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Power

Submission + - In Africa, Lighting up the Darkness with LEDs

Submitted by
Peace Corps Online
Peace Corps Online writes: "In a non-electrified society, life is defined by the sun and little is accomplished once it sets around 6 pm. Only 19 percent of rural areas in Ghana have electricity. The rest use foul-smelling kerosene lamps to light their huts, which pollute, provide little light and are major fire hazards. But now Philips has partnered with KITE, a not-for-profit Ghanaian organization, to bring artificial light to villages that have no electricity. The new Philips products include a portable lantern which provides bright white light where it is needed, the Dynamo Multi LED self-powered (wind-up) flashlight that provides 17 minutes of light from two minutes hand winding, and the "My Reading Light", which is a solar-powered reading light with built-in rechargeable battery. "People can now do things in the evening," says Harriette Amissah-Arthur, KITE's director. "If you could only see the joy these products bring the villagers. You look at their faces; you have to see it to believe it.""
Hardware Hacking

Atom-Based Mini-ITX Motherboard Available 240

Posted by kdawson from the small-is-beautiful dept.
LWATCDR writes "A company out of the UK is selling an Intel Atom-based Mini-ITX motherboard. It has a riser for two PCI cards, two SATA ports, and an IDE ports so it could make a great little NAS, firewall, MAME box, or low-power workstation. To add to the fun it has a real parallel port 'perfect for hardware hacking,' a real RS-232 port 'perfect for data acquisition,' and two USB ports. The price is around $100, give or take, and hopefully it will come down over time. All in all a nice system to run Linux, WindowsXP, BSD, or maybe even OpenSolaris on."
Image

Connection Reset by Peer 7

Posted by samzenpus
This is how you leave no doubt that you were a nerd.

Feed Science Daily: Edible 'Antifreeze' Prevents Unwanted Ice Crystals In Ice Cream And Frozen Foods (sciencedaily.com)

From feed by sdfeed
An edible and tasteless "antifreeze" has been developed that prevents the formation of ice crystals that can spoil the smooth, silky texture of ice cream and interfere with the palatability of other frozen foods. Scientists explain that preventing the formation of large ice crystals is a major challenge for frozen food manufacturers and consumers who store packages in home freezers.


Microsoft

MS Promotion Site Flagged By MS Anti-Phishing 279

Posted by kdawson from the too-good-to-be-true dept.
Stony Stevenson writes "Microsoft has launched a marketing campaign that lets any student at an Australian university buy the Ultimate edition of Office 2007, usual price $1,150, for only $75 — a discount of about 93%. But when students go to the promotion site, Microsoft Live OneCare pops up a warning that the site may be a phishing scam. The warning reads: 'Phishing filter has determined this might be a phishing website. We recommend that you do not give any of your information to such websites. Phishing websites impersonate trustworthy websites for the purpose of obtaining your personal or financial information.'"
Science

Ancient Village Unearthed Near Stonehenge 186

Posted by kdawson from the for-the-living dept.
cityhunter007 writes to point out coverage on CNN.com about an ancient village discovered two miles from Stonehenge that may have housed workers building the monument, or perhaps visitors after it was constructed. The village, at a site known as Durrington Walls, dates from about the time Stonehenge was built, 2600 BCE. The article says: "The researchers speculated that Durrington Walls was a place for the living and Stonehenge — where cremated remains have been found — was a cemetery and memorial... Stonehenge was oriented to face the midsummer sunrise and midwinter sunset, while the wooden circle at Durrington Walls faced the midwinter sunrise and midsummer sunset."
Security

Is It Illegal To Disclose a Web Vulnerability? 198

Posted by kdawson from the responsible-schresponsible dept.
Scott writes "I'm submitting my own story on an important topic: Is it illegal to discover a vulnerability on a Web site? No one knows yet, but Eric McCarty's pleading guilty to hacking USC's web site was 'terrible and detrimental,' according to tech lawyer Jennifer Granick. She believes the law needs at least to be clarified, and preferably changed to protect those who find flaws in production Web sites — as opposed to those who 'exploit' such flaws. Of course, the owners of sites often don't see the distinction between the two. Regardless of whether or not it's illegal to disclose Web vulnerabilities, it's certainly problematic, and perhaps a fool's errand. After all, have you seen how easy it is to find XSS flaws in Web sites? In fact, the Web is challenging the very definition of 'vulnerability,' and some researchers are scared. As one researcher in the story says: 'I'm intimidated by the possible consequences to my career, bank account, and sanity. I agree with [noted security researcher] H.D. Moore, as far as production websites are concerned: "There is no way to report a vulnerability safely."'"
Privacy

Journal Journal: No good deed goes unpunished...

