Technology News: Dispute on Spam Stirs Big Assault on the Internet
A squabble between a group fighting spam and a Dutch company that hosts Web sites said to be sending spam has escalated into one of the largest computer attacks on the Internet, causing widespread congestion and jamming crucial infrastructure around the world, John Markoff and Nicole Perlroth write on Wednesday in The New York Times.
Read full story => Bits on NYT

Programming News: Will Government Monitoring Force a Change in the OSI Model?
Picture this: you go to send an email to your friend Sam. So you open up Gmail, type in the email, and hit send. Sam gets his email and reads it. Nowhere between you and Sam was the email able to be read by a third party. Right now to do this you’d have to buy or download an app, encrypt the message manually, share a public key with Sam, and so forth. But what if the computer took care of all that work for you?
Read full story => Freedom or Safety

Photography News: iPhone as Your Third Camera Option
You have a DSLR around your neck, and another body in your camera bag. You should be able to cover just about anything, right? Yes, indeed. Especially since you have a formidable third option in your pocket. An iPhone. I love standing in the thick of things and pulling out my iPhone to record panoramas. Those images look much different than anything I shoot with my other cameras. I often hold the iPhone overhead and sweep across the scene to capture an entirely new perspective.
Read full story => TheDigitalStory

“Apparently,” he writes, “some bit has switched somewhere—like a Manchurian candidate being triggered—and everyone is willfully ignoring the state of things in Cupertino.”

Read full story => CNN Fortune Tech

Technology News: How the Internet Has Changed the World
From hactivism to the flipped classroom, the Internet has sparked an online revolution with digital tools. Classified documents on Wikileaks helped spark the Arab Spring, and protestors organized through Facebook. Daily tweets about the Egyptian revolution increased 100% after the overthrow of the country, showcasing the power of trending. Not only has the World Wide Web assisted in shaping our political persuasions, but also our personal interests.
Read full story => Mashable

Programming News: CoffeeScript and Brave New World
I have to admit that the first time I heard about CoffeeScript, it sounded like a colossolly bad idea. While I was aware of JavaScript’s quirks as well as another developer, trying to work around them by actually inventing a new language that compiled to “proper” JavaScript sounded like a crazy idea, or at least overkill. I didn’t particularly have a strong opinion, per se, as it didn’t seem to any of the big problems around JavaScript or web-development in general.
Read full story => Duruk Net

Photography News: Win One of Two Photography Courses from New York Institute of Photography
Over the last two years here at dPS we’ve run very popular competitions with the New York Institute of Photography to give away to lucky dPS readers some of their great photographic teaching. Due to popular demand – we’re doing it again this week!
Read full story => Digital Photography School

Technology News: 4 Ways The Internet Of Things Will Radically Change Your Life
For consumers, the much hyped internet of things is hardly visible yet. It’s also hard to imagine how this new layer of infrastructure would look, feel and behave, and how we will interact with it. In other words: how will it be different from the fridge that sends e-mail when you run out of milk (who reads e-mail anyway?), that seems to pop up somewhere every year, much to the indifference of the public?
Read full story => Whiteboard Mag

Programming News: Oracle Will Stop Providing Security Updates for Java 6 Next Month
The last publicly available release of Java 6 is to be released on February 19th 2013. After that date all new security updates, patches, and fixes for both the runtime and SDK of Java SE 6 will only be available through My Oracle Support, and will therefore only be available to users with a commercial license with Oracle.
Read full story => InfoQ

Photography News: 10 Creative Nature Photography Compositions and How They Were Taken
What makes a great photograph? Is there any one aspect of the process which separates the merely good from the truly magnificent? Many candidates immediately spring to mind, such as subject matter, light, mood, and moment. In my opinion, however, one aspect clearly rises above the rest, and is the thread which ties all of these other qualities together. Composition—the artistic arrangement and placement of visual elements within the picture frame—is the most difficult aspect of the art of photography to master, and also the most important.
Read full story => LightStalking

Technology News: The U.N. Fought The Internet – And The Internet Won; WCIT Summit In Dubai Ends
For the last two weeks some of the planet’s most oppressive regimes have faced off against some of the most powerful Internet advocates in an effort to rewrite a multilateral communications treaty that, if successful, could have changed the nature of the Internet and altered the way it is governed.
Read full story => Forbes

