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Lord of the Rings

Submission + - Finally, The Hobbit starts shooting (eonline.com)

Submitted by Tiger4
Tiger4 writes: Real pictures, not photoshopped (much), of Peter Jackson on the set of The Hobbit acting like a director are now available at EOnline.com. This despite the strikes, bankruptcies, contract disputes, and legal actions that have swarmed Jackson and the project since his Lord of the Rings days. Yes, this is News for Nerds and it is Stuff that Matters. Admit it, secretly you've been dying to see this happen.
Science

Submission + - A look at the world's dwindling food supply (arstechnica.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The UK's Government Office of Science has released a report titled "Future of Food and Farming: Challenges and Choices for Global Sustainability" That takes a look at, among other related concerns, how to continue to feed a global population that is on pace to reach 9 billion by the year 2050
Blackberry

Submission + - Net Neutrality, Common Carrier and Blackberries

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: I have noticed that AT&T blocks access to companies web mail exchange interfaces in hopes of them signing up for their premium enterprise service. There used to be a workaround of spoofing what type of browser you were using to circumvent this but this feature was disabled last year. Can I sue AT&T citing that they aren't obliging to their 'common carrier' status as a phone company? Isn't this a direct representation of the tiered internet that we have all feared?
Google

Submission + - Google Fined Over Street View Privacy Breach (ispyce.com)

Submitted by autospa
autospa writes: Google received its first ever fine for improperly gathering and storing data for its Street View application on Monday when it was penalized by France's privacy watchdog. The euro100,000 ($141,300) penalty — the largest ever by French body CNIL — sanctions Google for collecting personal data from Wi-Fi networks — including e-mails, web browsing histories and online banking details — from 2007 to 2010 through its roaming camera-mounted cars and bicycles. The fine is the first against Google over the data-gathering, which more than 30 countries have complained about. At least two other European countries are considering fines, while some others have ruled against penalizing Google.
Security

Submission + - France hands Google record fine over Street View (thinq.co.uk)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: France has slapped Google with a record €100,000 ($142,000) fine for collecting private Wi-Fi information with its Street View cars.

The French decided that Google "had not refrained from using the data identifying Wi-Fi access points of individuals without their knowledge." It further decided that Google had received economic benefits from the data collection, which Google had earlier denied.
Google claimed its Street View cars were 'mistakenly' collecting data from private Wi-Fi networks.
Security

Submission + - RSA Hackers May Have Wanted Server Source Code (threatpost.com)

Submitted by Trailrunner7
Trailrunner7 writes: The most important issues the RSA attack brings to the surface concern exactly what the attackers may have been after and what the successful compromise means for the integrity of the tens of millions of SecurID tokens deployed around the world.
As troublesome as these scenarios are for SecurID users, perhaps the more likely target of the attack on RSA is the source code for the software that's used to administer and run the token deployments at customer site.
"There's a lot of code needed for maintaining databases, adding and deleting users, making backups, synchronizing master and secondary copies of databases, and more. An attacker who could penetrate these administrative systems doesn't have to worry about key generation or cryptanalysis; they could simply steal existing keys or insert new ones of their own," Steve Bellovin said.

Submission + - A New Class of Nuclear Reactors (freakonomics.com) 1

Submitted by prunedude
prunedude writes: From Freakonomics: The folks over at IV Insights, the blog associated with Nathan Myhrvold's Intellectual Ventures, point out that it was the complete loss of power that disabled the cooling systems protecting the plant'(TM)s reactors. Which raises the question: Is there nuclear technology that could withstand such a catastrophe? Possibly. TerraPower, an Intellectual Ventures spin-off that also boasts Bill Gates as an investor, is working on a new reactor design called a traveling wave reactor that uses fast reactor technology, rather than the light water technology used at the Fukushima Daiichi plant.
The two biggest advantages of the fast reactor design is that it requires no spent fuel pools and uses cooling systems that require no power to function, meaning the loss of power from the tsunami might not have crippled a fast reactor plant so severely.
Firefox

