25838716
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phaedrus5001 writes:
From the article:"The Kinecthesia is a Kinect wired to a set of motors that allows the blind to navigate a room or open space, relying on feedback through the motors to assess objects in their path. The project, created by University of Pennsylvania students Eric Berdinis and Jeff Kiske, is worn like a belt and can sense objects in 3D space."
Here's the link to the project's homepage if you want more information on the specs and how it works.
25788782
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phaedrus5001 writes:
Tech Crunch is reporting that one of the co-founders of Diaspora, Ilya Zhitomirskiy has passed away. He was only 21. At the moment, the cause of his death is unknown.
25469160
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phaedrus5001 writes:
From the article: "Researchers have demonstrated a vulnerability in the computer systems used to control facilities at federal prisons that could allow an outsider to remotely take them over, doing everything from opening and overloading cell door mechanisms to shutting down internal communications systems.
The researchers began their work after [John] Strauchs was called in by a warden to investigate an incident in which all the cell doors on one prison's death row spontaneously opened."
25361226
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theodp writes:
Federal prosecutors will not charge a Texas judge seen lashing his teenage daughter with a belt on a YouTube video taken seven years ago and posted online last week, closing the door on the possibility of criminal charges in the case. The viral video, uploaded by now 23-year-old Hillary Adams, shows her father, Aransas County Court-at-Law Judge William Adams, whipping her with a belt for downloading music when she was 16 (full video, requires login). 'F*****g computers,' the judge tells his now ex-wife on the video. 'I told you I didn't want one in the god damn house. See all the problems they cause?' Hey, when a problem comes along, you must Whip It, right? Judge Adams issued a statement asserting that his daughter released the tape to retaliate against him for withdrawing his financial support. 'If the public must know, just prior to the YouTube upload, a concerned father shared with his 23-year-old daughter that he was unwilling to continue to work hard and be her primary source of financial support, if she was going to simply 'drop out' [from college] and strive to achieve no more in life than to work part time at a video-game store,' said the statement released by Adams' attorney.
25331040
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Lashat writes:
According to Ars Technica "A new survey seems to show that VMware's iron grip on the enterprise virtualization market is loosening, with 38 percent of businesses planning to switch vendors within the next year due to licensing models and the robustness of competing hypervisors."
What do /.ers say about moving away from what is IMHO the most stable and feature rich vm architecture available? Full disclosure:I am not clear on how the licensing has changed since that is not my department.
25057796
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geekgirl09 writes:
Today Representative Lamar upped the ante, introducing legislation, called the Stop Online Piracy Act, or "SOPA," that would not only sabotage the domain name system but would also threaten to effectively eliminate the DMCA safe harbors that have spurred much economic growth and online creativity.
As with its Senate-side evil sister, PROTECT-IP, SOPA would require service providers to “disappear” certain websites, endangering Internet security and sending a troubling message to the world.
But it gets worse. Under this bill, service providers (including hosting services) would be under new pressure to monitor and police their users’ activities.
25056474
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Trailrunner7 writes:
The commander of the U.S. Cyber Command said that the federal government is working on a system now that would allow it to work with ISPs and others to help stop ongoing attacks against government and private networks by pushing intelligence and attack signatures to them.
To help defend against attacks such as the onea that hit RSA and DigiNotar, as well as other, more mundane yet still damaging, ones, Gen. Keith Alexander, director of the NSA and commander of the U.S. Cyber Command said that the government is testing out a system now that has the capability to push real-time attack signatures and other information to ISPs and other organizations in key positions n order to head off ongoing operations.
"The adversary has all the advantage. They can scan and wait and if you make a mistake, they get in," Alexander said. "That's the dynamic we have to change. The intent would be to push signatures to the ISPs and if anything bad happens, we can update it dynamically with what we see. That's a huge step forward and we're having success with that. We need to communicate dynamically with our systems and our allies."
24957730
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An anonymous reader writes:
French researchers from ESIEA, a French engineering school, have found and exploited some serious vulnerabilities in the TOR network. They performed an inventory of the network, finding 6,000 machines, many of whose IPs are accessible publicly and directly with the system’s source code. They demonstrated that it is possible to take control of the network and read all the messages that circulate.
But there are also hidden nodes, the Tor Bridges, which are provided by the system that in some cases. Researchers have developed a script that, once again, to identify them. They found 181. "We now have a complete picture of the topography of Tor," said Eric Filiol.
Read More at "The Hacker News" — http://thehackernews.com/2011/10/tor-anonymizing-network-compromised-by.html
24957148
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stevegee58 writes:
The financial blockade by financial firms like Bank of America, Visa, MasterCard, Western Union, and PayPal has finally caught up with Wikileaks.
Due to lack of funding Wikileaks has announced on its web site that they're temporarily ceasing publication.
24884028
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ColdWetDog writes:
Adobe has admitted an image used in its 'image deblur' presentation was artificially blurred for the purposes of the demonstration. The company said the blur on the image was 'more complicated than anything we can simulate using Photoshop's blur capabilities.' It described the move as 'common practice in research' and defended the use of the image because 'we wanted it to be entertaining and relevant to the audience.' The other images shown were the result of camera shake, it said.
Adobe has photoshopped Photoshop.