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Networking

Nmap 5.20 Released 36

Posted by Soulskill
from the more-and-better dept.
ruphus13 writes "Nmap has a new release out, and it's a major one. It includes a GUI front-end called Zenmap, and, according to the post, 'Network admins will no doubt be excited to learn that Nmap is now ready to identify Snow Leopard systems, Android Linux smartphones, and Chumbies, among other OSes that Nmap can now identify. This release also brings an additional 31 Nmap Scripting Engine scripts, bringing the total collection up to 80 pre-written scripts for Nmap. The scripts include X11 access checks to see if X.org on a system allows remote access, a script to retrieve and print an SSL certificate, and a script designed to see whether a host is serving malware. Nmap also comes with netcat and Ndiff. Source code and binaries are available from the Nmap site, including RPMs for x86 and x86_64 systems, and binaries for Windows and Mac OS X. '"
Education

Ocean-Crossing Dragonflies Discovered 95

Posted by samzenpus
from the incredible-journey dept.
grrlscientist writes "While living and working as a marine biologist in Maldives, Charles Anderson noticed sudden explosions of dragonflies at certain times of year. He explains how he carefully tracked the path of a plain, little dragonfly called the Globe Skimmer, Pantala flavescens, only to discover that it had the longest migratory journey of any insect in the world."
Earth

Minnesota Introduces World's First Carbon Tariff 303

Posted by timothy
from the hey-cut-that-crap-out dept.
hollywoodb writes "The first carbon tax to reduce the greenhouse gases from imports comes not between two nations, but between two states. Minnesota has passed a measure to stop carbon at its border with North Dakota. To encourage the switch to clean, renewable energy, Minnesota plans to add a carbon fee of between $4 and $34 per ton of carbon dioxide emissions to the cost of coal-fired electricity, to begin in 2012 ... Minnesota has been generally pushing for cleaner power within its borders, but the utility companies that operate in MN have, over the past decades, sited a lot of coal power plants on the relatively cheap and open land of North Dakota, which is preparing a legal battle against Minnesota over the tariff."

Comment: Re:Talking about the mode switching.... (Score 1) 159

by flowsnake (#29502263) Attached to: <em>Elite</em> Turns 25

how did they do that ? ( It always bugged me)

As time progresses between vsyncs, the CRT electron beam scans left-to-right, then moves down a line, then left-to-right, until it hits the bottom-right - then it starts again at the next vsync. You set the video controller registers to mode A before the first line hits the CRT. A bit later, but before it reaches the bottom of the screen, you push new values into the video controller registers changing it to mode B; all the remaining lines are sent to the CRT in the new mode. You just have to make sure that the video controller register values get changed at the right point during each frame, and make sure that the mapped video memory contains data in the right format either side of the mode 'boundary' (although no boundary really exists). You can change mode more than once per frame if you want.

You could always read the Elite source code to see how Bell+Braben did it.

Transportation

+ - Creating Quantum Superpositions of Living Things->

Submitted by
KentuckyFC
KentuckyFC writes "Having created quantum superpositions of photons, atoms and even molecules, scientists are currently preparing to do the same for larger objects such as viruses. The technique will involve storing a virus in a vacuum and then cooling it to its quantum mechanical ground state in a microcavity. Zapping the virus with a laser then leaves it in a superposition of its ground state and an excited one. That's no easy task, however. The virus will have to survive the vacuum, behave like a dielectric and appear transparent to the laser light which would otherwise tear it apart. Now a group of researchers have worked out that several viruses look capable of surviving the superposition process, including the common flu virus and the tobacco mosaic virus. They point out that after creating the superposition, scientists will be able to perform Schrodinger's Cat experiment for the first time, which should be fun (except for the virus)."
Link to Original Source
Censorship

+ - Five 'evil' uses of IT-> 2

Submitted by schliz
schliz (994115) writes "iTnews has published a "think piece" on IT ethics that also describes five significant and 'evil' uses of IT: Nokia's Lawful Intercept technology in Iran; DDoS attacks in Estonia; Titan Rain; Chinese Web censorship; and IBM's involvement in the holocaust.

Australian ethicist Richard Lucas is quoted in the story as saying that IT developers are often far removed from their technologies' impact. He cites the philosophical 'moral distance' that could shield people from feeling morally obligated to issues that seem far away, saying: "It's a long way from 'I'm just writing some code' to 'someone is being denied welfare payments'.""
Link to Original Source
Security

+ - Password Hackers Do Big Business with ex-Lovers

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes "The Washington Post reports that disgruntled lovers and spouses considering divorce are flocking to services like YourHackerz.com that boast they have little trouble hacking into Web-based e-mail systems like AOL, Yahoo, Gmail, Facebook and Hotmail. The services advertise openly and there doesn't appear to be much anyone can do about it because while federal law prohibits hacking into e-mail, without further illegal activity, it's only a misdemeanor, says Orin Kerr, a law professor at George Washington University. "The feds usually don't have the resources to investigate and prosecute misdemeanors," says Kerr. "And part of the reason is that normally it's hard to know when an account has been compromised, because e-mail snooping doesn't leave a trace." It's not clear where YourHackerz.com is located, but experts suspect that most password hacking businesses are based overseas. Experts said there are numerous ways to steal someone's e-mail password, from simply guessing at family names or pet names to high-tech infiltration that let's web-based e-mail, such as Google's gmail and Yahoo, be attacked through bugs in the Web browser. "The unfortunate news is there's rather less of computer security than we would want," says one computer expert adding that "if you're an ordinary person and afraid you have an ex-lover who wants to hack you, you're probably better off not using computers for the kinds of communications you want to keep secret.""
Google

+ - A copyright black hole swallows our culture-> 2

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes "James Boyle, professor at Duke Law School, has a piece in the Financial Times in which he argues that a "copyright black hole is swallowing our culture." He explains some of the issues surrounding Google Books, and makes the point that these issues wouldn't exist if we had a sane copyright law."
Link to Original Source

Comment: Re:for the uk people: usa gets cheap open universi (Score 1) 272

by flowsnake (#29324337) Attached to: All-You-Can-Eat College For $99-a-Month
I don't know where you have worked, but The Open University is very highly regarded everywhere I have worked (large companies, household names), and by extension its graduates enjoy the same reputation. The fact that its graduates have shown the enthusiasm and work ethic required to complete full-strength degrees in their spare time reflects well upon these people when assessing their worth to a company.

"The only way for a reporter to look at a politician is down." -- H.L. Mencken

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