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Sun, December 16, 2007 11:00:01 PMFrom:
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Subject:
[Slashdot] Stories for 2007-12-17
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Slashdot Daily Newsletter
In this issue:
* More Details Emerge On Domestic Spying Programs
* Computer History Museum's YouTube Channel
* Amazon Offers Paid Web Database Service
* A Little .Mac Security Flaw
* The Transistor's 60th Birthday
* Adobe Opens Up AMF Spec
* Should Wikipedia Allow Mathematical Proofs?
* Ye Olde World Charm
* The End of the Corporate Lab
* Converting Light into Sound
* HTML V5 and XHTML V2
* Guantanamo Officers Caught Modifying Wikipedia
* Time Warner Wins Ohio-Wide Cable Franchise
* DoubleClick Goes MIA At FTC Chief's Old Law Firm
* Microsoft and Google Duke It Out For the Future
* RIAA Backs Down On "Unlicensed Investigator"
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| More Details Emerge On Domestic Spying Programs |
| from the government-and-business-a-sittin'-in-a-tree dept. |
| posted by kdawson on Saturday December 15, @20:36 (Privacy) |
| http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/12/15/2250200 |
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The feed brings us this NYTimes story giving [0]new details on the
telecom carriers' cooperation with secret NSA (and other) domestic spying
programs. One revelation is that the Drug Enforcement Agency has been
running a program since the 1990s to collect the phone records of calls
from US citizens to Latin America in order to catch narcotics
traffickers. Another revelation is what exactly the NSA asked for in 2001
that Qwest balked at supplying. According to the article, it was access
to the company's most localized communications switches, which primarily
carry domestic calls.
Discuss this story at:
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=07/12/15/2250200
Links:
0. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/16/washington/16nsa.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5088&en=e6aa872194ef69e8&ex=1355461200&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
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| Computer History Museum's YouTube Channel |
| from the way-it-was dept. |
| posted by kdawson on Saturday December 15, @22:43 (Television) |
| http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/12/15/2327235 |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
Doctor-R writes "The Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA has
created a [0]new YouTube channel for videos of their lecture series.
Newest is the Dec 10 panel on the [1]25th Anniversary of the Commodore 64.
Currently there are 23 lectures available and the 7-minute Museum
overview."
Discuss this story at:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=07/12/15/2327235
Links:
0. http://www.youtube.com/computerhistory
1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBvbsPNBIyk
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Amazon Offers Paid Web Database Service |
| from the shipping-is-still-free dept. |
| posted by Soulskill on Sunday December 16, @00:47 (Data Storage) |
| http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/12/16/0012213 |
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[0]firepoet writes "Amazon has released a new [1]web-services based
storage engine that looks an awful lot like a directory service:
SimpleDB. While not supporting SQL per se, they offer several simple
operations ?€? CREATE: to make a new domain. GET, PUT, DELETE: to
manipulate your domain. QUERY: to find things within the domain. Data is
stored in cells that contain multiple attributes. A single attribute may
contain multiple values. For example: (name, bob), (favoriteFruit,
apple), (favoriteFruit, banana). Another interesting tidbit is the cost
structure; you pay for how much data you store, how much you transfer,
and how much CPU time the database uses while manipulating your data.
'Amazon SimpleDB is designed to store relatively small amounts of data
and is optimized for fast data access and flexibility in how that data is
expressed.'"
Discuss this story at:
http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=07/12/16/0012213
Links:
0. mailto:firepoet78@yahoo.com
1. http://www.amazon.com/gp/browse.html?node=342335011
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
| A Little .Mac Security Flaw |
| from the case-for-thumb-drives dept. |
| posted by kdawson on Sunday December 16, @03:15 (Security) |
| http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/12/16/0055211 |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
[0]deleuth writes "The de facto online connectivity software sold along
with many Apple computers, .Mac, has a Web interface through which users
can check their 'iDisk' while away from their own computer. However,
there is no Log-Out button in this Web interface, so most users just
close the browser and walk away... not realizing that their iDisk has
been cached by the browser and that anyone who wants to can open up the
browser, go back to the link in History, and get into their iDisk
completely logged in. From here, files can be downloaded and/or deleted.
This seems like a minor security flaw via bad interface design, and
podcaster Klaatu (of thebadapples.info) posted this on the
discussion.apple.com site, only to have his post removed by Apple.
Furthermore, feedback at apple.com/feedback has gone unanswered. The
problem remains: there is no way for the average computer user to log-out
of their iDisk on public computers. A quick review of any public
terminal's browser history could bring up all kinds of interesting
things."
