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Robotics

Robotics Prof Fears Rise of Military Robots 258

Posted by timothy from the oh-you-worry-too-much dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Interesting video interview on silicon.com with Sheffield University's Noel Sharkey, professor of AI & robotics. The white-haired prof talks state-of-the-robot-nation — discussing the most impressive robots currently clanking about on two-legs (hello Asimo) and who's doing the most interesting things in UK robotics research (something involving crickets apparently). He also voices concerns about military use of robots — suggesting it won't be long before armies are sending out fully autonomous killing machines."
Internet Explorer

IE 0-Day Flaw Used In Chinese Attack 318

Posted by timothy from the zero-is-where-you-start-counting dept.
bheer writes "A zero-day attack on IE was used to carry out the cyber attack on Google and others that's been getting so much ink recently, reports The Register, quoting McAfee's CTO. While the web (and security) community has pointed out the problems with IE's many security flaws (and its sluggish update cycle) in the past, IE shows no sign of vanishing from the corporate landscape."
Google

Google Switching To EXT4 Filesystem 348

Posted by timothy from the make-money-with-open-source dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Google is in the process of upgrading their existing EXT2 filesystem to the new and improved EXT4 filesystem. Google has benchmarked three different filesystems — XFS, EXT4 and JFS. In their benchmarking, EXT4 and XFS performed equally well. However, in view of the easier upgrade path from EXT2 to EXT4, Google has decided to go ahead with EXT4."

Comment Quick and easy "plaintextify" for Windows (Score 1) 495

by terrahertz (#30768586) Attached to: Tynt Insight Is Watching You Cut and Paste
1) Copy desired formatted/linked/etc text to clipboard.
2) Windows key-R (opens Run box)
3) Ctrl-V (paste the text into the Run box)
4) Shift-Home (select the now-plaintext)
5) Ctrl-C (copy the now-plaintext)
6) Esc (close Run box)

I use this all the time when copying and pasting in Windows, and it works great for me.

Comment How Tynt.com says to avoid being tracked... (Score 5, Informative) 495

by landrew (#30768504) Attached to: Tynt Insight Is Watching You Cut and Paste

This from their FAQ - Technical Topics (http://www1.tynt.com/faq-technical-topics):

Q. How can I block Tynt Insight from monitoring my actions?

A. Tynt understands that some people are uncomfortable having events from their web browsing recorded in a database. We take your privacy concerns seriously and we are therefore investing considerable effort into developing a feature that will allow users to block Tynt software across all the sites that are using it, from within their own browser. Until we have this blocking feature ready, it is possible to achieve a similar effect by using one of the many ad blocking components available on the net. For Firefox users, we have found Adblock plus to work well, and Super Ad Blocker is effective for IE users.

I can't wait to download and install software they've written to help me block them from tracking me with their software. Good thing I'm using Ad Block Plus and NoScript while I wait, or they'd know I cut-n-pasted that...

Comment sat terminals (Score 2, Informative) 139

by zogger (#30768340) Attached to: Disaster Recovery For Haiti's Cell Phone Networks

40 sat terminals are being established, along with 60 broadband terminals, from the ITU. A lot of stuff has to be moved in, because so much was destroyed

http://www.itu.int/newsroom/press_releases/2010/02.html

I was looking at various pics of the destruction, and it is trite and often used, but it looks like a major giant airforce just carpet bombed the place.

I have never been there, but based on other articles I have read about real poor areas with cellphones, a lot of the people depend on charging kiosks / local services to recharge their phones, because domestic electricity is so rare. I would imagine most of those facilities are now smashed as well.

Comment Re:Print Screen (Score 1) 806

by Lord Lode (#30768084) Attached to: Does Your PC Really Need a SysRq Button Anymore?

Print screen isn't that rarely used. Maybe if you'd remove that ability you'd find out you miss it more than you think. And print screen button is the standard in Windows, Gnome and KDE. There is no other sane known keyboard shortcut for this. If the print screen button is gone, No desktop or Windows will properly support print screen anymore, I don't think they'll bother finding another combination for it. And using various "screen grab" tools is too much work.
Displays

Best Way To Put a Monitor On a Robot? 48

Posted by timothy from the window-to-the-soul dept.

