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Budapest Panorama, at 70GP, Now the World's Largest Digital Photo
hasanabbas1987 writes "It's just been a few months since a 45-gigapixel panorama of Dubai claimed the title of world's largest digital photograph, but it's now already been well and truly ousted — the new king in town is this 70-gigapixel, 360-degree panorama of Budapest. As with other multi-gigapixel images, this one was no easy feat, and involved two 25-megapixel Sony A900 cameras fitted with 400mm Minolta lenses and 1.4X teleconverters, a robotic camera mount from 360world that got the shooting done over the course of two days, and two solid days of post-processing that resulted in a single 200GB file — not to mention a 15-meter-long printed copy of the photograph for good measure. Of course, what's most impressive is the photo itself [Note: requires Silverlight]."

Slashdot ~Created Sat Jul 31 15:09:59 2010

Mars Rover Spirit May Never Wake From Deep Sleep
astroengine writes "After repeated calls from NASA to wake up Mars Exploration Rover Spirit from its low-energy hibernation mode, mission control is beginning to realize the ill-fated robot may never wake up again. After getting stuck in a sand trap in Gusev Crater and then switching into hibernation in March, rover operators were hopeful that the beached Spirit might yet be saved. Alas, this is looking more and more unlikely. In a statement, NASA said: 'Based on models of Mars' weather and its effect on available power, mission managers believe that if Spirit responds, it most likely will be in the next few months. However, there is a very distinct possibility Spirit may never respond.'" Related xkcd strip, in case the headline wasn't anthropomorphic enough for you.

Slashdot ~Created Sat Jul 31 15:09:59 2010

Silent, Easily Made Android Rootkit Released At DefCon
An anonymous reader writes with news that security experts from Spider Labs released a kernel level rootkit for Android devices at DefCon on Friday. "As a proof of concept, it is able to send an attacker a reverse TCP over 3G/WIFI shell upon receiving an incoming call from a 'trigger number.' This ultimately results in full root access on the Android device." The rootkit was developed over a period of two weeks, and has been handed out to DefCon attendees on DVD.

Slashdot ~Created Sat Jul 31 15:09:59 2010

Average Cellphone Data Usage Is 145.8 MB Per Month
destinyland writes "For the first time, the majority of cell phones are accessing data services — 53 percent, compared to only 42 percent last year, according to a new study by Validas. And each user downloads an average of 145.8 MB per month (the average was just 96.8 MB per month in 2009). The heaviest users are Verizon smartphone owners, averaging 428 MB per month (338 MB on average for iPhone users). In fact, Verizon users were twice as likely as iPhone users to exceed both 500 MB and 2 GB each month."

Slashdot ~Created Sat Jul 31 15:09:59 2010

TI Calculator DRM Defeated
josath writes "Texas Instruments' flagship calculator, the Nspire, was hacked to allow user-written programs earlier this year. Earlier this month, TI released an update to the OS that runs on the calculator, providing no new features, but only blocking the previous hack. Now, just a few weeks later, Nleash has been released, which defeats this protection. The battle rages on as users fight for the right to run their own software on their own hardware."

Slashdot ~Created Sat Jul 31 15:09:59 2010

Who Is Downloading the Torrented Facebook Files?
eldavojohn writes "Gizmodo's got an interesting scoop on a list of IPs acquired from Peer Block revealing who is downloading the Facebook user data torrented this week: Apple, the Church of Scientology, Disney, Intel, IBM and several major government contractors just to name a few. The article notes that this doesn't mean it's sanctioned by these companies or even known to be happening, but the IP addresses of requests coming to one of the users' machines match to lists of IP blocks for each company."

Slashdot ~Created Sat Jul 31 15:09:59 2010

Fossil Fuel Subsidies Dwarf Support For Renewables
TravisTR sends word of research from Bloomberg New Energy Finance which found that direct subsidies for renewable energy from governments worldwide totaled $43-46 billion in 2009, an amount vastly outstripped by the $557 billion in fossil fuel subsidies during 2008. "The BNEF preliminary analysis suggests the US is the top country, as measured in dollars deployed, in providing direct subsidies for clean energy with an estimated $18.2bn spent in total in 2009. Approximately 40% of this went toward supporting the US biofuels sector with the rest going towards renewables. The federal stimulus program played a key role; its Treasury Department grant program alone provided $3.8bn in support for clean energy projects. China, the world leader in new wind installations in 2009 with 14GW, provided approximately $2bn in direct subsidies, according to the preliminary analysis. This figure is deceptive, however, as much crucial support for clean energy in the country comes in form of low-interest loans from state-owned banks. State-run power generators and grid companies have also been strongly encouraged by the government to tap their balance sheets in support of renewables."

