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Bug

Crashing an In-Flight Entertainment System 322

Posted by kdawson from the stress-testing dept.
rabblerouzer writes "Hugh Thompson, who was interviewed by Slashdot on the dangers of e-voting, now has a cool blog entry on how he was able to bring down the gaming/movie console on an airplane. He calls it one of the most interesting examples of a software 'abuse case' he has ever seen." Fortunately the IFE system is totally disjoint from the avionics.
Hardware Hacking

Submission + - Wireless Wii Hack for SNES and NES Controllers

Submitted by GooglyWoogly
GooglyWoogly writes: One of the nice features of the marvelous Wii is that you also can play all those retro NES/SNES/Genesis/other games. To be more retro, you could buy one of these, but who wants wires in a Wii world ?
Mark Feldman decided to take a step further by hacking the old NES & SNES controllers to work wirelessly with the Wii. Retro games can now be enjoyed how the makers intended — with the 'real' controllers but with the wireless convenience of Wii.
He has a YouTube video showing the gear, with an iPod replacement battery used to power the controllers.
United States

Submission + - Stanford gears up for robot race

Submitted by nght2000
nght2000 writes: The Stanford Racing Team displayed their entry for the DARPA Urban Challenge this past weekend. The story was reported in the Palo Alto Daily News. The DARPA Urban Challenge features autonomous ground vehicles conducting simulated military supply missions in a mock urban area. Safe operation in traffic is essential to U.S. military plans to use autonomous ground vehicles to conduct important missions. The vehicle, a 2006 diesel powered Passat named Junior, was donated by Volkswagen of America. Volkswagen's Electronics Research Laboratory in Palo Alto, California is once again joining the Stanford Team by providing vehicle support, modification and testing. This year the team is being sponsored by no less than Google, Intel, Red Bull and others. Stanford won the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge with their Volkswagen Touareg robot named Stanley. The Urban Challenge is scheduled to be held at an undisclosed location on November 3, 2007.
Graphics

Submission + - CPU Scaling With the GeForce 8800 Series

Submitted by
LegionHW
LegionHW writes: "In the past we have tested the GeForce 8800 GTX at 1600x1200 in a number of games using a mixture of high-end Intel and AMD processors. However, given the 8800 GTS is a far more popular solution, we felt it would be best to include this graphics card in the article. Therefore, we now have a direct comparison between the GTX and GTS using a range of processors."
Security

Remote Code Execution Hole Found In Snort 95

Posted by kdawson from the upgrade-right-now dept.
Palljon1123 writes "A stack-based buffer overflow in the Snort intrusion detection system could leave government and enterprise installations vulnerable to remote unauthenticated code execution attacks. The flaw, found by researchers at IBM's ISS X-Force, affects the Snort DCE/RPC preprocessor and could be used to execute code with the same privileges (usually root or SYSTEM) as the Snort binary. No user action is required." Sourcefire has an update to fix the vulnerability in versions 2.6.1, 2.6.1.1, and 2.6.1.2; Heise Security spells out the workaround for the 2.7.0 beta version.

Feed NSA Spy Documents Stay Sealed (wired.com)

From feed by wiredfeed
A federal judge rejects a bid by Wired News and other media outlets to unseal whistle-blower papers in a lawsuit over surveillance of Americans. In 27B Stroke 6.


Operating Systems

Submission + - Will Vista teach people about memory?

Submitted by adamdrayer
adamdrayer writes: Like all IT people, I am constantly bombarded with questions by the prospective computer buyer. There are always the normal annoyances like being thrust a Dell catalogue and being asked to spec out a machine for "email and internet". Or explaining that the computer I spec'ed out 2 weeks ago no longer exists or has changed price. Or telling the boss why the company can't give him a copy of Office.

By far, the most annoying thing to me is telling someone to make sure that they get at least 1GB of memory and having them tell me that memory isn't an issue because they are not going to load much in the way of pictures and music. No matter how hard I try, I can't seem to shake people's idea that memory doesn't do what it sounds like. Even when they nod and say they understand... I know they don't.

Do you think since Vista will require most folks to upgrade, it will also force people to finally understand what the role of memory is in the computer?

Feed Banking on Babies' Cord Blood (wired.com)

From feed by wiredfeed
Pediatricians push the ultimate biological insurance policy -- a stash of umbilical cord blood to battle future illness -- as the government sets up a national blood-banking system. By the Associated Press.


Education

Submission + - Should sites like Wikipedia be blocked at schools?

Submitted by Londovir
Londovir writes: Recently our school board made the decision to block Wikipedia from our school district's WAN system. This was a complete block — there aren't even provisions in place for teachers or administrators to input a password to bypass the restriction. The reason given was that Wikipedia (being user created and edited) did not represent a credible or reliable source of reference for schools. My question is: should we block sites such as Wikipedia because students may be exposed to misinformation, or should we encourage sites such as Wikipedia as an outlet for students to investigate and determine validity of information? What's your opinion?
Microsoft

4 GB May Be Vista's RAM Sweet Spot 767

Posted by kdawson from the honkin' dept.
jcatcw writes "David Short, an IBM consultant who works in the Global Services Division and has been beta testing Vista for two years, says users should consider 4GB of RAM if they really want optimum Vista performance. With Vista's minimum requirement of 512MB of RAM, Vista will deliver performance that's 'sub-XP,' he says. (Dell and others recommend 2GB.) One reason: SuperFetch, which fetches applications and data, and feeds them into RAM to make them accessible more quickly. More RAM means more caching."
Security

Submission + - FBI Translating 1,000 Wiretap Conversations a Day

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: New on the Bad Guys blog: FBI Translating Over 1,000 Wiretap Conversations a Day Spurred by adding hundreds of new linguists and help from allies overseas, the FBI is translating a record 34,000 wiretapped conversations a month, Bureau officials tell the Bad Guys blog. http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/badguys/070220/f bi_translating_over_1000_wire.htm Long criticized for their lack of language specialists, FBI officials say they are finally catching up to an unprecedented intake of surveillance since 9/11. In the last four years, the Bureau's counterterrorism investigations have netted a windfall of foreign language materials: Over 500,000 hours of audio 5.5 million electronic data files 1.8 million pages of text The growth in FBI electronic surveillance is due largely to counterterrorism and counterintelligence wiretaps. The number of national security wiretaps approved by the secret FISA court jumped by 122 percent from 2001 to 2005, the story notes, while criminal wiretaps have increased by only 19 percent.

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When it is incorrect, it is, at least *authoritatively* incorrect. -- Hitchiker's Guide To The Galaxy

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