Journal by Shadowruni
A few nights ago I was reading my email when I got some phish; an email broken English stating that I MUST use their software. (Not included in the email but linked to instead) to access my Monster.com account. Notwithstanding Monster's WAY too lazy security policy on email addresses (I get a few "shipping coordinator" offers a week); something about this piqued my curiosity.
Businesses

Where Should I Get My Job Interview Code Samples? 249

Posted by Cliff from the delivering-the-goods dept.
crlove asks: "I'm preparing for an upcoming job interview and my interviewer will want to see some code samples. Unfortunately, all of the coding I've done work-wise since college is not only proprietary, but often classified. To be honest, with long days at work and a busy life outside of it, I haven't had much time to code on my own. So, what should I show my interviewer? Should I start working up some code samples? If so, what would be considered sufficiently complex to take to an interview?"

One Last Spamhaus Warning Before The End 632

Posted by Zonk from the going-down dept.
kog777 writes to mention that Spamhaus has released a final warning about an increase in junk email, as they prepare to lose their domain to an Illinois court ruling. From the article: "According to Spamhaus, more than 650 million Internet users - including those at the White House, the U.S. Army and the European Parliament - benefit from Spamhaus' 'blacklist' of spammers that helps identify which messages to block, send to a 'junk' folder or accept. Losing the domain name would make it more difficult for service providers and others to obtain the lists. 'If the domain got suspended, it would be an enormous hit for the Net,' said Steve Linford, Spamhaus' chief executive officer. 'It would create an enormous amount of damage on the Internet.'"

Vista to Create 50,000 Jobs in Europe 270

Posted by CowboyNeal from the working-for-the-man dept.
prostoalex writes "A Microsoft-sponsored study found that Vista will be a boon to European economy, as it 'will create more than 50,000 technology jobs in six large European countries and will lead to a flood of economic benefits for companies there,' News.com reports. Europe will see a total of 1.2 mln paychecks thanks to the new operating system: 'In the six countries studied, more than 150,000 IT companies will produce, sell or distribute products or services running on Windows Vista in 2007 and will employ 400,000 people, IDC said. Another 650,000 will be employed in the IT departments of businesses that rely on Vista.'"

The Secret Origins of TiVo 151

Posted by CowboyNeal from the trust-no-one dept.
Davis Freeberg writes "TiVo is probably better known for their ad zapping technology than their television advertisements. In fact, other then a few lousy infomercials and a commercial that was rumored to be banned by the networks, TiVo has never really had much in the way of TV advertisements. Apparently though, one of TiVo's more rabid fans did some sleuthing and discovered a hidden easter egg video buried deep within TiVo's own website. The video itself exposes the true origins of TiVo's technology and how they got their hands on that ad zapping photon remote to begin with."

Unique and Productive or Just More Eye-Candy? 111

Posted by samzenpus from the sort-the-pics dept.
4ndys writes "A guy who goes by the name MacSlow is currently working on a project he calls LowFat. This is a photomanager with a twist. Rather than just viewing you pictures one at a time, you spread the pictures out over your desktop and can manage them in a much more natural way. He is hoping to release this on multiple platforms inc. Linux, Mac and Windows."

NJ Bill Would Prohibit Anonymous Posts on Forums 487

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the glad-we're-not-in-nj dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The New Jersey legislature is considering a bill that would require operators of public forums to collect users' legal names and addresses, and effectively disallow anonymous speech on online forums. This raises some serious issues, such as to what extent local and state governments can go in enacting and enforcing Internet legislation."

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