29334127
submission
swandives writes:
WebOS could be an important player in the long run as an open-source mobile OS because Android could become closed source with Google's purchase of Motorola Mobility, Hewlett-Packard CEO Meg Whitman said during a speech at the HP Global Partner conference in Las Vegas.
It may take up to four years for the complete impact of webOS to be felt, Whitman said. HP has said it would release WebOS — originally developed by Palm for phones and tablets — to the open-source community. The company bought Palm in 2010 but late last year announced it will not make devices that use the software.
23294610
submission
swandives writes:
More in the Oracle/Google patent infringement saga. Oracle says no court has ever found that APIs for software like Java are ineligible for copyright protection. The claims were made in its objection to Google's request that the court make a summary judgment on Oracle's copyright allegations. In early August, Google asked the judge to rule that Google doesn't infringe Oracle copyright in its implementation of Android. In an objection to that request, Oracle asked the judge to let the charge go to trial. Earlier, Judge Alsup denied Google's attempt to get a potentially damaging e-mail redacted. Looks like this one could take a while.
23277810
submission
swandives writes:
Imagine what would happen if all the Google engineers turned rogue and held the world’s Gmail accounts to ransom. Or if aliens attacked earth and wiped California off the map. Seems the folks over at Google's enterprise division have already considered these scenarios. CIO is running an article, as part of a larger interview with Google Enterprise director of security, Eran Feigenbaum. He's a fascinating guy — in his spare time he practises magic and mentalism and you may also have heard of him as Eran Raven, the contestant from NBC television show, Phenomenon.
22972558
submission
swandives writes:
India's home ministry has asked its communications ministry to monitor social networking websites such as Twitter and Facebook amid fears that the services are being used by terrorists to plan attacks.
The request suggests that the Indian government is trying to broaden the scope of its online surveillance for national security. Under new rules to the country's IT Act that came into force earlier this year, websites and service providers are required to provide government security agencies with information on private accounts, including passwords, on request without a court order.
17706180
submission
swandives writes:
In 1950 Bell Labs researcher Richard W. Hamming made a discovery that would lay an important foundation for the modern computing and communications industries — coming up with a method for performing computing operations on a large scale without errors. Hamming wrote about how self-checking circuits help eliminate errors in telephone central offices. He speculated the “special codes” he proposed — which became known as Hamming codes — would only need to be applied to systems requiring unattended operation for long periods or “extremely large and tightly integrated” systems where a single failure would incapacitate the entire installation.
Hamming code was the first discovery in an immense field called coding theory. This article looks back on the history of Hamming codes, their applications, and includes interviews with Todd Moon, Professor of electrical and computer engineering at Utah State University and David MacKay, Professor of natural philosophy in the department of Physics at the University of Cambridge and chief scientific adviser to the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change. An interesting read, about a little-known but fundamental element of information theory.
17326748
submission
swandives writes:
Following on from the iPhone serial port hack, Chris Pollock shows how an iPad will look with a serial port adapter for those who need more screen space. The pictures show a basic prototype, but Pollock expects to have a more attractive alternative up and running in the coming months.
12691192
submission
swandives writes:
There's lot of talk about Facebook and privacy at the moment, but a bug in Facebook's website lets hackers delete Facebook friends without permission. Steven Abbagnaro, a student from Marist College in Poughkeepsie, New York reported the flaw, writing proof-of-concept code that scrapes publicly available data from users' Facebook pages and deletes all of their friends, one by one. The victim first has to click on a malicious link while logged into Facebook.
Abbagnaro's code exploits the same underlying flaw that was first reported by Alert Logic security analyst, M.J. Keith, who discovered cross-site request forgery bug, where the website doesn't properly check code sent by users' browsers to ensure that they were authorized to make changes on the site.
10842532
submission
swandives writes:
The Australian Grand Prix F1 event is being held in Melbourne this weekend (27-28 March) and Computerworld Australia has interviewed the technology teams for BMW Sauber, McLaren Racing, Red Bull Racing, and Renault about how they run their IT systems and how technology has changed the sport. Each car has about 100 sensors which capture data and send anywhere up to 20GB back to the pits during a race. The tech guys arrive a week before a race to set everything up — the kit for BMW Sauber weighs close to 3200 kilograms and when it's all over, they pack it all up and move on to the next event. Good pics too.
10536158
submission
swandives writes:
Australian gamers will dress as zombies to raise awareness about the lack of an R18+ rating for video games in the country. The protest will begin at Hyde Park Fountain on March 27 and lumber through Sydney, raising awareness of the need for a higher classification rating and hopefully causing a bit of havoc at the same time! Computerworld Australia has pictures of previous zombie protests in the lead-up to the event. Australia has a long history of lobbying for an R18+ games classification but, even after a decade, video games are banned from sale if they exceed the maximum M15+ classification.
So far, the list of banned titles includes 7 Sins, Risen, Left 4 Dead 2 and Dark Sector. Others, like Alien Vs Predator, were initially banned but appealed the rating and are now MA15+.
10233204
submission
swandives writes:
Researchers at US-CERT have warned the software that accompanies the Energizer DUO USB battery charger contains a Trojan that gives hackers total access to a Windows PC. The product was sold in sold in the US, Latin America, Europe and Asia starting in 2007.
Upon installation, the software creates the file "Arucer.dll," a Trojan that listens for commands on TCP port 7777. Upon instructions, the Trojan can download and execute files, transmit files stolen from the PC, or tweak the Windows registry. Uninstalling the software disables the automatic execution of the Trojan. And users can also remove Arucer.dll from Windows' system32 directory, then reboot the machine, to remove the file.
8734922
submission
swandives writes:
The Linux.conf.au is in full-swing in Wellington, New Zealand, and Computerworld Australia has an interview with Jon Corbet in the leadup to his Kernel Report. The latest kernel release is due early March and will include reversed-engineered drivers for Nvidia chipsets.