Slashdot ~Created Sat Jul 31 15:09:59 2010

Microsoft To Issue Emergency Fix For Windows .LNK Flaw
Trailrunner7 writes "Microsoft will issue an out-of-band patch on Monday for a critical vulnerability in all of the current versions of Windows. The company didn't identify which flaw it will be patching, but the description of the vulnerability is a close match to the LNK flaw that attackers have been exploiting for several weeks now, most notably with the Stuxnet malware. The advance notification from Microsoft on Friday said that the company is patching a critical vulnerability that is being actively exploited in the wild and affects all supported Windows platforms. The LNK flaw in the Windows shell was first identified earlier this month when researchers discovered the Stuxnet worm spreading from infected USB drives to PCs. Stuxnet has turned out to be a rather interesting piece of malware as it not only uses the LNK zero day vulnerability to spread, but it had components that were signed using a legitimate digital certificate belonging to Realtek, a Taiwanese hardware manufacturer."

Slashdot ~Created Sat Jul 31 15:09:59 2010

UK Government Rejects Calls To Upgrade From IE6
pcardno writes "The UK government has responded to a petition encouraging government departments to move away from IE6 that had over 6,000 signatories. Their response seems to be that a fully patched IE6 is perfectly safe as long as firewalls and malware scanning tools are in place, and that mandating an upgrade away from IE6 will be too expensive. The second part is fair enough in this age of austerity (I'd rather have my taxes spent on schools and hospitals than software upgrade testing at the moment), but the whole reaction will be a disappointment to the petitioners." Update: 07/31 11:43 GMT by S : Dan Frydman, the man who launched the petition, has posted a response to the government's decision.

Slashdot ~Created Sat Jul 31 15:09:59 2010

The Canadian Who Holds the Key To the Internet
drbutts writes "The Toronto Star has an interesting story on how they are securing DNS: 'It's housed in two high-security facilities separated by the North American landmass. The one authenticated map of the Internet. Were it to be lost — either through a catastrophic physical or cyber attack — it could be recreated by seven individuals spread around the globe. One of them is Ottawa's Norm Ritchie. Ritchie was recently chosen to hold one of seven smartcards that can rebuild the root key that underpins this system' called DNSSEC (Domain Name System Security Extensions). In essence, these seven can rebuild the architecture that allows users to know for certain where they are and where they are going when navigating the Web."

Slashdot ~Created Sat Jul 31 15:09:59 2010

US Ability To Identify Source of Nuclear Weapons Decays
Hugh Pickens writes "The NY Times covers a report released by the National Research Council, which says the ability of the US to identify the source of a nuclear weapon used in a terrorist attack is fragile and eroding. The goals of the highly specialized detective work, known as nuclear attribution, is to clarify options for retaliation and to deter terrorists by letting them know that nuclear devices have fingerprints that atomic specialists can find and trace. 'Although US nuclear forensics capabilities are substantial and can be improved, right now they are fragile, under-resourced and, in some respects, deteriorating,' the report warns. 'Without strong leadership, careful planning and additional funds, these capabilities will decline.' The report calls on the federal government to take steps to strengthen its forensic capabilities and argues for the necessity of better planning, more robust budgets, clearer lines of authority and more realistic exercises."

Slashdot ~Created Sat Jul 31 15:09:59 2010

New PS3 Firmware Causing HDD Upgrade Problems?
Channard writes "While there have been occasional reports of previous PS3 firmware upgrades causing system crashes and so forth, Sony's new firmware upgrade for the system, 3.41, is apparently stopping PS3 owners from upgrading their hard disks. This problem has been encountered by many users on Sony's forums and occurs when you try to put a new hard disk into a PS3 that already has the firmware upgrade installed. The general course of action for upgrading a PS3's drive is that you download the latest PS3 firmware onto a memory stick and, after swapping the hard drive in the PS3, plug the stick in, allowing the PS3 to properly prepare the disk for use. But as of upgrade 3.41, the PS3 fails to recognize the firmware on the stick, complaining that it can't proceed until you insert the correct firmware. Repeating the process and re-downloading the firmware does not fix the problem, as I can confirm, having encountered the problem myself. Users can put the old hard disk back in, provided they've not reformatted it for some other purpose, so all is not lost. Sony have apparently told gaming website CVG that 'The information available to our Consumer Services Department does not suggest that this is a problem PlayStation owners are likely to experience when upgrading the HDD with 3.41 update.' This seems to fly in the face of the currently available information — although whether or not this statement was issued by Kevin Butler is unclear. Either way, PS3 owners encountering this problem will likely have to wait a few days for a fix and use their old HDDs for now."

