not appeal to some, there is no underage contact in any of my work, and I make that either explicitly clear in all my stories or I state it up front in the book's disclaimer. I don't condone or support actual incest, just as someone who writes mysteries about serial killers wouldn't condone killing. What I write is fiction.' Kindle's own TV ad features a book with a story line of sex between a 19-year-old and his stepmother, defined in some states as incest ('Sleepwalking' by Amy Bloom)."

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MS Hypes Win7 Tablets For CES — Again
jfruhlinger writes "About a year ago at this time, we were all hearing exciting news about Windows-based tablets that Microsoft would be unveiling at CES. They would transform the industry and strangle the iPad in its cradle! Well, now the hype machine is starting again, for the same products that never materialized last year. This time around, though, the market has changed so much so quickly that Microsoft's tablet bid isn't cutting edge; as Ryan Faas points out, it's desperate."

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Humble Bundle 2 Is Live
Dayofswords writes "The first Humble Bundle was a monster success, with over 100,000 people donating over $1 million in total to support the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Child's Play, and of course the developers behind the games. The second bundle is now live (bundle site), containing five great games: Braid, Cortex Command, Machinarium, Osmos, and Revenge of the Titans. Each game is DRM-free, the games work on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux, and you pay what you want and decide where your money goes."

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Air Force Blocks NY Times, WaPo, Other Media
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the Air Force, not content with blocking WikiLeaks and its mirrors, has begun blocking media sites carrying WL documents. "Air Force users who try to view the websites of the New York Times, Britain's Guardian, Spain's El Pais, France's Le Monde or German magazine Der Spiegel instead get a page that says, 'ACCESS DENIED. Internet Usage is Logged & Monitored'... The Air Force says it has blocked more than 25 websites that contain WikiLeaks documents, in order to keep classified material off unclassified computer systems. ... The move was ordered by the 24th Air Force... The Army, Navy, and Marines aren't blocking the sites, and the Defense Department hasn't told the services to do so, according to spokespeople for the services and the Pentagon."

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FBI Alleged To Have Backdoored OpenBSD's IPSEC Stack
Aggrajag and Mortimer.CA, among others, wrote to inform us that Theo de Raadt has made public an email sent to him by Gregory Perry, who worked on the OpenBSD crypto framework a decade ago. The claim is that the FBI paid contractors to insert backdoors into OpenBSD's IPSEC stack. Mr. Perry is coming forward now that his NDA with the FBI has expired. The code was originally added ten years ago, and over that time has changed quite a bit, "so it is unclear what the true impact of these allegations are" says Mr. de Raadt. He added: "Since we had the first IPSEC stack available for free, large parts of the code are now found in many other projects/products." (Freeswan and Openswan are not based on this code.)

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Fourth Amendment Protects Hosted E-mail
Okian Warrior writes "As reported on the EFF website, today the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit ruled that the contents of the messages in an email inbox hosted on a provider's servers are protected by the Fourth Amendment, even though the messages are accessible to an email provider. As the court puts it, 'The government may not compel a commercial ISP to turn over the contents of a subscriber's emails without first obtaining a warrant based on probable cause.'"

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McDonald's Hacked and Customer Data Stolen
An anonymous reader writes "McDonald's servers were recently compromised and hackers were able to get access to customers' e-mail addresses, names, addresses, phone numbers, birth dates, genders, as well as certain information about their promotional preferences and Web information interests. The sites affected were: McDonalds.com, 365Black.com, McDonalds.ca, mcdonaldsmom.com, mcdlive.com, monopoly.com, playatmcd.com, and meencanta.com. The restaurant chain is warning customers to be cautious of anyone claiming to be from McDonald's contacting them by phone or e-mail, and asking for personal or financial information. McDonald's has also set up a FAQ page for affected customers with 13 questions and their corresponding answers." Update by KD : Weld Pond tweets: "Silverpop email marketer owned. Was email subcontractor for McDonalds and DevientART (13M users) and 105 other orgs."

