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Microsoft

Submission + - All Versions of Internet Explorer Under Threat (net-security.org)

Submitted by Orome1
Orome1 writes: Today Microsoft released a new security advisory to help protect users from a vulnerability affecting Internet Explorer versions 6, 7, and 8. Exploiting this vulnerability could lead to unauthorized remote code execution inside the iexplore.exe process. Although Microsoft is currently not aware of any attacks, given the public disclosure of this vulnerability, the likelihood of criminals using this information to actively attack may increase.
Piracy

Submission + - MegaUpload Dares RIAA to Sue Them (zeropaid.com)

Submitted by Dangerous_Minds
Dangerous_Minds writes: Yesterday, there were reports that the RIAA and MPAA were working with Mastercard to cut off payments to so-called "rogue-websites" like MegaUpload. Today, a spokesperson from MegaUpload issued a response to the RIAA on ZeroPaid. Bonnie Lam of MegaUpload said, "the vast majority of our revenue is coming from advertising" She also said, "Megaupload is a legitimate business operating within the boundaries of the law. In five years of operation we have not been sued by a single content owner. If the RIAA or MPAA would have legal grounds they would have taken us to court by now. We suggest that they attack us within the legal system and stop labeling us until they have something to show."

Submission + - BYTE is coming back (technologizer.com)

Submitted by harrymcc
harrymcc writes: More than a dozen years after its death, BYTE magazine is still the most beloved computer magazine of all time--the one that employees of every other tech mag got used to being compared unfavorably with. And now it's being revived, in the form of a new BYTE.com. The new version isn't replicating the focus of the old BYTE--it's focused on the use of consumer tech products in a business environment--and I'm pretty positive it won't feature Robert Tinney's art or epic Jerry Pournelle columns. But I'm glad to see the legendary brand back in use rather than sitting in limbo.
Science

Submission + - 50,000 year-old finger bone connect to present man (sciguru.com)

Submitted by RogerRoast
RogerRoast writes: Gene sequencing of a 50,000 year old bone found in Siberia shows that the cave dwellers were neither Neandertals nor modern humans, but the individual is from a group that shares a common origin with Neanderthals. The bone belonged to a female lived at that time.
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft dealing with second 0-Day vulnerability (thetechherald.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Just hours after confirming a vulnerability in Internet Explorer, Microsoft has another problem on their hands. Late Wednesday, Microsoft confirmed that they are investigating a Denial-of-Service (DoS) vulnerability that resides in the FTP component of IIS.

Submission + - Discovery of new molecule for rocket fuel (eurekalert.org) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Trinitramid — A new molecule composed of nitrogen and oxygen could be 30% more efficient than the best rocket fuel today. For each 10% increase in rocket fuel efficiency, payload weight doubles. Further studies to scale production quantity and determine stability are in progress.
Businesses

Submission + - Skype Outage Hits Users Worldwide

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "The LA Times reports that millions of Skype phone users worldwide couldn't make calls or were dropped in mid-conversation, because of a network connection failure that began about 9 a.m. Wednesday PST. "For a communications system this large to go down, it's almost unheard of," says Charles S. Golvin, a Forrester Research analyst. "Usually when phone lines are disrupted, the blackout is confined to a specific geographical area. This is worldwide." In theory, Skype, which is based on peer-to-peer networking technology shouldn't see an outage but that is not really the case — the company has a massive infrastructure that it uses for purposes such as authentication and linking to the traditional phone networks. "The outage comes at a time when Skype is starting to ask larger corporations for their business," writes Om Malik. "If I am a big business, I would be extremely cautious about adopting Skype for business, especially in the light of this current outage.""

Submission + - Using Kinect for touch-free interface in surgery (gizmag.com)

Submitted by cylonlover
cylonlover writes: While Microsoft probably isn’t thrilled open source drivers for its Kinect have led to it being used for 3D virtual sex games, a new application for the device developed by members of the Virtopsy research project at the Institute of Forensic Medicine at the University of Bern in Switzerland is likely to be more welcome. The team has developed a functional prototype using Kinect that provides users with a hands-free way to review radiological images.
Businesses

Submission + - 439 Fewer Ways to Hate Bank of America

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: Haters of Bank of America and CEO Brian Moynihan now have 439 fewer ways to express their disdain for the bank. In recent days, at least 439 domain names that are critical of BofA’s top officials were taken off the market. The registrations of the domain names, which include imaginative swipes at the bank's CEO, such as BrianMoynihanBlows.com and BrianTMoynihanSucks.net, will stop BofA-haters from slamming the bank's top execs and directors with a couple of very specific pejoratives. Companies have made it a practice to scoop up negative web addresses that might be used by disgruntled customers, but this domain name buy is unusual in that it focuses on BofA's directors and corporate officers rather than the corporate brand. In other BofA news, a cloud of suspense surrounds Bank of America and WikiLeaks amidst speculation that BofA may be the next target of Julian Assange.

Submission + - Jupiter-like exoplanets not as common as thought (cosmosmagazine.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: While the number of known exoplanets continues to grow rapidly, the number of Jupiter-like planets, in Jupiter-like orbits might not be as common as thought.
Republicans

Submission + - Republicans Vow to Take Down FCC's Net Neutrality (pcmag.com)

Submitted by oldspewey
oldspewey writes: The Federal Communications Commission on Tuesday approved net neutrality rules, but that will be a short-lived victory if congressional Republicans have anything to say about it.

"Today's action by the FCC will hurt our economy, stifle private-sector job creation, and undermine the entrepreneurship and innovation of Internet-related American employers," Rep. John Boehner, the incoming House majority leader, said. "The FCC is attempting to push excessive government regulation of the Internet through without Congressional authority and these actions threaten the very future of the technology," according to Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas.

