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Security

Botnets As "eWMDs" 172

Posted by kdawson from the trying-to-wake-sleeping-policymakers dept.
John Kelly writes "The current issue of Policy Review has a paper by an American computer scientist and the recent Permanent Undersecretary of Defense for Estonia. Drawing on the Estonian cyber attacks a year and a half ago, as well as other recent examples, they argue that botnets are the major problem. They propose that botnets should be designated as 'eWMDs' — electronic weapons of mass destruction. The paper also proposes a list of reforms that would help to limit the scale and impact of future botnet attacks, beginning with defining and outlawing spam, internationally." Many of the proposed solutions are common-sensical and won't be news to this audience, but it is interesting to see the botnet threat painted in such stark terms for readers of the Hoover Institution's Policy Review. For a more comprehensive overview of cyber-security threats, listen to NPR's interview with security experts on the occasion of the release of a new report, "Securing Cyberspace for the 44th Presidency," which recommends creating a cyber-security czar reporting to the President.
Emulation (Games)

Submission + - William Gibson's AGRIPPA Recovered and Emulated (umd.edu)

Submitted by
MGK
MGK writes: "Agrippa (a book of the dead) appeared in 1992 as a collaboration between artist Dennis Ashbaugh, author William Gibson, and publisher Kevin Begos, Jr. On December 9, 2008--the sixteenth anniversary of the original "Transmission" event debuting Agrippa--The Agrippa Files (http://agrippa.english.ucsb.edu) announces the release of two major new discoveries for scholars and fans:
  • An emulated "run" of the entire original Agrippa poem, made possible by the forensic recovery of the code containing Gibson's text from a mint condition Agrippa diskette loaned by collector Allan Chasanoff. This is the first public view of Agrippa in its original incarnation (that is, its custom-made behaviors and interface) since 1992. direct link: http://agrippa.english.ucsb.edu/category/the-book-subcategories/the-poem-running-in-emulation
  • An hour's worth of never-before-seen footage from the December 9, 1992, public debut of Agrippa at the Americas Society in New York City during the "Transmission" event. This footage, shot by "Templar, Rosehammer, and Pseudophred" is the source of the transcription of the text that was released online within hours of the event. direct link: http://agrippa.english.ucsb.edu/category/documents-subcategories/the-hack

These materials are accompanied by high-resolution images, stills from the video, screenshots, and a bit-level copy of the disk image itself, all publicly accessible with the permission of Kevin Begos, Jr., William Gibson, Allan Chasanoff, "Templar," and "Rosehammer."

We are also pleased to be releasing a major new full-length essay documenting the process of recovering these materials and exploring their significance for the study of the work: Matthew G. Kirschenbaum, with Doug Reside and Alan Liu, "No Round Trip: Two New Primary Sources for Agrippa."

direct link: http://agrippa.english.ucsb.edu/kirschenbaum-matthew-g-with-doug-reside-and-alan-liu-no-round-trip-two-new-primary-sources-for-agrippa

The Agrippa Files, a project of the UC Santa Barbara English Department's Literature.Culture.Media Center, was aided by the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH) and the Digital Forensics Lab at University of Maryland, College Park, in recovering and releasing these materials. Special thanks to Doug Reside and Matt Kirschenbaum for their efforts."
IBM

DARPA's IBM-Led Neural Network Project Seeks To Imitate Brain 170

Posted by timothy from the cats-are-smarter-than-people dept.
An anonymous reader writes "According to an article in the BBC, IBM will lead an ambitious DARPA-funded project in 'cognitive computing.' According to Dharmendra Modha, the lead scientist on the project, '[t]he key idea of cognitive computing is to engineer mind-like intelligent machines by reverse engineering the structure, dynamics, function and behaviour of the brain.' The article continues, 'IBM will join five US universities in an ambitious effort to integrate what is known from real biological systems with the results of supercomputer simulations of neurons. The team will then aim to produce for the first time an electronic system that behaves as the simulations do. The longer-term goal is to create a system with the level of complexity of a cat's brain.'"
Businesses

Submission + - Nationwide domain name/yard sign conspiracy (rjmetrics.com) 1

Submitted by
robertjmoore
robertjmoore writes: "Everywhere I go lately, I see these lawn signs that say "Single?" and then give a URL with my town's name in it. Being a huge business intelligence geek with too much time on my hands, I decided to track down who was behind them and wound up uncovering ten thousand domain names, a massively coordinated and well-funded guerilla marketing machine, and the $45 Million revenue business hiding behind it all. Hot off the presses, these are my findings."
Space

Submission + - New class of pulsars discovered (nasa.gov)

Submitted by
xyz
xyz writes: "NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has discovered a new class of pulsars which emit purely in gamma rays. A pulsar is a rapidly spinning neutron star, and of the nearly 1800 catalogued so far, only a small fraction emit at frequencies higher than radio waves. The gamma-ray-only pulsar, which lies within a supernova remnant known as CTA 1, is silent across parts of the electromagnetic spectrum where pulsars are normally found, indicating a new class of pulsars."
Transportation

Submission + - Wireless not the cause of Qantas incident

Submitted by Raalle
Raalle writes: No one here will be surprised by the findings of the ATSB that that the recent Qantas incident was not caused by wireless interference but by "a computer unit that detects the angle at which the plane is flying." Hmm... so does that mean that Qantas will be issuing a full retraction? Probably not....