Programming News: Rails Environment Variables
Setting Rails environment variables. Using ENV variables in Rails, locally and with Heroku. A guide for developers using the example apps from the RailsApps project. Others may find it helpful as well. Rails applications should be “turnkey”; that is, deployed anywhere without modifying code. But many applications require configuration of settings such as email account credentials or API keys for external services.
Read full story => RailsApps Projects

Photography News: 29 Stunning Staircase Images
There is something about a good staircase that seems to draw photographers to shoot it. Perhaps it’s the repetition and patterns in the steps or it could be the geometric shapes that often appear around them. Whatever it is – staircases present some cool possibilities when you’re out shooting so keep your eye open for them. Here are a few to get you thinking about how to photograph staircases.
Read full story => Digital Photography School

Technology News: Mobile Internet traffic gaining fast on desktop Internet traffic
Global mobile traffic is growing so fast that in some places it has already surpassed desktop traffic. That was one of the key conclusions of a year-end Internet trends report delivered this evening at Stanford University by Kleiner Perkins venture capitalist Mary Meeker. Once known by many as the “Queen of the Net,” Meeker reported that 13 percent of all Internet traffic is now executed from a mobile device, up from just 4 percent just two years ago. In tech-savvy India, mobile Internet traffic has reached 60 percent, surpassing desktop Internet traffic, which has declined to 40 percent.
Read full story => c|net

Programming News: End of Public Updates for Java SE 6
Have you updated to Java SE 7? Along with great features (Fork/Join, NIO, Project Coin), Java SE 7 is being updated and patched regularly. Java SE 7 has been out for over a year and is ready to download. The last publicly available release of Oracle JDK 6 is to be released in February, 2013. This means that after 19 February 2013, all new security updates, patches and fixes for Java SE 6 and Java SE 5 will only be available through My Oracle Support and will thus require a commercial license with Oracle.
Read full story => Oracle

Photography News: How to Take Extraordinary Photos by Thinking Creatively
The creativity in your photographs is what will make your imagery stand out. Most of us, if we commit the time, can technically master the craft of photography. Capturing a compelling image can be much more difficult especially when you are excited, experiencing something for the first time, and are visually overloaded.
Read full story => Digital Photography School

Technology News: The Internet Isn’t Broken; So Why Is The ITU Trying To ‘Fix’ It?
We’ve been talking about the ITU’s upcoming World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) for a while now, and it’s no longer “upcoming.” Earlier today, the week and a half session kicked off in Dubai with plenty of expected controversy. The US, the EU and now Australia have all come out strongly against the ITU’s efforts to undermine the existing internet setup to favor authoritarian countries or state-controlled (or formerly state-controlled) telcos who want money for internet things they had nothing to do with. The BBC article above has a pretty good rundown of some of the scarier proposals being pitched behind closed doors at WCIT.
Read full story => techdirt

Programming News: Agile is Not for Everyone
Someone asked me again about self-assessments for their agile transition. That got me thinking about this problem of transitioning to agile. I don’t believe agile is for everyone in every circumstance. Some people claim agile has “crossed the chasm.” Certainly, many people are aware of agile. Many people understand that a cross-functional team works in increments, delivering features asking for feedback. That’s at the team level.
Read full story => Johanna Rothman

Photography News: Which Lens Should You Buy
Choosing a lens for the DSLR can be quite overwhelming. Should you go in for a kit lens or invest in a specialized high quality lens? Will a prime lens help you take the shots that you want or it would be better to consider a zoom lens? Then there is focal length, aperture and other lens terminology that comes into play. Seriously, choosing a perfect lens can be a tedious job! And there’s no right answer to this question. In fact the best lens depends on what your requirements are. You can win over this complicated puzzle by answering this basic question: What do I love to photograph?
Read full story => APN Photography School

Technology News: U.N. WCIT–12 makes Syrian Internet blackout ‘trivial’ everywhere
If the U.N.’s World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT–12) meeting is successful, run by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), it will make Syria’s recent unprecedented Internet shutdown a legally supported maneuver for every country in the world. Now that Syria’s Internet access has resumed, technical experts at Renesys explain that a government-forced Internet blackout can only happen under certain conditions.
Read full story => ZDNet

Programming News: The Elements of Programming
A powerful programming language is more than just a means for instructing a computer to perform tasks. The language also serves as a framework within which we organize our ideas about processes. Thus, when we describe a language, we should pay particular attention to the means that the language provides for combining simple ideas to form more complex ideas.
Read full story => xuanji

