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The Military

US Deploys 'Heat-Ray' In Afghanistan 406

Posted by Soulskill
from the warming-up-to-the-idea dept.
Koreantoast writes "The United States military has deployed Raytheon's newly developed Active Denial System (ADS), a millimeter-wave, 'non-lethal' heat-ray, to Afghanistan. The weapon generates a 'burning sensation' that is supposedly harmless, with the military claiming that the chance of injury is at less than 0.1%; numerous volunteers including reporters over the last several years have experienced its effects during various trials and demonstrations. While US military spokesperson Lt. Col. John Dorrian states that the weapon has not yet been operationally used, the tense situation in theater will ensure its usage soon enough. Proponents of ADS believe the system may help limit civilian deaths in counterinsurgency operations and provide new, safer ways to disperse crowds and control riots, but opponents fear that the system's long-term effects are not fully known and that the device may even be used for torture. Regardless, if ADS is successful in the field, we'll probably see this mobile microwave at your next local protest or riot."

Comment: It's the economics...dude (Score 1) 292

by GSGKT (#30705718) Attached to: China Luring Scientists Back Home
Smart and motivated people is in limited supply, so nations would complete for them. No graduate students, or postdocs, have ever got rich from their stipends while perform research in the US. Otherwise more American youth would want to work in university laboratories instead of the Wall Street. China is doing everything to bring their best talents home, because they also have invested a lot of resources on them. It still a sound investment for the US to attract the best talents from anywhere in the world to be educated and perform research here. If just the top 10% of these people decide to stay in this country, then everyone benefits from that. Furthermore, it is easier to find and recruit the best talents and for them want to stay, if they are educated here...most be the koolaid you find in the cafeteria.
Security

Mi5 seeks top geek, or "Q". ->

Submitted by
GSGKT
GSGKT writes "Interested in finding innovated ways to blow things up, pimp fast cars, invent new technology, and not have to worry about permits and budgets? The UK security service MI5 is looking for James Bond style gagdget-maker 'Q' as chief scientific adviser to "lead and co-ordinate" its scientific work. According to a report in the Telegraph, the job is being advertised on MI5's website (Britain's domestic intelligence agency) with the successful applicant expected to use their expertise to thwart terror operations around the world, 'to lead and co-ordinate the scientific work of the Security Service so that the service continues to be supported by excellent science and technology advice'. MI5's chief science adviser would help 'to frustrate terrorism, to prevent espionage hurting the UK, protect our critical national infrastructure and to frustrate the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Applications for the MI5 science job close on April 24, and could take up to six months to process (just like any government job applications). Good luck, guys."
Link to Original Source

Comment: Re:JPL's next grant application: is it water? (Score 1) 186

by GSGKT (#26951819) Attached to: Strange Globs Could Signal Water On Mars
Dear Funding Agency: JPL has a great track record for "less money for greater success"! In addition, the initial $520M for Mars Lander projects has kept many physcists and engineers happily employed. Instead of giving $$ to further enrich Wall Street bankers, business exec, hedgefund traders, etc., this project will employ the brightest minds in this great country to achieve no other countries can in the next N years(and pile up more bull-s*&t here until the BS meter breaks).

Comment: JPL's next grant application: is it water? (Score 2, Insightful) 186

by GSGKT (#26951401) Attached to: Strange Globs Could Signal Water On Mars
Dear ___funding agency____, Is there surface water on Mars? We need to send another mission to Mars. It should cost less than the amount of money GM asked for bailout during this funding period to study this question, and 2 five-year funding periods to really find out. Please send money. JPL/NASA
Security

Asus reports virus loaded into Eee Box PCs ->

Submitted by
Gareon
Gareon writes "Asustek Computer's Japanese arm has alerted owners of its new Eee Box low-cost desktop PC that the machine shipped with a virus. The D drive of the Eee Box B202, which launched in Japan last week, contains a virus file named "recycled.exe," Asustek said in a statement. When the drive is opened, the virus begins copying itself to the main C drive on the machine and to any other removable drives or USB memory connected to the computer. Read the latest WhitePaper — Determining the cause of poor application performance Despite repeated attempts to get more information from Asustek, the company has not confirmed that the problem is limited to only Japanese Eee Box PCs. The company also didn't explain how the virus got into the computers..."