Discuss this story at:
http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=07/12/16/0055211
Links:
0. mailto:deleuth@yahoo_nospam.com
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
| The Transistor's 60th Birthday |
| from the silly-hats-will-be-worn dept. |
| posted by kdawson on Sunday December 16, @05:46 (Businesses) |
| http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/12/15/2152228 |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
Apple Acolyte sends in a Forbes piece noting the [0]60th birthday of the
transistor on Dec, 16. For the occasion the AP provides the obligatory
[1]Moore's-Law-is-ending, no-it-isn't article. From Forbes: "Sixty years
ago, on Dec. 16, 1947, three physicists at Bell Laboratories in Murray
Hill, N.J., built the world's first transistor. William Shockley, John
Bardeen and William Brattain had been looking for a semiconductor
amplifier to take the place of the vacuum tubes that made radios and
other electronics so impossibly bulky, hot and power hungry."
Discuss this story at:
http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=07/12/15/2152228
Links:
0. http://www.forbes.com/opinions/2007/12/15/transister-creation-anniversary-oped-cx_fa_1215transistor.html
1. http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5ibT3mKMRVFxj5rGZfVcWH6T9WihwD8TI0Q380
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Adobe Opens Up AMF Spec |
| from the remotely-possible dept. |
| posted by kdawson on Sunday December 16, @08:08 (The Internet) |
| http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/12/16/0144200 |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
[0]neutrino38 writes "Adobe has [1]released the specification of the AMF
format, the format used by Flash Remoting ?€? the equivalent of AJAX for
the Flash world. The article doesn't mention the [2]AMFPHP project and
the fact that some German and Canadian guys had reverse-engineered the
format a long time ago. Adobe's action eases a long-standing legal
uncertainty that slowed the uptake of AMFPHP for commercial projects.
Next, we note that Adobe has not released its RTMP protocol used to
contact a Flash Media server. This latter protocol is more interesting as
it provides sessionful operation; media streaming; RPC both client-side
and server-side using the AMF format; and shared objects among several
sessions and server-side events. Fortunately, RTMP has been partially
reverse-engineered by the [3]red5 project. I suggest that the W3C should
take a look at the whole Flash ecosystem as they think about [4]upgrading
the HTTP protocol."
Discuss this story at:
http://developers.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=07/12/16/0144200
Links:
0. http://www.ives.fr/
1. http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071215-adobe-opens-up-amf-liberates-source-for-remoting-framework-used-in-rich-web-apps.html
2. http://www.amfphp.org/
3. http://osflash.org/red5
4. http://slashdot.org/~neutrino38/journal/190520
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Should Wikipedia Allow Mathematical Proofs? |
| from the great-now-i-can-fail-wikipedia-too dept. |
| posted by CmdrTaco on Sunday December 16, @09:04 (Math) |
| http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/12/16/1225252 |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
[0]Beetle B. writes "An argument has arisen over whether [1]Wikipedia
should allow pages that provide proofs for mathematical theorems (such as
[2]this one). On the one hand, Wikipedia is a useful source of
information and people can benefit from these proofs. On the other hand,
how does one choose which proofs to include and which not to? Should
Wikipedia just become a textbook that teaches mathematics? Should it just
state the bare results of theorems and not provide proofs (except as
external links)? Or should they take an intermediate approach and
formulate a criterion for which proofs to include and which to exclude?"
Discuss this story at:
http://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=07/12/16/1225252
Links:
0. mailto:beetle_b@@@email...com
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Totient_function/Proofs
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Totient_function/Proofs#Proofs_of_totient_identities_involving_the_floor_function
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Ye Olde World Charm |
| from the anachronistic-appliances dept. |
| posted by Soulskill on Sunday December 16, @09:59 (Hardware Hacki|
| http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/12/16/1427219 |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
[0]The Solitaire brings us a link to Datamancer, where Richard R. Nagy
[1]shows off his Steampunk Laptop. The attention to detail and the
creative style, which includes a copper-plated keyboard and speakers
shaped like violin f-holes, make this an impressive case mod. From
Datamancer: "This may look like a Victorian music box, but inside this
intricately hand-crafted wooden case lives a Hewlett-Packard ZT1000
laptop that runs both Windows XP and Ubuntu Linux. It features an
elaborate display of clockworks under glass, engraved brass accents, claw
feet, an antiqued copper keyboard and mouse, leather wrist pads, and
customized wireless network card. The machine turns on with an antique
clock-winding key by way of a custom-built ratcheting switch made from
old clock parts."
