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 IT: Stronger Encryption for Wi-Fi |
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from the huff-and-puff-and-blow-the-house-down dept.
sp00 writes "The first products certified to support Wi-Fi Protected Access 2, the latest wireless security technology, were announced by the Wi-Fi Alliance on Wednesday. The Wi-Fi Alliance says WPA2 is a big improvement on earlier wireless security standards, such as Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP), which hackers have found easy to circumvent. It includes Advanced Encryption Standard, which supports 128-bit, 192-bit and 256-bit keys."
( Read More... | 39 of 58 comments | it.slashdot.org )
| Science: SETI Finds Interesting Signal |
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from the ding-dong-ditch dept.
Several readers sent in notes about an interesting signal discovered by SETI. No real evidence of Someone Out There, but not fully explainable either. Another reader submits a blurb suggesting that aliens should send spacemail, not signals: "Rutgers electrical engineering professor, Christopher Rose, has an article on Nature magazine's cover today describing the most efficient way for our civilization to be discovered by aliens. On this question of better to 'write or radiate', his conclusions: better not to send radio transmission, when physical media like DNA on an asteroid can declare a terrestrial presence. Similar to what motivated Voyager scientists to attach a plaque for the outbound trip. Rose has some great information payload sizes as examples (like the entire information equivalent for our global genome fitting on a 100 pound laptop!)."
( Read More... | 239 of 302 comments | science.slashdot.org )
| BBC Launches Downloaded Music Charts |
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from the casey-casum dept.
PReDiToR writes "The BBC today aired its first chart rundown of downloaded music. 'The Official UK Download Chart is based on the most popular, legally downloaded tracks in the UK. It's compiled from the sale of permanently owned single track downloads and doesn't include streamed downloads, subscriptions or free downloads.' The Chart played on Radio 1, the UK's most listened to station, and will be a regular feature."
( Read More... | 76 of 96 comments )
| Science: Disney Goes Boom! |
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from the time-on-target dept.
BoomZilla writes "Reading Disney's alliteratively titled Practically Perfect Pyrotechnics introduces the latest in firework launch technology. Gone are the 'light blue touch paper and retire a safe distance' days. Shells are now launched using compressed air. No burning black powder means no smoke drifting over the residential neighborhoods, plus a safer show. Best of all the new system is more precise and can launch shells higher than black powder, enabling spectacular new effects. An additional article: The future of theme park fireworks covers some of the pros and cons of compressed air launch systems." We mentioned this earlier.
( Read More... | 102 of 138 comments | science.slashdot.org )
| Mozilla.org Relaunched |
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from the no-popups dept.
mpeach writes "Mozilla Organization has launched its new Web site and it's looking a fair bit sleeker than it used to. No new product releases to go with the new look unfortunately, but, according to the Firefox 1.0 Roadmap, release candidates of the latest browser are getting closer by the day."
( Read More... | 247 of 313 comments )
| Science: The End of Encryption? |
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from the doom-and-gloom dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The encryption algorithms that make virtually all electronic commerce possible work only because certain mathematical problems are very, very hard to solve. But some mathematicians are trying to prove that there's really no difference between 'hard' and 'not hard' problems--known in the math biz as P and NP. In an article on TechnologyReview.com, Simson Garfinkel spells out the real-world consequences of this mathematical conundrum."
( Read More... | 333 of 453 comments | science.slashdot.org )
| Your Rights Online: MST3K Rightsholders Sue Over Theater Commentary |
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from the no-that-is-not-your-style-because-it-is-ours dept.
An anonymous reader writes "How can people who parody people sue people who parody them? Mr. Sinus is being sued by Best Brains Inc. the owners of the rights to Mystery Science Theatre 3000 because they are using a name/format that is too similar to their own. Here is the story." Evil thought: Apple should include a "three silhouettes yakking on merged soundtrack" mode in iMovie.
( Read More... | 227 of 285 comments | yro.slashdot.org )
| Apache: Hardening Apache |
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from the crunchy dept.
Gianluca writes "If security is not a concern, installing the Apache web server is a simple task even for an inexperienced system administrator. The problem is that security should always be a concern, and in case of Apache the information about making it secure can be sparse and fragmented. This is probably the reason why many web administrators are pretty clueless when it comes to Apache security. Needless to say, this creates a worrisome situation (to say the least): many web servers are vulnerable and exposed to thousands of potential attackers." Read on for Gianluca's review of Hardening Apache, a book intended to consolidate and clarify that information.
( Read More... | 4953 bytes in body | 136 of 199 comments | apache.slashdot.org )
| Your Rights Online: Googling Behind China's Great Firewall |
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from the wot's-all-this-then dept.
xcham writes "The OpenNet Initiative, a joint project of the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, the Berkman Center at Harvard Law School, and the Advanced Network Research Group at Cambridge, have released a bulletin regarding the type of filtering applied to Google by the Chinese government. Most notably, certain keywords are filtered, as well as Google's 'cache' function. More information on how the keyword filtering is implemented is available in a previous bulletin."
( Read More... | 218 of 292 comments | yro.slashdot.org )
| Developers: Implications Of The Recent Hash Function Attacks |
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from the some-but-not-all dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Cryptography Research has issued a Q&A that explains the security implications of the hash function collision attacks recently announced at CRYPTO 2004. Apparently the consequences can be catastrophic for certain kinds of code signing and digital signatures, but MD5 sums for checking binaries are (mostly) OK. While the speculation that SHA-1 is about to fail seems to be overblown, updating the many legacy systems and protocols that rely on MD5 is going to be a massive undertaking."
