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Communications

Submission + - Undersea Cables Damaged by Earthquake (gigaom.com)

Submitted by
ColoradoAuthor
ColoradoAuthor writes: "The horrific earthquake and the ensuing tsunami in Japan have caused widespread damage to undersea communications, according to data collected by telecom industry sources. Initially, it was thought that the damage to the cables that connect Japan and Asia to each other and other parts of the world was limited, but new data shows the extent of the problems."

Submission + - White House wants new copyright law (cnet.com) 1

Submitted by slewfo0t
slewfo0t writes: The White House today proposed sweeping revisions to U.S. copyright law, including making "illegal streaming" of audio or video a federal felony and allowing FBI agents to wiretap suspected infringers.
Science

Submission + - Physicists Develop Quantum Public Key Encryption (technologyreview.com)

Submitted by
KentuckyFC
KentuckyFC writes: "Public key cryptography allows anybody to encrypt a message using a public key but only those with another private key can decrypt the message. That's possible because of certain mathematical functions that are easy to perform in one direction but hard to do in reverse. The most famous example is multiplication. It's easy to multiply two numbers together to get a third but hard to start with the third number and work out its factors. Now Japanese researchers have discovered a quantum problem that is hard to solve in one direction but easy to do in reverse. This asymmetry, they say, could form the basis of a new kind of quantum public key cryptography. Their system is based on the problem of distinguishing between two ensembles of quantum states. This is similar to the problem of determining whether two graphs are identical, ie whether they correspond vertex-for-vertex and edge-for-edge. Increasing the complexity of the graph can always make this problem practically impossible for a quantum computer to solve in a reasonable time. But knowing the structure of a subset of the graph makes this problem easy, so this acts as a kind of private key for decrypting messages."
Cloud

Submission + - IsoHunt To Court: Google Is The Bigger Problem (techspot.com)

Submitted by Krystalo
Krystalo writes: isoHunt is still fighting its legal battle with the MPAA. In the latest episode, the torrent website filed a reply brief to the US Court of Appeals in which it suggests that Google, and not IsoHunt, is the largest BitTorrent search engine on the Internet.
United States

Submission + - White House wants to make IP infringement a felony (cnet.com) 2

Submitted by
Shikaku
Shikaku writes: "The White House today proposed sweeping revisions to U.S. copyright law, including making "illegal streaming" of audio or video a federal felony and allowing FBI agents to wiretap suspected infringers.

In a 20-page white paper (PDF), the Obama administration called on the U.S. Congress to fix "deficiencies that could hinder enforcement" of intellectual property laws."
Microsoft

Submission + - The Fundamental Failure of Endpoint Security (net-security.org)

Submitted by Orome1
Orome1 writes: Most people owning a PC are familiar with Microsoft's patching process — it's easy and it's there. For a lot of them, it also gives the impression that Microsoft's products are chock-full of flaws. But, according to recent research, it's not the vulnerabilities in Microsoft's products we should worry about, but those in third-party software. Even though the number of discovered vulnerabilities has slightly decreased in the last two years, the worrying fact is that 84 percent of all those found in 2010 can be exploited from a remote location, and that 69 percent are tied to third-party products that may or may not have a quality patching mechanism in place.
NASA

Submission + - A Superhero Scrubs the Air: The Mighty Houseplant (wsj.com)

Submitted by walterbyrd
walterbyrd writes: The humble houseplant is on the attack. Building on NASA experiments for air purification in space, scientists are pinpointing plant species—from the peace lily to the asparagus fern—that are particularly skillful at cleaning indoor air of pollutants that can cause a range of health problems.

A growing body of global research is showing plants can reduce dust particles and contaminants, such as formaldehyde and benzene, that come from cigarette smoke, paint, furniture, building materials and other sources.

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