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MS Hypes Win7 Tablets For CES — Again
jfruhlinger writes "About a year ago at this time, we were all hearing exciting news about Windows-based tablets that Microsoft would be unveiling at CES. They would transform the industry and strangle the iPad in its cradle! Well, now the hype machine is starting again, for the same products that never materialized last year. This time around, though, the market has changed so much so quickly that Microsoft's tablet bid isn't cutting edge; as Ryan Faas points out, it's desperate."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

MS Hypes Win7 Tablets For CES -- Again
jfruhlinger writes "About a year ago at this time, we were all hearing exciting news about Windows-based tablets that Microsoft would be unveiling at CES. They would transform the industry and strangle the iPad in its cradle! Well, now the hype machine is starting again, for the same products that never materialized last year. This time around, though, the market has changed so much so quickly that Microsoft's tablet bid isn't cutting edge; as Ryan Faas points out, it's desperate."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Hidden Backdoor Discovered On HP MSA2000 Arrays
wiredmikey writes "A hardcoded password-related security vulnerability has been discovered which apparently affects every HP MSA2000 G3, a modular large scale storage array. According to the alert, a hidden user exists that doesn't show up in the user manager, and the password cannot be changed, creating a perfect 'backdoor' opportunity for an attacker to gain access to potentially sensitive information stored on the device, as well as systems it is connected to."

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Julian Assange's Online Dating Profile Leaked
Ponca City writes "The Telegraph reports that an online dating profile created by Julian Assange in 2006 has been unearthed from OKCupid disclosing that the WikiLeaks editor sought 'spirited, erotic' women 'from countries that have sustained political turmoil.' Writing under the pseudonym of British science fiction author Harry Harrison, Assange described himself as a 'passionate, and often pig headed activist intellectual.' Assange said he was seeking a 'siren for [a] love affair, children and occasional criminal conspiracy' adding that he was 'directing a consuming, dangerous human rights project which is, as you might expect, male dominated' and added enigmatically: 'I am DANGER, ACHTUNG.' Among Assange's listed interests were the 'structure of reality' and 'chopping up human brains' – although he added the caveat '(neuroscience background)' lest the latter put off potential admirers. 'I like women from countries that have sustained political turmoil,' Assange wrote. 'Western culture seems to forge women that are valueless and inane. OK. Not only women!'"

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Why Special Effects No Longer Impress
brumgrunt writes "When an advert for toilet roll now has a CG dog in it, have we come to the point where special effects have no lasting impact whatsoever? As Den of Geek argues, 'Where we once sat through Terminator 2 and gasped when Robert Patrick turned into a slippery blob of mercury, we now watch, say, Inception and simply acknowledge that, yes, the folding city looks quite realistic.'"

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Why Anonymous Can't Take Down Amazon.com
suraj.sun writes "The website-attacking group 'Anonymous' tried and failed to take down Amazon.com on Thursday. The group's vengeance horde quickly found out something techies have known for years: Amazon, which has built one of the world's most invincible websites, is almost impossible to crash.... Anonymous quickly figured that out. Less than an hour after setting its sights on Amazon, the group's organizers called off the attempt. 'We don't have enough forces,' they tweeted."

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Watch 200 Years of Global Growth In 4 Minutes
kkleiner writes "A professor of international health in Sweden, Hans Rosling has a long history of exploring the facts and figures that surround our changing world. In the a segment of the BBC series, Rosling gives one of his most famous lectures with a new twist. Using 120,000+ bits of data and augmented reality, the exuberant professor takes us through the last 200 years of global history and its uneven growth of wealth and health." This is really worth watching. Seriously.

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Google Patents Browser Highlight All Button
An anonymous reader writes "Google has picked up another patent on a technology that you might think basic to the web: the highlight all button for searches in browsers. The patent will backdate to 1999 and presents an interesting problem for such software as the Firefox browser and FeedDemon RSS reader. And, in an interesting twist, Microsoft uses a similar mechanism in Windows Explorer. But Microsoft itself said that browser technology can't be separated from the operating system. Does that mean the company owes a royalty to Google for all those copies of Windows?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google Patents Browser Hightlight All Button
An anonymous reader writes "Google has picked up another patent on a technology that you might think basic to the web: the highlight all button for searches in browsers. The patent will backdate to 1999 and presents an interesting problem for such software as the Firefox browser and FeedDemon RSS reader. And, in an interesting twist, Microsoft uses a similar mechanism in Windows Explorer. But Microsoft itself said that browser technology can't be separated from the operating system. Does that mean the company owes a royalty to Google for all those copies of Windows?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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