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Space

Submission + - First Evidence of Another Universe? 2

Submitted by blamanj
blamanj writes: Three months ago, astronomers announced the discovery of a large hole at the edge of our universe. Now, Dr. Laura Mersini-Houghton thinks she knows what that means. (Subscription req'd at New Scientist site, there's also an overview here.) According to string theory, there are many universes besides our own. Her team says that smaller universes are positioned at the edge of our universe, and because of gravitational interactions, they can be observed, and they're willing to make a prediction. The recently discovered void is in the northern hemisphere. They contend another one will be found in the southern hemisphere.
Math

Submission + - Possible backdoor found in RNG standardizedby NSA (schneier.com) 1

Submitted by
kfz versicherung
kfz versicherung writes: "Defining algorithm for random numbers is one of the hardest fields in mathematics. We all know Microsoft failed miserably, even Linux (pdf) and SSL had their fair share of troubles. But now Bruce Schneier tells us the Strange Story of Dual_EC_DRBG, one of four random number generation algorithms standardized by the NSA (pdf). While on first look just slower than the other three, Dan Shumow and Niels Ferguson showed at Crypto 2007 that the algorithm contains a weakness that can only be described a backdoor. Their presentation showed that the constants used have a relationship with a second, secret set of numbers that can act as a kind of skeleton key. If you know the secret numbers, you can predict the output of the random-number generator after collecting just 32 bytes of its output."
Security

Submission + - Dislike a Relative? Turn Them in as a Terrorist! 9

Submitted by Stanislav_J
Stanislav_J writes: A Swedish man who had less than fond feelings for his daughter's hubby, took advantage of the son-in-law's trip to America by reporting him to the FBI as a terrorist. The e-mail, which the father-in-law admits to sending, earned him a libel charge after his poor son-in-law was arrested on his arrival in Florida, handcuffed, interrogated, and placed in a cell for 11 hours before being released.

It's a brief article, but dovetails nicely with the recent Slashdot story about "The War on the Unexpected." That article touched on many examples of well-meaning, but misguided and paranoid citizens reporting innocent activities to the authorities. In the current climate, the potential also exists for maliciously false and far from well-meaning reports made to the Feds about people one simply doesn't care for, or those made merely as a sick prank.

While the man admitted to sending the e-mail to the FBI, he claims he thought no harm would come from it because "he did not think the US authorities would be stupid enough to believe him." To quote the great philosopher Bugs Bunny, 'Nyahh....he don't know us very well, do he?'
The Almighty Buck

Submission + - Gates drops to #3, new face on #1

Submitted by mritunjai
mritunjai writes: The bull run in Indian stock market and spectacular growth of Reliance Industries stock, Mukesh Ambani has catapulted to be the richest man in World with a net worth of $63.2 Billion. Following him are Carlos Slim Helu at $62.3 Billion and Bill Gates at $62.2 Billion. Just in July '07 Bill Gates was displaced from #1 by Slim Helu. The brick-and-mortar barons are making a come-back specially the ones in infrastructure business. Are days of software billionairs numbered ?
Math

Submission + - Wolfram awards $25,000 for flawed proof

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: Slashdot readers will have seen an announcement by Stephen Wolfram offering a $25,000 prize for a proof or a disproof that a certain 2-state, 3-color Turing machine is universal. The prize was awarded on October 24th, 2007 to Alex Smith of Birmingham, UK.

However, according to discussion in the Foundation of Mathematics e-mail list, archives of which are available here, the members of the prize committee were "informed but not polled" as to the validity of the proof. The prize committee members were Lenore Blum, Greg Chaitin, Martin Davis, Ron Graham, Yuri Matiyasevich, Marvin Minsky, Dana Scott and Stephen Wolfram. On October 26, Martin Davis wrote to the FOM list that "The determination that Smith's proof is correct seems to have been made entirely by the Wolfram organization. My understanding is that the I/O involves complex encodings."

On October 29th, Stanford computer scientist Vaughan Pratt wrote to the Foundations of Mathematics list that the universality proof of the (2,3) Turing machine was flawed, asking "How did an argument containing such an elementary fallacy get through the filter?" Pratt points out that the fallacy of the proof could be used to "prove" the erroneous statement that a linear bounded automaton is universal. The text of Pratt's email is available here.
Java

Submission + - Apple Censors Java discussion

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A quick Google search of "java 6 apple" turns up some interesting results. Note the following two threads on Apple's support website:

Both have since been taken down or otherwise made inaccessible. Seems a lot of Java developers are upset about the lack of information about Java 6 support in OS X, and Apple's removal of the Java 6 developer preview from the ADC website.

The discussions can still be viewed here:
It's funny. Laugh.

Submission + - Science stumbles on with Ig Nobel awards (networkworld.com) 1

Submitted by
carusoj
carusoj writes: "Research into the mystery of wrinkles on bed sheets, a method for extracting vanillin from cow dung, the "gay bomb," and the effect of Viagra on hamster jet lag dominated the awards Thursday night at the 2007 Ig Nobel awards at Harvard University. The tongue-in-cheek award program by the Annals of Improbable Research magazine at Harvard gives Ig Nobels as a parody of the Nobel prizes for serious scientific research. Past winners include Enron for economics and Dan Quayle for education."
Censorship

Submission + - Bloggers who risked all to reveal Junta in Burma 2

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Internet geeks share a common style, and Ko Latt and his four friends would not be out of place in cyber cafés across the world. They have the skinny arms and the long hair, the dark T-shirts and the jokey nicknames. But few such figures have ever taken the risks that they have in the past few weeks, or achieved so much in a noble and dangerous cause. Since last month Ko Latt, 28, his friends Arca, Eye, Sun and Superman, and scores of others like them have been the third pillar of Burma's Saffron Revolution. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article2563937.ece
It's funny. Laugh.

Submission + - Idiot criminal uploads pix of self from stolen iMa (boingboing.net)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Last week a number of computers were stolen from an office in Vancouver, BC. One of those computers was a shared iMac with Flickrbooth, an app that automatically uploads photo booth shots to our flickr account, installed on it. Just this morning a friend called to tell us that there are photos of whoever has the computer now in our flickr stream! Obviously the guy didn't know he was uploading images of himself and his awesome tattoos.

"There should be a word for this, thinking you're getting away with something on the sly while the world laughs at you, anticipating your inevitable demise — schadendouche?" [beatnik]
Mozilla

Submission + - Mozilla IronMonkey and ScreamingMonkey

Submitted by
mritunjai
mritunjai writes: "Mozilla foundation has started work on IronMonkey and ScreamingMonkey projects this summer. According to an interview given to Artima, this would be beginning of The Browser Scripting Revolution. IronMonkey is an effort to integrate Microsoft .NET CLR into Tamarin Javascript VM donated by Adobe to Mozilla. This would enable Mozilla browsers to eventually be able to run web applications written in Python (IronPython) and Ruby (IronRuby) and presumably other .NET languages like C# apart from Javascript. ScreamingMonkey is an effort to integrate the (.NET enabled) Tamarin VM into other browsers starting with Microsoft Internet Explorer. Java was not considered as it was not open source when the decision was taken."
Businesses

Submission + - Bad bosses take the elevator...

Submitted by mritunjai
mritunjai writes: A new study validates what we've always suspected to be true. Promotions and career growth seem to be directly proportional to how much you can make your subordinates' life miserable.

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