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The Courts

Submission + - FBI Doesn't Tell Courts About Bogus Evidence

Submitted by dprovine
dprovine writes: According to a joint investigation by series of articles in The Washington Post and 60 Minutes, a forensic test used by the FBI for decades is known to be invalid. The National Academy of Science issued a report in 2004 that FBI investigators had given "problematic" testimony to juries. The FBI later stopped using "bullet lead analysis", but sent a letter to law enforcement officials saying that they still fully supported the science behind it. Hundreds of criminal defendants — some already convicted in part on the testimony of FBI experts — were not informed about the problems with the evidence used against them in court. Does anyone at the Justice Department even care about what effect this will have on how the public in general (and juries in particular) regards the trustworthiness of FBI testimony?
Movies

NYT Confirms Movie Studios Paid to Support HD DVD 441

Posted by Zonk from the money-makes-the-world-go-round dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The New York Times has confirmed the story that Paramount and DreamWorks Animation were paid $150 million for an exclusive HD-DVD deal that will last 18 months. 'Paramount and DreamWorks Animation declined to comment. Microsoft, the most prominent technology company supporting HD DVDs, said it could not rule out payment but said it wrote no checks. "We provided no financial incentives to Paramount or DreamWorks whatsoever," said Amir Majidimehr, the head of Microsoft's consumer media technology group.'" We discussed Paramount's defection on Monday.
Supercomputing

Quantum Computing and Optically Controlled Electrons 74

Posted by samzenpus from the greased-lightning dept.
eldavojohn writes "Researchers have released a new paper on quantum computing theorizing how to use optically controlled electrons to make an ultrafast quantum computer. From the article, "Scientists have designed a scheme to create one of the fastest quantum computers to date using light pulses to rotate electron spins, which serve as quantum bits. This technique improves the overall clock rate of the quantum computer, which could lead to the fastest potentially scalable quantum computing scheme of which the scientists are aware.""
Microsoft

Is Windows Vista in Trouble? 879

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the shooting-feet dept.
Ken Erfourth writes "The Inquirer.net is running a story about what they consider two powerful indications that Vista is failing in the marketplace. One, Dell has reintroduced PCs running Windows XP on its website due to customer demand. Two, Microsoft is conducting a worldwide firesale on a bundle of Microsoft Office 2007/WindowsXP Starter Edition. According to Inquirer.net, at least, these are signs of serious problems selling Vista. Are we seeing the stumbling of the Microsoft Juggernaught with the slow adoption of Windows Vista?"
Space

Submission + - Black Hole Cluster Emits Massive Cloud

Submitted by
Shifty Jim
Shifty Jim writes: "According to a recent article at Space.com a black hole cluster may be the source of a massive cloud millions of light years in size. From the article:
'A giant cloud of superheated gas 6 million light years wide might be formed by the collective sigh of several supermassive black holes, scientists say. The plasma cloud, detailed in April 10 issue of Astrophysical Journal, might be the source of mysterious cosmic rays that permeate our universe.
...
The plasma cloud is located about 300 million light years away near the Coma Cluster and is spread across a vast region of space thought to contain several galaxies with supermassive black holes, or active galactic nuclei (AGN), embedded at their centers.'"

Feed Safari browser exploit produced within 9 hours in hacking competition (engadget.com)

From feed by engfeed

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

Shane Macaulay and Dino Dai Zovi, a software engineer and security researcher taking part in the brilliantly named "PWN to Own" Hack-a-Mac contest at the CanSecWest conference in Vancouver, managed to hack into and take control of a MacBook by finding a security exploit that takes advantage of an open Safari browser window. Shane and his teammate Dino won the prize of a brand new MacBook -- presumably loaded with Firefox or some other browser variant -- for managing to find the hole on the second and final day of the contest. The hack wasn't exactly a breeze, since the pair admitted to a total of 9 hours in order to find and exploit the weakness. Apple has patched OS X four times over the last year to fix dozens of security updates, and only regurgitated the corporate line when asked for comment on this particular vulnerability. ("Apple takes security very seriously", well duh!) Even with the recent arousal of interest in Mac OS security, the world has yet to see any kind of exploit released into the wild world web; when / if one does, we'd probably expect the most damaging exploit to use good ol' social engineering rather than a complicated hack like this. Still, Mac users should take some form of satisfaction from knowing that the issue of Mac security is being investigated, rather than being taken for granted.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time

Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!
XBox (Games)

Microsoft Updates Xbox 360 Back Compat Again 71

Posted by Zonk from the everything-old-is-new-again dept.
liquidzero4 writes "Earlier this week, Microsoft patched in another of their regular backwards compatibility updates. This one is fairly important; not only does it add a number of titles to the official back-compat list but several of the new old games are fairly popular. The likes of Panzer Dragoon ORTA, Jet Set Radio Future, Mercenaries, Oddworld: Munch's Oddysee, Soul Calibur 2, and Star Wars Republic Commando are sure to make some 360 owners happy."

Feed Why the world has lost interest in IPTV services (theregister.com)

From feed by registerfeed
Is it feasible to deliver TV-quality video over IP?

Comment While doing the research for the very first issue of Faultline, one IPTV specialist (who shall remain nameless) told us "you can't send video across the web", and proceeded to lecture us on the finer points of Quality of Service protocols.
Games

Massively Multiplayer Online Birdwatching Game 63

Posted by Zonk from the more-learning-is-fun dept.
eldavojohn writes "The shots you take in CONE Sutro Forest don't come from shotguns or sniper rifles. In the game, players manipulate remote control cameras, taking pictures of birds and classifying them. It starts next week with the premise being that the more birds you take pictures of and classify correctly, the more points you get. It's more of an experiment in collaborative technology than a game ... but if you can get your users to do work for you and have fun at the same time, you might have something big."
Education

Submission + - Open IWB software?

Submitted by Flying Haggis
Flying Haggis writes: I am a maths teacher (ages 11-18 to avoid confusion between US and UK systems). I will soon be given an interactive/electronic whiteboard and projector but I am a bit baffled about brand and software. My concern comes in that if I develop resources for one board then they may well not work on the other (main) brand if/when i swap to another school. To summarise:
Brand "S": will run multi-platform (inc Linux) but only on proprietary boards
Brand "P": software can be licensed for other boards but is not multi-platform
"P" would seem like a winner — at least until we take the department down a Linux thin-client route...
This is obviously a problem that many of you face in your fields as well when evaluating software. Question is, does anyone know of an open environment for classroom IWB use — or even a "closed" one that supports the main file formats?
Biotech

Submission + - Tasmanian paper made from 'roo poo

Submitted by
msmiffy
msmiffy writes: "BBC News reports that a Tasmanian paper company is offering tourists — and others — paper made from kangaroo and wallaby dung. It is nice to see companies "going through the motions" to produce a green and sustainable product.

This may be old news for some, as the article reports that it is already being done in Africa using the end-product of elephants and in Scandinavia with post-elk fibres."
Apple

Apple Ships 8-Core MacPro 628

Posted by CmdrTaco from the way-more-cores-than-the-earth dept.
ivan1024 writes "The Apple website is announcing the availability of an 8-core Mac Pro. The machine will ship with two 3.0 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon 5300 processors. Older models with the Dual-Core chips remain available. Base model with two 3.0 GHz Quad-Core Xeon processors start at $3997, (albeit with unacceptably minimal RAM or HD space; fully spec'd with dual 30" monitors and tons o' RAM/HD still over $10K... bummer)"
The Courts

Dispelling BSD License Misconceptions 202

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the deflating-the-demons dept.
AlanS2002 writes "Groklaw is hosting an article by Brendan Scott which looks at the misconceptions surrounding the BSD license. From the article: 'We observe that there exists a broad misconception that the BSD permits the licensing of BSD code and modifications of BSD code under closed source licenses. In this paper we put forward an argument to the effect that the terms of the BSD require BSD code and modifications to BSD code to be licensed under the terms of the BSD license. We look at some possible consequences and observe that this licensing requirement could have serious impacts on the unwary.'"

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