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Google

Submission + - Google Algorithm to Search Out Hospital Superbugs 1

Submitted by
Googling Yourself
Googling Yourself writes: "Researchers in the UK plan to use Google's PageRank algorithm to find how super-bugs like MRSA spread in a hospital setting. Previous studies have discovered how particular objects, like doctors' neckties, can harbor infection, but little is known about the network routes by which bugs spread. Mathematician Simon Shepherd plans to build a matrix describing all interactions between people and objects in a hospital ward, based on observing normal daily activity. "Obviously nurses move among patients and that can spread infection, but they also touch light switches and lots of other surfaces too," says Shepard., "If you observe a network of all those interactions you can build a matrix of which nodes in the network are in contact with which other nodes." Combining that information with the strength of different interactions within a ward makes it possible to calculate which ties to cut — by, perhaps, tougher cleaning — to maximally disrupt the network and cut infections. "Ultimately, we would like to produce a software tool so managers of wards can carry out the analysis for themselves," says Shepherd."
Robotics

Submission + - Sperm could power nanobots (msn.com)

Submitted by
Lucas123
Lucas123 writes: "According to MSNBC, scientists are experimenting with using a sperm's flagellum or tail to overcome the problem of supplying energy to nanobots that could be implanted in the body as smart probes that would release disease-fighting drugs, monitor enzymes and perform other medical roles within a patient's body. Powered by a compound called adenosine triphosphate or ATP (produced by mitochondria), a sperm's flagellum can propel it at about 7 inches an hour. Energy from ATP could also power the pumps charged with dispensing the medication at a certain rate from the nanobots."
Government

Submission + - Norwegian government requires ODF (regjeringen.no)

Submitted by
ringe
ringe writes: "Today, the Norwegian govermnent made public their decision to require the use of open standards in all governmental institutions. From the press release: "The government has decided all information on public websites must be released in the open document formats HTML, PDF or ODF. The time where public documents from officials where released in the Microsft Word format only will end with this [decision]." The news is covered in local publications. All links are Norwegian. The press release goes on to say:
  • HTML will be the primary format for the release of public information on the Internet.
  • PDF (1.4 or newer or PDF/A — ISO 19005-1) is obligatory in cases where one wants to preserve the original presentation of a document.
  • ODF (ISO/IEC 26300) will be used to release documents which should be modifiable after download, for instance schemas to fill in by the user.
The decision will be effective by the 1st of January 2009."
Sci-Fi

Submission + - Terry Pratchett has early onset Alzheimer's

Submitted by JaJ_D
JaJ_D writes: According to Paul Kidby's website, Terry Pratchet has been diagonsed with early onset Alzheimer's.

From the site:

would have liked to keep this one quiet for a little while, but because of upcoming conventions and of course the need to keep my publishers informed, it seems to me unfair to withhold the news. I have been diagnosed with a very rare form of early onset Alzheimer's, which lay behind this year's phantom "stroke".

Jaj
Security

Submission + - Russian Hackers Hijack Search Results (techluver.com)

Submitted by
TechLuver
TechLuver writes: "A huge campaign to poison web searches and trick people into visiting malicious websites has been thwarted. "The booby-trapped websites came up in search results for search terms such as "Christmas gifts" and "hospice". Windows users falling for the trick risked having their machine hijacked and personal information plundered. The criminals poisoned search results using thousands of domains set up to convince search index software they were serious sources of information. While computer security researchers have seen small-scale attempts to subvert search results before now, the sheer scale of this attack dwarfed all others. "This was fairly epic," said Alex Eckelberry, head of Sunbelt Software — one of the firms that uncovered the attack. ( http://techluver.com/2007/11/29/russian-hackers-hijack-search-results-in-coordinated-web-attack/ )"
Microsoft

Submission + - Ten things holding back tech development (zdnet.co.uk)

Submitted by
ZDOne
ZDOne writes: "ZDNet UK has put together a list of the main blockers that are preventing technology from achieving its true potential in terms of development and progress. Microsoft's strangle hold on the desktop makes the list as does operator lock-in and controversially the lack of real global wars/disasters. The article claims that these days, warfare still results in misery and death, but the technological benefits are harder to appreciate. There's not much in a stealth fighter or bomb-disposal robot that helps away from the battlefield. The "war on drugs" and the "war on terror" both sound good but have generated little of note, beyond copious government expenditure on ever more inventive ways to annoy their own citizens."
Microsoft

Submission + - Trojan horse spreads through Microsoft's IM (computerworld.com.au)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A new Trojan horse that started to spread early Sunday via Microsoft's instant messaging client has already infected about 11,000 PCs, a security company said Monday. The as-yet-unnamed Trojan horse began hitting systems about 7 a.m. EST on Sunday, according to Roei Lichtman, the director of product management at Aladdin Knowledge Systems. "We still haven't found what it's meant to do, but at the moment, it's creating an army [of bots]," he said. "Eventually, of course, the operator will send commands to do something." Users of Microsoft's Windows Live Messenger instant messaging program receive a message that includes spoofed Zip files, such as one named "pics" that is actually a double-extension executable in the format "filenamejpg.exe" or a file labeled "images" that in reality is a .pif executable. "This is really growing rapidly," said Lichtman. Six hours after it first found the Trojan horse, Aladdin put the total number of assembled bots at about 500; three hours later, that had climbed to several thousand. By 12:30 p.m. EST Monday, the botnet had been built out to 11,000 machines. But while its speed in spreading is impressive, Lichtman pointed to another characteristic of the Trojan horse: It can also propagate via virtual private network (VPN) clients, the programs typically used by businesspeople to connect with their employer's networks when they're outside the corporate firewall.
Education

Submission + - Ad revenue from online game used to feed the poor (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by __aammpv6063
__aammpv6063 writes: BBC News has a recent article about a new website, Freerice.com, which uses profits from on-screen advertisements to buy food for impoverished nations through the UN World Food Program (WFP). Because the game involves word quizzes, it is also potentially useful as a tool for building up your vocabulary, whether for personal reasons, or to prepare for the SAT's or GRE's. Give it a shot.
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft apologizes for Windows Update snafus (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by A little Frenchie
A little Frenchie writes: Microsoft has been having all sorts of problems with automatic Windows updates lately. First, it was reports of users who had turned off automatic update installations finding that their computers had installed and rebooted anyway without their consent, then some enterprise Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) users found out that Windows Desktop Search (WDS) had been installed without administrator approval. Microsoft acknowledged the first problem but denied the second, then relented and issued an apology via WSUS product manager Bobbie Harder's blog.
The Internet

Submission + - WHOIS faces the axe (hexus.net)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: HEXUS.net reports that "A growing group of net privacy advocates is presurring Internet overseer ICANN into scrapping WHOIS, the web's domain-name 'phone book'." It is claimed that the system, which is open to abuse, doesn't do enough to protect domain registrants details from spammers and fraudsters, and should be either scapped or overhauled. The article goes on to compare WHOIS to an another much-abused technogy: E-Mail.

WHOIS, much like e-mail, is an age-old Internet relic that comes from a time when the Internet was almost considered a network of trustworthy users. E-mail has, quite clearly, some massive problems coping in the modern age, but it's still here. It stands to reason, then, that WHOIS won't be going anywhere any time soon. Just like e-mail, it's prone to abuse. But again, just like e-mail, it's too useful to axe.

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