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Submission + - Professor Uploads Student Data to Public WebServer (securityweek.com)

Submitted by wiredmikey
wiredmikey writes: Professor Uploads Personal Data of 40,000 Students to Public Web Server — According to the University, a faculty member inadvertently uploaded files containing data including names, social security numbers, addresses, birth dates and educational information to an unencrypted faculty web server. This Web server was apparently public and had reportedly been indexed by Google.
Firefox

Submission + - Chrome tops consumer browser test (choice.com.au)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: CHOICE Computer magazine (nb: CHOICE is the Australian version of Consumer.org) has done a browser showdown between IE, Firefox, Opera, Safari and Chrome testing them on factors like performance and compliance. They also looked at memory footprints both standalone and with tabs open. The results aren't too surprising — IE fails dismally, but Firefox was edged out in the top spot by Chrome. Still, it's a good comparison for the uninitiated — CHOICE Computer is aimed at more mainstream users, providing options for those who perhaps haven't considered other browsers before.
Privacy

Submission + - GoDaddy logs in on customers' VPS unauthorized (sucuri.net) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: From a dismayed user's blog:

I have been a GoDaddy user for a while and never had problems with them. In fact, differently than some people, I had great support and service from them. However, one recent situation is making me change my mind about them...
Space

Submission + - Space Junk Getting Worse (space.com)

Submitted by HockeyPuck
HockeyPuck writes: According to Space.com the amount of 'space junk' is getting worse. tracking information supplied by the U.S. military, as well as confirming German radar data, showed that a spent upper stage from a Chinese rocket and the European Space Agency's (ESA) huge Envisat Earth remote-sensing spacecraft would speed by each other at a nail-biting distance of roughly 160 feet (50 meters).

ESA's Envisat tips the scales at 8 tons, with China's discarded rocket body weighing some 3.8 tons. A couple of tweaks of maneuvering propellant were used to nudge the large ESA spacecraft to a more comfortable miss distance.

But what if the two objects had tangled?

Submission + - Victorian Postal Service Resembled E-mail (nytimes.com)

Submitted by goombah99
goombah99 writes: Written mail in Victorian London was delivered and picked up 12 times in a 12 hour day. It also resembled e-mail in the way it was used. Messages often sought replies by the next postal pickup. And even the lazy practice of sharing links rather than writing a thoughtful letter became commonplace as people would send copies of previously read newspapers instead of writing. Like now, newspapers saw their circulations plummet as their content was shared freely this way. And as the price of mail droppped to negligible, junk mail was invented along with the 409 solicitations from strangers. All in all it seems like a good evidence that charging more for e-mail delivery would arguably cure its worst tendencies.
Technology

Submission + - Carbon Microchips to be Based on Carbon Life Forms

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: For several years scientists and engineers have toyed with nanotechnologies based on carbon--from nanotubes to nanowires to tiny quantum dots--all of which showed promise, but which had big hurtles to overcome for commercialization. We knew that carbon-based microchips could solve the overheating problem that silicon chips have today, because we are carbon computers--after all the human brain is the world's fastest supercomputer and yet only consumes 25 watts. Unfortunately, carbon nanotubes and the like were difficult to process using conventional chip fabrication equipment, so we were searching for a way to engineer chips like ourselves. Graphene--pure crystalline sheets of carbon--on the other hand, can be processed using the same equipment used to make all the different kinds of silicon complementary metal oxide semiconductors (CMOS chips) we enjoy today. The DoD program called CERA has already inspired IBM to create the world's fastest carbon transistor--a 100-Ghz model that is 20-times faster than silicon CMOS and which should be ready for military applications within three years. It won't take long for these high-speed mil-spec carbon microchips to begin trickling down to consumer electronics. I say 5 to 10 years tops. What do you think?
Government

Submission + - Use open source? Then you're a pirate! (computerworlduk.com) 4

Submitted by superapecommando
superapecommando writes: There's a fantastic little story in the Guardian today that says a US lobby group is trying to get the US government to consider open source as the equivalent to piracy.
The International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA), an umbrella group for American publishing, software, film, television and music associations, has asked with the US Trade Representative (USTR) to consider countries like Indonesia, Brazil and India for its "Special 301 watchlist" because they encourage the use of open source software.
A Special 301, according to Guardian's Bobbie Johnson is: "a report that examines the 'adequacy and effectiveness of intellectual property rights' around the planet — effectively the list of countries that the US government considers enemies of capitalism. It often gets wheeled out as a form of trading pressure — often around pharmaceuticals and counterfeited goods — to try and force governments to change their behaviours."
Read more: http://www.computerworlduk.com/community/blogs/index.cfm?entryid=2811&blogid=10
Government

