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wiredmikey writes "A hacker who tried to land an IT job at Marriott by hacking into the company's computer systems and then unwisely extorting the company into hiring him, has been sentenced to 30 months in prison. The hacker started his malicious quest to land a job at Marriott by sending an email to Marriott containing documents taken after hacking into Marriott servers to prove his claim. He then threatened to reveal confidential information he obtained if Marriott did not give him a job in the company's IT department. He was granted a job interview, but little did he know, Marriott worked with the U.S. Secret Service to create a fictitious Marriott employee for the use by the Secret Service in an undercover operation to communicate with the hacker. He then was flown in for a face to face "interview" where he admitted more and shared details of how he hacked in. He was then arrested and pleaded guilty back in November 2011. Marriott claims that the incident cost the company between $400,000 and $1 million in salaries, consultant expenses and other costs."

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KLM is letting you pick who you're going to sit with on your next flight by tapping into the social networks Facebook and LinkedIn. It's a completely optional service.

sciencehabit writes "Petroleum geologists have long used air guns in their search for oil and gas deposits. Sudden blasts from the devices generate seismic waves that they use to map underground rock formations. Could the same technique be used to study earthquakes? A team of Chinese scientists thinks so. The researchers have designed an air gun that could be useful in monitoring changes in stress buildup along fault zones."

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tsu doh nimh writes "Two months after authorities shut down a massive Internet traffic hijacking scheme, the malicious software that powered the criminal network is still running on computers at half of the Fortune 500 companies, and on PCs at nearly 50 percent of all federal government agencies. Internet Identity, a Tacoma, Wash. company that sells security services, found evidence of at least one DNSChanger infection in computers at half of all Fortune 500 firms, and 27 out of 55 major government entities. Computers still infected with DNSChanger are up against a countdown clock. As part of the DNSChanger botnet takedown, the feds secured a court order to replace the Trojan's DNS infrastructure with surrogate, legitimate DNS servers. But those servers are only allowed to operate until March 8, 2012. Unless the court extends that order, any computers still infected with DNSChanger may no longer be able to browse the Web. The FBI is currently debating whether to extend the deadline or let it expire."

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alphadogg writes "Former FCC chairman Reed Hundt made waves when he called the House spectrum auction legislation 'the single worst telecom bill' he's seen. The legislation, which would severely restrict the FCC's ability to place conditions on spectrum auctions, is seen as a non-starter in the Senate where a bipartisan group of senators including John Kerry (D — Mass.) and Jerry Moran (R — Kan.) have signaled strong opposition to the House approach to authorizing spectrum auctions. In this interview, Hundt outlines his major objections to the House bill and describes what he would do differently to make more spectrum available."

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First time accepted submitter creativeHavoc writes "Forbes author Tomio Geron takes a look at data accrued by mobile app monitoring startup Crittercism. After looking at normalized data of crashes over the various mobile operating system versions he compares crash rates of apps on the two platforms. He also breaks it down further to look how the top apps compare across the competing mobile operating systems. The results may not be what you expect."

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Hugh Pickens writes "Ken Gaebler discusses a new way of hiring called 'employment simulations,' which are gaining popularity among high-tech firms that are seeking data from prospective employees that you can't get from sit-down interviews. In a typical employment simulation, candidates participate in online 'video games' that leverage simulation software to determine how well candidates perform in actual job situations. 'There are no questions about your former work experience and office habits. There's simply a computer game. If you win, you get the job. If you lose, game over.' As one example, call centers are very amenable to simulations because the work environment (a series of computer programs and databases) is relatively easy to replicate and the tasks that make up job performance are easy to measure (data entry speed and accuracy, customer service, multitasking, etc). Other employment simulation programs have been written for healthcare, insurance, retail sales, financial services, hospitality and travel, manufacturing and automotive, and telecom and utilities. But skeptics say employment simulators and other computer-based hiring models have some drawbacks. 'Like any technology, the effectiveness of employment simulations is limited to the quality of the software and its accessibility to users,' says Gaebler."

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An anonymous reader writes "Google has just made some interesting changes to their developer pages. As of today, all of the documentation, source code, and firmware images pertaining to CDMA Android devices (including the Verizon Galaxy Nexus) have been removed. A statement from Google explains that the proprietary software required to make these devices fully functional got in the way of Android's open source nature, so CDMA devices are no longer supported as developer hardware. What does this mean for the Galaxy Nexus, which is only available as CDMA in the U.S.?"

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Efforts to preserve our environment and our health don't have to be all or nothing, do they?