Photography News: The Camera Store
Believe it or not, there used to be in almost every town, small shops that specialized in selling cameras. Once, the camera store was the best place to buy a camera, at least in the old days. Camera shops had it all. That is, they had everything you might need to take your pictures. They sold cameras, film, flash units, photoflash bulbs, lenses, filters, tripods, camera bags, film processing, darkroom supplies, photo books and things like film projectors and studio lights. If you needed a specific filter or a stepping ring, they probably had a drawer full. If they didn’t have one in stock, they would order it for you and call you when it was in. They sold films of all sizes and varieties. The person behind the counter was always there to answer any questions you might have and everyone that visited probably had a similar interest in photography. Good personalized service meant repeat customers.
Read full story => pixiq

Technology News: ‘If It Ain’t Broke Don’t Fix It’: EU Adds Its Voice To The Chorus Opposing More Internet Regulation Ahead Of Key ITU Dubai Meeting
The European Union today became the latest official body to back an open internet, ahead of a important United Nations meeting to update internet and telecoms regulation for the first time in 24 years. The International Telecommunication Union, a UN agency, is meeting in December in Dubai for the World Conference On International Telecommunications to revise the International Telecommunication Regulation treaty. In the lead up, several countries, and even some private companies, have been lobbying for changes that would see nations get more control of how the internet is used in their countries.
Read full story => TechCrunch

Programming News: Why JavaScript is the Future of Programming
JavaScript started out in 1995 as a widely hated language. It was viewed as nothing but a toy. Since then, it has grown its empire and has gained respect from developers. jQuery, AJAX, Node.js, and CoffeeScript have all helped to build the JavaScript empire. On top of this, beginners have been flocking to JavaScript because the language really does make it so easy to get started.
Read full story => JSPRO

Photography News: How To Correct Lens Distortions For True To Life Pictures
Lens correction is a tool in various photo editing software tools that majorly corrects lens induced distortions like vignetting, barrel distortion and chromatic aberration. Lets see what do these terms mean, why do these distortions occur and how we can fix or reduce them. Lens distortion occurs in every lens. There’s no lens which has no distortion.
Read full story => APN Photography School

Technology News: European Parliament Passes Resolution Against ITU Asserting Control Over Internet
Today, the European Parliament passed a resolution that condemns the upcoming attempt from the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) to assert control over the Internet, and instructed its 27 Member States to act accordingly. This follows an attempt from the ITU to assert itself as the governing body and control the Internet. The Pirate Party was one of the parties drafting the resolution.
Read full story => falkvinge

Programming News: A Few New Things Coming To JavaScript
I believe the day-to-day practice of writing JavaScript is going to change dramatically for the better when ECMAScript.next arrives. The coming year is going to be an exciting time for developers as features proposed or finalised for the next versions of the language start to become more widely available.
Read full story => Addy Osmani

Photography News: Getting the Most Out of Common Digital Photograph File Formats
The photography has a treasure trove of digital resources at their disposal to ensure great electronic storage and great photographs. Digital cameras now have pixel depths to rival expensive manual cameras, and many of these digital cameras are available to the average consumer. Storing those photographs has also been made easy because of a convergence of camera technology with mobile devices, personal computers, and cell phones. The average consumer may not have a ready understanding of the ways in which digital photographs are stored and accessed on these devices, therefore it is important to look at file formats for digital images and see what that means for both quality of image and their use.
Read full story => photOpoly

Technology News: Scientists Find Cheaper Way to Ensure Internet Security
Scientists at Toshiba and Cambridge University have perfected a technique that offers a less expensive way to ensure the security of the high-speed fiber optic cables that are the backbone of the modern Internet.
Read full story => NYT

Programming News: Refining Ruby
In Ruby, all classes are mutable. Indeed, when you define a new class, you’re really just creating an empty class and filling it with methods. The ability to mutate classes at runtime has been used (or abused) by many libraries and frameworks to decorate Ruby’s core classes with additional (or replacement) behavior. For example, you might add a “camelize” method to String that knows how to convert under_score_names to camelCaseNames. This is lovingly called “monkey-patching” by the Ruby community.
Read full story => Headius

Photography News: HDR Photography: set up, shoot and process your first high dynamic range image
Capturing a scene with a full range of tones is one of the biggest challenges faced by everyone from amateur to professional photographers. Our tutorial on HDR photography shows you subtle ways around this common photography problem by learning how to set up, shoot and process a high dynamic range image. Even if it isn’t your first time practicing HDR photography, we’re confident you’ll learn something new.
Read full story => Digital Camera World