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Software

Submission + - Dutch government adopts open code and standards (google.com)

Submitted by
christian.einfeldt
christian.einfeldt writes: "The Dutch government has set a target date of April 2008 for its agencies to start using open standards-based software, the Netherlands Economic Affairs Ministry said Thursday, according to a 14 December 2007 Associated Press article by Toby Sterling. Government organizations will still be able to use proprietary software and formats but will have to justify it under the new policy, ministry spokesman Edwin van Scherrenburg said. Microsoft Netherlands spokesman Hans Bos claims that Microsoft's Office productivity suite will still be used widely in the Dutch government until April, and that Microsoft Office will comply with the new Dutch rules once Microsoft's so-called "Open Office XML" standard is approved as an international ISO standard in February, as Microsoft sees it. The Dutch policy directs government organizations at the national level to be ready to use the Open Document Format to save documents by April, and at the state and local level by 2009, according to the AP's Sterling."
Movies

Submission + - Harry Potter 5 Standard DVD Defective by Design

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Many people I know — and unsurprisingly, many people online — have already written that the quality of the Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix standard DVD is of such poor quality that a VHS tape is a superior version. Even older DVDs from earlier movies in the series stand up with higher quality than this release. Is this a ploy by Warner Bros. to push the HD versions of the film?
Digital

Submission + - 10 Tech Concepts You Need to Know for 2008 (popularmechanics.com)

Submitted by mattnyc99
mattnyc99 writes: As they report from the heady International Electron Devices Meeting with advance word on cheaper photovoltaic cells and nanogenerators, new flexible "communications sheet" furniture and predictions from Intel's Penryn chip team, Popular Mechanics has listed its annual 10 tech concepts you need to know for next year. The short list: EEG game controllers, self-healing materials, high-k transistors, vertical search, clear-pixel cameras, pay-per-glance advertising, flexible displays, embedded voice recognition, self-defending bots and nano cancer therapy. See how that stacks up to how we debated the list from last year (and the year before that), and let the guessing begin...
KDE

Submission + - KDE 4.0 Release Candidate 2 (kde.org) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: December 11, 2007 (The INTERNET). The KDE Community is happy to announce the immediate availability of the second release candidate for KDE 4.0. This release candidate marks the last mile on the road to KDE 4.0.
Toys

Submission + - Technology Roadmap for Productive Nanosystems (e-drexler.com)

Submitted by
WillWare
WillWare writes: "The working group for the Technology Roadmap for Productive Nanosystems is 70-some scientists and researchers from academia, industry and the U.S. National Laboratories, who for the last two years have been figuring out how to get from today's technology to real working advanced nanotechnology. Their report has finally been published in PDF format, available to the general public. It surveys relevant current research efforts and looks at the most fruitful directions for future work."
Space

Submission + - Near Earth "Asteroid" Turns Out to be Spac 1

Submitted by iamlucky13
iamlucky13 writes: Last week, the IAU's Minor Planet Center asked professional astronomers around the world to help track a previously unknown asteroid, labeled 2007 VN84, that will pass the earth at the alarmingly close distance of 5600 km on November 13. However, Denis Denisenko of the Moscow Space Research Institute then noticed something peculiar: the object's trajectory exactly matched that of the European Space Agency's Rosetta probe, which will perform a gravitational slingshot around the earth on that date on its way to study and land on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. The MPC's editorial notice on the error also comments critically on the current means available to identifying distant spacecraft such as Rosetta.
Privacy

Submission + - White House ordered to preserve all e-mail (cnn.com)

Submitted by Verunks
Verunks writes: A federal judge Monday ordered the White House to preserve copies of all its e-mails in response to two lawsuits that seek to determine whether e-mails have been destroyed in violation of federal law. The issue surfaced in the leak probe of administration officials who disclosed Valerie Plame's CIA identity
Security

Submission + - "Look for the padlock" isn't enough (littlewhitedog.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: One of our community members received some instant message spam inviting him to click on a link to one of those websites which pretends to scan one's computer, displays horrifying warnings of myriad vulnerabilities, and then offers to sell the fix for these "vulnerabilities". So far, so normal. Scammers have been doing this sort of thing for years now.

This time, however, there's a difference. Crooks are buying SSL certificates to lend their websites an air of authenticity.

http://www.littlewhitedog.com/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=132
Sci-Fi

Submission + - Best Sci Fi Device

Submitted by largesnike
largesnike writes: Your favourite Sci Fi device?

