Google Delivering Factual Answers [Slashdot: 4/7/2005; 7:52:55 PM] Google Inc. on Thursday began delivering factual answers for some queries at the top of its results page, to save users from having to navigate over to other sites and look for the information. For example, if a user enters the query 'Portugal population,' Google returns the answer -- 10.5 million -- along with a link to the Web page where the information came from, which in this case is the population page of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency's Factbook. The query 'who is Jane Fonda?' triggers the answer '... is an Academy Award winning American actress, model, writer, producer, activist and philanthropist' and provides the link to the Wikipedia online encyclopedia's entry for the actress. A small percentage of queries currently trigger these factual answers, but the service, called Google Q&A, is in its early stages, said Peter Norvig, Google's director of search quality. 4/7/2005 8:09:35 PM    

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Ask these key questions to test application security. [TechRepublic.com 4/7/2005; 3:52:39 AM] Companies should conduct application testing from both an authorized user's and an unauthorized user's perspective. This testing should include all systems that make up the application. Not sure where to begin? Mike Mullins suggests some key questions to ask when testing. Let's look at some main areas to focus on and some key questions to ask when testing.

• Scripting: Could someone script an attack that overwhelms the application?
• Enumeration: Is it possible to enumerate account information of other users?
• Passwords: Have you changed the default passwords?
• Sessions: Have you based tokens on easily re-created variables, such as sequential, time, date?
• Error handling: Does your application reveal information about the products used to create it?
• Field variables: Have you fixed SQL injection and buffer overflows?
• Code commenting: Have you cleansed HTML of comments and unused metadata?
• Session time-out: Do sessions expire after a reasonable period of time?
• Session cache: Does information expire to prevent someone from replaying a session?
• Network parameters: Have you documented ports and protocols and filtered for origination?

4/7/2005 6:19:41 PM    

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One Size Fits One: Tailoring Technology to Consumer Needs. [Knowledge@Wharton 4/6/2005; 5:53:01 PM] While a number of commentators these days suggest that the web could ultimately make newspapers, magazines and TV obsolete, Jeff Weiner, senior vice president for search and marketplace at Yahoo!, doesn't buy it: Bloggers may critique and supplement the big outlets, but they won't soon replace them. The future, he predicted, won't belong to either mass or micro players, but rather to consumers who will increasingly tailor their information gathering to their needs and tastes. The move toward more personal media isn't limited to the web, he said. Its musical analog is the digital music player -- iPods are the most prominent example -- which lets users not only download songs but also mix and store them in varied ways. The TV versions are TiVo's digital video recorders and cable's on-demand video services. "Talk to people who have TiVo, and they will tell you that it absolutely changed their lives," Weiner noted. "TiVo users have an evangelical zeal." 4/7/2005 6:14:14 PM    

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File-Sharing Is the Latest Battleground in the Clash of Technology and Copyright. [New York Times 4/7/2005 via Tomalak's Realm] This is just the latest installment of a longstanding battle between technology companies and copyright holders. In the early 1900's, the disruptive technology was player pianos. Manufacturers of player piano rolls purchased a single copy of the sheet music of a song, hired someone to record the music and then sold these mechanical reproductions to consumers. The sheet music publishers held that this was copyright infringement. Congress responded with the Copyright Act of 1909, which required piano roll manufacturers to pay songwriters a fee for each roll. Subsequently, mechanical reproduction fees have been extended to new technologies like phonographs, audio tapes, CD's and online streaming digital music.
Almost 100 years later, up to $1 of the cost of each music CD still goes to the sheet music publishers. -- Eric 4/7/2005 6:00:44 PM    

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Sinister Heresy: Microsoft's Open Source Message Gains Subtlety. [NewsForge April 07, 2005 09:00 AM by Bruce Byfield]
This article appears to be a review of a seminar describing Microsoft's revised attitude towards Open Source. As I read it, though, I started wondering when the Spanish Inquisition was going to show up. The article is actually a warning to all True Believers that Microsoft has started using the "time-honored debating tactics" of being polite, reasonable, honest, and thoughtful, to promote its Microsoft-Is-Not-ALL-Evil heresy. It ends up with a warning that "even these informed people" can be influenced to stray by these sinister "tactics", and that it "shows that the rules of engagement can change at any time -- and that the FOSS Community had better be ready when they do." What ever happened to the Apple fanatics? -- Eric

"Barnaby Jeans, an IT Pro Advisor at Microsoft Canada, has a new approach to Microsoft advocacy. ... Warning that "not all distributions are created equal or even compatible" without giving specifics, he goes on to say that most of the highly customized distributions fall into the Roll Your Own category that most corporations lack "the skill or the money to maintain." The implication is that the advantages of having access to the source code is overrated. ... Because Jeans demonstrates a knowledge of his subject, the implications of his argument are likely to be accepted without question, except by audience members who already know something about the subject. ... The result is a much more sophisticated and effective defense of Microsoft than consumers usually see. ... The effectiveness can be judged by the fact that the people who approached him after the seminar were the open source users in the audience. Although their opinions were unchanged, even these informed people seemed to respect the Microsoft perspective in a way that they had not at the start of the presentation. ... Many people in the FOSS communities are used to the Microsoft response to open source being crude and hysterical. What Jeans proves is that it can just as easily be subtle and sound reasonable. Even more importantly, he shows that the rules of engagement can change at any time -- and that the FOSS Community had better be ready when they do."

