Comment Yes (Score 1) 601
but I used to work for PGP...
Comment You can't go c but you can go faster (Score 1) 315
I'm a mathematician, not a physicist. In special relativity the Lorentz transformation has a singularity at the speed of light. Its perfectly defined below and faster than the speed of light. Richard Feynman suggested that unless the math prohibits it, it will be found in nature. Of course, if we see a particle hitting another before it was emitted, we'd likely interpret it as the target "pulled" the particle from the emitter. This explains the alternate view of physics -- all matter emits dark, and light bulbs and stars suck the dark in. Mathematically it makes just as much sense as emitting massless photons. Who's going to buy the idea of a massless particle that goes the speed of light? Its crazy talk.
This is just a reminder that like economics, scientific method is really a confidence game. Its all a matter of whether you believe the rules stated so far are consistent.
Want a Body Piercing With That Server? 19
1sockchuck writes "The web hosting business is known for promotional gimmicks. But here's an unusual one: ServerBeach UK is offering a free body piercing with every new server ordered on April 1st. 'We were tired of the typical boring giveaways that have been done to death' said ServerBeach's Dominic Monkhouse. The stunt revives memories of earlier guerrilla marketing efforts by web hosts, like the 'human billboard' who was paid $7,000 to tattoo a hosting company's logo on the back of his head."
Comment Re:Why does Google need to 'partner' with the NSA? (Score 1) 122
Where else is Google going to find someone that understands how to configure SELinux so it can be used in real life.
Oh, doh! I referenced real life in the same sentence as SELinux and Google in a Slashdot posting on the NSA.
Mozilla Plans Fix For Critical Firefox Vulnerability In Next Release 140
Trailrunner7 writes "A month after an advisory was published detailing a new vulnerability in Firefox, Mozilla said it has received exploit code for the flaw and is planning to patch the weakness on March 30 in the next release of Firefox. Mozilla officials said Thursday that the vulnerability, which was disclosed February 18 by Secunia, is a critical flaw that could result in remote code execution on a vulnerable machine. The vulnerability is in version 3.6 of Firefox."
Piezo Crystals Harness Sound To Generate Hydrogen 187
MikeChino writes "Scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have discovered that a mix of zinc oxide crystals, water, and noise pollution can efficiently produce hydrogen without the need for a dirty catalyst like oil. To generate the clean hydrogen, researchers produced a new type of zinc oxide crystals that absorb vibrations when placed in water. The vibrations cause the crystals to develop areas with strong positive and negative charges — a reaction that rips the surrounding water molecules and releases hydrogen and oxygen. The mechanism, dubbed the piezoelectrochemical effect, converts 18% of energy from vibrations into hydrogen gas (compared to 10% from conventional piezoelectric materials), and since any vibration can produce the effect, the system could one day be used to generate power from anything that produces noise — cars whizzing by on the highway, crashing waves in the ocean, or planes landing at an airport."
Dead Pigs Used To Investigate Ocean's "Dead Zones" 106
timothy writes "As places to study what happens to corpses, the Atlantic Ocean is both much larger and much more specialized than the famous 'body farm' in Knoxville, TN. But for all kinds of good reasons, sending human bodies into Davy Jones' locker just to see where they float and how they bloat is unpopular. Pigs don't pay taxes, and more importantly, they don't vote. So Canadian scientists have taken to using them as human-body proxies, to study what happens when creatures of similar size and hairlessness (aka, us) end up 86ed and in the drink."
Comment Absolutely evil (Score 2, Interesting) 600
We already know how to break into systems with buffer and heap overflows. We know how to do SQL injection into not-so-smart applications. If you work at it you can break into almost anything.
Absolutely no good purpose is served providing a toolkit that allows people to break into naively configured systems. Much of what you describe is akin to leaving the keys in your Maserati with the doors unlocked and the engine running. Please don't make things easier for joyriding teenagers.
If a site wants to know if they're secure, within the current limits of our knowledge, they can perform their own audits, and hire their own advisers to test their systems in a controlled fashion.
Applications, such as BOINC, have an unknown state of security review or audit. I doubt they applied the coding guidelines of CERT, or any of the Common Criteria levels. An administrator would only deploy such applications in the DMZ of their network. To call a Linux system, or Windoze system, secure means you've evaluated the risk of both the operating system and the applications on that system and decided it is good enough for you.
