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Networking

Submission + - New two-way radio tech will double Wi-fi speeds (myce.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Scientists at Stanford University have broken through the technological barrier in communications that had, until now, limited the potential speed of Wi-fi networks. They have devised a two-way radio communication technique that “mimics the way humans are able to screen out the sound of our own voices during a conversation.” This innovation immediately doubles the potential speed of Wi-fi.

Patents are currently in the works, and commercialization will soon follow.
Linux

Submission + - Linux Kernel 2.6.37 released

Submitted by mvar
mvar writes: Version 2.6.37 is out: It's early January, and bleary-eyed people everywhere are getting over their hangovers and wondering where they should send their merge requests to. And now they can. Because 2.6.37 is out, and the merge window for the next release is thus open. Of course, as usual, I'll probably let 2.6.37 cool for a few days to try to encourage people to look at the release rather than go all crazy with newly merged features in the next tree.
Science

Submission + - Solar-Power Produced Liquid Fuel to Replace Oil?

Submitted by FordPrefect276709
FordPrefect276709 writes: ETH Life announced [ethz.ch] (Google translated — original in german) today researchers from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) and Paul Scherrer Institut (PSI) successfully tested a new reactor to convert solar energy to liquid fuel. According to the original article [sciencemag.org] in science, a solar cavity-receiver reactor was used to combine the oxygen uptake and release capacity of cerium oxide and facile catalysis at elevated temperatures to thermochemically dissociate CO2 and H2O, yielding CO and H2, respectively. Stable and rapid generation of fuel was demonstrated over 500 cycles. The combination of CO and H2 is commonly referred to as syngas and is a precursor of gasoline, kerosene and other liquid fuels.
The prototype reactor was tested using a radiation intensity that corresponds to the force of 1,500 suns. While the conversion efficiency of solar power to fuel "only" amounted to a mere 0.8 percent, this is two orders of magnitude better than before and an efficiency of 19 percent could theoretically be expected. Research will take another ten years until we see solar power plants to produce versatile fuels — but this would be well in time to replace oil. Are deserts the next oil fields...?
Linux

Submission + - Boxee Box having difficulty with GPL?

Submitted by synthesizerpatel
synthesizerpatel writes: For those of you unfamiliar with the XBMC fork Boxee, it's recently been released as an appliance in the form of D-Link's Boxee Box (retail: ~$200 USD). The Boxee Box has an Intel CE4100 Atom processor and runs the Boxee fork on top of a Linux based operating system. However it seems that they're having some difficulty with the GPL.

While Boxee does commit their code back to XBMC, XBMC's SCM doesn't seem to include their CE4100 code (or doesn't yet? I'll give them the benefit of the doubt). Boxee's SVN (svn.boxee.tv) server is password protected so you can't download from their SCM — You can download tarball that is preported to be the source code for the CE4100 port from their webpage. Their documentation seems to cover their developer environments and doesn't take into account a fresh install. There's a fair amount that is right but it's mixed in with incorrect or out-of-context information and requires a bit of time to pick through.

Boxee also provides a link to the Intel CE4100 Environment 13.7.10304.125504, which comes with a broken installer stating that an unnamed (NULL) dependency is not met. You can unpack the SDK by hand with a little bit of effort and if you understand how cross-compiling works you'll eventually figure out how to start a build.

You then run into another problem.

Both the SDK and the Boxee source code are missing the drivers for the Intel CE4100 platform. Neither source or binary are provided even though the Boxee binary links against them (in their GPL code) and ships them on their Linux based platform. Its very difficult to find documentation on the CE4100. Intel's public website seems bereft of any information on it beyond press releases. You can sign up for an embedded products account but without a corporate backed account (NDA anyone?) you won't get access to the good stuff design guide, platform SDK, etc.

A word of warning in regards to people interested in hacking the Boxee — its made some efforts to be a closed product. They sign their filesystems which get checked before mounting, any root-shell acess methods that are published seem to get quickly fixed. After the latest root access methods were documented the holes were patched fairly quickly. . That being said, it's still fairly simple to get access to the root filesystem and to execute arbitrary code.