Slashdot ~Created Sat Jul 31 15:09:59 2010

FCC Gives Thumbs-Up To First LTE Phone
eagledck tips news that the FCC has "finally approved the first 4G Long Term Evolution (LTE) phone for sale in the US." The Samsung device will use MetroPCS as a carrier, but tech specs, software details and a launch timetable are still uncertain. Meanwhile, Verizon is ramping up testing of their own LTE infrastructure, hoping to launch in 25 to 30 markets by the end of the year. An anonymous reader notes that LTE rollouts could be hampered by a confused and conflicted patent situation. "It is impossible to know where all the patents are but we have identified more than 60 companies holding essential patents. It is a very large landscape and fragmented. If there was one major patent pool and a handful of individual companies to deal with, that would be possible. But signing license deals with 40 plus [entities] is not. A unified patent pool is best," said a representative for one of three patent pool organizations trying to accomplish that.

Slashdot ~Created Sat Jul 31 15:09:59 2010

DefCon Contest Rattles FBI's Nerves
snydeq writes "A DefCon contest that invites contestants to trick employees at 30 US corporations into revealing not-so-sensitive data has rattled nerves at the FBI. Chris Hadnagy, who is organizing the contest, also noted concerns from the financial industry, which fears hackers will target personal information. The contest will run for three days, with participants attempting to unearth data from an undisclosed list of about 30 US companies. The contest will take place in a room in the Riviera hotel in Las Vegas furnished with a soundproof booth and a speaker, so an audience can hear the contestants call companies and try to weasel out what data they can get from unwitting employees." The group organizing the contest has established a strict set of rules to ensure participants don't violate any laws. Update: 07/31 04:45 GMT by S : PCWorld has coverage of one of the day's more successful attacks.

Slashdot ~Created Sat Jul 31 15:09:59 2010

How Should a Non-Techie Learn Programming?
CurtMonash writes "Nontechnical people — for example marketers or small business owners — increasingly get the feeling they should know more about technology. And they're right. If you can throw up a small website or do some real number-crunching, chances are those skills will help you feed your family. But how should they get started? I started a thread with the question on DBMS2, and some consistent themes emerged, including: Learn HTML + CSS early on; Learn a bit of SQL, but you needn't make that your focus; Have your first real programming language be one of the modern ones, such as PHP or Python; MySQL is a good vehicle to learn SQL; It's a great idea to start with a project you actually want to accomplish, and that can be done by modifying a starter set of sample code (e.g., a WordPress blog); Microsoft's technology stack is an interesting alternative to some of the other technology ideas. A variety of books and websites were suggested, most notably MIT's Scratch. But, frankly, it would really help to get more suggestions for sites and books that help one get started with HTML/CSS, or with MySQL, or with PHP. And so, techie studs and studdettes, I ask you — how should a non-techie go about learning some basic technological skills?"

Slashdot ~Created Sat Jul 31 15:09:59 2010

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~Created Sat Jul 31 15:09:59 2010

