AaronBenage - Slashdot User

Electricity From Salty Water-> 1

Submitted by

BuzzSkyline

on Friday July 24 2009, @08:58AM

BuzzSkyline writes "It's possible to produce energy by simply mixing fresh and salty water. Although chemists and physicists have long known about the untapped energy available where fresh water rivers pour into salty oceans, the technology for exploiting the effect has been lacking. An Italian physicist seems to have solved the problem with the experimental demonstration of a "salination cell" that creates power given nothing more than input sources of salty and fresh water. Apparently the renewable, environmentally friendly energy source is comparable to "each river in the world ending at its mouth in a waterfall 225 meters [739 feet] high." A paper describing the technology is due to be published in an upcoming issue of the journal Physical Review Letters."
Link to Original Source

Hacker Claims iPhone 3GS Encryption Easy to Crack-> 2

Submitted by suraj.sun on Friday July 24 2009, @05:32AM

suraj.sun writes "What Apple won't tell you is that the supposedly enterprise-friendly encryption included with the iPhone 3GS is so weak it can be cracked in two minutes with a few pieces of readily available freeware.

"It is kind of like storing all your secret messages right next to the secret decoder ring," said Jonathan Zdziarski, an iPhone developer and a hacker who teaches forensics courses ( http://www.zdziarski.com/forensics_seminar/ ) on recovering data from iPhones. "I don't think any of us [developers] have ever seen encryption implemented so poorly before, which is why it's hard to describe why it's such a big threat to security."

Zdziarski said it's just as easy to access a user's private information on an iPhone 3GS as it was on the previous generation iPhone 3G or first generation iPhone, both of which didn't feature encryption. If a thief got his hands on an iPhone, a little bit of free software is all that's needed to tap into all of the user's content. Live data can be extracted in as little as two minutes, and an entire raw disk image can be made in about 45 minutes, Zdziarski said.

Wondering where the encryption comes into play? It doesn't. Strangely, once one begins extracting data from an iPhone 3GS, the iPhone begins to decrypt the data on its own, he said.

To steal an iPhone's disk image, hackers can use popular jailbreaking tools such as Red Sn0w and Purple Ra1n to install a custom kernel on the phone. Then, the thief can install an Secure Shell (SSH) client to port the iPhone's raw disk image across SSH onto a computer.

"We're going to have to go with the old imperative of 'Trust no one,'" he said. "And unfortunately part of that is, don't trust Apple."

Wired : http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/07/iphone-encryption/"
Link to Original Source

Comment: Re:Rational (Score 1) 807

by AaronBenage on Tuesday January 27 2009, @05:49PM (#26629383) Attached to: Marijuana Could Prevent Alzheimer's, New Study

I really think it comes down to the fact that there is no way to quantitatively determine how high a person might be at any given time. With alcohol, you can get a finite measurement of blood alcohol content. Considering that marijuana stays in your system for much longer than alcohol, it would be difficult to impose laws based upon saturation thresholds as is done with alcohol. In addition to that, differing strains/growing conditions of marijuana provide a different level and quality of intoxication which cannot be quantitatively measured. On top of all of that, people have vastly differing tolerances to the mighty herb. In short, if you can't measure the effects, there is no way to prosecute. Law makers want to be able to prosecute for driving under the influence, public intoxication, etc. and they effectively can't do that. That's why it is still illegal...

Inside ReactOS

Submitted by

Andareed

on Wednesday March 14 2007, @11:32PM

Andareed writes "Alex Ionescu, a lead developer of ReactOS (an open-source, source and binary compatible clone of Windows NT) recently gave a talk on the internals of ReactOS. In this talk, Ionescu also discusses how ReactOS is nearing complete kernel compatibility with Windows Server 2003. Interestingly, Ionescu hints that there are no plans for ReactOS once the kernel has been completed."

Yellowstone Supervolcano Making Strange Rumblings

Submitted by

Frosty Piss

on Wednesday March 14 2007, @10:46PM

Frosty Piss writes "Supervolcanoes can sleep for centuries or millennia before producing incredibly massive eruptions that can drop ash across an entire continent. One of the largest supervolcanoes in the world lies beneath Yellowstone National Park. Yet significant activity continues beneath the surface. And the activity has been increasing lately, scientists have discovered. In addition, the nearby Teton Range of mountains, in a total surprise, is getting shorter. The findings, reported this month in the Journal of Journal of Geophysical Research, suggest that a slow and gradual movement of a volcano over time can shape a landscape more than a violent eruption."