Discuss this story at:
http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=07/12/16/1427219
Links:
0. http://www.thewhisper.net/modules.php?name=Forums
1. http://www.datamancer.net/
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
| The End of the Corporate Lab |
| from the keep-this-under-your-hat dept. |
| posted by Soulskill on Sunday December 16, @10:55 (The Almighty B|
| http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/12/16/1527258 |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
Doofus writes "The NYTimes is running an article about the end of the
corporate lab and the [0]growing partnerships between businesses and
universities around the country. A number of researchers are concerned
about the potential influence of business goals on universities'
strategic research priorities, and the possible censoring of research
antithetical to a corporate sponsor's business interests. Others claim
that the universities' intellectual freedom is more liberated by
corporate involvement. As the article states, 'The alternative to
corporate funds is for universities to rely even more on government
funds. And that raises parallel issues in the minds of some academics.'"
Discuss this story at:
http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=07/12/16/1527258
Links:
0. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/16/business/16ping.html?pagewanted=print
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Converting Light into Sound |
| from the do-you-see-what-i-hear dept. |
| posted by Soulskill on Sunday December 16, @11:50 (Communications|
| http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/12/16/167253 |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
[0]prostoalex writes "Researchers at Duke are trying to solve the problem
of speeding up fiber-optic connections by [1]converting light into sound,
then converting it back into light. From the Nature News article: 'To get
the information from the acoustic wave out again, a third light pulse,
the 'read' pulse, is sent in. When it reaches the part of the fibre being
affected by the acoustic wave, the light scatters in such a way as to
regain the information that was left behind by the initial pulse. The
newly-formed data pulse leaves the fibre, resuming the journey in the
same direction as the original pulse, taking the same information with
it.'"
Discuss this story at:
http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=07/12/16/167253
Links:
0. http://www.moskalyuk.com/blog
1. http://www.nature.com/news/2007/071213/full/news.2007.376.html
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
| HTML V5 and XHTML V2 |
| from the battle-of-the-markup dept. |
| posted by CmdrTaco on Sunday December 16, @12:45 (The Internet) |
| http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/12/16/1656245 |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
An anonymous reader writes "While the intention of both HTML V5 and XHTML
V2 is to improve on the existing versions, the approaches chosen by the
developers to make those improvements are very different. With differing
philosophies come distinct results. For the first time in many years,
[0]the direction of upcoming browser versions is uncertain. This article
uncovers the bigger picture behind the details of these two standards."
Discuss this story at:
http://developers.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=07/12/16/1656245
Links:
0. http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/web/library/x-html5xhtml2.html?S_TACT=105AGX08&S_CMP=EDU
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Guantanamo Officers Caught Modifying Wikipedia |
| from the heavy-hands-in-the-cookie-jar dept. |
| posted by kdawson on Sunday December 16, @13:45 (Government) |
| http://politics.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/12/16/1842258 |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
James Hardine writes "Wikileaks reports that US armed forces personnel at
Guantanamo have [0]conducted propaganda attacks over the Internet. (The
story has been picked up by the NYTimes, The Inquirer, the New York Daily
News, and the AP.) The activities documented by Wikileaks include
deleting Guantanamo detainees' ID numbers from Wikipedia, posting of
self-praising comments on news websites in response to negative articles,
promoting pro-Guantanamo stories on the Internet news focus website Digg,
and even altering Wikipedia's entry on Cuban President Fidel Castro to
describe him as 'an admitted transsexual' (misspelling the word
'transsexual'). Guantanamo spokesman Lt. Col. Bush blasted Wikileaks for
identifying one 'mass communications officer' by name, who has since
received death threats for 'simply doing his job ?€? posting positive
comments on the Internet about Gitmo.'"
Discuss this story at:
http://politics.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=07/12/16/1842258
Links:
0. http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Wikileaks_busts_Gitmo_propaganda_team
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Time Warner Wins Ohio-Wide Cable Franchise |
| from the bye-bye-local-access dept. |
| posted by kdawson on Sunday December 16, @14:48 (Networking) |
| http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/12/16/1855256 |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
An anonymous reader writes "Time Warner Cable has received a
[0]state-wide franchise agreement in Ohio. Time Warner's agreement covers
260 communities in 60 of Ohio's 88 counties, for 10 years. AT&T was the
first to earn a state-wide franchise contract, after a law was passed in
September that allowed operators to negotiate a single state-wide
agreement. In the past operators negotiated franchise agreements at the
local level."