There are a number of challenges when setting up lighting for green screen in a small studio space. Here's how DIY-IT's David Gewirtz solved them for his Skype Studio project.

An anonymous reader writes "The NY Times recently ran a story on the discovery of a cache of wax cylinder records, recorded in Europe in the 1880s, of Otto von Bismarck, Helmuth von Moltke, and various musicians. 'In June 1889, Edison sent Wangemann to Europe, initially to ensure that the phonograph at the Paris World’s Fair remained in working order. After Paris, Wangemann toured his native Germany, recording musical artists and often visiting the homes of prominent members of society who were fascinated with the talking machine. Until now, the only available recording from Wangemann’s European trip has been a well-known and well-worn cylinder of Brahms playing an excerpt from his first Hungarian Dance. That recording is so damaged "that many listeners can scarcely discern the sound of a piano, which has in turn tarnished the reputations of both Wangemann and the Edison phonograph of the late 1880s," Dr. Feaster said. "These newly unearthed examples vindicate both."'"

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An anonymous reader writes "While America had offered the F-16, F-18 and now the stealth F-35 fighter, India picked for its new multi-role attack jet a low cost, older French plane. Why? For one, it's cheaper, and two, if American/Indian relations go bad, can they get the parts and equipment to keep the planes in the air? It seems prudence beat out the latest in technology."

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Plugh writes "In a victory for transparency and openness in government, and saving tax dollars, New Hampshire has passed HB418. State agencies are now required by law to consider open source software when acquiring software, and to promote the use of open data formats."

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An anonymous reader writes "Saad Allami likely never expected that a simple text message of encouragement would have turned his life upside down. But as seen in a similar case of absurd overreaction by authorities, a simple text message is all it takes to have yourself branded as a terrorist. From the article: 'The Quebec man says he was arrested by provincial police while picking up his seven-year-old son at school. A team of police officers stormed into his home, telling his wife she was married to a terrorist. And his work colleagues were detained for hours at the U.S. border because of their connection to him.'"

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SpuriousLogic sends this excerpt from a BBC article detailing the suspension of a sales ban on certain Apple products in Germany: "Motorola Mobility had forced Apple to remove several iPad and iPhone models from its online store [yesterday] after enforcing a patent infringement court ruling delivered in December. An appeals court lifted the ban after Apple made a new license payment offer. However, Germany-based users may still face the loss of their push email iCloud service after a separate ruling. 'A suspension like this is available only against a bond, but Apple is almost drowning in cash and obviously won't have had a problem with obtaining and posting a bond.' ... A statement from Apple said: 'All iPad and iPhone models will be back on sale through Apple's online store in Germany shortly.'" Reader DJRumpy points out that Motorola is seeking royalties of 2.25% for Apple's wireless devices in exchange for a license to use Motorola's patents.

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Facebook may seem like it has been around for quite some time, but the company is only eight years old today. Happy Birthday Facebook!

Apple's recent statement that an ARM-based MacBook is not on the table leads CNET to speculate on a new iPad with a Transformer-like keyboard. Count me in.

New submitter someWebGeek writes "LibreOffice, the community-driven fork of OpenOffice, appears to have a very healthy and growing group of code contributors. The Document Foundation has published new stats that portray the climbing rates of developer involvement both in terms of numbers of people and numbers of code commits. One of the most encouraging aspects, as noted by Ryan Paul in an article at Ars, is that non-corporate code contributions by independent volunteers constitute the largest slice of the latest commit-pie."

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New submitter cqwww writes "A small magazine in Victoria, BC just uncovered a massive public traffic surveillance system deployed in Canada. Here's a quote from the article: 'Normally, area police manually key in plate numbers to check suspicious cars in the databases of the Canadian Police Information Center and ICBC. With [Automatic License Plate Recognition], for $27,000, a police cruiser is mounted with two cameras and software that can read license plates on both passing and stationary cars. According to the vendors, thousands of plates can be read hourly with 95-98 percent accuracy. ... In August 2011, VicPD Information and Privacy Manager Debra Taylor called me to explain that, even though VicPD had the ALPR system in one of their cruisers, the [Royal Canadian Mounted Police] ran the system, and I should contact them for any information. "We actually don’t have a program," Taylor said. "We don’t have any documents per se." ... A month later, Taylor handed over 600 pages. ... [The claim they kept no documents] was apparently only in reference to digital information. VicPD had kept 500 pages of written, hard-copy logs of every ALPR hit they’d ever seen.'"

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Have you ever received a friend request from a Facebook user whom you've never met or even heard of? Chances are this person doesn't exist and you're looking at a fake Facebook profile.