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Displays

Real-Time Holograms Beam Closer To Reality 79

Posted by samzenpus from the holodeck-here-I-come dept.
sciencehabit writes "It's not quite the flickering blue projection of Princess Leia begging, 'Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi, you're my only hope!' from the classic sci-fi movie Star Wars, but holographic projection has just beamed a bit closer to reality. Researchers in Arizona have devised a novel plastic film that can be used to generate holographic 3D images sent electronically from one location to another. The technology opens the door for everything from holographic surgery to movies that literally surround the viewer."
Security

Gene Simmons Threatens Anonymous Again and Gets DDoS'd 403

Posted by CmdrTaco from the hack-and-lol-all-night dept.
BussyB writes "Rather than shutting him up, the 'Operation Payback' DDoS attack on his websites only made Simmons more angry and outspoken. None of those threats seemed to bother Anonymous, however, and the group promptly launched another DDoS attack on both of Simmons' websites and rendered them inaccessible once again."
Power

Construction of French Fusion Reactor Underway 389

Posted by samzenpus from the limitless-escargot-coming-soon dept.
GarryFre writes "It has been said that fusion is 50 years away for quite a few decades, but now work has actually been started. Digging has begun in the south of France on the planned site for France's first fusion reactor. A tokomak is a torus shaped magnetic confinement device which is necessary to withstand the temperatures associated with fusion that are so high, solid materials can't hold them. As such, the building represents the future core of ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor.) It will be interesting to see if it takes 50 years to build it."

Comment Re:Who knew! (Score 4, Insightful) 156

by zindorsky (#33563524) Attached to: New Crypto Attack Affects Millions of ASP.NET Apps

Even one time pads are susceptible to brute force attacks.

Nope, absolutely incorrect. That's what makes one-time pads different. When the key length is the same as the plaintext length, it is possible have perfect security. Look up unicity distance.

If the original was normal human readable text it becomes immediately obvious when your brute force succeeds and a subsequent dictionary comparison of each word yields a hit.

But your brute force attack will yield every single possible plaintext (with the same length as the original plaintext). Which is the real one?

For example, if the ciphertext is BWIJAA, your brute force attack will get ATTACK for one key, and GOHOME for another. (And every other 6 character string.)

Comment Re:Infinite complexity? (Score 1) 830

by zindorsky (#33277674) Attached to: Ray Kurzweil Does Not Understand the Brain

The human brain is composed of one hundred billion or so neurons. Looks like it's pretty much finite to me. I have ten times as many bytes of information in my hard disk.

But a neuron is worth a lot more than a byte - it's more like a node. At least mine are - don't know about yours.

(But point taken about "infinite complexity".)
Businesses

How Chat and Youth Are Killing the Meeting 205

Posted by CmdrTaco from the good-riddance-i-say dept.
dominique_cimafranca writes "Forbes columnist Dan Woods describes a change in the way some companies handle meetings. Owing to instant messaging and younger tech-savvy CEOs, meeting time has gone down from as much as 30 hours per week to as little as 2 hours per week. Woods proposes ways to make this 'meetingless' management effective."
Games

Scrabble To Allow Proper Nouns 377

Posted by CmdrTaco from the you-gotta-be-kidding-me dept.
Hogwash McFly writes "The rules of the popular word game Scrabble are soon to allow proper nouns. Mattel, the maker of the game, hopes the changes made for a new edition, released this July, will 'add a new dimension' to Scrabble and 'introduce an element of popular culture into the game.' With this rule change, the company hopes to target younger fans and families, although they will continue to sell the traditional version where 'Beyonce' and 'Facebook' are not permitted words." Nobody is listening to my suggestion to penalize by one tile any player who has memorized every two-letter English word.
Science

Study Shows People In Power Make Better Liars 265

Posted by Soulskill from the practice-makes-perfect dept.
oDDmON oUT writes "MSNBC is reporting that a Columbia Business School study shows those who hold power over others make better liars. According to one of the study's coauthors, 'It just doesn't hurt them as much to do it.' For the average liar, she said, the act of lying elicits negative emotions, physiological stress and the fear of getting caught in a lie. As a result, she added, liars will often send out cues that they are lying by doing things like fidgeting in a chair or changing the rate of their speech. But for the powerful, the impact is very different: 'Power, it seems, enhances the same emotional, cognitive, and physiological systems that lie-telling depletes. People with power enjoy positive emotions, increases in cognitive function, and physiological resilience such as lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol. Thus, holding power over others might make it easier for people to tell lies.'"
Image

Surgeon Makes Tutorial DVD For Conscious Open-Heart Surgery Screenshot-sm 170

Posted by samzenpus from the looks-easy-enough dept.
Lanxon writes "Swaroup Anand, 23, from Bangalore, was fully conscious as he underwent open-heart surgery. An epidural to the neck, administered at the city’s Wockhardt Hospital, numbed his body during the procedure. Dr Vivek Jawali pioneered the technique ten years ago and has recently released a tutorial on DVD, which gives a step-by-step guide to the procedure for other surgeons to watch and learn from."

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