Submission + - Mozilla Releases Firefox 4 (techspot.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Mozilla has released Firefox 4. The final build comes less than two weeks after Release Candidate 1. The company originally found no major problems in the RC1 build, and decided to release RC1 as the final version, but then changed its mind. An RC2 build was quietly pushed out on March 18, 2011 with a few fixes, and today the final bits appeared on Mozilla's servers.
Security

Submission + - Experts Weigh in on the RSA SecurID Breach (securityweek.com)

Submitted by wiredmikey
wiredmikey writes: After notifying customers on Thursday that it had been breached after hackers mounted a highly sophisticated cyber attack that put its SecurID product at risk, RSA has yet to expand on the details and potential impact of the attack, leaving customers concerned and with many questions unanswered.

In the meantime, reactions are pouring in from customers and the information security community in general, some saying to prepare for the worst, and some brushing it off as not-so-serious incident.

One expert commented that “If ‘the keys to the kingdom’—the public serial number to secret key mapping database—had NOT been compromised, there would be zero danger to users of RSA’s SecurIDs." At the same time another expert says doesn’t believe the incident is a game changer. “It's serious news that RSA's SecurID solution has been the target of an advanced persistent threat. But It's not a game-changer. Anybody who says it is, is an alarmist.”

So what are others saying and doing in the meantime while they wait for answers from RSA on the SecurID system being attacked?

Submission + - Kinect Used to Help Visually Impaired (gizmag.com)

Submitted by Zothecula
Zothecula writes: The decidedly low tech white cane is still one of the most commonly used tools to help the visually impaired get around without bumping into things. Now, through their project called NAVI (Navigation Aids for the Visually Impaired), students at Germany's Universität Konstanz have leveraged the 3D imaging capabilities of Microsoft's Kinect camera to detect objects that lie outside a cane's small radius and alert the wearer to the location of obstacles through audio and vibro-tactile feedback.

Submission + - Fukushima one week on: Situation 'stable', says IA (theregister.co.uk)

Submitted by Attila Dimedici
Attila Dimedici writes: This article claims that the safest place to be
  if your country is hit by a monster earthquake and giant tsunami is the local nuclear power plant. This article mentions that over the last ten years there have been seven nuclear fatalities and 44 wind farm fatalities ( I saw this stated elsewhere as well).

Submission + - Microsoft Urges Office Users To Block Flash Player (computerworld.com)

Submitted by
Batblue
Batblue writes: "Microsoft has urged users of older Office suites to install and run a complicated tool to protect themselves against ongoing attacks exploiting an unpatched bug in Adobe's Flash Player.

"For users of Office prior to 2010, the Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit (EMET) can help," said Andrew Roths and Chengyun Chu, a manager and security engineer, respectively, with the Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC). "Turning on EMET for the core Office applications will enable a number of security protections called 'security mitigations'," the pair wrote in a post to the company's Security Research & Defense blog.

EMET is a tool designed for advanced users, primarily enterprise IT pros, that manually enables ASLR (address space layout randomization) and DEP (data execution prevention) for specific applications. ASLR and DEP are two anti-exploit technologies included with Windows. Adobe confirmed that attackers were exploiting an unpatched bug in Flash Player by sending potential victims malicious Microsoft Excel documents."

Submission + - CRISP Demonstrates Self-Repairing Chips (hothardware.com)

Submitted by
MojoKid
MojoKid writes: "Processors are making great strides in performance-per-watt output, but everyone knows that there will be limits. One of the issues with chips getting smaller and more powerful is fragility. The smaller manufacturing geomtries get, the less robust they are, and that has led to a number of research projects looking into the feasibility of creating self-repairing chips. The CRISP (Cutting edge Reconfigurable ICs for Stream Processing) project researches optimal utilization, efficient programming and dependability of reconfigurable many-cores CPUs for streaming applications. Its goal is to develop a single, highly scalable, reconfigurable system concept that can be used for a wide range of streaming applications; from low-cost consumer applications to very demanding specialty applications. The project consortium consists of Recore Systems (project leader), University of Twente, Atmel Automotive, Thales Netherlands, Tampere University of Technology, and NXP Semiconductors."

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