( Read More... | 169 of 216 comments | developers.slashdot.org )
| Games: Both Tea And No Tea - Updated Hitchhiker's Game |
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from the cream-and-sugar-please dept.
Ford Prefect writes "To coincide with the new radio series of Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the BBC will be reviving the old Infocom Hitchhiker's text adventure game, to appear on Radio 4's website. It's not just a straight port, either - apparently 'the new version of the game will be illustrated by Rod Lord, who won a BAFTA for his graphics for the original Hitchhiker TV series.' Hoopy!"
( Read More... | 215 of 264 comments | games.slashdot.org )
| Your Rights Online: SCO Caps Legal Expenses At $31 Million |
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from the nice-prime-number-of-millions dept.
uniqueCondition points to a story on News.com, writing "With SCO's legal costs reaching $7.3 million in their most recent quarter, nearly half of the $15 million it has spent in the last five quarters, SCO can't afford this kind of litigation. They have therefore limited their payment to $31 million for the entire case and is giving their legal team a larger slice of any settlement SCO achieves. Under the current agreement, the firm's contingency payment is 20 percent of a settlement. Under the new agreement, that increases to a range of 20 to 33 percent." uniqueCondition links also to coverage at Techrepublic.com, InformationWeek and The Inquirer.
( Read More... | 235 of 313 comments | yro.slashdot.org )
| Your Rights Online: Microsoft Codec Required For Blu-Ray Players |
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from the on-every-corner dept.
dmayle writes "According to ExtremeTech, the Blu-Ray Disc Association (which consists of many big names, like Sony, Philips, and Pioneer) has decided to mandate Microsoft's VC-1 video codec. With HD-DVD incorporating Microsoft's patented video codecs as well, what will happen to the state of media players on Open Source? (Here's an additional source for Blu-Ray info)."
( Read More... | 350 of 435 comments | yro.slashdot.org )
| Philadelphia Considers Free Citywide Wireless Access |
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from the that's-what-I-call-brotherly dept.
The Associated Press is running an story about Philadelphia's city goverment seriously considering creating the world's largest hotspot. "For about $10 million, city officials believe they can turn all 135 square miles of Philadelphia into the world's largest wireless Internet hot spot....the city would likely offer the service either for free, or at costs far lower than the $35 to $60 a month charged by commercial providers"
( Read More... | 349 of 452 comments )
| AbiWord vs. MS Word, For Now |
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from the abiword-is-an-unsung-hero dept.
Gsurface writes "If you have decided that it is time to kill MS Word, then it is time to look for an alternative. Flexbeta.net compares AbiWord, part of a larger project known as AbiSource, with MS Word and asks: is AbiWord a worthy MS Word replacement? Not to ruin the ending but according to the article the only draw back to AbiWord is that it currently does not feature a grammar checker, though a plug-in is in the works." (Also on this front, AbiWord's native Mac OS X version is labeled experimental, but seems to work very nicely.)
( Read More... | 368 of 472 comments )
| Developers: Is Open Source An Advantage For Game Developers? |
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from the if-they-want-to-be-in-debian-it-is dept.
chas7926 writes "OSNews.com is running an article that claims that the open source development model is not a very effective way to develop high quality games. Even the exceptions are not much of a threat to major label products. Does open source development only make sense for products like web servers and operating systems?"
( Read More... | 363 of 450 comments | developers.slashdot.org )
| Searching For Trouble With Google |
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from the dirty-deeds-done-dirt-cheap dept.
achilles writes "From a recent eWeek article: 'Whether they realize it or not, many people leave sensitive information out in plain view on Web sites. But sooner or later, a Google search will dig it up.' The article goes on to list some examples such as 'a search for credit card numbers. Try this one, for "Visa 4366000000000000..4366999999999999' and other 'risky data' from careless users, such as QUICKEN files etc."
( Read More... | 395 of 487 comments )
| Your Rights Online: Busted For Using Library Wi-Fi Outside The Library |
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from the salt-lake-city-burger-king dept.
sevej writes "Keith Shaw, in his weekly column "Wireless Computing Devices" (Network World Fusion), reported on a recent entry in AKMA's Random Thoughts where AKMA was using a public WiFi network outside of a library. A policeman approached him and asked that he only access the Internet from within the Library and hinted that Federal Laws against "signal theft" were applicable. Oh, and btw, we're not talking about a person that looked like your stereotypical 'hacker'; AKMA is an ordained priest."
( Read More... | 549 of 709 comments | yro.slashdot.org )
| Science: World's First Practical Plastic Magnet |
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from the demagnetize-your-own-credit-card dept.
Stopmotioncleaverman writes "New Scientist is reporting that scientists at the University of Durham in the UK have created the world's first plastic magnet to work at room temperature from two compounds, emeraldine base polyaniline (PANi) and tetracyanoquinodimethane (TCNQ). In 2001, scientists in Nebraska created a plastic magnet, but it only worked at 10 Kelvin. Most notably from the article - "One of the most likely applications is in the magnetic coating of computer hard discs, which could lead to a new generation of high-capacity discs". This story is also being reported in lots of other places."
( Read More... | 125 of 174 comments | science.slashdot.org )
| Science: The Last Atlas 2 Rocket Launch |
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from the it's-all-x-prize-from-here-on-out dept.
Fiz Ocelot writes "Reuters reports that the last Atlas 2 rocket was launched on Tuesday. The rocket was the last to launch the old-fashioned way. For this launch, the 120-member team was inside a blockhouse 1,400 feet from the launch pad. It was also the end of an era dating back to the 1950s, when most rockets, including early manned flights, were launched from concrete blockhouses adjacent to the pads."
( Read More... | 112 of 150 comments | science.slashdot.org )
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