Submission + - Verizon Denounces Network Neutrality (internetnews.com) 1
darthcamaro writes: There are a lot of opinions in the U.S debate over network neutrality. The FCC is set to announce their ruling tomorrow but today Verizon's CEO Ivan Seidenberg came out with a stinging attack against it. Speaking at the big Supercomm conference in Chicago, Verizon's chief blasted network neutrality as a burdonsome regime that that could put the U.S back into a full blow recession.
"If a burdensome regime of network neutrality is imposed on all parts of the Internet industry, it will inject an extraordinary amount of bureaucratic oversight into the economy's main growth engine to the future," Seidenberg said."We can't create a smart economy by dumbing down our critical infrastructure. "We can't move forward by pitting network providers and applications developers against each other when the real promise of broadband is an expanding pie for everyone."
Submission + - New Video Illustrates our Nuclear Policy MADness (youtube.com) 2
__aajbyc7391 writes: At this week's historic UN Security Council session, President Obama eloquently presented his vision of 'a world without nuclear weapons.' To help advance this initiative, Stanford Professor Emeritus Steven Hellman, co-inventor of public key cryptography and founder of NuclearRisk.org, has just published a 97 second video that graphically illustrates the unacceptable risk posed by the concept of 'nuclear deterrence.' Global warming pales in comparison to the MADness of what we've learned to accept as 'normal.'
Submission + - Iran's nuclear ambitions (theglobeandmail.com)
selven writes: "Following Iran's revelation regarding its secret nuclear enrichment plant, western leaders are banding together against it, saying that it violates Articles 2 and 3 of the Non-Proliferation Treaty and suggesting serious sanctions against the country if it refuses to back down on its uranium enrichment program. Iran maintains that it nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only and that it's not fair for the US to be criticizing them in this way while having thousands of nuclear warheads."
Submission + - Austin Police Department Threatens Online Commente (statesman.com)
FutureDomain writes: "Annoyed at online commenters using police officer's names, the Austin Texas police department has threatened to "sue them for libel or file charges if investigators think a crime was committed". State lawmakers passed a bill that bans "using another person's name to post messages on a social networking site without their permission and with the intent to harm, defraud, intimidate or threaten". The department also shut down a Twitter site last March that claimed to issue official police bulletins."
Submission + - Infidelity rife in cybersex world (itnews.com.au) 4
bennyboy64 writes: "According to new research more people than ever are seeking treatment for their cybersex addiction. Doctoral candidate Marcus Squirrell surveyed over 1,300 internet users who regularly frequented online sex, fetish and swinging sites to engage in online sexual activities, which included accessing erotic pictures, as well as interacting with others using chat rooms and webcams. According to Squirrell, a "fairly large percentage" of respondents admitted to taking part in cybersex activities outside the comfort of their home. "A lot of people who have got problems with compulsive online sexual behaviour can't actually control themselves and end up doing it at work as well," Squirrell said. In some cases people were participating in online sexual activites for up to ten hour per day. Squirrell also found that more than half the participants who engaged in cybersex were married or in a serious relationship."
Submission + - Alzheimer's Disease linked to Sleep Deprivation (newscientist.com) 3
sonnejw0 writes: "NewScientist is reporting a link between sleep deprivation and increased amyloid-beta plaque load, the protein thought responsible for a large part of the symptoms of Alzheimer's Disease, in mice. Medication to abrogate insomnia reduced the plaque load. Also discussed is a recently discovered sleep cycle of amyloid-beta deposition in the brain, in which levels decrease while asleep. From the article:
""Holtzman also tried sending the mice to sleep with a drug that is being trialled for insomnia, called Almorexant. This reduced the amount of plaque-forming protein. He suggests that sleeping for longer could limit the formation of plaques, and perhaps block it altogether."
Submission + - Version 2.5.10 released (sourceforge.net)
SF:amirshk writes: The eLibrary Project is an eBook organizer with tagging and search capabilities.
It automatically downloads the book\'s cover image and info from the web, and displays them in a friendly user interface.
New version includes:
* Tabbed split UI allowing to view several books
* New concept: default file for book, so Shift+Double Click will open
the default viewer and DoubleClick will open the eLibrary book info.
* Books browsing according to authors and publisher
* More data retrieved and without limit
* Automatic book tagging via google books project
* MRU books and latest searches
* Easier tags managment vie drag&drop and shortcuts
Several bug fixes:
* Multi-User issues
* Non english characters in tags and filenames
* And more.
Download: http://sourceforge.net/projects/ebooklibrary/files/Install/2.5.10/eLibrary_2_5_10.msi/download
