Comment Re:overwritten once CAN be recovered (Score 3, Informative) 780
Markup Fail!
Great Zero Challenge
Comment Re:overwritten once CAN be recovered (Score 5, Informative) 780
The [a href="http://16systems.com/zero.php"]Great Zero Challenge[/url] says otherwise. They're simply asking for the filename of one of the files on a drive that has been wiped once with zeros. Despite offering the challenge for over a year and actively speaking to data recovery companies, no one has taken them up on the offer.
Police Race At Dragway To Fight Illegal Street Racing
15
For $25, anyone over the age of 18 can race a police officer at the monthly "Beat the Heat" night in Miami, Florida. The races are held at County Line Drag Way and are designed to redirect people from racing on the streets to the dragstrip. "You could bring your mother's minivan. You can bring a pure racing car. It doesn't matter," said Officer Jose Ayala with the Medley Police Department.
Comment Intelligent Agents all failed 10 years ago (Score 1) 100
Intelligent Agents were a big deal at the beginnings of the dotcom bubble era. There are plenty ofBooks and Articles about them. A good part of Java's sandbox security model evolved from the anticipation that we would be allowing agents to come visit our computers to do their intelligent activities.
In the real world other technologies did a better job at whatever agents were designed to do. As the article points out, Google and other well constructed search engines are much better at finding online information than a series of wide-flung bits of software. Well designed APIs filled much of the gap for more specific applications.
Intelligent Agents did find one toehold in the marketplace though, spyware and botnets show just how useful it can be to have your software running on someone else's machine. Of course they're completely outside of any security 'sandbox' and get to do what they please.
It sounds as if someone is making an attempt to capitalize on some IP before it expires.
Exploit Found to Brick Most HP and Compaq Laptops 294
Ian Lamont writes "A security researcher calling himself porkythepig has published attack code that can supposedly brick most HP and Compaq laptops. The exploit uses an ActiveX control in HP's Software Update. It would 'let an attacker corrupt Windows' kernel files, making the laptop unbootable, or with a little more effort, allow hacks that would result in a PC hijack or malware infection.' The same researcher last week outlined a batch of additional vulnerabilities in HP and Compaq laptops, for which HP later issued patches."
Bees Can Optimize Internet Bottlenecks 128
prostoalex writes "Georgia Tech and University of Oxford scientists claim bees can help up develop a better Internet traffic algorithms. By observing bees, the researchers noticed that bees pass back information on route quality. 'On a basic level, the honeybee's dilemma is a tale of two flower patches. If one patch is yielding better nectar than the other, how can the hive use its workforce most efficiently to retrieve the best supply at the moment? The solution, which earned Austrian zoologist Karl von Frisch a Nobel Prize, is a communication system called the waggle dance.' Any practical applications of that? Well, apparently ad servers, serving banners across a variety of servers, can report back on the time it took to generate the page."
Interconnecting Wind Farms To Smooth Power Production 112
Roland Piquepaille writes "Wind power is one of the world's fastest growing electric energy sources, but as wind is intermittent, a single wind farm cannot deliver a steady amount of energy. This is why scientists at Stanford University want to connect wind farms to develop a cheaper and more reliable power source. Interconnecting wind farms with a transmission grid should reduce the power swings caused by wind variability and provide a somewhat constant and reliable electric power (or 'baseload' power) provided by other power plants."
Study Warns of Internet Brownouts By 2010 318
Bergkamp10 writes "Consumer and corporate use of the Internet could overload the current capacity and lead to brown-outs in two years unless backbone providers invest billions of dollars in new infrastructure, according to a new study. A flood of new video and other Web content could overwhelm the Net by 2010 unless backbone providers invest up to US $137 billion in new capacity, more than double what service providers plan to invest, according to the study by Nemertes Research Group. In North America alone, backbone investments of $42 billion to $55 billion will be needed in the next three to five years to keep up with demand, Nemertes said. Quoting from the study: 'Our findings indicate that although core fiber and switching/routing resources will scale nicely to support virtually any conceivable user demand, Internet access infrastructure, specifically in North America, will likely cease to be adequate for supporting demand within the next three to five years.' Internet users will create 161 exabytes of new data this year."
