Slashdot

Not that it's an earth-shattering development -- I'm not creating miniature black holes or anything, but I did re-up my Slashdot subscription.

The first potential ghost article: Engineers Make Good Terrorists?. I don't think that one will get canned! Though it sure seems like a leftover April Fool's gag. Sadly, it's not... the source article is dated 4/3, not 4/1. Of course, the past seven-and-a-half years have been an extended April Fool's Day... but on the bright side, there are only 9 months 19 days 17 hours 3 minutes before the foolishness finally ends.

I haven't been able to take my usual peek behind the curtain of Slashdot, because my subscription has lapsed and I haven't been able to renew it. Woe is me!

I'm sure I'll get around to it again sometime soon. Heck, it's not like five or ten bucks will make the rent check bounce. But it would buy a used GameCube game for the little gamerz at home. If anyone wants to finance my ghost hunting exploits, please feel free... clicky the linky above and pop "622190" into the "Buy Gift Subscription For" box. I'm certain to think very fondly of you for at least five minutes.

Again, no formatting, just saving the story and links. This article got pulled because it's a dupe of one from several weeks back, maybe even a few months ago. I remember seeing it; it may have been this February article on Graphene Transistors, but I thought it was more recent than that.

Edit: The article has been restored. I guess the previous article was way back in February, so this one adds useful information.

Science: Replacing Copper With Pencil Graphite
Posted by kdawson in The Mysterious Future!
from the carbon-all-the-way-down dept.
Late-Eight writes
"A key discovery at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute could help advance the role of graphene as a possible heir to copper and silicon in nanoelectronics. Researchers believe graphene's extremely efficient conductive properties can be exploited for use in nanoelectronics. Graphene, a one-atom-thick sheet of carbon, eluded scientists for years but was finally made in the laboratory in 2004 with the help of everyday, store-bought transparent tape. The current research, which shows a way to control the conductivity of graphene, is an important first step towards mass producing metallic graphene that could one day replace copper as the primary interconnect material on nearly all computer chips."
Researchers are now hot to pursue graphene for this purpose over the previous favorite candidate, buckytubes (which are just rolled-up graphene). Farther down the road, semiconducting graphene might take over from silicon at the heart of logic chips.

Links:
Story: http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/07/24/2123225
Submitter: http://www.shellscript.co.uk/
"graphene as a possible heir to copper and silicon in nanoelectronics": http://www.physorg.com/news104473084.html

(By the way, it's strange that I can't get a Science icon. I went for the Sci-Fi icon instead, for lack of anything more appropriate.)

I'm going to try the rapid-response, no-formatting method again.

MacBook Hacked in Security Contest
Posted by CmdrTaco in The Mysterious Future!
from the caught-with-your-pants-down dept.
TheCybernator writes
"Macaulay, a software engineer, was able to hack into a MacBook through a zero-day security hole in Apple's Safari browser. The computer was one of two offered as a prize in the "PWN to Own" hack-a-Mac contest at the CanSecWest conference in Vancouver. The successful attack on the second and final day of the contest required a conference organizer to surf to a malicious website using Safari on the MacBook -- a type of attack familiar to Windows users. CanSecWest organizers relaxed the rules Friday after nobody at the event had breached either of the Macs on the previous day."

Links:

Story: http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/04/23/1457220
hack into a MacBook: http://news.zdnet.co.uk/security/0,1000000189,39286793,00.htm

I'm too tired today to add the fancy formatting, sorry. I've got two other ghosts from last month sitting on my hard drive, and I don't want this one to join them for fear of ectoplasmic overload, or something. So here's the basics:

Science: "Smart Dust" to Explore Planets
Posted by ScuttleMonkey in The Mysterious Future!
from the new-but-not dept.
Ollabelle writes
"The BBC is reporting how tiny chips with flexible skins could be used to glide through a planet's atmosphere in swarms to gather data and report back. 'The idea of using millimetre-sized devices to explore far-flung locations is nothing new, but Dr Barker and his colleagues are starting to look in detail at how it might be achieved. The professor at Glasgow's Nanoelectronics Research Centre told delegates at the Royal Astronomical Society gathering that computer chips of the size and sophistication required to meet the challenge already existed.'"

Links: tiny chips with flexible skins

Article link: http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/04/18/1925206

Update: Good thing I didn't go to all that trouble, because the article was only playing dead. It went to "Nothing to see here", but remained in red on the front page and eventually went live.