ceswiedler - Slashdot User

Submission + - Stuxnet was designed to subtly interfere with uran (wired.com)

Submitted by

ceswiedler

on Monday November 15, 2010 @07:54PM

ceswiedler writes: "Wired.com is reporting that the Stuxnet worm was apparently designed to subtly interfere with uranium enrichment by periodically speeding or slowing specific frequency converter drives spinning between 807Hz and 1210Hz. The goal was not to cause a major malfunction (which would be quickly noticed), but rather to degrade the quality of the enriched uranium to the point where much of it wouldn't be useful in atomic weapons. Statistics from 2009 show that the number of enriched centrifuges operational in Iran mysteriously declined from about 4,700 to about 3,900 at around the time the worm was spreading in Iran."

Submission + - GIMP 2.8 will sport redesigned UI (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by

ceswiedler

on Monday February 08, 2010 @09:53PM

ceswiedler writes: "Ars Technica's Ryan Paul previews the upcoming release of the GIMP. It will now include a single-window mode where the user can dock toolbar windows and switch between images via tabs. There are other improvements as well, including docking support in multi-window mode and improvements to the text tool."

Submission + - Maryland town tests newcryptographic voting system (wired.com)

Submitted by

ceswiedler

on Wednesday November 04, 2009 @06:40PM

ceswiedler writes: "In Tuesday's election voters in Takoma Park, MD used a new cryptographic voting system designed by David Chaum with researchers from several universities including MIT and the University of Maryland. Voters use a special ink to mark their ballots, which reveals three-digit codes which they can later check against a website to verify their vote was tallied. Additionally, anyone can download election data from a Subversion repository and verify the overall accuracy of the results without seeing the actual choices of any individual voter."

Submission + - FCC begins crafting net neutrality regulations (nytimes.com)

Submitted by

ceswiedler

on Thursday October 22, 2009 @07:06PM

ceswiedler writes: "The FCC has begun crafting rules for network neutrality. The full proposal hasn't been released yet, but according to their press release (warning, Microsoft Word document) carriers would not be allowed to "prevent users from sending or receiving the lawful content", "running lawful applications", or "connecting and using...lawful devices that do not harm the network". There will be a three-month period for comments, beginning January 14, after which the FCC will issue its final guidelines."

Submission + - Debian switching from glibc to eglibc

Submitted by

ceswiedler

on Wednesday May 06, 2009 @03:57PM

ceswiedler writes: "Aurelien Jarno has just uploaded a fork of glibc called eglibc, which is targeted at embedded systems and is source- and binary-compatible with glibc. It has a few nice improvements over glibc, but the primary motivation seems to be that it's a "more friendly upstream project" than glibc. Glibc's maintainer, Ulrich Drepper, has had a contentious relationship with Debian's project leadership; in 2007 the Debian Project Leader sent an email criticizing Drepper for refusing to fix a bug on glibc on the ARM architecture because in Drepper's words it was "for the sole benefit of this embedded crap"."

Submission + - Disgruntled engineer hijacks city computer system (sfgate.com)

Submitted by

ceswiedler

on Tuesday July 15, 2008 @12:34AM

ceswiedler writes: "A disgruntled software engineer has hijacked San Francisco's new multimillion-dollar municipal computer system. When the Department of Technology tried to fire him, he disabled all administrative passwords other than his own. He was taken into custody but has so far refused to provide the password, and the department has yet to regain admin access on their own. They're worried that he or an associate might be able to destroy hundreds of thousands of sensitive documents, including emails, payroll information, and law enforcement documents."

Slashdot Top Deals