Submission + - Linus celebrates MS Windows 7 launch (linux-mag.com)
i_frame writes: Enjoy!...
Submission + - LucidDB 0.9.2 Release (sourceforge.net)
SF:perfecthash writes: LucidDB is a new RDBMS purpose-built entirely for data warehousing and business intelligence. Its storage and query architecture supports high-performance OLAP against star schemas, and allows ETL operations to be expressed entirely as SQL statements. Find out more at http://www.luciddb.org/ 0.9.2 is a maintenance release containing bugfixes, HTTP client/server support, and catalog-based password authentication.
Alexander Mekhrishvili has also created the PG2LucidDB bridge, enabling access to LucidDB from just about any client environment!
Submission + - MIT Researchers Develop Indoor Robocopter (mit.edu)
An anonymous reader writes: Researchers at MIT's Robust Robotics Group have developed a robotic helicopter capable of flying inside buildings, or other GPS-Denied environments. While the video talks about search and rescue or civil engineering applications, the brings somewhat scary reminders of Minory Report to my head. How long till I see one of these chasing me down a dark alley??
Submission + - SPAM: Prototype security software blocks DDoS attacks
coondoggie writes: Researchers have come up with host-based security software that blocks distributed denial-of-service attacks without swamping the memory and CPU of the host machines.The filtering, called identity-based privacy-protected access control (IPCAF), can also prevent session hijacking, dictionary attacks and man-in-the-middle attacks, say researchers at Auburn University in their paper, "Modeling and simulations for Identity-Based Privacy-Protected Access Control Filter (IPCAF) capability to resist massive denial of service attacks."
[spam URL stripped]
Link to Original Source
[spam URL stripped]
Link to Original Source
Submission + - Dow to sell Solar Shingles (reuters.com)
CyberDong writes: Dow Chemical Co said on Monday it would begin selling a new rooftop shingle next year that converts sunlight into electricity. The new solar shingles can be integrated into rooftops with standard asphalt shingles, Dow said, and will be introduced in 2010 before a wider roll-out in 2011.
Submission + - Skills, Not Tools Are the Key to IT Security (internetnews.com)
darthcamaro writes: There are a lot of decent automated web security tools now available, that make it seem as though all you need to do is point a tool at your web app and then presto you're secured. Reality is somewhat different. HP had a hacking challenge event and it proved that researchers actually need to know what they're doing as the tools themselves aren't good enough to entirely automate the hacking process.
"Most of our log-in challenges were designed to subvert tools," Matt Wood, senior security research at HP web security research group, told InternetNews.com. "The way they were designed, HP WebInspect or any other Web application scanning tool would not have been able to identify every single one of the hacks automatically."
Submission + - Hotmail Accounts Hacked (bbc.co.uk)
i_frame writes: BBC is reporting that thousands of Hotmail accounts have been compromised in a phishing attack, an a list of more than 10,000 e-mail accounts and password have been posted online. A Microsoft spokeperson stated that "upon learning of the issue, we immediately requested that the credentials be removed and launched an investigation to determine the impact to customers".
A consultant at Sophos told the BBC News "We still don't know the scale of the problem"
A consultant at Sophos told the BBC News "We still don't know the scale of the problem"
Submission + - Pentagon: Our cloud is better than Google's (networkworld.com)
bednarz writes: "At a press conference Monday, the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) announced that it's allowing military users to run applications in production mode on its new RACE cloud computing platform. Henry Sienkiewicz, technical program director, says RACE is more secure and stable than commercial cloud services. Google, for example, has suffered from frequent service outages including high-profile Gmail and Google News outages http://www.networkworld.com/news/2009/090209-google-outage-if-this-is.html in September. "We achieve 99.999% availability at all times," Sienkiewicz says. In contrast, Google claims 99.9% availability for Google Apps."
Submission + - NETGEAR WNR3500L Open Source Router Announced (myopenrouter.com)
MyOpenRouter writes: NETGEAR has announced the WNR3500L, a brand new, open source, wireless-N gigabit router which is customizable with third party firmwares.
MyOpenRouter is the dedicated source for NETGEAR open source routers, with the full scoop including a review with screenshots, how-to's, tutorials, firmware downloads, and more.
