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Security

Submission + - Researchers: Security certificate warnings useless (networkworld.com)

Submitted by BobB-nw
BobB-nw writes: Every Web surfer has seen them. Those "invalid certificate" warnings you sometimes get when you're trying to visit a secure Web site. They say things like "There is a problem with this Web site's security certificate." If you're like most people, you may feel vaguely uneasy, and — according to a new paper from researchers at Carnegie Mellon University — there's a good chance you'll ignore the warning and click through anyway. In a laboratory experiment, researchers found that between 55 percent and 100 percent of participants ignored certificate security warnings, depending on which browser they were using (different browsers use different language to warn their users).
Intel

Submission + - Firmware Bug in New Intel SSDs - Shipments Delayed

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: It has come to light that there is a defect in recently-released Intel SSDs which causes them to stop functioning if — and only if — a password is set on the drive in the system BIOS... and then changed or disabled later. Despite early concerns about the viability of these drives, Intel has been able to work out a firmware fix for the problem. That won't be available immediately, but should be showing up in about two weeks. Intel is not going to be shipping more of these until they have the firmware fix, so there will likely be a shortage of the drives for the next couple weeks — depending on how vendors handle their existing stock and orders.
Earth

Submission + - New Zealand tree caught in time warp (sciencemag.org) 1

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: A eukalyptus-like tree from New Zealand is still waging a battle that should have ended over 500 years ago. The tree continues to sport evolutionary adaptations, such as barbed leaves, to protect it from a large, flightless bird known as a moa. There's just one problem: the moa went extinct around 1500 AD.
Input Devices

Can New Game Control Schemes Hope To Match the PC Keyboard? 202

Posted by Soulskill from the precision-and-complexity dept.
An opinion piece on Gamasutra discusses how, in spite of the fancy new motion control systems that have come to console gaming, the PC's keyboard and mouse setup is still unreplaceable for many titles and genres. Quoting: "With over 100 keys to choose from (back of the box quotation right there), the possibilities are near endless, if you start to think of shift and control functions altering the purpose of keys. It means that, when the developers start to make their game, they don't have to worry about the limitations of the interface, knowing that, if all else fails, they can always assign the compass to K, even if that's a bit of a stretch to all but the pianists. The keyboard is the friend of ambition, and ArmA 2 is the testament to that, in all its surrealist, broken glory. ... It's the same reason RTS games have found a home on the PC for so long, able to use the skills people accumulate moving around windows and clicking on icons to command troops and manipulate their battle lines. Developers taking advantage of what we already know to teach us something we don't is what gaming is all about."
Mars

Six Men Endure 105-Day Mars Flight Simulator 274

Posted by Soulskill from the riding-the-boredom-machine dept.
drunken_boxer777 writes with this excerpt from an AP report: "Six men emerged from a metal hatch after 105 days of isolation in a mock spacecraft, still smiling after testing the stresses that space travelers may face on the journey to Mars. They had no television or Internet and their only link to the outside world was communications with the experiment's controllers — who also monitored them via TV cameras — and an internal e-mail system. Communications with the outside world had 20-minute delays to imitate a real space flight."
Government

Submission + - India to issue over a billion biometric id cards (timesonline.co.uk)

Submitted by
angrytuna
angrytuna writes: "The Unique Identification Authority is a new state department in India charged with assigning every living Indian an exclusive number and biometric ID card. The program is designed to alleviate problems with the 20 current types of proof of identity currently available. These problems range from difficulties for the very poor in obtaining state handouts, corruption, illegal immigration, and terrorism issues.

Issuing the cards may be difficult, however, as less than 7% of the population is registered for income tax, and voter lists are thought to be inaccurate, partly due to corruption. The government has said the first cards will be issued in 18 months."
Security

Submission + - Catching Spammers in the Act (technologyreview.com) 1

Submitted by wjousts
wjousts writes: Technology Review has a piece on new research aimed at determining how spammers get your e-mail address.

The researchers exposed 22,230 unique e-mail addresses over five months. E-mail addresses in comments posted to a website had a high probability of getting spammed, while of the 70 e-mail addresses submitted during registration at various websites, only 4 got spammed.
Transportation

Submission + - Ingenious Energy-Generating Bike Rental System (inhabitat.com)

Submitted by
Mike
Mike writes: "Designer Chiyu Chen has conceived of an ingenious transit system that encourages the use of sustainable transportation by crediting people for riding and renting energy generating bicycles. The bikes in Chen's Hybrid2 system are outfitted with his "Hybrake" regenerative braking system, which generates and stores kinetic energy from braking and cycling. Once a bike has been charged up by riding it, simply return it to a station and the bike will feed energy into the city's grid, while a credit for public transportation is given to the rider."
Enlightenment

Submission + - Document Format War Mirrors French Revolution (bnet.com)

Submitted by
Michael_Curator
Michael_Curator writes: "The ongoing battle over who lost the document format wars is the same one at the root of every major philosophical argument underlying revolution: it's the fight between radicals who want to wipe the slate clean and start over (Robespierre, the Bolsheviks) and pragmatists who favor reform and compromise (Danton, the Mensheviks). The radicals are willing to risk everything, including their lives, while the pragmatists are only willing to risk what matters most. In the case of both France and Russia, the radicals triumphed in the short term, while the pragmatists were proven right in the long run — but the radicals could claim that their irredentism made the pragmatists seem more palpable by comparison."

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