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Security

Submission + - Former TSA Agent Admits to Aiding Drug Dealer (foxnews.com)

Submitted by mrquagmire
mrquagmire writes: A former federal security officer has admitted helping a man accused of running a drug ring evade security and smuggle money through the Buffalo Niagara Airport.
Minnetta Walker was arrested in March. She admitted Friday in federal court helping the man get around airport security scanners, The Buffalo News reported.
As a behavioral detection officer, Walker was trained to observe and analyze human behavior and had unrestricted access to the airport and its security stations. Sometimes, she'd direct travelers she appeared to know, including Frank, away from security lines where body image scanners or pat-downs might detect large sums of cash, and escort them to their gates so they wouldn't be pulled aside for random inspections, authorities said. She'd also alert travelers to the presence of undercover law enforcement officers, authorities said.
OS X

Submission + - Apple Acknowledges Mac Defender Existence (net-security.org)

Submitted by Orome1
Orome1 writes: It took a while for Apple to react properly to the onslaught of Mac Defender and similar fake AV aimed at Mac users, but they finally did it. Only days after the revelation of internal Apple documents that instructed AppleCare and Apple store employees not to acknowledge the existence of Mac Defender and not to offer help in removing it from infected computers when asked by the users, the company has posted a support document that explains the situation and offers advice on how to avoid installing this malware and how to remove it.

Submission + - Adobe Releases Flash to HTML 5 Converter (ibtimes.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Adobe has released its Flash to HTML 5 conversion tool, codenamed "Wallaby." Wallaby is an application to convert Adobe Flash Professional CS5 files (.FLA) to HTML5 and its primary design goals were to get the best quality and performance on browsers within iOS devices like iPhone and iPad.
IT

Submission + - A letter on behalf of the world's PC fixers (pcpro.co.uk)

Submitted by
Barence
Barence writes: "PC Pro's Steve Cassidy has written a letter on behalf of all the put-upon techies who've ever been called by a friend to fix their PC. His bile is directed at a friend who put a DVD bought on holiday into their laptop, and then wondered what went wrong.

"Once you stuck that DVD in there and started saying 'yes, OK' to every resulting dialog box, you sank the whole thing," Cassidy writes. "It doesn’t take 10 minutes to sort that out; it requires a complete machine reload to properly guarantee the infection is history."

"No, there is no neat and handy way I’ve been keeping secret that allows you to retain your extensive collection of stolen software licences loaded on that laptop. I do disaster recovery, not disaster participation.""
Science

Submission + - $30 GPS jamer - jams your life (newscientist.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A simple $30 GPS jamer made in china can ruin your day. Not just affecting your car navigation — ATM machines, cell phone towers, plane, boat, train navigation systems all depend upon GPS signals that are easily blocked. These devices fail badly — with no redundancy. These jamers can be used to defeat vehicle tracking products — but end up causing a moving cloud of chaos. Next wave of anti-GPS devices include GPS spoofers to trick or confuse nearby devices — scary.

Submission + - Yummier chocolate on the way! (gizmag.com)

Submitted by cylonlover
cylonlover writes: If DNA sequencing never held much relevance for you, consider the benefits likely to flow from the recent sequencing and assembly of the chocolate tree genome. The Theobroma cacao plant is generally regarded as producing the world's finest chocolate, but is particularly vulnerable to disease and not particularly productive, and is hence shunned by risk averse growers. It is hoped the research will not only lead to hardier trees by altering the genes, but will also enable the percentages of cocoa butter, flavonoids, antioxidants, terpenoids and hormones to be regulated. The end result is likely to be smoother, more flavorsome, better smelling and even healthier chocolate. Now that's progress!
Education

Why Teach Programming With BASIC? 709

Posted by timothy from the because-of-the-great-name dept.
chromatic writes "To answer the perennial question 'How can we teach kids how to program?', we created a web-based programming environment. As we began to write lessons and examples, we surprised ourselves. Modern languages may be powerful and useful for writing real programs, but BASIC and Logo are great languages for demonstrating the joy of programming."

