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Encryption

BD+ Successfully Resealed 443

Posted by Soulskill from the effort-vs.-reward dept.
IamTheRealMike writes "A month on from the story that BD+ had been completely broken, it appears a new generation of BD+ programs has re-secured the system. A SlySoft developer now estimates February 2009 until support is available. There's a list of unrippable movies on the SlySoft forums; currently there are 16. Meanwhile, one of the open source VM developers seems to have given up on direct emulation attacks, and is now attempting to break the RSA algorithm itself. Back in March SlySoft confidently proclaimed BD+ was finished and said the worst case scenario was 3 months' work: apparently they underestimated the BD+ developers."
Linux

Slackware 12.2 Released 351

Posted by CmdrTaco from the hiya-patrick dept.
pilsner.urquell submitted a quote from the announcement saying "Well folks, it's that time to announce a new stable Slackware release again. So, without further ado, announcing Slackware version 12.2! Since we've moved to supporting the 2.6 kernel series exclusively (and fine-tuned the system to get the most out of it), we feel that Slackware 12.2 has many improvements over our last release (Slackware 12.1) and is a must-have upgrade for any Slackware user."
Image

Inventor Builds Robot Wife Screenshot-sm 469

Posted by samzenpus from the you-lonely-lonely-man dept.
Inventor Le Trung must really like the book "The Stepford Wives," because he has built the dream of every lonely man without hope, a robot wife. Le's wife, Aiko, starts the day by reading him the newspaper headlines and they go for a drives in the countryside. Le says his relationship with Aiko hasn't strayed into the bedroom, but a few tweaks could turn her into a sexual partner, even redesigning her to have a simulated orgasm. *Shudder*
Operating Systems

Submission + - A new way of sleeping in the Linux kernel

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Linux Kernel version 2.6.25 introduces a new Linux process sleeping state, TASK_KILLABLE: If a process is sleeping killably in this new state, it works like TASK_UNINTERRUPTIBLE with the bonus that it can respond to fatal signals. This feature is generally an improvement over the existing options--after all, it is another way to keep from getting stuck with dead processes.
Data Storage

Submission + - Western Digital working on 20,000 rpm drive

Submitted by MrKaos
MrKaos writes: Western digital seems to be preparing itself for the onslaught of SSD drives affecting it's market by developing a 20,000 rpm hard drive. Similar to the Velociraptor line of drives, the new drives seem to be offering lower capacity as a trade off for higher seek and write times. Looks like the battle lines are drawn for a new series of development in the mass storage front.
Security

Submission + - Canadian Eco-Database almost compromised. (www.cbc.ca)

Submitted by
BPPG
BPPG writes: "An unusual mishap occurred that could have opened up attacks on a government database known as NEMISIS, the National Enforcement Management Information System and Intelligence System.

From the article:

A sensitive government document detailing a classified computer database has been given to the CBC after it was found lying on an Ottawa street in a rain-stained, tire-marked brown envelope.

The document is a risk assessment of an Environment Canada classified environmental enforcement database. It details a number of the system's failings and describes exactly how the data could be attacked and corrupted, the CBC's James Cudmore reported.

NEMISIS, a semi-secret system and database which has been around since the late 90's (as detailed in some heavy documents here)[PDF] is due for an security overhaul. Somebody might have just happened to drop some medium-risk "Protected B" assessments out of their briefcase. Environment Canada has responded and is doing some internal internal investigations. The interesting this is that nobody has said whether or not the documents could have already been looked before they were found by the people that turned them in.

Aside from industrial fraud and ecological activism, The name 'NEMESIS' alone could have prompted an attack."
Supercomputing

Submission + - University of Toronto, IBM to launch supercomputer (itnews.com.au)

Submitted by Ashlynne9423
Ashlynne9423 writes: The University of Toronto and IBM are building Canada's most powerful supercomputer, a mammoth machine that will need its own building for storage and will be capable of performing 360 trillion calculations per second. It's expected the system will be among the top 20 fastest supercomputers in the world and the largest outside the United States. It will be able to store data equivalent to that held by one million regular DVDs.
Power

Submission + - Hybrid cars - recharge the battery with the brakes (lovetoguide.com)

Submitted by
rhowern
rhowern writes: "The battery system in hybrid cars is recharged from the car itself. For instance, today, a hybrid car's battery is able to recover power when the brakes are applied. Of course, there will come that day when it loses its ability to recharge itself, but by then the price of a new battery may very well have come down considerably from today's prices."
The Courts

Submission + - Dispelling confusion & FUD in Open Source lice (ostatic.com) 1

Submitted by ruphus13
ruphus13 writes: Internetnews released an article today where they claimed that "enterprises using open source are being sued for not complying with the multitude of licenses the software comes with,". The author goes on to suggests that businesses should think twice before using open-source software, lest they find themselves on the receiving end of a lawsuit themselves. This is nothing but creating FUD in the market. The linked article outlines the flaws in this reasoning, and points to specific issues to consider when choosing an Open Source license. The OSS movement definitely has unneeded complexity in its licensing, but encouraging companies to 'stay away' from Open Source for fear of being sued is nothing short of irresponsible trolling and flame-baiting.
Operating Systems

Submission + - Is Foxconn deliberatley sabotaging Linux? (ubuntuforums.org) 3

Submitted by
Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward writes: "A user on the Ubuntu forums posted a thread questioning the practices of the hardware manufacturer, Foxconn. From the Thread:
"I disassembled my BIOS to have a look around, and while I won't post the results here,I'll tell you what I did find.
They have several different tables, a group for Windws XP and Vista, a group for 2000, a group for NT, Me, 95, 98, etc. that just errors out, and one for LINUX. The one for Linux points to a badly written table that does not correspond to the board's ACPI implementation."
The worst part is Foxconn's insistence that the product is ACPI compliant because their tables passed to Windows work, and that Microsoft gave the the magic WHQL certification."
Government

Submission + - Ottawa apologizes for "Indian residential scho (nationalpost.com)

Submitted by BPPG
BPPG writes: Starting as early as the 1870's and late into the twentieth century, the Canadian government implemented a school system for aboriginal children, intended to reform them into English-speaking Christian Labourers. The methods of these schools mostly included isolation from their previous cultures and severe reprimands for those even speaking in their native languages.

Today, Ottawa is formally apologizing. Native leaders including Leader of the Assembly of First Nations, Phil Fontaine, Inuit leader Mary Simon, Metis leader Clem Chartier, Patrick Brazeau, national chief of the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples were present in the house of commons for the speech delivered by Prime Minister Stephen Harper (video also available). While generally seeming like a joyous day for survivours across Canada, there are still some mixed reactions to the apology.

I have a buddy who told me that they were worried about protesters for other causes taking advantage of the media on Parliament Hill today, but apparently that didn't turn out to be much of an issue.

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