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Hardware

Submission + - OCZ to cache your HDD with SSD (theregister.co.uk)

Submitted by sl4shd0rk
sl4shd0rk writes: OCZ is coming out with Synapse Cache; an SSD cache for your hard drive. The SSD runs software which copies data into the cache, from your hard drive, as you work with it. The data sits on the SSD until it gets less activity and gets flushed to the hard disk. Aside from boosting your IOPS to 10k/75k (read/write) The SSD also comes with capabilities for AES encryption, SMART and TRIM.
Security

Submission + - DigiNotar goes bankrupt after hack (itpro.co.uk)

Submitted by
twoheadedboy
twoheadedboy writes: "DigiNotar, the Dutch certificate authority (CA) which was recently at the centre of a significant hacking case, has been declared bankrupt. The CA discovered it was compromised on 19 July, leading to 531 rogue certificates being issued. It was only in August that the attacks became public knowledge. Now the company has gone bankrupt, parent firm VASCO said today. VASCO admitted the financial losses associated with the demise of DigiNotar would be “significant.” It all goes to show how quickly a data breach can bring down a company..."
Games

Submission + - Dead Island's Steam problems continue, DRM style. (steampowered.com)

Submitted by Channard
Channard writes: Dead Island has done pretty well in terms of sales, but the game's PC release hasn't gone smoothly. Initially, Deep Silver/Techland released the wrong version of the game onto Steam, causing some consternation amongst gamers. The game also contains a variety of other bugs. However, it now emerges that even the fixed version of the game requires you to be online and connected to Steam in order to play.

Most Steam games only require you to validate the game once, after which you have the option of switching Steam to offline mode and playing the games regardless of whether or not you're connected to the internet at the time. Since the retail version of Dead Island uses Steamworks, this problem affects retail copies of the game as well.

While this may smack of Ubisoft-style DRM, Deep Silver/Techland suggest this is a bug although they then go on to state that they ' cant make any promises' as to when or indeed if it'll be fixed. They also try to blame Steam's Steam Cloud architecture, although this seems to be a case of passing the buck since other Steam Cloud games don't have this problem and can be played fine offline, albeit without Steam Cloud synchronization.

 
Java

Submission + - Oracle: Java's Worst Enemy (infoworld.com) 1

Submitted by
snydeq
snydeq writes: "Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister sees Oracle's buggy Java SE 7 release as only the latest misstep in a mounting litany of bad behavior. 'Oracle shipped Java SE 7 with a serious, showstopping bug, and who was the first to alert the Java community? The Apache Foundation. Oh, the irony. This is the same Apache Foundation that resigned from the Java Community Process executive committee in protest after Oracle repeatedly refused to give it access to the Java Technology Compatibility Kit,' McAllister writes. 'It seems as if Oracle would like nothing better than to stomp Apache and its open source Java efforts clean out of existence. And that's a shame, because at this point, Apache is doing a lot more good for the Java community than Oracle is. If I made my living as a Java developer, I would be pounding the walls right now. Oracle should be ashamed of itself. It's almost as if it doesn't care about its customers at all — ah, but what am I saying?'"

Submission + - Instant Quantum Communication Is Near (popsci.com)

Submitted by fljmayer
fljmayer writes: In this experiment, researchers in Australia and Japan were able to transfer quantum information from one place to another without having to physically move it. It was destroyed in one place and instantly resurrected in another, “alive” again and unchanged. This is a major advance, as previous teleportation experiments were either very slow or caused some information to be lost. See more at http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2011-04/quantum-teleportation-breakthrough-could-lead-instantanous-computing
Science

Submission + - Cuckoos in biological arms race (cam.ac.uk)

Submitted by
Cambridge_Uni
Cambridge_Uni writes: "New research reveals how biological arms races between cuckoos and host birds can escalate into a competition between the host evolving new, unique egg patterns (or ‘signatures’) and the parasite new forgeries."

Submission + - Oldest Known Tetrapod Found (guardian.co.uk)

Submitted by qazsedcft
qazsedcft writes: The oldest footprints ever made by four-legged creatures have been discovered by scientists, forcing them to reconsider a critical period in evolution: the point at which fish crawled out of the water onto land to evolve into reptiles, mammals and eventually humans. The "hand" and "foot" prints are 18m years older than the earliest, previously confirmed fossil remains of "tetrapods" or four-legged vertebrates and were left by lizard-like creatures up to 2.5 metres long. The discovery, reported in tomorrow's issue of the journal Nature, was made in a former quarry in the Holy Cross Mountains in south-eastern Poland. The fossil footprints can be reliably dated to the early Middle Devonian period, around 395 million years ago.
Space

Submission + - Did V838 Monocerotis Collide With Another Star? (discovery.com)

Submitted by astroengine
astroengine writes: V838 Monocerotis erupted to life in 2002, swelling 1,000 times larger and blasting out the light of 600,000 suns. Although this might sound like a supernova, it isn't; a red giant star sits where a white dwarf of black hole should reside. Astronomers have been puzzling over this mystery for years, but new evidence gathered from X-ray observations suggest something rather interesting happened to V838 Mon. It collided with another star...
Linux

Submission + - Fedora 12 Release (fedoraproject.org)

Submitted by lorenlal
lorenlal writes: The latest version of Fedora will be released to the mirrors at 10:00 EST. Key features include setting the base architecture for x86 to i686, Gnome 2.28, KDE 4.3, and all sorts of stuff located here. Please be considerate, and use the mirrors.
Idle

Submission + - Bruce Schneier Action Figure (thatsmyface.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: For the geek who has everything, The Register brings news of a Bruce Schneier action man doll. With a choice of options including "Casual Bruce", "Smart Bruce" and "Head only" and with a choice of heads "Bald", "Ponytail" and "Cyborg". Just in time for xmas eh folks

The doll is available from ThatsMyFace.com for $89.99

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