Submission + - Tracking Down an ISP on Craigslist.org
Anonymous Coward writes: "Hi — I'm sort of desperately in need of help because somebody is harassing my sister. I was wondering if any of you knew or had suggestions about how to track down an ISP or email address of an anonymous posting on craigslist.org. Some dickhead posted my sister's phone number and a raunch photo (not her) on the casual encounters section. Needless to say, she's been getting a lot of nasty calls and is really freaked out. Shy of subpoena-ing craigslist (which we think we're gonna do), I wanted to know if there was a way to find out who did it. Then I can begin plotting his (her?) comeuppance ...
I don't know if its possible. I don't know if any of you are looking to make a few bucks to do it (we'll most definitely pay). I swear this isn't anything sketchy and honestly, you'd really be helping her out because she's having a shit day. Thanks in advance and please contact us at the email posted."
Submission + - Snow Drift Game Replaces Prisoner's Dilemma (physorg.com)
eldavojohn writes: "It's a well known situation and one often studied in everything from behavioral sciences to artificial intelligence. It involves the idea that cooperation is promoted by two or more individuals working together to achieve a return greater than working for their own interests. Scientists are now leaning toward the iterated snow drift game (ISD) replacing the iterated prisoner's dilemma (IPD) to accurately model what humans experience in real life. Essentially it removes the defective partner risk that is inherent in the IPD situation. If you are fingered by your friend while in separate interrogation rooms while you claim that both you and your friend are innocent, the outcome is much worse. In the ISD, your idle partner does not negate points from your efforts to work together — it just doesn't add anything either."
Underground Mac Community Foils a Coup 253
An anonymous reader writes "In an attempted palace coup that would not have been out of place in a Shakespearian tragedy, a moderator faction at Mac Serial Junkie, one of the largest underground Mac communities, was shut out this weekend after it was discovered that many staff members were plotting a coup. The plans included a surreptitious takeover of the domain name macserialjunkie.com. In an Open Letter to the Community, the founders of MSJ explain how a number of people at the highest levels of the underground planned their takeover activities for almost two years, only to be foiled at the last minute."
Submission + - Multiformat Listening Test at 64kbps 1
prospective_user writes: "Do you think you have good ears? Think again.
The community at Hydrogenaudio has prepared a Public Listening Test for comparison of the most popular audio codecs (AAC, Vorbis, and Microsoft's WMA included) in a battle to see how they stand at compressing audio at 64kbps.
Many of the participants right now have expressed their surprise at being unable to determine which is the original and which is the compressed version of 18 samples covering a vast amount of musical styles.
The results of this test (and other that are conducted at Hydrogenaudio) will be used by the developers of the codecs to further improve the "transparency" and let this kind of test be even harder.
Everyone is invited to participate and show how good your listening is!"
The community at Hydrogenaudio has prepared a Public Listening Test for comparison of the most popular audio codecs (AAC, Vorbis, and Microsoft's WMA included) in a battle to see how they stand at compressing audio at 64kbps.
Many of the participants right now have expressed their surprise at being unable to determine which is the original and which is the compressed version of 18 samples covering a vast amount of musical styles.
The results of this test (and other that are conducted at Hydrogenaudio) will be used by the developers of the codecs to further improve the "transparency" and let this kind of test be even harder.
Everyone is invited to participate and show how good your listening is!"
Submission + - 'Sidejacking ' On WiFi
ancientribe writes: As if you need another reason not to use WiFi unprotected, here's one: a researcher has released a tool that lets hackers "sidejack" your machine and access your Web accounts. Called Hamster, the tool basically clones the victim's cookies by sniffing their session IDs and controlling their Website accounts.
http://www.darkreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=130 692&WT.svl=news1_2
http://www.darkreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=13
Submission + - iPhone Hacked for Third-Party Software (businessweek.com)
OpenSourceNut writes: "The iPhone has been hacked offering access to third party programs. Businessweek has a full article explaining the various functions of the programs now being used. Hello World!"
Submission + - New antibiotics for pathogenic attacks of bacteria (heraldbiz.com)
allengineering writes: "A team of research directed by the pr.
KIM
Kyung-Gyu of the Faculty of Medicine of
the University of Sungkyunkwan discovered the structure of the protein Rse B
playing an essential part in the transmission of the signals of stresses
resulting from the pathogenic attacks of bacteria. The article is been published
in the edition of May of the Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences of the the USA (PNAS). This projection should
make it possible to develop new antibiotics."
