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Security

Submission + - How Apple orchestrated web attack on researchers

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=451 Apple continued to claim that there were no vulnerabilities in Mac OS X but came a month later and patched their Wireless Drivers (presumably for vulnerabilities that didn't actually exist). Apple patched these "non-existent vulnerabilities" but then refused to give any credit to David Maynor and Jon Ellch. Since Apple was going to take research, not give proper attribution, and smear security researchers, the security research community responded to Apple's behavior with the MoAB (Month of Apple Bugs) and released a flood of zero-day exploits without giving Apple any notification. The end result is that Apple was forced to patch 62 vulnerabilities in just the first three months of 2007 including last week's megapatch of 45 vulnerabilities.
Biotech

Submission + - Polymers from Maple Syrup

Submitted by codegen
codegen writes: The CBC is reporting a discovery where the syrup of the maple tree can be used as a base for a polymer that is biodegradable. Bacteria are used to transform the sugars into naturally occuring polymers. Maple syrup apparently works better than other sources such as apple juce waste products or corn/cane sugars. The polymers may also have medical applications as well.
Education

Submission + - Drop 'kiss of life', urge medics

Submitted by
gollum123
gollum123 writes: "from the BBC Advising first-aiders to give the "kiss of life" is off-putting and unnecessary, say medics ( http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6454013.stm ). Not only are bystanders less likely to help someone who has collapsed if they have to do mouth-to-mouth ventilation, many are unable to perform it properly. Chest compressions alone are just as good if not better in most cases, a Japanese study in The Lancet shows. Studies show less than a third of people who collapse in public are helped by a bystander. Surveys reveal many would-be first-aiders are put off by the idea of giving the kiss of life — for fear of catching an infectious disease, for example. And when bystanders do assist, giving mouth-to-mouth can steal time from giving essential chest compressions. Dr Ken Nagao and colleagues at the Surugadai Nihon University Hospital in Tokyo say in these circumstances it would be better for all parties to stick to giving chest compressions alone, which they called cardiac-only resuscitation."
Security

Submission + - Amazon... we have a (password) problem...

Submitted by
poodlehat
poodlehat writes: "I was on Amazon.com earlier today to check on an order I placed. I went to log in, and accidentally appended some extra characters to the end of my password. Me, being a lazy typist, decided to hit enter and re-enter my password on the inevitable login rejection screen. Well, imagine my surprise when the site let me straight into my account! I logged back out and intentionally typed something completely wrong in the password field and got rejected, so it it definitely only checking up to the number of characters in the stored password. This seems totally unacceptable to me — the two "keywords" should have to match exactly, right? Or is this behavior considered acceptable in the security world? I tried to find a technical contact at Amazon.com, the customer service page just doesn't feel like it would cut it on this one... anyone have a contact?"
AMD

AMD Demonstrates "Teraflop In a Box" 182

Posted by kdawson from the speedy-silicon dept.
UncleFluffy writes "AMD gave a sneak preview of their upcoming R600 GPU. The demo system was a single PC with two R600 cards running streaming computing tasks at just over 1 Teraflop. Though a prototype, this beats Intel to ubiquitous Teraflop machines by approximately 5 years." Ars has an article exploring why it's hard to program such GPUs for anything other than graphics applications.
Windows

Submission + - Consumer Vista support slashed by Microsoft

Submitted by
Mytob
Mytob writes: "Microsoft is to limit support for three versions of Windows Vista, including its most expensive, to five years rather than the usual 10 years. The company defended the difference by noting that the clock just started ticking. "End of life-cycle support for Windows Vista is still five years out," a spokesperson said. http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/news/index.cfm?newsid=8 550"
Security

Submission + - P2P trojan threatens to "kill you," delete

Submitted by
soulxtc
soulxtc writes: "Instead of the proverbial "gotcha letter" via your ISP, a mysterious copyright holder has created a trojan that overwrites all of their program, music, and system files with popular comic book character images warning them not to use P2P or it will "kill them." Have Japanese copyright-holders in fact gone "nuclear" in their fight? It will most certainly only backfire as parents have to soon start consoling their children about how their favorite comic book character is dancing on their PC screen deleting all of their kids files and threatening to "kill them" or "turn them in to the police.""
Power

Submission + - Using Gym Rats' Body Power to Generate Electricity

Submitted by
Carl Bialik from WSJ
Carl Bialik from WSJ writes: "A Hong Kong health club is hoping that a car battery, some StairMasters and dozens of gym rats can help ease the world's energy problems. It is just one of a wave of projects that are trying to tap the power of the human body, the Wall Street Journal reports. From the article: 'The human power project at California Fitness was set in motion by Doug Woodring, a 41-year-old extreme-sports fanatic and renewable-energy entrepreneur, who pitched the experiment to the gym's management last May. "I've trained my whole life, and many megawatts have been wasted," says Mr. Woodring, who has worked out at the Hong Kong gym for years. "I wanted to do something with all that sweat." '"

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