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Security

Mac Hack Contest Redux 164

Posted by samzenpus from the what-breaks-first dept.
narramissic writes "Remember the controversial Mac hacking contest from last year's CanSecWest conference? No? Here's a refresher: Conference organizers challenged attendees to hack into a Macintosh laptop, with the successful hacker winning the computer and a cash prize. Winner Dino Dai Zovi found a QuickTime bug that allowed him to run unauthorized software on the Mac once the computer's browser was directed to a specially crafted Web page. Well, the contest is back again this year, but with a twist, says Dragos Ruiu, the principal organizer of CanSecWest: 'We're thinking of having a contest where we have Vista and OS X and Linux ... and see which one goes first.""

Robotic Telescope Installed on Antarctica Plateau 128

Posted by Zonk from the j-j-j-just-a-b-b-bit-n-n-n-nippy dept.
Reservoir Hill writes "Antarctica claims some of the best astronomical sky conditions in the world — devoid of clouds with steady air that makes for clear viewing. The very best conditions unfortunately lie deep in the interior on a high-altitude plateau called Dome A. With an elevation of up to 4,093m, it's known as the most unapproachable point in the earth's southernmost region. Now astronomers in a Chinese scientific expedition have set up an experimental observatory at Dome A after lugging their equipment across Antarctica with the help of Australia and the US. The observatory will hunt for alien planets, while also measuring the observing conditions at the site to see if it is worth trying to build bigger observatories there. The observatory is automated, pointing its telescopes on its own while astronomers monitor its progress from other locations around the world via satellite link. PLATO is powered by a gas generator, and has a 4000-litre tank of jet fuel to keep it running through the winter. The observatory will search for planets around other stars using an array of four 14.5-centimetre telescopes called the Chinese Small Telescope Array (CSTAR). Astronomers hope to return in 2009 with new instruments, including the Antarctica Schmidt Telescopes (AST-3), a trio of telescopes with 0.5-metre mirrors, which will be more sensitive to planets than CSTAR."
Intel

Submission + - Skulltrail And 3.4GHz Penryn Performance Preview (hothardware.com)

Submitted by
MojoKid
MojoKid writes: "Intel let a few members of the press get some hands-on time with their new 45nm quad-core processor, code-named Penryn today at IDF. Dual quad-core 3.4GHz processors were configured in a Seabird chipset-based dual socket system based on the Intel's Skulltrail platform, for a total of eight cores. The benchmark numbers look pretty sharp as does the system, with a red-eyed skull on the front, just in time for Halloween we suppose."
Graphics

Submission + - Real-time raytracing for PC games almost a reality (pcper.com)

Submitted by
Vigile
Vigile writes: "Real-time raytracing has often been called the pinnacle for computer rendering for games but only recently has it been getting traction in the field. A German student, and now Intel employee, has been working on raytraced versions of the Quake 3 and Quake 4 game engines for years and is now using the power of Intel's development teams to push the technology further. With antialiasing implemented and anisotropic filtering close behind, they speculate that within two years the hardware will exist on the desktop to make "game quality" raytracing graphics a reality."
Power

Submission + - The Myth of the Solar PC (earthweb.com)

Submitted by
jammag
jammag writes: "Everybody wants to be green — especially the marketing departments of PC makers. This article casts a doubting eye on Lenovo's ThinkCentre PC. The box claims environmental, granola-crunching sainthood, but if you look closer it's pretty funny. To really get your juice from the sun, you'll need the optional $1,229 add-on. The article points out that Google's Sergey Brin has a solar-powered cell phone, but only because (being a billionaire) he can afford it. When the heck is a true solar-powered computing device going to be available to us un-moneyed masses?"
Portables

Submission + - The pocket-sized Vista PC (hexus.tv)

Submitted by unts
unts writes: The UMPC is still struggling to find its feet, but companies are still pushing forwards with new designs and increased power. OQO has come forth with the e2 UMPC, which has a 1.6GHz CPU, 1GiB RAM and support for either regular or solid state hard drives. The e2 weighs 450g and will fit in your pocket. Of course, how comfortable it'll be is another matter. HEXUS.tv has footage of the e2 and HEXUS.net has an article on the tiny PC.
Input Devices

Submission + - CatCam reveals kitty's secret adventures (tripod.com)

Submitted by
Matthew Skala
Matthew Skala writes: "J. Perthold attaches a ruggedized USB still camera with an enhanced battery and a microcontroller to click the shutter, to his cat, Mr. Lee — then sends Mr. Lee out into the neighbourhood. Intrigue: secret feline agents meet under cars. Romance: a visit to the lady cat next door. Action: motion-blurred high-speed shots as the camera bounces along inches from the ground. Also, it's a nice little hardware hack. Now to combine this with the Flo Control cat door..."
Displays

Submission + - Why Did Laptop Screens Become Mirrors?