In case you don't recall, here's the original Slashdot story.

And here's a BBC News article about what the ATSB actually found.
Education

Submission + - Richard Dawkins' Website blocked in Turkey (richarddawkins.net)

Submitted by meist3r
meist3r writes: Internet providers in Turkey have been ordered by court verdict to block access to the website of famous Evolutionist Richard Dawkins after they acknowledged a claim by Islamic creationist author Adnan Oktar. Reason for the verdict were comments by Dawkins on his website concerning Oktars book "Atlas of Creation". While this is not the first time that turkish authorities have restricted access to websites for religious and ideological reasons the case of Creationism against Evolution is becoming less about scientific facts or evidence thereof but rather about political and religious indoctrination.
Patents

Submission + - Venture Company Turns Patent Troll, As Predicted (wsj.com)

Submitted by
JuliusSu
JuliusSu writes: "Nathan Myhrvold's firm, Intellectual Ventures, has accumulated over 20,000 patents, and has now obtained payments of $200 to $400 million from companies like Verizon and Cisco. Early on, technology companies invested in the firm because they considered it an ally that would keep patents out of the hands of "patent trolls". Now they are investing as protection against being sued for patent infringement: "There is an "implicit threat" that if companies don't agree to a licensing deal with Intellectual Ventures, they could face costly patent-infringement lawsuits, says Henry Gutman, a Simpson Thacher lawyer. A more complete story was published in the Wall Street Journal yesterday (paid subscription required). This turn of events was foreseen two years ago by Business Week and Slashdot readers."
The Courts

Submission + - Bill to Add Accountability to Border Laptop Search (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes: "Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-CA) has introduced a bill that would add accountability to the DHS searches conducted upon the laptops of those crossing the border. Specifically, it would require the issue of receipts to those who had their property confiscated so that it could later be returned, would limit how long the DHS can keep laptops, would require them to keep the laptop's information secure, and would create a way to complain about abuse. Finally, the DHS would be required to keep track of how many searches were done and report the details to Congress. Rep. Sanchez also has also issued a statement about the proposed bill."
Earth

Submission + - correction to a slashdot report on Carbon dating (scienceblogs.com)

Submitted by
nanahuatzin
nanahuatzin writes: "In a previous report of slashdot news it was stated that that carbon dating in the ocean can only be trusted up to 150 million years ago.

But the original report at http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2008/09/03/0802841105 it was not about carbon dating.

The problem first is that the report at slashdot can be used to say that Carbon dating does not work, which is one of the arguments of the creationst. but carbon dating is not used on samples older than a few tenths of thousands years old, never is used to samples millions of years old. And the original article is not about carbon dating,

The second problem is that it can be used to argue against the evidence of global warmimg. But we could understand current climate and climate change with far less than the last 100 million years of a climate record.

The report is really about what is need to be reasesed on data older than 150, million. Which is exactly the process on how we know how to use it with precision."
Google

Submission + - Google now supports CalDAV

Submitted by sof_boy
sof_boy writes: After many months of testing, Google Calendar finally adds CalDAV support. "CalDAV is an open protocol that allows calendar access via WebDAV. CalDAV models calendar events as HTTP resources in iCalendar format, and models calendars containing events as WebDAV collections. This allows you to publish and subscribe to calendars, share them collaboratively, sync between multiple users and sync between multiple devices."
Microsoft

Microsoft Blesses LGPL, Joins Apache Foundation 425

Posted by timothy from the could-be-the-largest-free-software-vendor dept.
Penguinisto writes "According to a somewhat jaw-dropping story in The Register, it appears that Microsoft has performed a trifecta of geek-scaring feats: They have joined the Apache Software Foundation as a Platinum member(at $100K USD a year), submitted LGPL-licensed patches for ADOdb, and have pledged to expand their Open Specifications Promise by adding to the list more than 100 protocols for interoperability between its Windows Server and the Windows client. While I sincerely doubt they'll release Vista under a GPL license anytime soon, this is certainly an unexpected series of moves on their part, and could possibly lead to more OSS (as opposed to 'Shared Source') interactivity between what is arguably Linux' greatest adversary and the Open Source community." (We mentioned the announced support for the Apache Foundation earlier today, as well.)

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