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Google

Submission + - Oracle Patent Case Against Google Weakening (itworld.com)

Submitted by
jfruhlinger
jfruhlinger writes: "If Oracle thought that they'd wave their vague Java patents around get licensing money from Google and other vendors in perpetuity, they may have another thing coming. The judge in the case seems skeptical of many of Oracle's claims, and indeed some of the patents at the heart of the suit are being re-examined — and rejected."
Science

Submission + - Do Cities Cause Schizophrenia? (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: City dwellers worldwide enjoy several advantages over their rural compatriots, including, on average, better job prospects and better access to food and health care (not to mention nightlife). At the same time, city living can be stressful, and studies have found that mental health problems, such as schizophrenia, depression, and anxiety disorders, are more common in urbanites. Now, researchers have taken a crack at understanding this connection by looking for differences in how the brains of people from urban and rural environments react to certain kinds of stress. The team found that the bigger the city someone currently lives in, the more amygdala activity he or she exhibits during social stress, which could predispose to schizophrenia, depression, and other disorders.
Security

Submission + - Fired IT worker replaces CEO's PPT with porn (sophos.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: 52-year-old Walter Powell wanted revenge when he was fired from his position as an IT manager at Baltimore Substance Abuse System Inc.

So, he hacked into their systems — installing keyloggers to steal passwords.

And then, when his CEO was giving a presentation on a 64 inch TV to the board of directors... he replaced the slides with pornographic images of naked women.

Powell has now been given a 2 year suspended sentence, and 100 hours community service.

The moral? Don't piss off your IT staff
Politics

Submission + - Secret Vote at NRC on Vermont Yankee (boston.com)

Submitted by
mdsolar
mdsolar writes: "

The five members of the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission refused to say Thursday whether they had voted in secret a day earlier on whether to ask the U.S. Justice Department to intervene in the lawsuit brought by Entergy Corp. against the state of Vermont over the future of the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant..... A senior NRC official, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak about the matter, said the commission voted 3-2 on whether to ask the Justice Department to intervene, but he would not say which way the vote went.

Meanwhile other unprofessional and manipulative behavior on the part of the NRC Chair has been brought to light in an Inspector General's report. http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/677-e2-wire/166861-top-nuke-regulator-defends-his-tenure-i-hold-people-accountable"

Submission + - LHC reaches its aim for 2011, goes for even more (web.cern.ch)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Both ATLAS and CMS at CERN announced the fulfilling of a goal for the 2011 year: obtaining 1 inverse femtobarn integrated luminosity (to simply put: the data). "With the LHC running at much higher intensity than initially foreseen, signals of new physics might appear any moment in our data," said CMS spokesperson Guido Tonelli. A third LHC experiment, LHCb, requires less data than ATLAS and CMS, but has also exceeded its expectations for the year. Sources close to the LHC operation team say that even 3 inverse femtobarns are possible this year.
Windows

Submission + - Windows 8: the Ultimate Tablet/PC Hybrid? (hurvitz.org)

Submitted by
orenh
orenh writes: "Microsoft has revealed that Windows 8 will add the mobile-friendly Tiles UI to the full operating system. Many people have criticized this decision as a foolish attempt to enter the tablet space with a desktop operating system. But I think it's a smart idea, since this makes Windows 8 the only operating system that can power no-compromise hybrid tablet/desktop machines. After being eclipsed by Apple and Google in the mobile space, will Microsoft have the last laugh?"
GNU is Not Unix

Submission + - skype protocol reverse engineered (wordpress.com)

Submitted by
shifting_control
shifting_control writes: "While many Linux users are upset that Microsoft’s buying out Skype and that the Free Software Foundation’s GNU Free Call hasn’t matured much in being a reliable replacement to Skype (not all of the FSF projects move along), there is some interesting news this morning: an independent researcher has reverse-engineered the Skype protocol."
Security

Submission + - Sony's many security missteps: A timeline (techtarget.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: We all know Sony's handling of the security breach has been bad, but how bad exactly? Robert Westervelt broke down each and every mistake that lead to the company's $171 million meltdown, and what you can do to avoid the same fate.
Power

Submission + - Harnessing the energy of Galloping Gertie (newscientist.com)

Submitted by FatLittleMonkey
FatLittleMonkey writes: You've all seen the footage of Galloping Gertie, the infamous Tacoma Narrows bridge. This is due to a type of turbulence called Wake Galloping, caused by airflow creating lift on the lee-side of cylinders (or cables on suspension bridges.) Now researchers in South Korea have developed a way of harnessing the turbulence to generate electricity. Their device works most efficiently at wind speeds too low for conventional wind turbines.

Submission + - Frist attack using RSA breach ? (networkworld.com)

Submitted by jeffviper
jeffviper writes: Ouch.... we all knew it was a bad thing for RSA and here is the first casualty : Lockheed Martin

Lockheed responded to questions about the incident with this written statement: "We have policies and procedures in place to mitigate the cyber threats to our business, and we remain confident in the integrity of our robust, multilayered information systems security," said spokesman Jeffery Adams.

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