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Security

Adobe Flash To Be Top Hacker Target In 2010 180

Posted by CmdrTaco from the flash-in-the-pan dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Adobe Systems' Flash and Acrobat Reader products will become the preferred targets for criminal hackers (PDF) in 2010, surpassing Microsoft Office applications, a security vendor predicted this week. 'Cybercriminals have long picked on Microsoft products due to their popularity. In 2010, we anticipate Adobe software, especially Acrobat Reader and Flash, will take the top spot,' security vendor McAfee said in its '2010 Threat Predictions' report. 'We have absolutely seen an increase in the number of attacks, around Reader in particular and also Flash Player to some extent,' CTO Kevin Lynch told reporters at the Adobe Max conference in October. 'We're working to decrease the amount of time between when we know about a problem and when we release a fix. That used to be a couple of months; now it's within two weeks for critical issues.'"
Television

"Loud Commercial" Legislation Proposed In US Congress 636

Posted by Soulskill from the you-have-my-grandmother's-vote dept.
Hackajar writes "Have you ever caught yourself running for the volume control when a TV commercial comes on? Congresswoman Anna Eshoo (D-CA) has, and is submitting legislation that would require TV commercials in the US to stay at volume levels similar to the programming they are associated with. From the article: 'Right now, the government doesn't have much say in the volume of TV ads. It's been getting complaints ever since televisions began proliferating in the 1950s. But the FCC concluded in 1984 there was no fair way to write regulations controlling the "apparent loudness" of commercials.'"
Books

The DIY Book Scanner 177

Posted by Soulskill from the lightening-the-load dept.
azoblue writes "Daniel Reetz did not want to lug around heavy textbooks, so he built a book scanner to create digital copies. '... over three days, and for about $300, he lashed together two lights, two Canon Powershot A590 cameras, a few pieces of acrylic and some chunks of wood to create a book scanner that's fast enough to scan a 400-page book in about 20 minutes (PDF). To use it, he simply loads in a book and presses a button, then turns the page and presses the button again. Each press of the button captures two pages, and when he's done, software on Reetz's computer converts the book into a PDF file. The Reetz DIY book scanner isn't automated — you still need to stand by it to turn the pages. But it's fast and inexpensive.'"
Google

How Does the New Google DNS Perform? (and Why?) 275

Posted by CmdrTaco from the all-your-data-are-belong-to-me dept.
Tarinth writes "Google just announced its new Google DNS platform. Many have viewed this as a move to increase ad revenue, or maybe capture more data. This article explores those questions, as well as the actual benchmarking results for Google DNS — showing that it is faster than many, but not nearly as fast as many others." We also recently discussed security implications of the Google Public DNS.
Medicine

Reducing One Amino Acid Could Increase Lifespan 286

Posted by timothy from the for-compulsive-food-sorters dept.
John Bryson writes "Eating less of one amino acid might lengthen your life. There have been lots of previous studies showing that many species live long on highly restricted calories, but a lot of this benefit may be possible by only restricting one amino acid. Amino acids that have shown this have been tryptophan and methionine. A recent study, published online December 2 in Nature, a highly respected journal, may help explain some of the health benefits of restricted-calorie diets."

Comment Re:I’m the guy who wrote the 59-page report (Score 1) 314

by mcohrs (#30305892) Attached to: Dell Defect Turning 2.2GHz CPU Into 100MHz CPU?
Dell did respond to the question with what they call a fix. They say the "issues arose under more extreme thermal and usage models" Not sre what that means - perhaps it occurs where people are actually using the laptop. They also claim not to have banned anyone. Tinkerdude responds with more data, see the Dell blog (Direct2Dell) at http://bit.ly/6IsqaF
Earth

Lifecycle Energy Costs of LED, CFL Bulbs Calculated 400

Posted by kdawson from the pla-hol dept.
necro81 writes "The NY Times is reporting on a new study from Osram, a German lighting manufacturer, which has calculated the total lifecycle energy costs of three lightbulb technologies and found that both LEDs and CFLs use approximately 20% of the energy of incandescents over their lifetimes. While it is well known that the newer lighting technologies use a fraction of the energy of incandescents to produce the same amount of light, it has not been proven whether higher manufacturing energy costs kept the new lighting from offering a net gain. The study found that the manufacturing and distribution energy costs of all lightbulb technologies are only about 2% of their total lifetime energy cost — a tiny fraction of the energy used to produce light." The study uses the assumption that LEDs last 2.5 times longer than CFLs, and 25 times longer than incandescents.
Bug

