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The Military

Iran Reverse Engineers Cobra Attack Helicopter 500

Posted by Soulskill
from the lightning-turnaround dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "Continuing its tradition of reverse engineering and fabricating its stockpile of 40-year old American weaponry, Iran announced that it is about to unveil its first ever domestically produced Cobra attack choppers. Nearly 50 years after the U.S. introduced the legendary Bell AH-1 Cobra, once the backbone of the U.S. Army's attack helicopter fleet, Iran's locally-grown Cobras will be armed with 'different types of home-made caliber guns, rockets and missiles,' according to Iran's semi-official Fars news agency. 'All the phases of designing and manufacturing of the chopper have been done inside the country and the helicopter enjoys some capabilities which make it preferable to Apache Choppers,' says Brigadier General Kioumars Heidari. Iranian officials stress that Iran's military and arms programs serve defensive purposes and should not be perceived as a threat to any other country, reports the FARS news release. More photos available here."
Power

Germany Sets New Solar Power Record 510

Posted by Soulskill
from the bright-sunshiny-day dept.
An anonymous reader sends this quote from a Reuters report: "German solar power plants produced a world record 22 gigawatts of electricity per hour — equal to 20 nuclear power stations at full capacity — through the midday hours on Friday and Saturday, the head of a renewable energy think tank said. The German government decided to abandon nuclear power after the Fukushima nuclear disaster last year, closing eight plants immediately and shutting down the remaining nine by 2022. ... The record-breaking amount of solar power shows one of the world's leading industrial nations was able to meet a third of its electricity needs on a work day, Friday, and nearly half on Saturday when factories and offices were closed."
AI

Where's HAL 9000? 247

Posted by Soulskill
from the i'm-sorry-dave,-i'm-dolphin-grill-antifreeze dept.
An anonymous reader writes "With entrants to this year's Loebner Prize, the annual Turing Test designed to identify a thinking machine, demonstrating that chatbots are still a long way from passing as convincing humans, this article asks: what happened to the quest to develop a strong AI? 'The problem Loebner has is that computer scientists in universities and large tech firms, the people with the skills and resources best-suited to building a machine capable of acting like a human, are generally not focused on passing the Turing Test. ... And while passing the Turing Test would be a landmark achievement in the field of AI, the test’s focus on having the computer have to fool a human is a distraction. Prominent AI researchers, like Google’s head of R&D Peter Norvig, have compared the Turing Test’s requirement that a machine fools a judge into thinking they are talking to a human as akin to demanding an aircraft maker constructs a plane that is indistinguishable from a bird."
Android

Microsoft Wins US Import Ban On Motorola's Android Devices 200

Posted by Soulskill
from the sorry-about-your-luck dept.
jbrodkin writes "The U.S. International Trade Commission today ordered an import ban on Motorola Mobility Android products, agreeing with Microsoft that the devices infringe a Microsoft patent on 'generating meeting requests' from a mobile device. The import ban stems from a December ruling that the Motorola Atrix, Droid, and Xoom (among 18 total devices) infringed the patent, which Microsoft says is related to Exchange ActiveSync technology. Today, the ITC said in a 'final determination of violation' (PDF) that 'the appropriate form of relief in this investigation is a limited exclusion order prohibiting the unlicensed entry for consumption of mobile devices, associated software and components thereof covered by ... United States Patent No. 6,370,566 and that are manufactured abroad by or on behalf of, or imported by or on behalf of, Motorola.' Motorola (which is being acquired by Google) was the last major Android device maker not to pay off Microsoft in a patent licensing deal. Microsoft has already responded to the decision, saying it hopes Motorola will now reconsider."

Comment: Scientists are individuals (Score 1) 408

by Burz (#39966283) Attached to: Positive Bias Could Erode Public Trust In Science

...not just "scientists" who collaborate and challenge as a whole discipline.

They interact with the mass media at the level of individuals and very small groups. As such, most journalists won't pass up an opportunity to quote a researcher who says something like, "This changes everything!" and the spirit of such statements (if not the actual statements) are usually found throughout the articles written by "science" reporters. They play up the significance of individual studies and competition and downplay (or attempt to discredit) the consensus-built and collaborative aspects of science so that the stories fit in with the individualist and consumerist narratives favored by the corporate press.

That dynamic contributes greatly to the public's distorted notions of scientific pursuit. Thus, the popular American sentiment that scientists are mostly bozos "lacking in common sense", and that is when they feel charitible. You'll need to change the overall media culture before you can improve the situation.