Submission + - US Unable To Win A Cyber War (net-security.org) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The inability to deflect even a simulated cyber attack or mitigate its effects shown in the exercise that took place some six days ago at Washington's Mandarin Oriental Hotel doesn't bode well for the US. Mike McConnell, the former Director of National Intelligence, said to the US Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee yesterday that if the US got involved in a cyber war at this moment, they would surely lose. "We're the most vulnerable. We're the most connected. We have the most to lose," he stated. Three years ago, McConnell referred to cybersecurity as the ‘‘soft underbelly of this country’’ and it's clear that he thinks things haven't changed much since then.
Security

Submission + - GPS hacking puts vital services at risk

Submitted by goG
goG writes: Critical infrastructure and other technology dependent on global positioning satellites are increasingly threatened by attack from widely available equipment, technology experts are warning. Air traffic communications, the electricity grid, telecom networks and other emergency services are under threat from GPS "jammer" devices, comprised of parts readily available at any electronics store.

"A portable jammer in a tall building could cover most of London and aircraft approaching its airports," said Professor David Last, a past president of the Royal Institute of Navigation and now a GPS consultant.

Jamming and spoofing are irresistible to the hacker type who do it for fun, Professor Last said.

Feed Engadget: Videogame training may improve eyesight, no word on the health benefits of Mind (engadget.com)

From feed by engfeed

You know, the benefits of videogames just keep adding up. According to a study published in Nature Neuroscience, video game training may help people improve contrast sensitivity, or the ability to differentiate between shades of gray. Among the two groups studied, the most improvement was noted among folks who played games which required precise, visually guided aiming actions, such as Call of Duty 2 and Unreal Tournament 2004. "When people play action games," said Daphne Bavelier, a professor of brain and cognitive sciences at the University of Rochester, "they're changing the brain's pathway responsible for visual processing. These games push the human visual system to the limits and the brain adapts to it, and we've seen the positive effect remains even two years after the training was over." Now that we've established that the Xbox can be part of a healthy lifestyle, it would be irresponsible of us not to play it more often.

[Via CNet]

Filed under: Gaming

Videogame training may improve eyesight, no word on the health benefits of Mind Flex originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 30 Mar 2009 11:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Security

Submission + - Conficker Flaw Opens Botnet to Hijacking (washingtonpost.com)

Submitted by krebsatwpost
krebsatwpost writes: Researchers at the Honeynet Project have discovered a previously overlooked flaw in the Conficker worm that could allow criminals to hijack portions of the network, or lay the groundwork for a "good worm" to remove the worm, The Washington Post reports. Security companies have known for some time that Conficker sews up the security hole it uses to break in to Windows systems, not with the patch that Microsoft provided but with its own version of that patch. According to the story, "this tactic not only prevents other malicious software from infiltrating the host via that vulnerability, but it also makes it difficult to for system administrators to find potentially infected systems simply by scanning their networks for PCs that are missing that critical software update." HoneyNet Researchers Tillmann Werner and Felix Leder found that the patch as implemented by the Conficker worm has subtle differences that allow systems infected with it be distinguishable from PCs protected by the official Microsoft patch. Meanwhile, members of the Conficker Cabal working to block the worm from updating itself on April 1 toiled over the weekend alongside makers of vulnerability scanning tools, to help sysadmins better locate infected systems on their networks.
Education

Submission + - Why Toddlers Don't Do What They're Told

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "New cognitive research shows that that 3-year-olds neither plan for the future nor live completely in the present but instead call up the past as they need it. "There is a lot of work in the field of cognitive development that focuses on how kids are basically little versions of adults trying to do the same things adults do, but they're just not as good at it yet. What we show here is they are doing something completely different," says professor Yuko Munakata at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Munakata's team used a computer game and a setup that measures the diameter of the pupil of the eye to determine mental effort to study the cognitive abilities of 3-and-a-half-year-olds and 8-year-olds. The research concluded that while everything you tell toddlers seems to either fall on deaf ears or go in one ear and out the other, the study found that toddlers listen, but then store the information for later use. "For example, let's say it's cold outside and you tell your 3-year-old to go get his jacket out of his bedroom and get ready to go outside," says doctoral student Christopher Chatham. "You might expect the child to plan for the future, think 'OK it's cold outside so the jacket will keep me warm.' But what we suggest is that this isn't what goes on in a 3-year-old's brain. Rather, they run outside, discover that it is cold, and then retrieve the memory of where their jacket is, and then they go get it.""

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