I'm part of my schools IGVC team, and we're upgrading our bot's computer to an onboard mini-itx. Most of the access to the box is gonna be through ssh, but I want a terminal I can just mount on the bot for convenience. Bidding on a psOne LCD already, but what are some good options if that doesn't pan out? I want to keep it as cheap as possible and small (in the 5-7 inch range). I haven't found any good guides to modding a digital photo frame or portable DVD player, but I'm probably just not looking in the right places.
The Almighty Buck

GoDaddy VP Caught Bidding Against Customers 222

Posted by timothy from the strong-accusations-so-consider-the-source dept.
An anonymous reader writes "A GoDaddy Vice President has been caught bidding against customers in their own domain name auctions. The employee Adam Dicker isn't just any GoDaddy employee; he's head of the GoDaddy subsidiary that controls the auctions. Dicker won some of the domains he bid for, and pushed up the bid price on auctions he didn't win. The conflict of interest is unethical, but could this practice also be illegal? Said a representative for a competitor, 'Even if controlled, that practice has bad news written all over it.' This comes hot on the heels of news that despite earlier promises to ICANN to end their 60-Day ban on transfers, GoDaddy quietly circumvented it by forcing customers to agree to the ban anyway. ICANN doesn't appear to be investigating or asking follow-up questions about this. What can be done to force ICANN to police the registrars for which it is responsible?"
Communications

Netgear Launches Open Source-Friendly Wireless Router 182

Posted by timothy from the market-linksys-chose-to-mostly-ignore dept.
An anonymous reader submits news of Netgear's release of the "open source Wireless-G Router (model WGR614L), enabling Linux developers and enthusiasts to create firmware for specialized applications, and supported by a dedicated open source community. The router supports the most popular open source firmware; Tomato and DD-WRT are available on WGR614L, making it easier for users to develop a wide variety of applications. The router is targeted at people who want custom firmware on their router without worrying about issues, and enjoy the benefits of having an open source wireless router."
Quickies

Submission + - MIT's mini tractor beam

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: MIT scientists have developed a way to use light to grab and move minuscule particles on a microchip. The research could lead to fine-grained biological sensors and other precisely built nanoscale devices. Optical tweezers have been used on transparent media — like a microscope slide — that let the light shine through and hold objects in a tractor beam-like embrace. (This is possible because light's individual photons transfer minuscule amounts of force to particles they hit.) What's new in the optical tweezer from MIT's Matt Lang and David Appleyard is the use of infrared light. Unlike visible light, the infrared does not bounce off the silicon used as the basis for microchips. That means that MIT's optical tweezer can be used not just for study but to build structures on the surface of chips. Lang and Appleyard proved their technique by getting 16 live E. coli cells to spell out "MIT" on a chip.
Spam

Submission + - CAPTCHA broken - thanks to a virtual stripper (bbc.co.uk) 3

Submitted by
Dynamoo
Dynamoo writes: "A few months ago there was some speculation that spammers had managed to break the security CAPTCHA for many webmail systems and were using them to spread viruses and junk email. The problem was that no-one could actually demonstrate a mechanism to defeat the security code.

However, an novel approach has been documented by the BBC, suggesting that a virtual stripper application may be partly to blame. The woman in the application progressively undresses if the user types in the correct CAPTCHA code.. a code that is actually being generated by the Yahoo! mail security check. The application itself is a trojan, dubbed TROJ_CAPTCHAR.A by Trend."
Wireless Networking

Submission + - Universal Wi-Fi adapter for digital cameras (wifinetnews.com)

Submitted by
Glenn Fleishman
Glenn Fleishman writes: "eyeFi has finally announced their Wi-Fi adapter for digital cameras. At $100, the 2 GB SD card features a full-fledged processing system that operates independent of the camera; no firmware is needed in the camera for the adapter to transfer images over a local network. eyeFi's system lets you configure the adapter to connect to one or more Wi-Fi networks (with or without encryption), while you set up photo-sharing and social-networking logins on their site. You can configure the card, whenever the camera is powered up and within range of a network it's set to use, to upload photos, which are then automatically posted to whichever services you specify. Photos are uploaded at full resolution, and resized only for services that won't accept larger sizes."

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