New GNOME Shell Mockup Looks Good â€" But Is It Better? Yesterday it was announced that GNOME 3.0 is delayed till next year. The extra time has given the Shell Developers some more time to play around with new concepts and they have come up a new mockup. Here are the new mockups. OSNews ~Created Sat Jul 31 13:48:49 2010	Register: Microsoft Should Make a Bold Open Source Move A provocative editorial at The Register makes this suggestion: "Microsoft should consider acquiring Novell's SUSE Linux business and focusing it completely on mobile. Novell has a seat at the Linux Foundation's MeeGo table, and Microsoft should embrace that operating system rather than its myriad (but universally unsuccessful) mobile variants of Windows." OSNews ~Created Sat Jul 31 13:48:49 2010
AMD Set to Beat Intel in USB 3 Race AMD plans to start shipping the USB 3-equipped chipset in the fourth quarter of 2010, beating Intel to the post. Intel hasn't announced its official plans for integrated USB 3 support yet, but various sources say it's not expected until we're well into 2011. OSNews ~Created Sat Jul 31 13:48:49 2010	Graphics Chip Market Seeing Big Changes As Nvidia falters, Advanced Micro Devices' ATI graphics unit is on the rise, spurred by "radical" shifts in the market, according to Mercury Research, which tracks the market for GPUs or graphics processing units. OSNews ~Created Sat Jul 31 13:48:49 2010
Microsoft's Tablet Self-Deception Microsoft had its annual financial analyst meeting on Thursday, and Steve Ballmer answered questions about what the company's answer to the iPad was going to be, and whether Windows Phone 7 was going to be a part of that product strategy. He said, "We're coming . . . We're coming full guns. The operating system is called Windows." Ballmer and Microsoft so don't get it. I can't believe Steve Ballmer is making me feel sorry for Microsoft. OSNews ~Created Sat Jul 31 13:48:49 2010	Tools That Find Serious Bugs Automatically Could Lead to Safer, More Stable Software. Several talks at the Black Hat security conference this week in Las Vegas will focus on tools that could make software safer by automatically searching for bugs--and pinpointing the ones that could be most dangerous. OSNews ~Created Sat Jul 31 13:48:49 2010
RMS Answers 25 Questions Richard Stallman, who's still taking on the role of the extremist who says extreme things so other Free Software advocates can look moderate in comparison, answers Reddit readers' questions. But there's some good stuff in there, and it seems he's dialed back the nutty a bit. OSNews ~Created Sat Jul 31 13:48:49 2010	Dell, HP to Resell Oracle'S Operating Systems Oracle has announced that rival hardware vendors Dell and Hewlett-Packard intend to certify and resell its Solaris and Enterprise Linux operating systems as well as Oracle VM on their x86 servers. The announcement "demonstrates Oracle's commitment to openness," company co-president Charles Phillips said in a statement. OSNews ~Created Sat Jul 31 13:48:49 2010
KDE SC 4.7 May Use OpenGL 3 For Compositing KDE SC 4.5 is about to be released and KDE SC 4.6 is being discussed. However, Martin Graesslin has revealed some details about what they are planning for KDE 4.7. According to Martin's blog post, they are looking at OpenGL 3.0 to provide the compositing effects in KDE SC 4.7. OpenGL 3.0 provides support for frame buffer objects, hardware instancing, vertex array objects, and sRGB framebuffers. Read more here OSNews ~Created Sat Jul 31 13:48:49 2010	Details of 100m Facebook Users Collected and Published Personal details of 100m Facebook users have been harvested and published on the net by a security consultant. The list, which has been shared as a downloadable file, contains the URL of every searchable Facebook user's profile, their name and unique ID. BBC News OSNews ~Created Sat Jul 31 13:48:49 2010
New BlackBerry OS Expected August 3 BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion has distributed invites to an exclusive media event in New York, where it's expected to show off the first device to run the brand new BlackBerry OS, BlackBerry 6. CIO.com offers predictions for how the event will unfold. OSNews ~Created Sat Jul 31 13:48:49 2010	LiMo + GNOME: crickets The GNOME foundation and the LiMo group announced a partnership to help push Linux forward in the consumer field. The only notice that anyone has seem to have taken is mockery. So why can someone announce some dedication to promoting open source software in the mobile space and generate no enthusiasm in the mobile space? Android. OSNews ~Created Sat Jul 31 13:48:49 2010
GNOME Census GNOME developer Dave Neary has posted the highlights of his work to determine where contributions to GNOME come from. This "Census" is a combination of data mining and surveys that gives a snapshot of gnome activity and the profile of a GNOME contributor. This project's aims were to answer three questions in particular: What does the developer community look like? What companies are investing in GNOME, and how? What does the commercial ecosystem around the GNOME project look like? OSNews ~Created Sat Jul 31 13:48:49 2010	GNOME 3.0 Delayed to March 2011 During the currently ongoing GUADEC conference in Den Haag the GNOME release team announced that GNOME 3.0 would be delayed for another six months and is now scheduled for March 2011. "We could release in September and have something working that is okayish, but it's not up to the standards we have" release team member Vincent Untz explains the reasoning. There's coverage of this issue at derStandard.at and an official GNOME press release. OSNews ~Created Sat Jul 31 13:48:49 2010
Dell expands Ubuntu Linux desktop offerings The latest panic in desktop Linux lad was that Dell would no longer be selling Ubuntu pre-installed on laptops and netbooks. Alas, for those who love drama, it wasn't true. In fact, Dell is expanding its Ubuntu desktop Linux offerings. OSNews ~Created Sat Jul 31 13:48:49 2010	NewsBone.com Suggest a feed to syndicate here, or check out what I'm doing over at freshtao. ~Created Sat Jul 31 13:48:49 2010