4/7/2005 5:00:20 PM    

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Discovery's Rollout Viewed - From Orbit. [NASA Watch 4/7/2005; 1:52:24 AM] Aboard the International Space Station, Expedition 10 Commander Leroy Chiao used a digital camera April 6 to photograph the rollout of the Space Shuttle Discovery at NASA's Kennedy Space Center from an altitude of 220 statute miles. Chiao used the same lens arrangement for the photograph that will be used by the next Station crew to photograph Discovery's heat shield as it approaches the Station on its Return to Flight.
You can also view KSC's Shuttle launch pads using Google's new satellite imagery service. 4/7/2005 4:26:02 PM    

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MTV announces an Internet "channel." [Scripting News 4/7/2005; 8:53:04 AM] MTV is launching a free "channel" on the internet that will show some of the station's TV programmes, including reality hit The Osbournes. The MTV Overdrive website will let users with high-speed computer connections watch music videos and extended programmes on demand. The website is currently being tested and will launch fully on 25 April. MTV president Van Toffler has said he is not worried about the web service drawing viewers away from their existing TV channels. "The TV experience is still great," he said. "Our ratings are moving higher and we don't fear that." 4/7/2005 4:21:50 PM    

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Best Buy Has Customer Arrested For Using $2 Bills. [Baltimore Sun 3/8/2005 via Anandtech 4/6/2005] A Baltimore man tried to pay for a Best Buy car stereo installation with $2 bills—and was arrested. "I'm just here to pay the bill," Bolesta says he told a cashier. "She looked at the $2 bills and told me, 'I don't have to take these if I don't want to.' She took the money, like she's doing me a favor." He remembers the cashier marking each bill with a pen. Then other store personnel began to gather, a few of them asking, "Are these real?" "Of course they are," Bolesta said. "They're legal tender."
When an employee noticed some smearing of ink, the cops were called in. The customer was locked into handcuffs and leg irons, in front of a store full of customers. He was transported to the County lockup, where he sat handcuffed to a pole and in leg irons while the Secret Service was called in. Finally, the Secret Service arrived, examined the bills and said they were legitimate, adding, according to the police report, "Sometimes ink on money can smear."
A police spokesman said, "It's a sign that we're all a little nervous in the post-9/11 world." 4/7/2005 4:18:40 PM    

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Microsoft Exec Broaches Open Source Paradigm. [InfoWorld 4/6/2005 via Linux Today 4/7/2005; 12:53:55] Like a Roman Catholic speaking to an audience of Protestant evangelicals, a Microsoft representative at the Open Source Business Conference Wednesday focused on similarities between traditional commercial projects and open source ventures, rather than cite sharp differences. Recognizing that some see Microsoft as anathema to open source, Microsoft’s Jason Matusow, director of the company’s Shared Source initiative, nonetheless said that companies building a business around open source operate in the same manner as commercial, proprietary vendors. 4/7/2005 4:04:52 PM    

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IBM: Proprietary Technology Not Enough. [CNET News 4/6/2005 11:51 AM] At the Open Source Business Conference, IBM said it's time to learn how to share. IBM itself has taken a mixed approach to open-source. It has aggressively promoted Linux and assigned hundreds of programmers to improve it. It also launched the Eclipse programming tool project. At the same time, IBM sells a lot of proprietary software, including its WebSphere business software and DB2 database. When it comes to legal actions, IBM also is mixed. The company permits use of 500 patents for open-source projects, but continues to win more patent awards than any competitor.
Irving Wladawsky-Berger, vice president of technology and strategy at IBM, described "a new kind of innovation cycle" in which companies move ahead of an expanding wave of open-source software. "A big part of your power is to have your people work with the communities and donate some of your intellectual property to those communities so they can get better. Then you build proprietary offerings on top of the open-source platform. Those proprietary offerings at some point will lose their value as proprietary offerings. Then there probably will be more value donating it to an open-source community, and on and on and on." 4/7/2005 4:01:14 PM    

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Call of the wild: animal ringtones. [Boing Boing 4/7/2005; 1:53:38 PM] This website offers animal sound ringtones for your mobile phone. Respond to the "true tone" of the turkey gooble, interrupted by a rifle blast. Other earthycrunchy options: Barred Owl, Canada Geese, Common Loon, Cougar, Mallard, Elk, Pintail, and Goose. Kinda pricey at $2.50 a shot. Free preview, though. 4/7/2005 3:50:38 PM    

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