Comment Hey Steve!! (Score 1) 320
Start living the high life! You'll do fine!
Old Stars Can Form New Planets 19
Smivs writes "Evidence is emerging that some old stars may develop a second set of planets long after this would normally be expected. A BBC article explains how astronomers believe the stars once had orbiting companions, but that these were engulfed when the stars expanded. This caused matter to be ejected from the stars, forming a disc of dust and gas from which planets could form anew. The two stars described in the latest study, BP Piscium and Tycho 4144 329 2, possess many signatures characteristic of stellar youngsters. However strong evidence exists that these stars are, in fact, very old."
Attacking Multicore CPUs 167
Ant writes "The Register reports that the world of current multi-core central processing units (CPUs) just entered is facing a serious threat.
A security researcher at Cambridge disclosed a new class of vulnerabilities that takes advantage of concurrency to bypass security protections such as anti-virus software
The attack is based on the assumption that the software that interacts with the kernel can be used without interference. The researcher, Robert Watson, showed that a carefully written exploit can attack in the window when this happens, and literally change the "words" that they are exchanging.
Even if some of these dark aspects of concurrency were already known, Watson proved that real attacks can be developed, and showed that developers have to fix their code. Fast..."