The Flux Capacitor
The Oscillation Overthruster
EPS Conduits
...I'm sure there are more — trying to think of them...
Security

Submission + - Russian hacker gang vanishes once again (computerworld.com.au)

Submitted by Arashtamere
Arashtamere writes: The shadowy hacker and malware hosting network that only recently fled Russia to set up operations in China has now pulled the plug there and vanished yet again, researchers said. An analyst at VeriSign's iDefense Labs unit who wanted to remain anonymous, leery of retribution from the gang, said IDefense had tracked RBN's migration earlier in the week from servers based in Russia to ones running in China. On Tuesday, RBN's Russian servers went dark as the group relinquished control of its assigned IP addresses, effectively severing its connection to the Internet. By Wednesday, however, RBN had relocated to China and Taiwan after obtaining at least seven net blocks of Chinese IP addresses, said iDefense. According to the security intelligence firm, as of Wednesday, RBN controlled 5,120 IP addresses assigned to Chinese service providers; known RBN clients were even seen using those addresses that day. But with its China move putting media and security community spotlights on the organization, RBN suddenly went offline on Thursday, said the analyst. "They severed connections to six of the seven net blocks on November 8," the analyst said. According to iDefense, RBN as a single organization may be dead and gone....RBN may even now be breaking up into smaller pieces farmed out to multiple countries' Internet infrastructures.
Hardware Hacking

Submission + - The Aerodynamics of Bicycle Racing

Submitted by
Ponca City, We Love You
Ponca City, We Love You writes: "Nick Frey, the reigning national time-trial bicycle champion, is a mechanical and aerospace engineering major at Princeton who puts his knowledge to work in modifications to his racing bike. Once a bicycle is moving fast enough, nearly all the cyclist's strength goes into pushing aside air. Reducing that resistance by a relatively small amount can result in major increases in speed with minimal increased effort so one of Frey's innovations is enclosing his brake cables in a special housing shaped like an airplane wing that shields them from the wind, reducing the resistance on his bike. "It's like free speed," says Frey. "And in cycling, every second counts." Other improvements include the helmet he purchased to match his riding posture and the silicon gel between his wheel rims and tires that subtly changes the shape of his tires, making them more aerodynamic. Frey subjects his own performance to rigorous analysis and posts his training and performance results, along with details about various races, on his blog."
Space

Submission + - Mission Accomplished on Riskiest Spacewalk (techluver.com)

Submitted by
Tech.Luver
Tech.Luver writes: "A spacewalking astronaut fixed a ripped solar energy panel on the international space station Saturday in a difficult and dangerous emergency procedure that allowed the crew to extend the wing to its full length. Spacewalker Scott Parazynski installed homemade braces on the torn wing and clipped the snarled wires that had ripped it in two places as it was being unfurled Tuesday. He then watched as the crew deployed the wing to its full 115-foot length. Astronauts inside slowly extended the wing, watching closely for more problems. The wing was about three-quarters unfurled when the crew noticed the damage on Tuesday. "Excellent work, guys, excellent," space station commander Peggy A. Whitson said after the tense ( http://techluver.com/2007/11/03/nasa-astronauts-gets-mission-accomplished-on-riskiest-spacewalk/ )"
Space

Submission + - Intergalatic Clouds of Missing Mass Missing Again

Submitted by
Ponca City, We Love You
Ponca City, We Love You writes: "Researchers at the University Of Alabama In Huntsville have discovered that some x-rays thought to come from intergalactic clouds of "warm" gas are instead probably caused by lightweight electrons leaving the mass of the universe as much as ten to 20 percent lighter than previously calculated. In 2002 the same team reported finding large amounts of extra "soft" (relatively low-energy) x-rays coming from the vast space in the middle of galaxy clusters. Their cumulative mass was thought to account for as much as ten percent of the mass and gravity needed to hold together galaxies, galaxy clusters and perhaps the universe itself. When the team looked at data from a galaxy cluster in the southern sky, however, they found that energy from those additional soft x-rays doesn't look like it should. "The best, most logical explanation seems to be that a large fraction of the energy comes from electrons smashing into photons instead of from warm atoms and ions, which would have recognizable spectral emission lines," said Dr. Max Bonamente."

Google's Young Brainiacs Go Globe-Trotting 175

Posted by Zonk from the nice-gig-if-you-can-get-it dept.
theodp writes "To train a new generation of leaders, Google sends its young associate product managers on a worldwide mission. Newsweek's Steven Levy tagged along and reports on the APMs' activities, which included passing out candy, notebooks and pencils to poor Raagihalli children, a 'Rubber Ducky' group sing-along at 2 a.m., and competitions to find the weirdest-gadget-under-$100 in Tokyo. The APM program, which seeks brilliant kids and slots them directly into important jobs with no experience necessary, was formed after Google's attempts to hire veterans from firms like Microsoft had awful results. 'Google is so different that it was almost impossible to reprogram them into this culture,' says Google CEO Eric Schmidt of the experienced hires."
Networking

Submission + - Verizon hacks DNS (adterrasperaspera.com) 1

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: Ad Terras Per Aspera is reporting that Verizon is now redirecting non-existent domain requests to their DNS servers to their own internal website. As detailed,

This is considered a severe security violation and they are willfully undermining the integrety of the service they provide.


Is Verizon setting themselves up to be sued for privacy violations and be disconnected from other Tier 1 providers?

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