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Comment Reminds me of David Gerrold's Rage for Revenge (Score 1) 392

by Kostya (#29896293) Attached to: Trojan Kill Switches In Military Technology

In Gerrold's Chtorr series, they used this. A lot of US military tech was in the hands of rebels, and they just deployed a kill switch. But in the book, it was expressed as a last-ditch measure. Once you use it, everyone knows about it, and you lose the advantage. Suddenly all the US allies were very, very concerned, as they began to wonder what US technology wasn't booby trapped.

I'd be really surprised we'd just hand this over to the Israelis if we had it. I'd think we would be saving this for a major military catastrophe for the US--kind of a "oh crap, we are up against the wall and this is our only hope of stopping the enemy." Because you only get to use it once with real effectiveness. Blowing it on a raid by another country (who would have taken them out anyways) seems stupid.
The Military

Trojan Kill Switches In Military Technology 392

Posted by Soulskill from the rockets-falling-out-of-the-sky dept.
Nrbelex writes "The New York Times reports in this week's Science section that hardware and software trojan kill switches in military devices are an increasing concern, and may have already been used. 'A 2007 Israeli Air Force attack on a suspected, partly-constructed Syrian nuclear reactor led to speculation about why the Syrian air defense system did not respond to the Israeli aircraft. Accounts of the event initially indicated that sophisticated jamming technology was used to blind the radars. Last December, however, a report in an American technical publication, IEEE Spectrum, cited a European industry source in raising the possibility that the Israelis might have used a built-in kill switch to shut down the radars. Separately, an American semiconductor industry executive said in an interview that he had direct knowledge of the operation and that the technology for disabling the radars was supplied by Americans to the Israeli electronic intelligence agency, Unit 8200.'"

Apple's WWDC Unveils iPhone 3.0, OpenCL, Laptop Updates, and More 770

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the one-more-thing dept.
Lots of big news from WWDC today including updates to almost all of Apple's laptops. They added a 13-inch version to the MacBook Pro line, updated the MacBook Air, and added a few new ports to some of the machines including an SD slot and firewire 800 port. Software updates saw Safari 4 launched, OS X updates including threading changes, Exchange support to mail, calendar, and address book, and OpenCL a new open graphics standard. The iPhone got quite a bit of love in 3.0, much of it just confirming older news. Cut, copy, and paste, shake to undo, developer APIs, Cocoa Touch support for text, landscape mode updates, spotlight, and MMS all made the bullet list. You will now also be able to rent and purchase movies directly from your iPhone. Other new features in 3.0 include the much debated tethering ability, allowing you to use your iPhone as a cellular modem (unfortunately there was no mention of AT&T actually supporting this feature, a wonder there wasn't a riot), integrated TomTom GPS navigation, and game features galore. New functionality also allows you to locate your iPhone via MobileMe, play a sound to help you locate it (regardless if it is set to silent), and even wipe your data remotely. The New iPhone hardware updates, "3GS", adds a 3 megapixel auto-focus camera, voice interfaces, twice the processing power, and hardware encryption. The 3GS comes in 16GB ($199) and 32GB ($299), pushing the 3G (which they are keeping on the market) to $99. Lots of other small updates amidst the bustle, looks like another successful WWDC.
Earth

Powerful Sonar Causes Deafness In Dolphins 323

Posted by Soulskill from the sorry-flipper dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "Mass strandings of dolphins and whales could be caused because the animals are rendered temporarily deaf by military sonar, experiments have shown. Tests on a captive dolphin have demonstrated that hearing can be lost for up to 40 minutes on exposure to sonar and may explain several strandings of dolphins and whales in the past decade. Most strandings are still thought to be natural events, but the tests strengthen fears that exercises by naval vessels equipped with sonar are responsible for at least some of them. For example, in the Bahamas in March, 2000, 16 Cuvier's beaked whales and Blainville's beaked whales and a spotted dolphin beached during a US navy exercise in which sonar was used intensively for 16 hours (PDF). 'The big question is what causes them to strand,' says Dr. Aran Mooney, of the University of Hawaii. 'What we are looking at are animals whose primary sense is hearing, like ours is seeing. Their ears are the most sensitive organ they have.' In the experiment, scientists fitted a harmless suction cup to the dolphin's head, with a sensor attached that monitored the animal's brainwaves, and when the pings reached 203 decibels and were repeated, the neurological data showed the mammal had become deaf, for its brain no longer responded to sound. 'We definitely showed that there are physiological and some behavioral effects [from repeated, loud sonar], but to extrapolate that into the wild, we don't really know,' said Mooney."

Comment Democracy works?!? Huh? (Score 5, Funny) 629

by Kostya (#27311773) Attached to: Mississippi Passes Law To Ban Traffic Light Cameras

However, lawmakers overwhelming voted to get rid of them (117-3 in the House, 42-9 in the Senate), because "the cameras were an invasion of privacy and their constituents thought they had been unfairly ticketed."

So despite the company and local municipalities profiting from this, constituents actually made their voices heard and their representatives acted accordingly?

I am deeply confused. This is not the democracy I am used to. I'm going to have to find something else to be cynical about today.
Programming

Best Practice For Retiring RSS Feeds? 71

Posted by timothy from the cleaning-up-in-advance dept.
GBJ writes "I work for an organisation that runs seasonal online competition events. Each event has its own news feed which becomes obsolete shortly after the event finishes. We're still getting RSS requests for some events as far back as 2004. I'd like to close a few thousand old feeds and remove the resource hit they cause, but I'm not sure what is the best approach. Currently I'm considering just returning a 404, but I have no idea if there is a better way to handle this. Uncle Google hasn't turned anything up yet, but sometimes it's hard to find something when you don't know what it's called ..."
Games

The Best Games of 2020 136

Posted by Soulskill from the congrats-duke-nukem-forever dept.
Gamasutra held a contest this year to describe what hit video games in the year 2020 would be like. Over 150 detailed entries were sent in, and they've posted the top 20. One persistent theme is the ever-present connectedness to the outside world, both in reality-based games and with multiplayer modes that are part of typical daily interactions. Quoting: "It's just an average day at your job. Noon swings around and it's time to amble out of the cubicle farm and venture outside into the city to find some lunch. You put on your slick steel framed Hunters Glasses, place your Hunters earpiece, and with black and white Hunters Gloves on, step out of the building and onto the street. After a block suddenly your dark tinted shades switch to a red tint. A silky female voice echoes in your ear, 'Players within range. Good Hunting.' The glasses are acting as a WiFi enabled computer screen. You swivel your head to scope the scene and find someone standing out within the red crowd as a white outline. The man with the white outline is scouting the area as well, trying to find who else is in the game right now. You get within range, pack a virtual snow ball with your gloves, approach slowly, wind up and throw with all your might the virtual snow ball at the man with the white outline. 'Player Eliminated,' says the female voice, 'Uploading Statistics.'"

Comment How about PUSH mail for all? (Score 1) 606

by Kostya (#27213505) Attached to: What Features Should Be Included With iPhone 3.0?

I know right now they have this one connection that they send push notifications down. I'd love some way to attach my other mail servers to that channel.

I'm not expecting to see that any time (if ever), but man, that would completely and utterly rock. I could hook my work Zimbra server into that channel and get instant notification of work email. I've gotten so used to MobileMe/.Mac being that way that it sucks having work be on a 15 minute refresh.

And yes, once you get used to it, you want to know immediately for all the rest of your email. Right now, I just set my phone to silent with vibrate off when I need privacy--then the phone just leaves me be during my DND times.

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