Technology

The Orange Goo That Could Save Your Laptop 285

Posted by timothy from the non-newtonian-novelty dept.
Barence writes "A British company has patented what can only be described as an orange goo that could save your laptop or iPod after a nasty fall. The amazing material is soft and malleable like putty, but the substance becomes solid instantly after impact. You can punch your fist into a ball of the material sitting on a desk and not feel a thing, according to the staff at PC Pro who have been testing the material, called 3do. It's being used by the military, the US downhill ski team, and motorcycle clothing manufacturers to provide impact protection in the event of a crash. However, it's also appearing in protective cases for laptops and MP3 players."
Medicine

A Breathalyzer For Cancer 123

Posted by timothy from the your-breath-smells-like-carcinoma dept.
Tiger4 writes "Cancer researchers in the UK have come up with a way to sniff for lung cancer on the breath. 'From the results, the researchers identified 42 "volatile organic compounds" (VOCs) present in the breath of 83% of cancer patients but fewer than 83% of healthy volunteers. Four of the most reliable were used to develop a nine-sensor array made from tiny gold particles coated with reactive chemicals sensitive to the compounds.' Other sources have picked up the story as well. Obviously, this would be a big breakthrough for rapid screening, and early detection significantly improves outcomes."
The Military

India's First Stealth Fighter To Fly In 4 Months 611

Posted by timothy from the but-now-everyone-knows-about-it dept.
xmpcray writes "Less than four months from now, India's first stealth fighter will fly for the first time. It is called the Fifth Generation Fighter Aircraft, or FGFA, and is being developed in Russia by Sukhoi. Several of the technologies being developed for the stealth fighter have evolved from those used in the Sukhoi 30 MKI. Considered the most maneuverable fighter in the world, the Sukhoi 30 MKI uses thrust vectored engines, which deflect the exhaust from its engines to extreme angles, enabling the jet to pull off violent maneuvers like a flat spin — where the jet literally spins around on its axis."
Privacy

Skype Trojan Can Log VoIP Conversations 151

Posted by timothy from the sans-malice-would-be-a-useful-thing dept.
Slatterz writes "Security giant Symantec claims to have found the public release of source code for a Trojan that targets Skype users. Trojan.Peskyspy is spyware which records a voice call and stores it as an MP3 file for later transmission. An infected machine will use the software that handles audio processing within a computer and save the call data as an MP3. The file is then sent over the internet to a predefined server where the attacker can listen to the recorded conversations."

TwIP - An IP Stack In a Tweet 81

Posted by timothy from the small-is-good dept.
Adam Dunkels writes "Inspired by the Twitter-sized program that crashes Mac OS X, I just wrote a really, really rudimentary IP stack called twIP, small enough to fit in a Twitter tweet. Although twIP is very far away from a real IP stack, it can do the first task of any IP stack: respond to pings. The entire source code can be found in this 128-character-long tweet. For those who are interested in low-level network programming, a code walkthrough with instructions on how to run the code under FreeBSD is available here. The FAQ: Q: why? A: for fun."
Graphics

Australian Defence Force Builds $1.7m Linux-Based Flight Simulator 232

Posted by timothy from the send-some-love-to-flightgear dept.
scrubl writes "The Australian Defence Force (ADF) has revealed its latest flight simulator runs on SUSE Linux-based clusters of Opteron servers and uses an open source graphics platform. The Defence Science and Technology Organisation's (DSTO) Air Operations Simulation Centre in Melbourne creates virtual worlds that allow pilots to experience real-world combat situations without leaving the ground. The visuals software was written in OpenGL, using commercial and open source scene graph engines and making 'heavy use of OpenGL Shader Language programs.'"
Patents

Cato Institute Critique of Software Patents 242

Posted by timothy from the oprah-favre dept.
binarybits writes "I've written an article for the free-market Cato Institute about how patents impede innovation in the software industry. It points out that people tend not to realize how vast the software industry is. It's not just Google and Microsoft; virtually every organization has an IT department producing potentially-infringing software. Organizations as diverse as J. Crew and the Green Bay Packers have been sued for patent infringement. It's crazy to expect all these organizations to worry about potential patent infringement. Hopefully the Supreme Court's Bilski decision will lead to new limits on software patents."
Earth

Wind Farms Can Interfere With Doppler Radar 179

Posted by timothy from the whiteout-on-the-right-parts-of-the-screen dept.
T Murphy writes "Wind farms can appear like storms or tornadoes on Doppler radar when placed too close to the radar. Tornado alley is a good area for wind farms, and good terrain for the turbines is also ideal for Doppler radar. With many new farms being constructed, the problem is growing. A false tornado warning was issued in Kansas by a computer, although canceled by a meteorologist aware of the problem — there are fears that false positives will grow. Worse would be a tornado ignored as a wind turbine. While meteorologists are trying to work with wind farm owners to shut off the turbines during bad weather, they have no control over the placement or operation of the turbines. Efforts are being made to improve detection technology to avoid further problems."
Earth

