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Security

Apple Issues Patches For 25 Security Holes 241

Posted by CmdrTaco from the it's-much-better-now-trust-me dept.
TheCybernator writes "Apple today released software updates to plug more than two dozen security holes in its Mac OS X operating system and other software. The free patches are available via the Mac's built-in Software Update feature or directly from Apple's Web site. All told, today's batch fixes some 25 distinct security vulnerabilities, including a dangerous flaw present in the AirPort wireless devices built into a number of Apple computers, including the eMac, the iBook, iMac, Powerbook G3 and G4, and the Power Mac G4. Apple said computers with its AirPort Extreme wireless cards are not affected. Earlier this month, Apple released a software update to fix a vulnerability in its wireless router, the AirPort Extreme Base Station. That update and instructions on how to apply it are available at the link."
Enlightenment

Submission + - Solar Cells Waste Money, Save Energy

Submitted by
sciencebase
sciencebase writes: "A complete cost-benefit analysis of photovoltaic solar cells suggests that their cost far outweighs the financial savings one might expect from reduced electricity costs. On the other hand, the cradle to grave analysis carried out by the researchers also that from cradle to grave these devices actually save energy. The balance will tip in favor of solar cells should the cost of electricity generated using fossil fuels rise three or four times today's price or the efficiency of solar cells rise beyond a few percent. Full story here"
Software

Submission + - The Most-Wanted Linux Software

Submitted by Susie
Susie writes: Photoshop, AutoCAD and iTunes are three of the most-demanded programs for the Linux desktop, but what else does the community want? Linux Format is running Make it with Mono, a voting system to determine what type of programs the Linux world needs. Get voting — the number-one entry on May 2nd will be written in Mono and released as open source!
Space

Submission + - Heisenberg-like Observation Created the Universe?

Submitted by Tablizer
Tablizer writes: Did the laws of physics think themselves into being? Observing may not only force quantum resolving of atomic particle features, but perhaps the universe's very laws themselves. Paul Davies states: "In that manner, what we must imagine is that the origin of the universe is an amalgam of realities, and only those realities that lead to observers who can resolve those ambiguities are going to be selected for. So the universe can engineer its own bio-friendliness, because the very observers who arise at a later stage are those who project out from the bio-friendly histories". (Sorry, no mention of cats)
NES (Games)

Submission + - Worlds Rarest NES Cartridge Almost Sold For 1$

Submitted by Zarjazz
Zarjazz writes: If both the innocence / ignorance of the seller and the validity of the winning bidder are to be believed, a job lot of 24 NES cartridges for $24 (1$ per game) eventually sold for over $20,000 after it was noticed that one of the cartridges was a special winners edition of 'Nintendo World Championships 1990'

After the death of his son in Iraq, the seller placed the games up for auction hoping "whoever buys the games will enjoy them as much as my son did!". NWC contained special versions of Super Mario Brothers, Rad Racer and Tetris to be played under a fixed time limit. At least 90 of these copies exist in a grey cartridge and were given out to semi-finalists of the 1990 NWC however only 26 of these cartridges exist in "gold" for the winners and are considered to be the rarest and most valuable NES cartridge released. The game can be clear seen lurking in the bottom left corner of the original auction image.
The Internet

Submission + - Birdwatching meets massive multiplayer online game

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Researchers at UC Berkeley and Texas A&M are launching a free game on the Internet Monday in which players will score points by remotely controlling a video camera and identifying wild birds. Craiglist's founder will host the show from the deck on his home near San Francisco. http://www.networkworld.com/community/?q=node/1428 2
NASA

Submission + - Did NASA Accidentally "Nuke" Jupiter?

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Title: Did NASA Accidentally "Nuke" Jupiter? Source: Enterprise URL Source: http://www.enterprisemission.com//NukingJupiter.ht ml Published: Apr 11, 2007 NASA's decision to finally terminate Galileo in September 2003 via a fiery plunge into Jupiter, was designed to prevent any possible biological contamination of Europa from a future random collision with the spacecraft, once its fuel was exhausted. An engineer named Jacco van der Worp claimed that, plunging into Jupiter's deep and increasingly dense atmosphere, the on-board Galileo electrical power supply — a set of 144 plutonium-238 fuel pellets — would ultimately "implode"; that the plutonium Galileo carried would ultimately collapse in upon itself under the enormous pressures of Jupiter's overwhelming atmosphere and go critical. Noone listened. One month later ... October 19, 2003 — an amateur astronomer in Belgium, Olivier Meeckers, secured a remarkable image, a dark black "splotch" showing up on the southern edge of Jupiter's well-known "North Equatorial Belt," trailing a fainter "tail" southwest (image center). Richard Hoagland http://www.libertypost.org/cgi-bin/readart.cgi?Art Num=183496 has now calculated that, given the slow fall through a highly pressurised atmosphere, it is possible that the splotch is the result of about 50lb of plutonium going critical 700 miles below. Way to go, NASA!