Announcement:
http://www.myopenrouter.com/blog/entry/13896/NETGEAR-Announces-WNR3500L-Open-Source-Gigabit-Router-Development-Partner-Program/
Review:
http://www.myopenrouter.com/article/12912/
Downloads:
http://www.myopenrouter.com/download/list?sort=date
MyOpenRouter is the dedicated source for NETGEAR open source routers, with the full scoop including a review with screenshots, how-to's, tutorials, firmware downloads, and more.
Announcement:
http://www.myopenrouter.com/blog/entry/13896/NETGEAR-Announces-WNR3500L-Open-Source-Gigabit-Router-Development-Partner-Program/
Review:
http://www.myopenrouter.com/article/12912/
Downloads:
http://www.myopenrouter.com/download/list?sort=date
Submission + - WARF and Intel settle patent suit over Core 2 Duo (google.com)
reebmmm writes: The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation and Intel have settled their patent suit over technology developed by Gurindar Sohi, a computer science professor at the University of Wisconsin — Madison.
Professor Sohi developed technology that was ultimately patented by WARF using money he received from Intel. Last month, Judge Barbara Crabb found that the funding agreement was ambiguous, but that e-mails revealed that the money was an unrestricted gift and carried with it no obligation to license or assign any inventions to Intel.
Trial was scheduled to begin today. The terms of the settlement were not disclosed.
At issue is the 5,781,752. A copy of WARF's original complaint is here.
Professor Sohi developed technology that was ultimately patented by WARF using money he received from Intel. Last month, Judge Barbara Crabb found that the funding agreement was ambiguous, but that e-mails revealed that the money was an unrestricted gift and carried with it no obligation to license or assign any inventions to Intel.
Trial was scheduled to begin today. The terms of the settlement were not disclosed.
At issue is the 5,781,752. A copy of WARF's original complaint is here.
Submission + - New Firefox security tech blocks Web attacks (computerworld.com)
CWmike writes: Mozilla has released a test build of Firefox that adds new technology designed to stymie most Web-based attacks including so-called clickjacking, it said Sunday. The technology, dubbed "Content Security Policy" (CSP), is a Mozilla-initiated specification targeted at Web site and application developers, who will be able to define which content on the site or in the online application is legitimate. That would block any script or malicious code that's been added by hackers who manage to compromise the site or app. Such attacks are generally tagged with the label of cross-site scripting (XSS). Preview editions of the test build are available for developers. "This isn't a single trick that's meant to counter a single kind of attack," said Johnathan Nightingale, the manager of the Firefox front-end development team. "This helps sites solve cross-site scripting, but it's more than that. They now have a way to shut everything dynamic off, so that no matter what content gets added to a site, if it's on the page and they've sent us policy instructions in its header, we shut it down." Firefox is passing the baton to site and application developers, who will be able to separate the legitimate from the illicit content. With CSP in place, Firefox will allow the former but will automatically block the latter. "It is in some ways similar to NoScript," said Brandon Sterne, Mozilla's security program manager.
Submission + - Die Hard: SCO is up for another round
i_frame writes: According to LinuxInsider a U.S. appeals court is considering that: "A judge erred in 2007 by granting the copyright of the UNIX OS to Novell", which means that "Novell may have to get in the ring yet again with SCO... SCO says the appellate panel's ruling reinstates the company's claims against IBM as well".
Comment Is this the end of humankind? (Score 1) 557
Yup ..., oh well maybe, but I'm realy sure Conficker is to be held resposible for the pandemic. If only we could detect where it downloaded the swine virus from?....
Submission + - SAP Sued By Oracle for Corporate Espionage
christoofar writes: The Philadelphia Inquirer is running a story about SAP America of stealing customer information by "theft on a grand scale" and then offering cut rate services to Oracle's customers. Story also here and here.
The fireworks are just about to begin and I'm sure we'll hear from Larry Ellison soon about this.
Another Step Towards the Driverless Car 224
jtogel writes "At Essex, we have for some time been working on automatically learning how to race cars in simulation. It turns out that a combination of evolutionary algorithms and neural networks can learn how to beat all humans in racing games, and also come up with some quite interesting, novel behaviours, which might one day make their way into commercial racing games. While this is simulation, the race is now on for the real thing — we are setting up a competition for AI developers, where the goal is to win a race between model cars on real tracks. As the cars will be around half a meter long, the cost of participating will be a fraction of that for the famous DARPA Grand Challenge, whereas the challenges will be similar in terms of computer vision and AI."