Submission + - Flash Player 'Square' Adds Native 64bit Support

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Adobe Flash Player 'Square' is a preview release that enables native 64-bit support on Linux, Mac OS, and Windows operating systems, as well as enhanced support for Microsoft Internet Explorer 9 beta. We have made this preview available so that users can test existing content and new platforms for compatibility and stability."
Science

Why the First Cowboy To Draw Always Gets Shot 398

Posted by timothy from the more-guns-less-crime dept.
cremeglace writes "Have you ever noticed that the first cowboy to draw his gun in a Hollywood Western is invariably the one to get shot? Nobel-winning physicist Niels Bohr did, once arranging mock duels to test the validity of this cinematic curiosity. Researchers have now confirmed that people indeed move faster if they are reacting, rather than acting first."
Image

The Art of Scalability 63

Posted by samzenpus from the read-all-about-it dept.
Martijn de Boer writes "Creating high performance growing networks is really a special skill managers and network architects should possess to be ready for the future. The Art of Scalability is a book written for these kinds of functions, and prepares you for the present and the imminent future. Scalability is achieved by principles that work on many levels within enterprises, whether it's processes, organizational structure or setting up your project, this book covers it all." Read on for the rest of Martijn's review.
Perl

Submission + - The Perl 6 Advent Calendar

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Larry Wall wasn't joking when he said that Perl 6 would be ready by Christmas, perhaps not this Christmas but that hasn't stopped a group of people (including head Rakudo developers Patrick Michaud and Jonathan Worthington) from putting together an Advent Calendar, featuring one cool Perl 6 feature everyday until Christmas. Topics currently covered include how to get and build Rakudo (the most actively developed and progressed implementation of Perl 6) and the new Metaoperators. For those wondering when Perl 6 will be finished; Rakudo will be having it's official 'production release' (dubbed Rakudo Star) April 2010.

Comment Parchive: Parity Archive Volume Set (Score 5, Interesting) 257

by khundeck (#30322938) Attached to: One Way To Save Digital Archives From File Corruption
Parchive: Parity Archive Volume Set

It basically allows you to create an archive that's selectively larger, but contains an amount of parity such that you can have XX% corruption and still 'unzip.'

"The original idea behind this project was to provide a tool to apply the data-recovery capability concepts of RAID-like systems to the posting and recovery of multi-part archives on Usenet. We accomplished that goal." [http://parchive.sourceforge.net/]

KPH
Security

Flaw Made Public In OpenSSH Encryption 231

Posted by timothy from the days-to-whom dept.
alimo20 writes "Researchers at the Royal Holloway, University of London have discovered a flaw in Version 4.7 of OpenSSH on Debian/GNU Linux. According to ISG lead professor Kenny Patterson, an attacker has a 2^{-18} (that is, one in 262,144) chance of success. Patterson tells that this is more significant than past discoveries because 'This is a design flaw in OpenSSH. The other vulnerabilities have been more about coding errors.' The vulnerability is possible by a man-in-the-middle intercepting blocks of encrypted material as it passes. The attacker then re-transmits the data back to the server and counts the number of bytes before the server to throws error messages and disconnects the attacker. Using this information, the attacker can work backwards to figure out the first 4 bytes of data before encryption. 'The attack relies on flaws in the RFC (Request for Comments) internet standards that define SSH, said Patterson. ... Patterson said that he did not believe this flaw had been exploited in the wild, and that to deduce a message of appreciable length could take days.'"
Data Storage

Researchers Store Optical Data In Five Dimensions 239

Posted by timothy from the don't-forget-time dept.
Al writes "Researchers from Swinburne University of Technology in Victoria, Australia, have developed an optical material capable of storing information in five dimensions. Using three wavelengths and two polarizations of light, the Australian researchers were able to write six different patterns within the same area. The material is made up of layers of gold nanorods suspended in clear plastic that has been spun flat onto a glass substrate and multiple data patterns can be written and read within the same area in the material without interference. The team achieved a storage density of 1.1 terabytes per cubic centimeter by writing data to stacks of 10 nanorod layers."

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