Lets all root for Boxee and D-Link to make things right. I'm sure it's simply an oversight but given that their product is based on the GPL software — I think it's reasonable to ask for the source code we're entitled to as customers.
Apple

Submission + - Apple To Challenge Microsoft With Cloud OS (conceivablytech.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Apple has received a patent that hints to the intent of providing network computers that will boot through a “net-booted environment.” It may seem that Apple is moving slowly into the cloud computing age and that it has many assets that are simply not leveraged in what could be a massive cloud environment that could cause more than just a headache for Google and Microsoft. However, it appears that Apple has been working for some time on an operating system, conceivably a version of a next-generation Mac OS or iOS, that could boot computers and other devices via an Internet connection.
Windows

Submission + - Microsoft Confirms Zero-Day Hours After Exploit (computerworld.com)

Submitted by CWmike
CWmike writes: Microsoft confirmed on Tuesday an unpatched vulnerability in Windows just hours after a hacking toolkit published an exploit for the bug. A patch is under construction, but Microsoft does not plan to issue an emergency update to fix the flaw. The bug was first discussed Dec. 15 at a South Korean security conference, but got more attention Tuesday when the open-source Metasploit penetration tool posted an exploit module crafted by researcher Joshua Drake. Metasploit says successful attacks are capable of compromising victimized PCs, then introducing malware to the machines to pillage them for information or enlist them in a criminal botnet.

Comment Test drive a Chrome notebook. (Score 1) 140

by grusapa (#34480540) Attached to: Google Unveils Beta Chrome OS Notebook
We have a limited number of Chrome notebooks to distribute, and we need to ensure that they find good homes. That’s where you come in. Everything is still very much a work in progress, and it’s users, like you, that often give us our best ideas about what feels clunky or what’s missing. So if you live in the United States, are at least 18 years old, and would like to be considered for our small Pilot program, please fill this out. We'll review the requests that come in and contact you if you've been selected.
Graphics

Company Seeks To Boost Linux Game Development With 3D Engine Giveaway 140

Posted by Soulskill from the for-services-rendered dept.
binstream writes "To support Linux game development, Unigine Corp. announced a competition: it will give a free license for its Unigine engine to a seasoned team willing to work on a native Linux game. The company has been Linux-friendly from the very start; it released advanced GPU benchmarks (Heaven, Tropics, Sanctuary) for Linux before and is working on the OilRush strategy game that supports Linux as well."
First Person Shooters (Games)

Combat Vets On CoD: Black Ops, Medal of Honor Taliban 93

Posted by Soulskill from the not-as-messy-as-the-real-deal dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Thom 'SSGTRAN' Tran, seen in the Call of Duty: Black Ops live action trailer and in the game as the NVA multiplayer character, gets interviewed and talks about Medal of Honor's Taliban drama. '... to me, it's a non-issue. This is Hollywood. This is entertainment. There has to be a bad guy if there's going to be a good guy. It's that simple. Regardless of whether you call them — "Taliban" or "Op For" — you're looking at the same thing. They're the bad guys.'" Gamasutra published a related story about military simulation games from the perspective of black ops veteran and awesome-name-contest winner Wolfgang Hammersmith. "In his view, all gunfights are a series of ordered and logical decisions; when he explains it to me, I can sense him performing mental math, brain exercise, the kind that appeals to gamers and game designers. Precise skill, calculated reaction. Combat operations and pistolcraft are the man's life's work."
Image

US Embassy Categorizes Beijing Air Quality As 'Crazy Bad' 270

Posted by samzenpus from the it-totally-sucks dept.
digitaldc writes "Pollution in Beijing was so bad Friday the US embassy, which has been independently monitoring air quality, ran out of conventional adjectives to describe it, at one point saying it was 'crazy bad.' The embassy later deleted the phrase, saying it was an 'incorrect' description and it would revise the language to use when the air quality index goes above 500, its highest point and a level considered hazardous for all people by US standards. The hazardous haze has forced schools to stop outdoor exercises, and health experts asked residents, especially those with respiratory problems, the elderly and children, to stay indoors."
Security

A Flood of Stable Linux Kernels Released 105

Posted by timothy from the five-is-better-than-one dept.
Julie188 writes "Greg Kroah-Hartman has released five new stable Linux kernels, correcting minor errors of their predecessors and including improvements which are unlikely to generate new errors. As so often with kernel versions in the stable series, it remains undisclosed if the new versions contain changes which fix security vulnerabilities, although the number of changes and some of the descriptions of those changes certainly suggest that all the new versions contain security fixes."

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