Cody Taylor

nodialtone writes with a Reuters report that Rod Beckstrom, director of the National Cybersecurity Center (NCSC), has tendered his resignation, citing clashes between the NCSC and the NSA with regard to who handles the nation’s online security efforts. In his resignation letter (PDF), he made the point that “The intelligence culture is very different than a network operations or security culture,” and said he wasn’t willing to “subjugate the NCSC underneath the NSA.” He also complained of budget roadblocks which kept the NCSC from receiving more than five weeks of funding in the past year. Wired has a related story from late February which discusses comments from Admiral Dennis Blair, director of National Intelligence, who thinks cyber security should be the NSA’s job to begin with.

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The New York Times reports that Cablevision Systems is testing a new project in Brooklyn, the Bronx, and some areas of New Jersey to bring targeted advertising to television audiences. “The technology requires no hardware or installation in a subscriber’s home, so viewers may not realize they are seeing ads different from a neighbor’s. But during the same show, a 50-something male may see an ad for, say, high-end speakers from Best Buy, while his neighbors with children may see one for a Best Buy video game.” The test deployment includes 500,000 households, and separates viewers by demographic data from Experian. “Experian has data on individuals that it collects through public records, registries and other sources. It matches the name and address of the subscriber to what it knows about them, and assigns demographic characteristics to households. (The match is a blind one: advertisers do not know what name and address they are advertising to, Cablevision executives said.)”

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An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from CNet: “Federal regulators said Thursday they are going into ‘search and rescue’ mode to help the millions of consumers unprepared for the phased transition to digital television, which culminates with the June 12 transition deadline. The millions of consumers waiting for coupons for digital converter box coupons will finally receive them within the next two and a half weeks, thanks to emergency funding for the coupon program provided in the stimulus package, said Bernadette McGuire-Rivera, an administrator for the National Telecommunications and Information Administration. The NTIA is also ratcheting up its outreach to consumers most likely to be unprepared for the transition… FCC commissioners said their agency is also intensifying its outreach, but they acknowledged that while one third of television stations have already dropped their analog signals, the hardest part is yet to come.” We previously discussed the DTV coupon program when it ran out of money in January. The 0 million from the stimulus packages adds to the .3 billion that’s already been spent.

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3D televisions could be on sale next year – and you may not need the silly glasses.

linuxkrn writes “The State of Colorado’s Office of Technology (OIT) has set up a work skills website. The problem is that the site says ‘DO NOT use FIREFOX or other Browsers besides IE. It has been decided that Mozilla based, non-IE browsers pose a security risk.’ (Original emphasis from site.) If the leading IT agency for the State is making these uneducated claims, should the people worry about their other decisions?”

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MojoKid writes “Similar to Roku and Vudu, ZillionTV relies on a set-top box that attaches to your TV. The ZillionTV Device connects to your home router via a wired Ethernet or Wi-Fi connection. It requires a broadband connection that is at least 2.7Mbps or faster. ZillionTV claims that it will have 15,000 titles available by the end of this year from content providers, including ‘Disney, 20th Century Fox Television, NBC Universal, Sony Pictures and Warner Bros. Digital Distribution.’ While Roku and Vudu are essentially available to anyone who has a broadband Internet connection and who is willing to purchase a device, ZillionTV will not be quite as easy to get. Instead of making the device and service directly available to consumers, ZillionTV will only be available (at least initially) through Internet service providers.”

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An anonymous reader writes “The folks behind the DNA-Rainbow project (discussed on Slashdot before) apparently have some time to play around with genome data. After creating amazing pictures from the human DNA code they are now transforming all chromosomes to audio and streaming them to the Internet. Every base is read and broadcasted instead converting it to a color. Seemingly this artistic project will last a while. After some math they found out that it will take them more than 23.5 years to air the whole human genome sequence.”

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eldavojohn writes “There’s no lack of news surrounding the settlement of Google’s controversial move to digitize books — but how do you even start this endeavor? A New York Times story reveals the obstacles they face just to get the word out that they want to settle with publishers and authors everywhere. They turned to a world-wide ad campaign to start the 5 million settlement process and they’re spending million to million in paper print ads and telephone hot-lines (handling 80+ languages) to reach as many people as possible. From the article: ‘We looked at how many books were published in various areas and we knew from the plaintiffs and Google that 30 percent were published in the U.S., 30 percent in industrialized countries. The rest of the world is the rest.’ That’s quite the herculean task! Hopefully Google’s efforts in digitizing books will breathe new life and revenue into authors and publishers the world over.”

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narramissic writes “Patent reform legislation was introduced yesterday, which, if it passes, would be the first major overhaul of U.S. patent law in more than 50 years. (It should be noted that the new legislation is very similar to the Patent Reform Act of 2007, which died on the Senate floor last year.) The legislation would bring U.S. patent law in line with global laws, and introduce ‘reasonable royalty’ provisions, which change the way damages are calculated and would reduce the likelihood of massive payouts for some patent holders. Representatives from Google, HP and Intel were quick to say that the changes would cut down on frivolous patent lawsuits. But the Innovation Alliance, a group representing patent-holders that oppose the legislation said that it would ‘devalue all patents, invite infringement — including from companies in China, India and other countries — and generate more litigation that will further strain the courts.'”

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darthcamaro and several other readers have noted that the Linux Foundation has bought Linux.com from Sourceforge Inc. (Slashdot’s corporate parent). The Linux Foundation (employer of Linus Torvalds) will take over the editorial and community stewardship for the site; Sourceforge will continue to supply advertising on it. “[Linux Foundation Executive Director Jim] Zemlin says the Linux Foundation wants to build a collaborative forum where Linux users can share ideas and get information on the Linux operating system. A beta of the site will be released in the next few months. … Linux.com is being redesigned as a central source for Linux software, documentation and answers regardless of platforms, including server, desktop/netbook, mobile and embedded areas.” What do you think should be on Linux.com?

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