Slashdot

chareverie writes "Fortify Software released a study where they concluded that open source software poses a large security risk to corporations who have implemented it. They reason this by stating that the fault lies within the open source communities and their failure to adhere to minimum security practices. Fortify Software studied 11 open source software packages, where the application server Tomcat was determined to be the best. The other 10 were found to have poor results, with those being Derby, Geronimo, Hibernate, Hipergate, JBoss, Jonas, OFBiz, OpenCMS, Resin and Struts. Jacob West, manager of Fortify's research group, reminds that purpose of the study was 'not to condemn open source software, but rather to point out that the security practices need to improve because open source adoption by enterprises and governments is growing.'"

ruphus13 writes "A new Goldman Sachs IT report recently released states that IT jobs will be dramatically reduced in 2009, starting with contract and offshore developers. From the article: 'Sharp reductions likely in contract staff, professional services and hardware, and almost no investment in cloud computing.' The article goes on to say 'The CIOs indicated that server virtualization and server consolidation are their No. 1 and No. 2 priorities. Following these two are cost-cutting, application integration, and data center consolidation. At the bottom of the list of IT priorities are grid computing, open-source software, content management and cloud computing (called on-demand/utility computing in the survey) — less than 2% of the respondents said cloud computing was a priority.' Postulating a 'pointy haired boss' problem, an analyst goes on to say, '[Grid computing, Open Source and Cloud computing] require a technical understanding to get to their importance. I don't think C-level executives and managers have that understanding.' But they do control the paychecks ..."

MojoKid writes "Sunnyvale-based manufacturer OCZ Technology has laid claim to being the first to bring a 'brain-computer' interface to the retail market and they have aimed it squarely at the gamer. The device is called the NIA, which is an acronym that stands for Neural Impulse Actuator. Instead of buttons, sticks, gyroscopes or motion sensors, it reads the body's natural bio-signals and translates them into commands that can be used to control PC games. This evaluation of the NIA shows the product actually works as advertised, with a little practice. It can, in some cases, offer reaction times superior to standard controllers, based on faster trigger response time, and the difference is quite noticeable and immediate."

"Incremental, fast and includes clients" certainly has the risk of scope creep, but with proper change management, that can be mitigated. The benefit, however, is transparency. You don't get the developers going off and wasting lots of time building the wrong thing. You don't get a continual state of development where it's never production-ready. The end effect is that it breeds a culture where you get used to delivering production-quality code. It sounds pathetic, but that's actually a rare skill. There's far less opportunity to dig yourself into a deep hole of failure, because as soon as you get a few inches down, the clients start complaining and your management can't make excuses.

I have to agree.

You see, the other costumed heroes were just that - some had improved capabilities (like Ozymandias), and some had neat devices (like Nite Owl), but in the end they were all people whose costume was primarily aimed at concealing their identities.

Dr. Manhattan was different... since he was no longer entirely human he was no longer affected by human norms and values (watch how his clothing becomes sketchier from his early days to the "present").

I thought it was a pretty cool way of showing how much he'd diverged from his original self without blabbing it out loud.

And is instead similar to the Agile software development process. If the average Web 2.0 monkey had some real software engineering background, maybe their work will be maintainable a few years down the road, and not just rewritten for the Next Big Buzzword.

I know that it my sound extreme. but the reality is this:

I just received a notice from my Printed circuit Board vendor in China stating that they will be unable to provide deliveries during this time due to mandatory shutdowns. thus i will have to resort to expensive U.S manufacturing. If im doing that then i assume others are doing the same. perhaps on a different scale then what my little company uses. As a whole this has to be effecting the average worker that works as such facilities there in china. Poor guy who was bringing home that 2$ a day now brings home none. on a larger scale you will see starvation, because i know more factory's then just PCB's manufacturing will be shut down.

that 2$ a day buys grain to eat. how will he earn his grain?

people might argue how this will effect consumer goods. but don't forget there is a human factor involved.

ruphus13 writes "The Pwnie Awards, an 'annual awards ceremony celebrating and making fun of the achievements and failures of security researchers and the wider security community' announced their 2008 nominees. From their site, 'The final list of nominees for the nine Pwnie Award categories is finally published. We've received some really good submissions and it was not an easy task to narrow them down to five nominees per category, but we hope that we've done a good job. The next step for the Pwnie Awards judges will gather in an undisclosed location prior to the award ceremony and vote on the winners.'"

Very good point, I have some nearly 20 year old legos that fit with brand new ones like they were from the same batch. I suppose I took it for granted without really thinking how much work would go into this level of quality control.

Relin writes "If you've been spending a lot of time playing NASCAR '09 on your Xbox 360, pause the game, buy yourself a memory stick, back up your game save, and turn off the auto-save feature. According to a growing number of reports, game saves have a tendency to become corrupted, forcing players to delete the data before being able to play the game again."
http://xbox360.thegamereviews.com/story-1629-GameBreaking-Bug-Found-in-NASCAR-09.html

The trailer for Watchmen got the E.T. treatment.
Just in case you were afraid that the character on screen was going to shoot you, his gun has been replaced by a walkie-talkie.

I forgot to mention the other bit of exciting comic book movie news this week: DaSpudMan noted that the Watchmen trailer is out — from the Director of 300, which spawns mixed feelings at our office. But it looks pretty good.

Relin writes "If you're confused about what's being offered in Portal: Still Alive, you are not alone, and Doug Lombardi recently cleared up some of that confusion with GameSetWatch editor Chris Remo. So what is Still Alive? A stand-alone version of Portal with a pack of maps from Portal: the Flash Version and no new plot."
http://pc.thegamereviews.com/story-1627-Portal-Still-Alive-Confusion-Cleared-Up.html

The latest results of Messenger's first flyby of Mercury confirms a magnetic field and molten outer core. Conversely, Venus which is Earth's twin in size, seems a lot more dead. A more important factor may have been chemical composition at the time of formation - Mercury had more metal. Elements may have been unevenly distributed as function of distance from the Sun in the original planetary nebula.

An anonymous reader writes "Gizmodo has a fascinating report and video tour inside the Lego factory, which is full of robots and controlled by a mainframe. 'This video shows something that very few people have had the opportunity to witness: the inside of the Lego factory, with no barriers or secrets. I filmed every step in the creation of the brick. From the raw granulate stored in massive silos to the molding machines to the gigantic storage cathedrals to the decoration and packaging warehouses, you will be able to see absolutely everything, including the most guarded secret of the company: the brick molds themselves.'"