NetworkWorld"
Link to Original Source

Comment: Re:Scientific community? (Score 1) 578

by GSGKT (#24548317) Attached to: The Flat Earthers Are Still With Us
If it is a theory, then we can apply this idea called "scientific method" and develop a testable hypothesis, and then... Wait, the flat earth idea has been shown to be false: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_Earth and Earth is an oblate spheroid. "Round" could be interpreted as like a circle and two-dimensional, just those flat-earth people want you to think. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth These flat earth "alchemists" are just like those who claim that human activities could never affect the climate http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Climate_change_skeptics, there are endless oil supplies on earth for human consumption, http://economics.about.com/cs/macroeconomics/a/run_out_of_oil.htm, HIV does not cause AIDS http://www.ourcivilisation.com/aids/not/abstract.htm, and the only way to study whales is to kill them and sell the meat in the supermarket http://www.icrwhale.org/QandAjapanresearch.htm. Aaahhh these fucking assholes.
Medicine

Chromosome 16 mutations linked to autism->

Submitted by GSGKT
GSGKT writes "Results from several studies find a genetic cause for autism. About 1% of people with autism have deletion or duplication of a region of chromosome 16 that involves about 25 genes. (In a very very simplified review of human genetics: except for two sex (X/Y) chromosomes, the other 22 chromosomes in the cell come in pairs, one from each parent. Each gene exists in two copies (alleles), one on each chromosome. Events like duplication and deletion will change the number of copies, the copy number, for genes in the affected region.) Change in the copy number of genes could change the amount of proteins expressed, thus affects human cognitive abilities and results in autism or other disorders. In most cases, the deletion/duplication occurs during duplication of the chromosomes in early development rather than inheritance. However, some people with deletions and mutations in this region are without signs of autism disorder. These mutations can be found in 0.1% among those with a psychiatric or language disorder, and about 0.01% in the general population. Autism could have multiple and complex causes (both environmental and genetic-predisposition like cancer)."
Link to Original Source
The Military

India tested sea-based ballistic missile->

Submitted by GSGKT
GSGKT writes "India has tested the K15 sea(submarine)-launch ballistic missile (SLBM), a two-stage solid fueled nuclear-warhead capable missile with 700-km range, from a submerged platform on Tuesday successfully. Currently only US, Russia, China, France and UK have this capability. This test would be the final stage before integrating K15 with India's 3 indigenous nuclear-powered submarines. These submarines, each can carry 12 vertical-launched SLBM's, are scheduled for sea trial next year. India already has the capability to launch ballistic missiles from land and airplanes. This article in The Times of India indicates that India has developed this missile and submarine systems) specifically against China."
Link to Original Source
Security

Google's Research on Malware Distribution->

Submitted by GSGKT
GSGKT writes "Google's Anti-Malware Team has made available some of their research data on malware distribution mechanism while the research paper is under peer review. The lead author, Niels Provos, wrote, "It has been over a year and a half since we started to identify web pages that infect vulnerable hosts via drive-by downloads, i.e. web pages that attempt to exploit their visitors by installing and running malware automatically. During that time (Jan 07 to Oct. 07) we have investigated billions of URLs and found more than three million unique URLs on over 180,000 web sites automatically installing malware. During the course of our research, we have investigated not only the prevalence of drive-by downloads but also how users are being exposed to malware and how it is being distributed." The technical report [PDF] is available. Salient points in this report are: (1) 4% of chance a URL might direct you to one of the 180 thousand malicious sites, with an average about 1.3% actually getting hit with a malicious result. (2) The distribution sites are concentrated to a few nations: China (67.0%), US (15.0%), Russia (4.0%) and Malaysia and (South) Korea (~2%). (3) The likelihood of a web page harboring malwares has no strong correlation to its contents. Visiting adult web pages is no more dangerous than visiting website about games, finance, online communities, etc. (4) Malware delivery is like by mis-directing ads on web pages during ads synchronization to malware distribution sites."
Link to Original Source
Security