Details of Next Gen Zune Surface 308

Posted by CmdrTaco from the better-luck-next-time dept.
KMG writes "Zune Scene has got a scoop about the next generation Microsoft Zune. There will be two new models; a flash memory based and a hard drive based. Zune with HDD will be thinner and have larger storage capacity while the flash based will feature Wi-fi, video playback. So will we see another try from Microsoft to beat Apple's iPod or it will be another vain attempt from the Redmond guys."
Hardware Hacking

Submission + - Xbox 360 HD DVD Hacked even for Revoked licences

Submitted by Umuri
Umuri writes: As mentioned in an article at engadget, the XBox 360 player has been compromised and now can play HD DVDs without authenticating with AACS, allowing even revoked licenses to be played. Backup your movies, format shift them, whatever. Defective by design doesn't even quite cover the failure of the model, or the success of the groups who made this possible.
Microsoft

Submission + - time.windows.com broken; Windows machines adrift?

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: It appears the widely-used time.windows.com Network Time Protocol server isn't working correctly. The host name is redirecting to unsynchronized Akamai NTP servers which are off by more than 100 seconds. This issue leaves millions of Windows XP and 2003 machines that still have the default configuration without a good source of network time. While most clients won't notice, there are certainly some important applications (such as kerberos authentication) that rely on accurate client time. This mis-configuration has been in place for at least several hours.

A bug report was submitted via Microsoft's website, but no response has been received in over 6 hours. This has apparently happened at least once before.
Enlightenment

Submission + - Google Earth now shows atrocities in Darfur

Submitted by
Josh Fruhlinger
Josh Fruhlinger writes: "http://www.switched.com/2007/04/10/darfur-crisis-s hown-in-google-earth/

Google Earth is a fascinating program that allows you to zoom in on virtually any location on earth using satellite imagery. As of today, however, when you search for Darfur, you are shown a large red region titled "Crisis in Darfur." This is one of the first times a search engine of this scale has become involved in international politics. Google looks at it as a way to educate its users to the atrocities occurring in the Democratic Republic of the Sudan.

"At Google, we believe technology can be a catalyst for education and action," Elliot Schrage, Google's vice president of global communications and public affairs told CNN. "'Crisis in Darfur' will enable Google Earth users to visualize and learn about the destruction in Darfur as never before and join the museum's efforts in responding to this continuing international catastrophe."

Crisis hot-spots are shown in red flames. When users zoom in on them, they are shown damaged and destroyed villages with photographic evidence. Also involved is the Holocaust museum which provided much of the content."
Security

Submission + - A Phishing attack against BoA's Sitekey Service

Submitted by
Christopher Soghoian
Christopher Soghoian writes: "We (Indiana University researchers Christopher Soghoian and Markus Jakobsson) have released a demo of a phishing attack against the SiteKey system used by Bank of America. This is based on the PassMark technology widely licensed by RSA to many other large financial firms. Yahoo's sign-in seal uses similar and equally vulnerable technology. Our demo shows the ease with which a phisher can execute a deceit-augmented man in the middle attack and display a user's SiteKey image to them, without the user ever directly connecting to BoA. This can then be used to trick the user into entering their password. View the video and screenshots yourself, and see if you'd be fooled. (Note: Slashdot covered a Harvard/MIT study of SiteKey a couple months ago)"
Patents

Amazon Patents Humans Assisting Computers 236

Posted by kdawson from the mechanical-turk dept.
theodp writes "Amazon's latest patent, the Hybrid Machine/Human Computing Arrangement, reads like scary sci-fi, with claims covering the use of humans 'of college educated, at most high school educated, at most elementary school educated, and not formally educated' to perform subtasks dispatched by a computer. From the patent: 'For examples, the task on hand requires French speaking humans, and Task Server has requested that each subtask be performed by at least 10 humans with a past accuracy record of at least 90%.' Yikes."

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