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The Internet

An Inside Look at the Great Firewall of China 165

Posted by CmdrTaco from the must-protect-general's-secret-recipe dept.
alphadogg writes "An interview with James Fallows, national correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly, who has experienced 'The Great Firewall of China' firsthand, an experience people from around the world will share this summer when the Olympics comes to that country. Based in Beijing, Fallows has researched the underlying technology that the Chinese use for Internet censorship. One good thing to know: With VPNs and proxies, you can get around it pretty easily." Will these Olympics lead to a more free China, or is it just corporate pandering?
Cellphones

SMS 4x More Expensive Than Data From Hubble 410

Posted by CmdrTaco from the and-much-less-space-porn dept.
paradoxSpirit writes "Physorg has a paper comparing the cost of text messaging versus the cost of getting data from Hubble Space Telescope. From the article: 'The maximum size for a text message is 160 characters, which takes 140 bytes because there are only 7 bits per character in the text messaging system, and we assume the average price for a text message is 5p. There are 1,048,576 bytes in a megabyte, so that's 1 million/140 = 7490 text messages to transmit one megabyte. At 5p each, that's £374.49 [$732.95] per MB — or about 4.4 times more expensive than the 'most pessimistic' estimate for Hubble Space Telescope transmission costs." "Hubble is by no means a cheap mission — but the mobile phone text costs were pretty astronomical!""
Security

DVD Porn Viruses Ravage US Soldiers' Computers 489

Posted by CmdrTaco from the oh-the-humanity dept.
stevegee58 writes "Tom Ricks' Inbox in the Sunday Washington Post reported that bootleg DVDs purchased in Iraqi markets ('souks') are frequently infected with viruses. Iraqi soldiers were affected as well; electronic interaction between Iraqi and US soldiers frequently resulted in a corresponding exchange of viruses from these infected DVDs."
Robotics

Sailing Robots To Attempt Atlantic Crossing 122

Posted by kdawson from the seriously-cheerful dept.
Roland Piquepaille writes "The Times of London reports that seven robotic craft will compete in a race across the Atlantic Ocean in October 2008. One of them, 'Pinta the robot sailing boat,' has been designed at Aberystwyth University in Wales. Pinta is expected to sail for three months at a maximum speed of four knots (about 7.4 kph). Its designers hope the Pinta will become the first robot to cross an ocean using only wind power. This 150-kilogram sailing robot costs only $4,900. The transatlantic race will start between September 29 and October 5, 2008 from Portugal. The winner will be the first boat to reach a finishing line between the northern tip of St. Lucia and the southern tip of Martinique in the Caribbean. Here are additional details and links."
The Military

NSA Takes On West Point In Security Exercise 140

Posted by Soulskill from the with-friends-like-these dept.
Wired is running a story about a recent security exercise in which the NSA attacked networks set up by various US military academies. The Army's network scored the highest, put together using Linux and FreeBSD by cadets at West Point. Quoting: "Even with a solid network design and passable software choices, there was an element of intuitiveness required to defend against the NSA, especially once it became clear the agency was using minor, and perhaps somewhat obvious, attacks to screen for sneakier, more serious ones. 'One of the challenges was when they see a scan, deciding if this is it, or if it's a cover,' says [instructor Eric] Dean. Spotting 'cover' attacks meant thinking like the NSA -- something Dean says the cadets did quite well. 'I was surprised at their creativity.' Legal limitations were a surprising obstacle to a realistic exercise. Ideally, the teams would be allowed to attack other schools' networks while also defending their own. But only the NSA, with its arsenal of waivers, loopholes, special authorizations (and heaven knows what else) is allowed to take down a U.S. network."
Spam

Spam Filtering For Small/Medium Business? 453

Posted by kdawson from the dumpster-diving dept.
or_is_it writes "The company I work for has been growing dramatically and I've been charged with the task of being the gatekeeper for our GFI Spam filters. This involves manually inspecting the subject line/to/from for all caught messages in each filter rule folder. For a company of about 50 people, in one day the number of spam messages can exceed 2,000. Neglect it for a day and you end up with quite a task on your hands. I've made the rules lax enough so important messages can go through, along with a few stray spams, for which I get bitched at. Tighten the rules up and then maybe an important time-sensitive email never gets to its intended recipient, and I get bitched at. Manually reading through all those subject lines is supposed to prevent that, but I'm only human and genuine messages can easily get overlooked. How do larger organizations deal with the spam issue? I can't imagine having one centralized person manually inspecting everyone's junk-mail header is the optimal solution. Purchasing a different commercial mail filter product is a possibility, but I'd like to hear some anecdotal evidence before jumping ship."
User Journal

Journal Journal: Xbox 360 for one of my Slashdot friends 3

Journal by Work Account

Hi all.

I have an extra Xbox 360 Core system that I would rather sell to one of my Slashdot friends than some random dude on an auction site.

Email your best offer in the $700 range to me at upstandingpatriot@yahoo.com

I also request that whoever gets it from me sends a pic back of you or your kid playing it so I get some joy out of the hours I stood waiting in line in the cold while sick :)

Comment How can you think about this NOW?! (Score -1, Offtopic) 370

by Work Account (#14071403) Attached to: Is Wi-Fi Ruining College?
Get your priorities straight people!

We may use cell phone traffic to monitor auto traffic!

Clearly we need another post about it!

So in case you missed it the last four times...

http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/19/14 3247&tid=158&tid=215&tid=193
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/19/07 45248&tid=126&tid=215&tid=158
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/ 01/159241&tid=193
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/10/16/076217 &tid=215&tid=126
User Journal

Journal Journal: TGIF 2

Journal by Work Account

I hope your Friday is going well!
User Journal

Journal Journal: Damn Slashdot janitors 1

Journal by Work Account

For some reason the janitors have my home IP or subnet blocked from posting comments so I was unable to comment and participate in the MNF pick'em last nite.

Instructions: Post a comment below expressing your disgust with a particular way this site is run
User Journal

Journal Journal: Winner of this week's NFL pick'em & Pick'em for MNF tonite! 1

Journal by Work Account

Work Account (that is me) won this week's NFL pick'em challenge 6-4, besting the 2nd place finisher ShadowWrought.

Pick'em for tonite's Monday Night Football game but be sure to include the total # of points scored. Whoever picks the winning team and has the point total closest to the real total (going over is OK, this is not the Price Is Right) wins.

Monday, October 31, 2005
9:00 pm
Baltimore 2-4
Pittsburgh 4-2
User Journal

Journal Journal: Pick 10 NFL teams to win this weekend 2

Journal by Work Account

Comment below before 1pm Eastern time on Sunday October 30th with 10 teams you think will win.

That is, out of the 13 Sunday games listed below, pick who you think will win in 10 out of the 13 games.

The Slashdotter with the highest % of being correct wins!

I'll announce the winner Monday morning!

All times are US/Eastern

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