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Hardware Hacking

Submission + - New Virgin America planes a hackers paradise

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Virgin America's new in-flight entertainment system "Red," is actually a gigantic sociological experiment in airborne distributed computing. The plane is full of networked, Linux-based computers each of the seat backs of the A319 and A320 jets. Each of the 149 seats will come with a 9-inch touch-sensitive display, a keyboard that can be removed from the armrest, a 110-volt outlet, an Ethernet jack, and a U.S.B. port. Made for watching movies, listening to MP3's and even order food but for a geek returning from a Black Hat conference it is wonderland. Virgin official are aware of the security threat, and say that they have a code of conduct and that they will just have to see what happens. Maybe they will have a flight Cyber Marshall.
Networking

Submission + - iSCSI Enabled NAS Reviewed - Thecus N5200 Pro (hexus.net)

Submitted by unts
unts writes: SMB (Windows File Sharing) is slow. NFS is quicker. But better than both is iSCSI — an implementation of SCSI-3 instructions over TCP/IP. iSCSI gives a network client block-level access to a drive, potentially yielding a performance boost. Thecus has a new 5-disk NAS product aimed at SOHO/SMEs featuring iSCSI, called the N5200 Pro. HEXUS has tested its SMB and iSCSI performance. The N5200 pro weighs in at around £600 (~$1200) without any disks. For the penniless, though, a number of open-source solutions for DIY NAS boxes also have iSCSI capabilities.
Television

Submission + - Plasma TVs can play at least 100.000 hours (hdtvinfo.eu)

Submitted by Xbm360
Xbm360 writes: Panasonic reports their Plasma Tvs can play at least 100.000 hours.

http://www.hdtvinfo.eu/content/view/105/1/

Based upon average daily viewing time of 6 1/2 hours, Panasonic 1080p Plasma HDTVs could on average take more than 42 years before they reach half of their original brightness level. Panasonic rates its current line of 720p Plasma HDTVs to play for 60,000 hours to half brightness or 25 years at six and a half hours per day.
Google

Submission + - Google gives Linux its patent protection

Submitted by Rob
Rob writes: Search giant Google has promised not to use its patent portfolio against the Linux operating system and other open source projects by becoming the first end-user licensee of the Open Invention Network. By joining the OIN Google has licensed over 100 patents from the non-profit organization, which was formed in November 2005 by IBM, Novell, Red Hat, Sony and Phillips to stockpile intellectual property for use as a defensive weapon. "Linux plays a vital role at Google, and we're strongly committed to supporting the Linux developer community," noted the company's open source programs manager, Chris DiBona.
First Person Shooters (Games)

Submission + - Hourly Game Server Rental

Submitted by JJC1138
JJC1138 writes: PayAsYouPlay.org is a new service that offers game server rental on an hourly basis. It should suit people who would like to have occasional deathmatch sessions with friends, and also clans that don't need their server 24/7. So far 'Counter-Strike' and 'Counter-Strike: Source' are supported, but more games are coming soon.
NASA

Submission + - Shuttle Endeavour to be launched today

Submitted by
Klaidas
Klaidas writes: "NASA reports that on the morning before the scheduled liftoff of Space Shuttle Endeavour on the STS-118 mission, launch officials confirmed once again that the countdown is continuing as planned and no issues have surfaced.
On Monday night, workers finished loading the reactants for the orbiter's three power-producing fuel cells. Checks of the space shuttle main engine's avionics and pneumatic systems are planned today, along with inspections of the external tank, activation of ground support equipment, and crew equipment stowage in the crew module. Launch remains on target for Aug. 8 at 6:36 p.m. EDT"
Bug

Bring Down Internet Explorer In Six Words 239

Posted by kdawson from the don't-you-think-she-looks-tired dept.
Marcion writes "Some handy Japanese guy called Hamachiya discovered a bug in Internet Explorer. Under certain conditions, an asterisk when used as a wildcard can crash IE as soon as the user attempts to go to another page." The article claims the "five HTML tags and a CSS declaration" crash IE7 as well as IE6, but I couldn't get IE7 to fail. This page says that as of June, IE6 was at about 37% market share and IE7 under 20%.

Feed Dell Fills New Position (nytimes.com)

From feed by nytfeed
Dell has hired Michael R. Cannon, who has been serving as chief executive of the Solectron Corporation, to fill the position of president for global operations.
United States

Journal Journal: Another Reason to Homeschool 42

Journal by pudge

I know this is old news, I just never got around to it before.

Texas is requiring 11-year-old girls in public schools to get a vaccine that only lasts three years as far as we know, that prevents a disease you can only get through sexual contact, that costs $360 per person to administer.
Graphics

Submission + - Flash: The End of Adobe [Acrobat] Reader?

Submitted by
ThinkComp
ThinkComp writes: "As hatred for Adobe Acrobat continues to grow, the fact remains that the Portable Document Format is a useful and nearly universal file format with few competitors in the same league. Meanwhile, the client software needed to use the format continues to expand in size and slow down, especially as a browser plug-in. In the interest of faster load times, fewer ads, and smaller file sizes, we've created a Flash-based PDF viewer that you can embed in web sites, including blogs. It's bare-bones, but given what YouTube's Flash-based player eventually did for on-line video, could this mean the beginning of the end for clunky software like Adobe [Acrobat] Reader 8.0?"

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