Discuss this story at:
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=07/12/16/1855256
Links:
0. http://www.com.state.oh.us/press/display.asp?ID=1225
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
| DoubleClick Goes MIA At FTC Chief's Old Law Firm |
| from the now-you-see-it dept. |
| posted by kdawson on Sunday December 16, @15:47 (Government) |
| http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/12/16/2026226 |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
[0]theodp writes "FTC Chairwoman Deborah Platt Majoras has [1]refused to
recuse herself from the agency's review of Google's $3.1B DoubleClick
acquisition, despite her [2]current and [3]past ties to DoubleClick law
firm Jones Day. EPIC and the Center for Digital Democracy, which had
requested her recusal, are [4]keeping up the pressure as
DoubleClick-related pages and references have been [5]disappearing from
Jones Day's website. Although the [6]statement issued by the Chairwoman
suggests Jones Day's DoubleClick representation is limited to the
European Commission, the [7]Google cache of one MIA document boasts:
'Jones Day is advising DoubleClick Inc., the digital marketing technology
provider, on the international and US antitrust and competition law
aspects of its planned $3.1 billion acquisition by Google Inc.'"
Discuss this story at:
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=07/12/16/2026226
Links:
0. mailto:theodp@aol.com
1. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/14/AR2007121401735_pf.html
2. http://www.jonesday.com/jmmajoras/
3. http://www.jonesday.com/news/news_detail.aspx?newsID=S984
4. http://computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9053159&intsrc=hm_list
5. http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2007/12/13/law-firm-purges-doubleclick-references
6. http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2007/12/google.shtm
7. http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2055/2115597970_b5e13f7dbb_o.jpg
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Microsoft and Google Duke It Out For the Future |
| from the send-in-the-clouds dept. |
| posted by kdawson on Sunday December 16, @16:47 (Businesses) |
| http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/12/16/2127244 |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
[0]Hugh Pickens writes "There is a long article in the NYTimes, well
worth reading, about the [1]future of applications and where they will
reside ?€? on the Web or on the desktop. Google President Eric Schmidt
thinks that 90 percent of computing will eventually reside in the
Web-based 'cloud.' Microsoft faces a business quandary as it tries to
link the Web to its existing desktop business ?€? 'software plus Internet
services,' in its formulation. 'Microsoft will embrace the Web while
striving to maintain the revenue and profits from its desktop software
businesses, the corporate gold mine, a smart strategy for now that may
not be sustainable,' according to the article. Google faces competition
from Microsoft and from other Web-based productivity software being
offered by startups, and it is 'unclear at this point whether Google will
be able to capitalize on the trends that it's accelerating.' David B.
Yoffie, a professor at the Harvard Business School, says the Google model
is to try to change all the rules. If Google succeeds, 'a lot of the
value that Microsoft provides today is potentially obsolete.' Microsoft
used to call this 'cutting off their air supply."
Discuss this story at:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=07/12/16/2127244
Links:
0. http://hughpickens.com/
1. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/16/technology/16goog.html?ei=5088&en=51443a66d6584dc2&ex=1355461200&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&pagewanted=print
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
| RIAA Backs Down On "Unlicensed Investigator" |
| from the fight-fairly-now dept. |
| posted by kdawson on Sunday December 16, @18:33 (The Courts) |
| http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/12/16/2033207 |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
[0]NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "Texas grandmother Rhonda Crain got the
RIAA to [1]drop its monetary claims against her after she [2]filed
counterclaims against the record companies for using an investigator,
MediaSentry, which is not licensed to conduct investigations in the State
of Texas. The RIAA elected to drop its claims rather than wait for the
Judge to decide the validity of [3]Ms. Crain's charges (PDF) that the
plaintiff record companies were 'aware that the... private investigations
company was unlicensed to conduct investigations in the State of Texas
specifically, and in other states as well... and understood that
unlicensed and unlawful investigations would take place in order to
provide evidence for this lawsuit, as well as thousands of others as part
of a mass litigation campaign.' Similar questions about MediaSentry's
unlicensed investigations were raised recently by the State Attorney
General of Oregon in [4]Arista v. Does 1-17"
Discuss this story at:
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=07/12/16/2033207
Links:
0. http://recordingindustryvspeople.blogspot.com/
1. http://recordingindustryvspeople.blogspot.com/2007/12/riaa-drops-claims-against-texas.html
2. http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/07/03/2323203&tid=123
3. http://www.ilrweb.com/viewILRPDF.asp?filename=sony_crain_070703MotAmendAnsCounterclaims
4. http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/11/30/1910202&tid=123
Copyright 1997-2006 OSTG. All rights reserved.
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