Dell Defect Turning 2.2GHz CPU Into 100MHz CPU? 314

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the making-the-pr-department-work-for-their-paycheck dept.
jtavares2 writes "In what is being dubbed Throttlegate, scores of users on many message boards have been complaining about nexplicably aggressive throttling policies on their Dell Latitude E6500 and E6400 laptops which cause their CPUs to be throttled to less than 5% of their theoretical maximums even while at room temperatures. In many cases, the issue can be triggered just by playing a video or performing some other trivial, but CPU intensive, task. After being banned [PDF] from the Dell Forums for revealing 'non-public information,' one user went so far as to write and publish a 59-page report [PDF] explaining and diagnosing the throttling problem in incredible detail. Dell seems to be silent on the issue, but many users are hoping for a formal recall."

Comment Been there, seen that (Score 2, Insightful) 15

by mcohrs (#30112176) Attached to: Judge Rules Quadriplegic Can Bear Arms
The folks at the Wyoming Assistive Technology Project, WYNOT, now called WIND (http://uwyo.edu/wind/watr/), had a number of modified weapons for people with disabilities. Contact them for more information. I also saw a handgun online designed for people who did not have the strength to pull a regular trigger or hold a regular pistol.
Books

Intel's New E-Reader For the Visually Impaired 111

Posted by kdawson from the tell-me-a-story dept.
serverguy writes "Intel will be releasing a win for all visually impaired members of society, a new device called the Intel Reader. It allows visually impaired people to take a snapshot of a newspaper, book, or magazine and have it read back to them. It's estimated that in the US alone there are as many as 55 million people who could make use of such a device. It comes at hefty price though: the paperback-sized device costs $1,499. The device contains a 5-megapixel camera and is powered by a Linux OCR system that converts text into spoken words. The device can hold up to 2GB of data, which would equate to around 600 snapshots. In addition to reading text, the device can also play back audio books in a number of supported formats such as MP3 and WAV. The Intel Reader is expected to be released next Tuesday." The device won't be speedy: "Intel says it takes about 30 seconds to process each page of text... It took... about 30 minutes to scan in the pages of a 250-page book and then one hour to process them."

Comment Re:Use your phone lines (Score 1) 438

by mcohrs (#30018336) Attached to: Simple, Cost-Effective, Multiroom Audio?
Darn, but you are so full of your self. My 20 year old system powering 5 sets of parallel speakers must not be working, maybe I am just hearing echos from days gone by. Seriously, it may not be the best idea, but it can and does work for me. You could also run the speakers in series/parallel (like 2 parallel pair of 2 series speakers) or use matching transformers from a master 70 v line output transformer or any number of other ways. Or you could just be a smart *** and nominate the poster for a Darwin award, much easier, and evidently more fulfilling than being constructive. Marlin

Comment Re:From what I've discovered... (Score 1) 579

by mcohrs (#29786509) Attached to: Are Software Developers Naturally Weird?
I think I have another take on this and that would be, we are what we are rewarded for. Let me argue that as we grew up, we perhaps had slightly less rewards for our social interactions, and more rewards for our geek abilities. This reinforced our geekeness over time. Perhaps we associated with other geeks, who were less critical of our lack of social skills. With no negative reinforcement for our oddities in the social realm, they flourish. I too, wonder about people's names are when they say, if there's anything else I can get you, my name is Sue, I have been known to ask what their names were if I didn't need anything else. Nobody but me seems to think this is funny.
Democrats

How the Obama Copyright Policies Might Unfold 188

Posted by kdawson from the pragmatic-is-as-pragmatic-does dept.
An anonymous reader points out a column by James Boyle, who knows a thing or two about copyright, analyzing the Obama Administration's policy choices about intellectual property and high tech. "Traditionally, Democratic administrations take their copyright policy direct from Hollywood and the recording industry. Unfortunately, so do Republican administrations. The capture of regulators by the industry they regulate is nothing new, of course, but in intellectual property there is the added benefit that incumbents can frequently squelch competing technologies and business methods before they ever come into existence. ... The Obama administration's warm embrace of Silicon Valley, and Silicon Valley's checkbook, had given some hope that this pattern would change — and I think it will. Now, instead of taking copyright policy direct from the media conglomerates (who, after all, have a very legitimate point of view — even if not the only point of view) it is quite likely that the administration will construct it as a contract between content companies and high-technology companies such as Google. In some places, citizens and consumers will probably benefit, simply because optimizing for the interests of two economic blocs rather than one is likely to give us a slightly more balanced, and less technology-phobic, set of rules. And perhaps the administration will go further. But recent actions make me doubt that this is the case."

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