Two New Worms use Valentine's Day as bait->

Submitted by GSGKT
GSGKT writes "Panda Security has found 2 new worms, Nuwar.OL and Valentin.E, use the topic of Valentine's Day to spread. These use the same tactics as the "I_LOVE_YOU virus back in May 4, 2000. There are no love in these malwares. From PS's news release: These malwares reach you by email with subjects like "I Love You Soo Much," "Inside My Heart" or "You ... In My Dreams.". One can download these malwares through the link in the text body to a webpage the looks like a romantic greeting card or run the attached file called "friends4u." After infection, the worm makes several copies of itself on the computer and sends out emails with copies of itself from the infected computer to spread and infect more users." Don't be fooled!"
Link to Original Source
Security

Skype plugs critical bug with temporary move->

Submitted by Clown of the month
Clown of the month writes "Hackers can exploit newly uncovered vulnerabilities in Skype Ltd.'s popular chat and VoIP software to shanghai a Windows PC, security researchers said Thursday. By Friday morning, Skype had confirmed one of the bugs, slapped the highest-possible vulnerability rating on it and temporarily disabled the feature used to exploit the flaw. However, it has not responded to a second, more serious charge that attackers could nail Skype users at public wireless hot spots. Early on Thursday, noted Israeli researcher Aviv Raff had spelled out what he called a "cross-zone scripting vulnerability" in Skype that could be leveraged by attackers armed with malicious video files. The way in, Raff explained, was through a security door that Skype left wide open. "Skype uses Internet Explorer Web control to render internal and external HTML pages," Raff said in a posting to his blog early Thursday. "[But] Skype is running this Web control in Local Zone ... [and] the HTML pages in a not-locked Local Zone mode." Skype does not yet have a patch in place, so instead, it simply shut off access to Dailymotion. "Skype has temporarily disabled users' ability to add videos from Dailymotion gallery until an official fix has been made available," the security bulletin said. But that may not secure Skype, said researcher Petko Petkov, a U.K.-based penetration tester, who also argued that the VoIP software harbors even scarier vulnerabilities, specifically unencrypted data within Skype's ads, some of which he said end up displayed by the same IE Web controller in a low-security zone."
Link to Original Source
Government

Effects of new German copyright law on science

Submitted by Kleiba
Kleiba writes "On January 1st, the controversial reforms of German copyright law became effective. While the effects on the right to create copies for personal use have been discussed passionately in public, little attention has been payed to other fields affected by the changes, such as science. I am a scientist working at a research institute in Germany and I enjoy the fact that the web made access to colleagues' publications very easy: most of the time you can find a PDF on a researcher's homepage. Likewise I provide download links to my own papers. But now my institute points out that since the beginning of the year, it's not only illegal to make papers available for download of which you don't own the copyright (think reading assignments in seminars and university classes), but also even to download publications from sources other than the copyright holder. In practice, I assume this will be almost impossible to assess. Still, I will probably remove links to papers on my homepage myself: it's just too complicated and time consuming to think about who holds the copyright on each single publication (me? one of the co-authers? the journal? all of us?). Now, I was wondering what slashdotters think about what effects legal changes like these will have on the progress of science in Germany and in general."
Security

First ever Mac 'scareware' makes appearance->

Submitted by Bergkamp10
Bergkamp10 writes "Computerworld reports that Mac users can now claim their first example of "scareware", a widespread scam in the Windows world where bogus security software tries to spook consumers into anteing up.MacSweeper, which sells for US$39.99 through a Web site by the same name, is a rogue application that will "always find something to fix/clean, but the only way to do so is to buy the program," claimed Patrik Runald, a senior security specialist at Helsinki, Finland-based F-Secure Corp said in a posting to the company's blog. Additional clues about the application's illegitimacy, added Runald, are easy to spot. The MacSweeper Web site, for example, includes text under an "About us" heading that is a brazen copy-and-paste from the Symantec site. MacSweeper.com, which was registered in November 2007, uses a domain name server based in Ukraine, according to a WHOIS search. The individuals who registered the domain, however, masked their identities using an anonymity service."
Link to Original Source

We're here to give you a computer, not a religion. - attributed to Bob Pariseau, at the introduction of the Amiga