Also, I keep thinking about the TV show "The Big Bang Theory". Is it me, or is the cast segregated into the engineers who manage a real social life, and the scientists who are not just eccentric but extreme (and extremely pitiful)?

Security

Adobe Introduces the Paid Security Fix 392

Posted by timothy
from the sure-would-be-a-shame-if-somethin'-was-ta-happen dept.
Nimey writes "Adobe has posted a security bulletin for Photoshop CS5 for Windows and OSX. It seems there is a critical security hole that will allow attackers to execute arbitrary code in the context of the user running the affected application. Adobe's fix? You need to pay to upgrade to Photoshop CS6. For users who cannot upgrade to Adobe Photoshop CS6, Adobe recommends users follow security best practices and exercise caution when opening files from unknown or untrusted sources."
Security

New York City Pushes Plan To Prevent Cyberattacks On Elevators, Boilers 171

Posted by timothy
from the what-about-egg-poachers-and-escalators? dept.
coondoggie writes "Imagine what would happen if an attacker broke into the network for the industrial control systems for New York City's elevators and boiler systems and decided to disrupt them, imperiling the lives of hundreds of thousands of residents relying on them. Think it could never happen? Think again. 'You could increase the speed of how elevators go up or down,' says Steve Ramirez, business analyst, analysis and communications in the Office of the CIO of the New York City Housing Authority, which provides public housing for low- to moderate-income families in the five boroughs of the city. And if attackers ever successfully penetrated the network-based industrial control systems for the boilers, they could raise the heat levels for municipal boilers, causing them to explode." Maybe Bruce Schneier could run a new movie-scenario contest about ways this could play out.
United Kingdom

UK Home Secretary Bans US Martial Arts Expert 440

Posted by samzenpus
from the chuck-norris-does-not-approve dept.
Big Hairy Ian writes "An American expert in violent self-defense has been excluded from entering the UK by the Home Office. From the article: 'Tim Larkin tried to board a plane from his home in Las Vegas on Tuesday, but was given a UK Border Agency letter saying "his presence here was not conducive to the public good." Mr Larkin, who was due to host seminars, told the BBC the move was a "gross over-reaction." The Home Office said he was subject to an exclusion order. A spokeswoman said: "The home secretary will seek to exclude an individual if she considers that his or her presence in the UK is not conducive to the public good." Mr Larkin — who trained as a US Navy Seal — runs a company teaching combat to military and law enforcement clients in the United States.'"
Your Rights Online

Overheated Voting Machine Cast Its Own Votes 378

Posted by samzenpus
from the getting-the-machine-vote dept.
longacre writes in with the results of a report on voting machines that malfunctioned in NY during the 2010 mid-term elections. "Tests of a number of electronic voting machines that recorded shockingly high numbers of extra votes in the 2010 election show that overheating may have caused upwards of 30 percent of votes in some South Bronx voting precincts to go uncounted. WNYC first reported on the issue in December 2011, when it was found that tens of thousands of votes in the 2010 elections went uncounted because electronic voting machines counted more than one vote in a race. A review by the state Board of Election and the electronic voting machines’ manufacturer ES&S found that these 'over votes,' as they’re called, were due to a machine error. In the report issued by ES&S, when the machine used in the South Bronx overheated, ballots run during a test began coming back with errors."
Science

Warmest 12-Month Period Recorded In US 297

Posted by samzenpus
from the it's-getting-hot-in-here dept.
First time accepted submitter seanzig writes "Dr. Jeff Masters of Weather Underground provides a good overview of the State of the Climate Report from NOAA's National Climatic Data Center (NCDC). May 2011 through Apr. 2012 broke the previous record (Nov. 1999 — Oct. 2000). A number of other interesting records (e.g., warmest March on record) and stats emerged. It just presents the data and does not surmise anything about the causes or what should be done about it."

Comment: You are right to suspect the driver: (Score 1) 247

by Burz (#39919825) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: What's a Good Tool To Detect Corrupted Files?

The Linux HFS+ driver can't even work in write mode unless the journal has been deleted, so the journal isn't working when using the HFS+ partition under Ubuntu and probably Windows as well (author take note). I would not use that filesystem under Linux or Windows on a daily basis. Also, since the journal has been deleted, you are probably missing the safety of journaling under the native OSX as well.

Author should also note that archival backups with md5 or sha256 checksums are probably the most straightforward way to maintain data integrity. If you want something more elegant for day to day use, I would consider setting up a NAS using either BTRFS or ZFS as the filesystem along with a nice 1Gbps LAN (if you don't have that already).

Surprise due today. Also the rent.