First of all, yes, I did read the whole article.

I could be totally wrong on this (but I don't think so...), but there doesn't seem to be anything new here. This is just a differential (like those between the right and left wheels of a car) where the input drive is the same as the input drive on a differential, the output drive is one of the wheels, and the electric motor that determines the gear ratio is in place of the other wheel.

They will find that the electric motor is really being run as a generator in lower gears, and so is actually just taking away energy, not increasing the torque.

I invented something like this when I was just a kid playing with Lego blocks. One of the pieces was a differential and I tried to create something like this, but then determined that it would only lose energy, not actually create a different gear ratio.

The vital thing that they are missing is that the way it is built, it is always trying to go into a lower gear. So even if you put a fly wheel in place of the electric motor, it would just spin faster and faster until the transmission was in neutral (as soon as you put any load on the output drive).

No holy grail here (unfortunately).

To me, it seems that the article does not actually detect unknown malware -- it only detects malware that is actively trying not to be detected. If the malware is currently unknown and is not trying to change how memory is accessed -- that is, it allows itself to be swapped out and overwritten like all the other running programs -- then it will not be detected by this method.

The idea seems to be that rootkits will always reside in memory but mask themselves by overriding OS calls. However, this may not always be the case.

Also, I would love to see how they plan to swap out the operating system along with all programs . . . as far as I know, this is not possible/practical on anything that exists. Obviously you have to do it in order to make the computer hibernate, but in that case the kernel stays in memory until the very end when it powers off the computer, and is reloaded again from disk when the computer resumes.

I have a programming contest coming up this Thursday at NJIT. We have two choices: Java, or C++. There is a one minute runtime limit for the solution (which is why we came in sixth place last year instead of first -- we focused too much on finishing all the problems than coming up with efficient solutions for two of them).

Anyway, for a runtime limit like that, there really is no difference between Java and C++. They will both do well or poorly depending on the algorithm. It's much better to be able to finish coding everything with time to spare than to spend too much time debugging.

You are forgetting the microsaccades in your eyes as you stare at the screen. They are applying a force over a distance. (Of course, this does not apply if you are using a screen reader.)

Additionally, your heart is pumping blood through your body by applying a force over a distance.

That's why you always debias random data. You take two bits at a time. If they are both the same, you throw them both out. If it is 1 0, you return 1. If it is 0 1, you return 0. Or vice versa.

Google Chrome (the browser) actually does run on Linux. It even has flash and java support now.

I added the chromium-daily repository, and everything is stable and works fine.

https://launchpad.net/~chromium-daily/+archive/ppa

By the way, I still use firefox for the most part. Adblock plus is nice.