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How a Team of Geeks Cracked the Spy Trade 187

Posted by kdawson from the connecting-the-dots dept.
drunken_boxer777 sends us to The Wall Street Journal for a lengthy article on a small tech company, Palantir Technologies, that is making the CIA, Pentagon, and FBI take notice. The submitter adds, "And yes, their company name is a reference to what you think it is." "One of the latest entrants into the government spy-services marketplace, Palantir Technologies has designed what many intelligence analysts say is the most effective tool to date to investigate terrorist networks. The software's main advance is a user-friendly search tool that can scan multiple data sources at once, something previous search tools couldn't do. That means an analyst who is following a tip about a planned terror attack, for example, can more quickly and easily unearth connections among suspects, money transfers, phone calls and previous attacks around the globe. ... With Palantir's software 'you can actually point to examples where it was pretty clear that lives were saved.'"
Google

Microsoft Holding 'Screw Google' Meetings In DC 331

Posted by Soulskill from the or-perhaps-screwgle dept.
Runaway1956 writes "Microsoft's chief Washington lobbyist has been convening regular meetings, attended by the company's outside consultants, that have become known by some beltway insiders as 'screw Google' meetings, DailyFinance has learned. The meetings are part of an ongoing campaign by Microsoft, other Google opponents, and hired third parties to discredit the Web search leader, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the matter. 'Microsoft is at the center of a group of companies who see Google as a threat to them in some combination of business and policy,' said a source who requested anonymity to avoid retribution. 'The effort is designed to make Google look like the big high-tech bad guy here.'"
Real Time Strategy (Games)

Achron — an RTS With Time Travel 141

Posted by Soulskill from the flux-capacitor-not-required dept.
An anonymous reader writes "As much as I'm looking forward to StarCraft 2, there's a new RTS gaming tech that has me even more enthused. The Escapist Magazine has posted interviews and footage of the upcoming 'meta-time strategy game' Achron, which was announced at GDC earlier this year. It's a multiplayer RTS where you can send things through time. The official site has some gameplay footage as well, and it looks like their tech is useful outside of gaming."
Space

Scientists Get $2M To Predict Space Weather 40

Posted by Soulskill from the spock-with-a-goatee dept.
coondoggie writes "Looking to understand better how space weather affects a variety of everyday consumer technologies, including global positioning systems, satellites for television reception, and cellular phones, researchers at Virginia Tech's Space@VT research group got a $2 million grant to build a chain of space weather instrument stations in Antarctica. The National Science Foundation grant will help the group build new radar units that will work with the current Super Dual-Auroral Radar Network — an international collaboration with support provided by the funding agencies of more than a dozen countries. The radars combine to give extensive views of the upper atmosphere in both the Arctic and Antarctic regions."
Math

Big Bang Could Be Recreated Inside a Metamaterial 113

Posted by kdawson from the never-met-a-material-i-didn't-like dept.
KentuckyFC writes "Metamaterials are substances with a permittivity and permeability that has been manipulated in a way that allows fine control over the behavior of light. They have famously been used to create an invisibility cloak that hides objects from view. Now Igor Smolyaninov, a physicist in the US, has calculated how metamaterials could be used for a much more profound demonstration: to reproduce the behavior of light in various kinds of spacetimes, in particular a (2+2) spacetime (one having two dimensions of space and two of time). His method is to show that there is formal mathematical analogy between the way metamaterials and spacetimes affect light. He goes on to show how a phase transition in a (2+2) spacetime leads to the creation of a (2+1) spacetime filled with photons, an event analogous to the Big Bang." Here are the abstract and the preprint (PDF).
Image

Verizon Sued After Tech Punches Customer In Face 493

Posted by samzenpus from the can-you-hit-me-now dept.
suraj.sun writes "A Verizon customer filed a lawsuit after the tech the company sent out got a little punchy. Instead of fixing the customer's problem, the tech allegedly hit him in the face. The New York Post says the tech attacked the customer after he asked to see some ID before allowing access to the apartment. From the article, '"You want to know my name? Here's my name," Benjamin snarled, slapping his ID card into Isakson's face, according to Isakson's account of the December 2008 confrontation. "The guy essentially snapped. He cold-cocked me, hit me two or three solid shots to the head while my hands were down," said Isakson, a limo driver. He said the pounding bloodied his face and broke his glasses. But things got uglier, Isakson said, when Benjamin squeezed him around the neck and pressed him up against the wall. "He's prepared to kill me," Isakson said. "That's all I could think of." The customer broke free and ran away. The Verizon tech then chased the customer until he was subdued by a neighbor who was an off-duty cop.'"
Games