Under the Congressional Review Act of 1996, a resolution of disapproval lets Congress disapprove of regulatory rules issued by federal agencies. If enacted, the rule may not take effect and the agency can't issue similar rules with statutory authorization, according to the Congressional Research Service.

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski defends the changes, arguing the "freedom and openness of the Internet is unprotected." The rules crafted by the commission will protect basic Internet values, provide a process for monitoring Internet openness and a recourse for innovators, consumers, or speakers harmed by improper practices. It will also provide predictability for Internet service providers so they can manage and invest in networks, he said. "On one end of the spectrum, there are those who say government should do nothing at all. On the other end of the spectrum are those who would adopt a set of detailed and rigid regulations," Genachowski said. "I reject both extremes in favor of a strong and sensible framework – one that protects Internet freedom and openness and promotes robust innovation and investment."
Government

Submission + - US spurs plethora of problem solving prizes (networkworld.com)

Submitted by coondoggie
coondoggie writes: Got a complicated problem? Hold a prize competition to solve it. That’s the basic idea behind the America Competes Act renewed by Congress this week.
The Competes act now gives every department and agency the authority to conduct prize competitions, according to the White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy. Prizes and challenges have an excellent track record of accelerating problem-solving by tapping America’s top talent and best expertise.
Media

Submission + - Why do movies still have closing credits?

Submitted by Subm
Subm writes: Closing credits now commonly stretch for ten minutes. Early movies had closing credits of ten people. Why do we still have them? The typical answer is to credit the people who contributed, but that method seems ineffective: one name out of thousands is nearly invisible, it's only visible while watching the movie, and they're unsearchable. Meanwhile, every movie has a web page but those pages rarely list the full closing credits. If the goal of closing credits is to credit the people who contributed, won't posting them online serve that goal better? If the goal is to give time to show bloopers, why not just show the bloopers? (The same goes for tv shows)

Submission + - Pickens Plan comes to a wimpering end (wsj.com)

Submitted by Spy Handler
Spy Handler writes: In 2008, billionaire T. Boone Pickens unveiled his "Pickens Plan" on national TV, which calls for America to end its dependence on foreign oil by increasing use of wind power and natural gas. Over the next two years, he spent $80 million on TV commercials and $2 billion on General Electric wind turbines. Unfortunately market forces were not favorable to Mr. Pickens, and in December 2010 he announced that he is getting out of the wind power business.

What does he plan to do with his $2 billion worth of idle wind turbines? He is trying to sell them to Canada, because of Canadian law that mandates consumers to buy more renewable electricity regardles of cost.
Piracy

Submission + - Avatar wins another award: Most Pirated Movie 2010

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Avatar broke various records at the box office, so it's not too surprising the title has been crowned as the most pirated movie in 2010. It's also worth noting that Avatar beat last year's record of total movie downloads in 12 months: Star Trek with 10,960,000 downloads. Here's the top 10:

Avatar: 16,580,000 downloads
Kick-Ass: 11,400,000 downloads
Inception: 9,720,000 downloads
Shutter Island: 9,490,000 downloads
Iron Man 2: 8,810,000 downloads
Clash of the Titans: 8,040,000 downloads
Green Zone: 7,730,000 downloads
Sherlock Holmes: 7,160,000 downloads
The Hurt Locker: 6,850,000 downloads
Salt: 6,700,000 downloads
Science

Submission + - Finger Bone Could Rewrite Human History (ibtimes.com)

Submitted by RedEaredSlider
RedEaredSlider writes: Thirty thousand years ago, the human family was pretty crowded.

A finger bone fond in a cave in Siberia appears to have come from a previously unknown variety of human. If confirmed, it could rewrite much of what we know about the history of modern humans — and our relatives.

The bone is from a young girl, and dates to 30,000-50,000 years ago. It was found with a tooth. Scientists have now extracted the DNA from both and sequenced the genome. They found it doesn't match modern humans, nor does it match Neanderthals. That means there was someone else roaming the steppe of eastern Asia.
Science

Submission + - 8-Year-Olds Publish Scientific Bee Study (wired.com)

Submitted by flintmecha
flintmecha writes: A group of British schoolchildren may be the youngest scientists ever to have their work published in a peer-reviewed journal. In a new paper in Biology Letters, 25 8- to 10-year-old children from Blackawton Primary School report that buff-tailed bumblebees can learn to recognize nourishing flowers based on colors and patterns. The paper itself is well worth reading. It’s written entirely in the kids’ voices, complete with sound effects (part of the Methods section is subtitled, “‘the puzzle’duh duh duuuhhh”) and figures drawn by hand in colored pencil.
Novell

Submission + - Attachmate's plans for SuSE still murky (itworld.com)

Submitted by jfruhlinger
jfruhlinger writes: Microsoft may not have bought Unix as a side effect of the Attachmate-Novell deal, but things are still up in the air for SuSE, one of the traditional powerhouses of the Linux community. Brian Proffitt tries to read between the lines of comments from Attachmate's CEO and thinks a sale of the SuSE unit is a distinct possibility.
Idle

Submission + - New Zealand Government Opens UFO Files (discovery.com)

Submitted by astroengine
astroengine writes: Following hot on the heels of a series of international UFO sighting disclosures, the New Zealand government has joined the party and made public 2,000 pages of UFO eyewitness accounts dating back to 1952. Helpfully, the NZ newspaper The Dominion Post has scanned the documents and has made them available online. Among the accounts of alien encounters and strange lights in the sky is one of New Zealand's most famous UFO mystery: the Kaikoura sighting. But was it aliens? Probably not, but it makes for an entertaining read.

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