Securing the Black Hat Wi-Fi Network With Aruba's Cloud
Aruba uses new technology to minimize the on-site equipment needed to secure one of the most hostile conference environments in America.

Wi-Fi Planet Wi-Fi Planet Wireless News ~Created Sat Jul 31 11:51:29 2010

Is Cisco's WPA Migration Mode Leaving Wi-Fi Users at Risk?
Researchers at Black Hat this week warn about a potential threat in Cisco 1200-series wireless access points, but the enterprise networking giant downplays the danger.

Wi-Fi Planet Wi-Fi Planet Wireless News ~Created Sat Jul 31 11:51:29 2010

Intel Denies Any Reduction in WiMAX Commitment
The chip giant was forced to respond after Asian publication reported the dissolution of Intel's WiMAX promotional group.

Wi-Fi Planet Wi-Fi Planet Wireless News ~Created Sat Jul 31 11:51:29 2010

Aerohive Revamps Free Online Wi-Fi Planner
With an update to its Wi-Fi planning tool, Aerohive has made it easier for networkers to plan for Wi-Fi deployments. Enterprise Networking Planet's review of the revamped tool says improved report output, a streamlined workflow and better interface make the tool accessible to more people while providing better results.

Wi-Fi Planet Wi-Fi Planet Wireless News ~Created Sat Jul 31 11:51:29 2010

Meru Expands WLAN Service Assurance Portfolio
Spectrum analysis, security, and monitoring products increase reliability and cut TCO for Meru Virtual Cell WLANs.

Wi-Fi Planet Wi-Fi Planet Wireless News ~Created Sat Jul 31 11:51:29 2010

Veriwave's WaveDeploy Raises the Bar on WLAN Assessment
Site assessment tool maps per-client application performance for what-if analysis, client certification, and SLA validation.

Wi-Fi Planet Wi-Fi Planet Wireless News ~Created Sat Jul 31 11:51:29 2010

Google Apologizes for Snaring Wi-Fi Data
Google says it didn't mean to gather unsecured data as its cars roamed the streets putting together Street View images, but the search company learned it was doing just that as a result of a request for an audit from a German privacy authority.

Wi-Fi Planet Wi-Fi Planet Wireless News ~Created Sat Jul 31 11:51:29 2010

4G On the Brink of Massive Growth
Whether it's WiMAX or LTE, 4G is going to be growing in the next few years. While the two protocols coexist right now, what's the future going to hold?

Wi-Fi Planet Wi-Fi Planet Wireless News ~Created Sat Jul 31 11:51:29 2010

SiBeam Introduces Wireless Video Streaming Chipset
By combining support two high-speed wireless protocols, the company hopes to usher in new, cheaper forms of high-definition wireless streaming.

Wi-Fi Planet Wi-Fi Planet Wireless News ~Created Sat Jul 31 11:51:29 2010

Wi-Fi 2015: Where Is Wireless Networking Going?
With more than 1 billion devices on the market and 802.11n now standardized, what's next for the networking technology? A panel of networking experts at Interop peers into the crystal ball.

Wi-Fi Planet Wi-Fi Planet Wireless News ~Created Sat Jul 31 11:51:29 2010

Blaise Agüera y Arcas - The Map as an Information Ecology
Blaise Agüera y Arcas, Architect of Bing Maps, discusses its structure and "information ecology," of content, users, and apps. By extracting the semantic content of 2D images and mapping them in 3D, Bing Maps continually improves a rich infrastructure of surface data about the world on which apps and services can ride. When it began allowing users to bind sets of images, Bing Maps found myriad partners to infill data, extrapolated to 3D, about tourist sites around the world.