Submitted by Strudelkugel
Strudelkugel writes: I decided to get a new laptop. I haven't looked new models for some time, but a friend was showing me his new one with many desirable features: Faster CPU, more RAM, faster disk, less weight. Just one problem: the LCD is the new "glossy" variety, which reflected the ceiling lights, the desk lamp, the wallpaper, etc. — essentially everything you would expect to see in a mirror. Obviously this degraded the display of the PC desktop. I thought it was a very annoying "feature", but I could always find a model with a decent anti-glare screen. Imagine my surprise when I went to the store and found every new model on display had glossy mirror screen! The people in the store said the new screens are supposed to offer a better image, but all agreed the reflectivity was something they didn't like. Where is the marketing PHB who foisted this idea upon the unsuspecting public? Is the glossy screen a wayward attempt to make laptops look more like shiny new toasters — something more oriented oriented to the general consumer?
Space

Submission + - Eating Outdoors-In Space, That Is (amarsodyssey.com)

Submitted by
nlhouser
nlhouser writes: "From this experiment, another theory grew that the radiated fungi would grow where nothing else would as long as radiation was present, which also offered a source of food for astronauts living in space for lengthened periods of time. Also, new testing has begun for ranges of electromagnetic radiation on the fungi, from ultraviolet light to visible light. Edible fungi, such as mushrooms, are also being tested."
Announcements

Submission + - Stackable ARM Linux Computers Allow Rapid Devel. (virtualcogs.com)

Submitted by Tarun Tuli
Tarun Tuli writes: Virtual Cogs Embedded Systems Inc. have released their miniature stackable Linux single board computers based around the Freescale i.MX21 processor. This system allows users to custom tailor their design to particular peripherals they need quickly. By stacking multiple daughterboards together, a precise solution can be created. Currently, daughter boards available include a Camera COG (3MP colour CMOS camera), Multimedia COG (320x240 TFT Touchscreen LCD, Sound Card), Ethernet COG (10/100 Mbit networking) and Breakout COG (development tool with .1" IDC breakout of pass-thru bus, MiniSD card slot and RS-232). Many additional daughter boards are under development and to be released soon including a robot controller, power controller, GPS/Bluetooth/Wifi board and a plug-in FPGA solution. In addition, all these designs are "open" so that users can easily adopt and develop their own daughtercards using standard PCB manufacturers.
Power

Submission + - China to enforce universal cell phone charger (eetimes.com)

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: In order to reduce the number of cell phone chargers tossed out each year, China is planning to enforce a compulsory USB-based universal cell phone charger standard.
The Internet

Submission + - Dotster Hijacks Their Customers' Subdomains

Submitted by mo
mo writes: Recently, Dotster's DNS service has made a massive, potentially illegal change that has gone largely unnoticed. They now redirect DNS queries for any of their customer's unused subdomains to a spam page that serves up ads. For example, www.asterisk.org is a popular open source PBX project who gets it's DNS from Dotster, but bogus.asterisk.org redirects to Dotster's page of ads. This policy has been imposed on all of their customers without informing them. Any domain who has ns1.nameresolve.com as their primary nameserver is being subjected to it.
AMD

Submission + - AMD Releases Detailed Phenom Die Photo (hothardware.com)

Submitted by MojoKid
MojoKid writes: A few weeks ago, AMD released information on new branding for their desktop derivatives of the Barcelona core, now dubbed the Phenom FX, X4 and X2. If you're unfamiliar with Phenom, the processors will be based on AMD's K10 architecture and will feature a faster on-die memory controller, support 64-bit and 128-bit SSE operations, and they'll be outfitted with 2MB of on-chip L2 cache (512KB dedicated per core) in addition to 2MB of shared L3 cache. Today,instead of revealing some more of the juicy details regarding those enhancements, AMD just sent over a tasty photo of a Phenom die. Click the image for a high-res version.
Media

Submission + - Netflix movie queues

Submitted by S.S.
S.S. writes: Wouldn't it be nice if you could put "holds" on your Netflix movie slots — as it is now, you currently always have to all your movies checked out to you out once, even if you only really want one out at the moment. This is inconvenient because if you suddenly want to see a different movie than any of the ones you currently have checked out, you have to send a movie back — there's transit time getting the movie back to Netflix before they will send you a new movie. However, what if you could put any of your movie slots "on hold," so that even if you pay for the privilege of having three movies out at a time, you could opt to just have one movie that you want to see out, and you could put the other two movie slots on "hold." Then when you wanted to see another movie, you could remove the "hold" on one of your slots, and they would send you the movie that's next in your queue immediately, without having to wait for you to send a movie back. This would be efficient and save a lot of time — how many people get movies they don't end up watching, and would rather put their slots on "hold" to save for when they really want to see a specific movie? Does anyone know if they're working on a feature like this?
Media

Submission + - New RealPlayer Feature: Rip Streaming Vids (gizmodo.com)

Submitted by HNK
HNK writes: Gizmodo.com has an article up about a new version of Real Player coming out. Why the good folks at Giz started the article with, "RealPlayer used to be cool," I'll never know, but the comments certainly rip into Real. Anyway, the basic scoop is that the new version of Real will allow you rip Internet streamed videos, with one click even. While this is a nice feature to add, there are other players that A) are better, B)are open source, C)are more functional, and D)HAVE NO MALWARE.

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