Laughing Gas Is Major Threat To Ozone Layer 306

Posted by timothy from the damn-you-street-racers-damn-you dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "The Christian Science Monitor reports that according to new research, nitrous oxide, the colorless, sweet-smelling gas with a long history as a medical and dental anesthetic is the next big threat to Earth's protective ozone layer. Its role in destroying ozone has long been recognized, as well as its role as a heat-trapping greenhouse gas but the new study puts nitrous oxide's ability to deplete ozone into numbers comparable to those used for other ozone-depleting gases covered by the 1987 Montreal Protocol. The researchers note that the health of the ozone layer has been improving since the adoption of the protocol and that nitrous oxide looms large today as an artificial destroyer of the ozone layer, in part because the emissions of other harmful chemicals have been so sharply reduced." (Continues.)
Privacy

Personalized In-Game Advertising In Upcoming Titles 244

Posted by Soulskill from the brought-to-you-by-frungy-the-sport-of-kings dept.
Scythal writes "In-game advertising provider Massive Inc., acquired by Microsoft in 2006, has signed up or renewed contracts with several publishers, notably EA, Blizzard Entertainment, THQ, and Activision. Eagerly anticipated games like Need for Speed: Shift will feature the technology that continuously collects 'anonymous' information about users, sends them to the Massive database for analysis, and downloads advertisements to be shown in the game. All that happens insidiously, without the users' explicit consent and out of their control, which raises further concerns about privacy, security and quite frankly, customer abuse. Would you feel concerned about software that collects personal information and sends it so that you get more personalized ads in a game you paid for?" (More, below.)
Businesses

Where Have You Gone, Bell Labs? 552

Posted by Soulskill from the i'm-guessing-china dept.
theodp writes "Name an industry that can produce 1 million new, high-paying jobs over the next three years, challenges BusinessWeek. You can't, because there isn't one. And that's the problem. So what's the answer? Basic research can repair the broken US business model, argues BW, saying it's the key to new, high-quality job creation. Scientific research legends like Bell Labs, Sarnoff Corp, and Xerox PARC are essentially gone, or shadows of their former selves. And while IBM, Microsoft, and HP collectively spend $17B a year on R&D, only 3%-5% of that is for basic science. In a post-9/11 world, DARPA's mission has shifted from science to tactical projects with short-term military applications. Cutting back on investment in basic science research may make great sense in the short term, but as corporations and government make the same decision to free-ride off the investments of others, society suffers the 'tragedy of the commons,' wherein multiple actors operating in their self-interest do harm to the overall public good. We've reached that point, says BW, and we're just beginning to see the consequences. The cycle needs to be reversed, and it needs to be done quickly."
Networking

Chinese Game Operator Used DDoS Attacks On Rivals 28

Posted by Soulskill from the world-of-latencycraft dept.
carusoj writes "An attack by a Chinese online game provider meant to cripple the servers of its rivals ballooned to cause an Internet outage in much of the country in May, according to police. The escalation began with a distributed denial-of-service attack on a domain registrar that serves many small gaming companies. While the national scale of the effects was unusual, such attacks are common among some small Internet businesses competing to draw customers in China, security researchers say. Police have arrested four people involved in the attack."
Government

Musician Lobby Terms Balanced Copyright "Disgusting" 319

Posted by Soulskill from the less-than-impressed dept.
An anonymous reader writes "While most of the attention at Thursday's Canadian copyright town hall was on the recording industry's strategy to pack the room and exclude alternate voices, the most controversial activity took place outside the hall. It has now been revealed that security guards threatened students and a Member of Parliament for distributing leaflets, and the American Federation of Musicians termed the MP's leaflet, which called for balanced copyright, 'disgusting' and demanded a retraction and apology. At this point, such an admission seems unlikely."
United States

Spammers Use Holes In Democrats.org Security 129

Posted by Soulskill from the hello-sir-madam dept.
Attila Dimedici writes "According to Cloudmark, 419 spammers are using the democrats.org website to relay email and bypass spam filters. 'The abuse, which dates back at least to the beginning of this month, helps evade filters that internet service providers employ to block the messages. ... The messages were sent courtesy of this page, which allows anyone with an internet connection to send emails. The PHP script employs no CAPTCHA or other measure to help ensure there is a real human being behind each email that gets funneled through the service. The service allows messages to be sent to 10 addresses at a time and even provides a way for people to import contacts they have stored in their address book.'"
The Courts

Lori Drew Cyberbullying Case Dismissed 408

Posted by timothy from the neither-vindication-nor-absolution dept.
Trepidity writes "About seven weeks after the judge tentatively overturned Lori Drew's guilty verdict for 'cyberbullying' following her online harassment of a teenager that was linked to the teenager's suicide, the case was finally officially dismissed. In a 32-page opinion (PDF), the court avoided a minefield of possible follow-on effects that civil-liberties groups had warned of by holding that merely violating a website's Terms of Service cannot constitute 'unauthorized access' for the purposes of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (18 U.S.C. 1030)."

Slashdot Top Deals