The Problems With Porting Games 330

Posted by Soulskill from the i-don't-have-that-button dept.
mr_sifter writes "There's a large lexicon of monosyllabic, four-letter words for describing something you don't like — but only PC gamers use the word 'port' with such a fervent degree of repulsion. Common complaints about console ports include meager graphics options, dodgy third-person camera angles, poorly-thought-out controls and sparsely distributed save points. In this feature, Bit-tech talks to developers of games such as Dead Space, Red Faction and Tales of Monkey Island to find out why porting games between the three major consoles and the PC is so difficult. Radically different CPU, graphics and memory architectures play their part, as do the differences in control methods and the rules Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo set about how games should work on their systems."

Comment DirectX, hardware drivers! (Score 1) 3

by Casai (#28810979) Attached to: What would you expect from a GamingOS ?
Linux and its many variants could easily be a gaming OS, given how much control users have over what processes are running and what goes into the kernel. The main problem is that the vast majority of games don't run natively on Linux. They use DirectX, which is unique to Windows. It is possible to run Windows games on Linux via emulation, but that means giving up performance, which is everything to gamers. (I mean, SOMEONE buys those $500 video cards, otherwise they wouldn't keep making them.)

Now, if someone ported DirectX to Linux, we'd be talking. Of course, I bet that'd be illegal, and you don't want to piss off Microsoft's legal department.

This holds true for any OS that would purport to be a gaming OS. Either it would have to support DirectX, or all game developers would have to ensure that their games run on some other API. For instance, instead of Direct3D, there's OpenGL. (How many recent games support Direct3D AND OpenGL? The last one I can think of is Quake 3.)
Transportation

Do We Need Running Shoes To Run? 776

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the kenyans-have-it-right dept.
prostoalex writes to tell us The Daily Mail has an interesting look at current research in the field of running and injuries related to running. Most of the evidence pointed at a lack of any need for running shoes. Some of the more interesting points: the more expensive the running shoes, the greater the probability of getting an injury; some of the planet's best and most intense runners run barefoot; Stanford running team, having access to the top-notch modern shoes sent in for free by manufacturers, after a few rounds of trial and error still chose to train with no shoes at all."
Games

Bethesda Announces New Fallout Game For 2010 254

Posted by Soulskill from the back-for-more dept.
On Monday Bethesda announced a new title in the popular Fallout series called New Vegas, set for release sometime in 2010. It's planned for the PC, Xbox 360, and PS3. They said it wasn't a sequel to the highly-acclaimed Fallout 3, but rather a brand new game set in the same universe, though they confirmed that it will be similar in style to Fallout 3. The new game will be developed by Obsidian Entertainment, a studio containing members of the original Fallout team, which Bethesda's Pete Hines discussed in an interview with Shacknews. The Fallout series also made headlines earlier this week when Bethesda trademarked the name for TV and film.
Security

Vista's Security Rendered Completely Useless 415

Posted by kdawson from the bypassing-memory-protection-safeguards dept.
scribbles89 sends in a story that originally ran in SearchSecurity; it sounds like it could be a game-changer. "While this may seem like any standard security hole, other researchers say that the work is a major breakthrough and there is very little that Microsoft can do to fix the problems. These attacks work differently than other security exploits, as they aren't based on any new Windows vulnerabilities, but instead take advantage of the way Microsoft chose to guard Vista's fundamental architecture. According to Dino Dai Zovi..., 'the genius of this is that it's completely reusable. They have attacks that let them load chosen content to a chosen location with chosen permissions. That's completely game over.'" Update: 08/08 14:23 GMT by KD : Changed the link, as the story first linked had been lifted without attribution.

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