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Sci-Fi

Submission + - The 4400 Canceled After Long Season Break

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: The 4400 was canceled this week by the USA Network, another in a long line of NBC affiliated sci-fi series to get the axe. While never able to find the audience that Heroes, and for a time, Battlestar Gallactica found, The 4400 managed to bring four seasons to air under increasingly tiny budgets. No reason was given for the cancellation at this time.
Power

Submission + - Perpetual Motion/Free Energy Machine Demonstration (engadget.com)

Submitted by
dotbenjamin
dotbenjamin writes: "Engadget report that the Kinetica Museum, London, will be holding a 10-day demonstration of a free energy machine as previously discussed on Slashdot. This machine would provide unlimited clean energy, breaking the fundamental laws of physics. There's been no paper published in any peer-reviewed journals and there are many who think this is complete bunk. Hopefully the demonstration will shed some more light on the matter."
Power

Submission + - Orbo Technology Being Demonstrated by Steorn (engadget.com) 3

Submitted by
eldavojohn
eldavojohn writes: "What was rejected by many of us as snakeoil (see tags), is being demonstrated today at 6PM at the Kinetica museum (1pm Eastern Time) for a ten day demonstration to the public. Known as the new technology "Orbo" by Irish company Steorn, it generated a lot of controversy as they claim this machine uses magnets to violate the laws of physics that we have witnessed for nearly three centuries. If this is a PR stunt, they're sure taking it all the way. From the article, "CEO Sean McCarthy tells SilconRepublic how it works. Namely, the time variance in magnetic fields allows the Orbo platform to "consistently produce power, going against the law of conservation of energy which states that energy cannot be created or destroyed." He goes on to say "It's too good to be true but it is true. It will have such an impact on everything we do. The only analogy I can give is if you had absolute proof that God wasn't real.""
The Media

Submission + - Steorm Free Energy Device demo in London

Submitted by DaddyExcellent
DaddyExcellent writes: Today the Steorm free-energy/over-unity device is being demoed in London, at 6pm GMT. From the article, 'Steorn, which is based in Dublin, claims to have discovered a method of creating clean, constant energy, which it claims could end the global fuel crisis.' The only information they have given out about the operation of the device is that it uses magnets, in a configuration such that if you move from a point and then return in the correct manner, you have more energy then you started with, as much as 400%. Sounds interesting, but they also mention harnessing the 'energy of magnets', which is a rather strange concept.
Security

Submission + - Vista more secure than Mac OS X

Submitted by myfootsmells
myfootsmells writes: Vista more secure than Mac OS X. In a recent interview Dino Dai Zovi, the New York-based security researcher who took home $10,000 in a highly-publicized MacBook Pro hijack has declared the code quality, at least in terms of security, to be much better overall in Vista than Mac OS X 10.4. and praises Microsoft's Security Development Lifecycle (SDL) at making this possible suggesting more vendors follow their lead.
United States

Wildlife Deputy Changed Science For Lobbyists 174

Posted by Zonk from the five-bucks-says-it-was-world-of-warcraft dept.
fistfullast33l writes "In another case of a government official creating a 'unique' interpretation of science, TPM Muckraker reports on Julie MacDonald, deputy assistant secretary for fish and wildlife and parks in the Department of the Interior in Washington. The Department's Inspector General issued a report today documenting evidence that MacDonald not only overrode opinions of department scientists to benefit lobbyists, and political interests, but also that she shared internal documents with said lobbyists and a friend in an unnamed online roleplaying game. My favorite episode: 'At one point, according to Fish and Wildlife Service Director H. Dale Hall, MacDonald tangled with field personnel over designating habitat for the endangered Southwestern willow flycatcher, a bird whose range is from Arizona to New Mexico and Southern California. When scientists wrote that the bird had a nesting range of 2.1 miles, MacDonald told field personnel to change the number to 1.8 miles. Hall, a wildlife biologist who told the IG he had had a running battle with MacDonald, said she did not want the range to extend to California because her husband had a family ranch there.'"
Windows

Submission + - NVIDIA responds to complaints about Vista drivers

Submitted by Not Straight
Not Straight writes: NVIDIA has issued an official response to the widespread complaints about the gaming performance of their GeForce cards under Vista. They're 'aware' of and monitoring nvidiaclassaction.org, but they have no plans to remove the Designed for Vista and Ready for Vista labeling from their products as requested by the site. Furthermore, they don't have a firm timeframe for delivering fully-compatible drivers. 'Over the coming weeks NVIDIA and our partners, along with the industry will continue to update Windows Vista drivers to ensure maximum performance on 3D applications and add feature support.' Until then, it looks like most gamers with GeForce cards will be best served by sticking with Windows XP.
The Internet

Submission + - DMCA Notices: Guilty until proven innocent

Submitted by Ben Maurer
Ben Maurer writes: It's no secret that media companies have started to hire companies automatically find file sharers and send letters to their ISPs. Many ISP's trust the good faith of these companies and will automatically deactivate the Internet connection of those who they get notifications for. I decided to investigate the reliability of notices from these companies. The answer: the companies do not actually gather the data they claim to and may falsely accuse users of copyright violation.
Security

Study Finds Bank of America SiteKey is Flawed 335

Posted by Hemos from the trying-something-new dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The NYT reports on a Harvard and MIT study, which finds that the SiteKey authentication system employed by Bank of America is ineffective at prevent phishing attacks. SiteKey requires users to preselect an image and to recognize this image before they login, but users don't comply. 'The idea is that if customers do not see their image, they could be at a fraudulent Web site, dummied up to look like their bank's, and should not enter their passwords. The Harvard and M.I.T. researchers tested that hypothesis. In October, they brought 67 Bank of America customers in the Boston area into a controlled environment and asked them to conduct routine online banking activities, like looking up account balances. But the researchers had secretly withdrawn the images. Of 60 participants who got that far into the study and whose results could be verified, 58 entered passwords anyway. Only two chose not to log on, citing security concerns.' The study, aptly entitled "The Emperor's New Security Indicators", is available online."

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