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Security

Submission + - Adobe Flash exploit could log keystrokes

Kenyon Lessi writes: Adobe has issued three critical security updates, one of which is designed to stop a problem in the way the Flash player interacts with browsers, which could result in users' keystrokes being transmitted to attackers. The problem affect Adobe Flash Player version 9.0.45.0, 8.0.34.0 and 7.0.69.0, as well as their earlier versions running on all platforms.
Republicans

Submission + - Integrity of Science: White House Misuse of Data (sciencemag.org)

Science data nerds writes: "The White House is consistently and persistently claiming that the US is doing better than Europe in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. This turns out to be false — their claim is purely based on carefully selecting the only subset of data that shows this. When all the data are used, Europe emissions have declined substantially; the US emissions have grown substantially. This story, and the linked analysis, debunk the White House claims."
Censorship

Submission + - Holocaust Dropped From UK Schools

dteichman2 writes: "It appears that UK schools are ignoring The Holocaust. A government-backed study, funded by the Department for Education and Skills, found that some teachers are reluctant to teach history lessons on The Holocaust for fear of offending Muslim students whose beliefs include Holocaust denial. As such, many schools are not covering the subject. Additionally, similar problems are being met with lessons on The Crusades because these lessons contradict teachings from local mosques.

Isn't there a law that requires UK schools to cover these topics? Should there be?"
Networking

Submission + - CERN Collider ready; get ready for data deluge

slashthedot writes: "The world's largest science experiment, a physics experiment designed to determine the nature of matter, will produce a mountain of data. And because the world's physicists cannot move to the mountain, an army of computer research scientists is preparing to move the mountain to the physicists.
At universities across the United States and at other institutions around the world, teams of computer research scientists and physicists are preparing for the largest physics experiment ever.
The collider will give protons a pop hoping to catch a glimpse of the Big Bang, or at least the subatomic particles that are thought to have last been seen at the big event 10 billion to 15 billion years ago that led to the formation of the universe. The CERN collider will begin producing data in November, and from the trillions of collisions of protons it will generate 15 petabytes of data per year.
By comparison, 15 petabytes would be the equivalent of all of the information in all of the university libraries in the United States seven times over. It would be the equivalent of 22 Internets, or more than 1,000 Libraries of Congress. And there is no search function.
More at: http://www.hpcwire.com/hpc/1572567.html"
Space

Submission + - Planet could harbor Life

BlueMorpho writes: "Planet of Promise: Small, Rocky World Could Harbor Life

For the first time, astronomers have discovered a planet far, far away that might be similar to Earth. This distant world, which pirouettes around a dim bulb of a star with the unglamorous name Gliese 581, may possibly sport a landscape that would be vaguely familiar to us — a panorama of liquid oceans and drifting continents. If so, there's the chance that it's a home to life — perhaps even advanced life.

http://www.space.com/searchforlife/070517_seti_pla net.html"
Censorship

Submission + - US Military launches YouTube channel

Jenga717 writes: The US military has launched its own channel on YouTube, in efforts to shift the media's focus of Iraq from a negative to a more positive light, and to "counter the messages of anti-American sites." From the article:

The footage is not picked specifically to show the military in a good light...and is only edited for reasons of time or content too graphic to be shown on YouTube...And while all the clips currently posted have been shot by the military's combat cameramen, soldiers and marines have been invited to submit their own clips.

So, soldiers can submit their own videos, only to have them edited by the US military. The question is, where are they supposed to submit them? Starting "on or about 14 May 2007", the Department of Defense will block troop access to Myspace, Youtube, MTV, and more sites,, due to a "growing concern for our unclassified DoD Internet, known as the NIPRNET". The troops will be unable to access these sites from any computer on the DoD network, yet are still able to access them from their home computers — which they can't use on the DoD network.

So why the censorship? The DoD cites security reasons, but the Commander of Global Network Operations (DoD's Joint Task Force)"has noted a significant increase in the use of DoD network resources tied up by individuals visiting certain recreational Internet sites." The PDF released by the DoD reminds troops that this "benefits not only you, your fellow Servicemembers, and Civilian employees, but preserves our vital networks for conducting official DoD business in peace and war."

Sounds like quite a sticky situation.

Biotech

Submission + - Scientists create 'plastic' blood

simm1701 writes: This aricle on the BBC Writes about a new form of artifical blood.

From the article:
Scientists have developed an artificial plastic blood which could act as a substitute in emergencies.

Researchers at Sheffield University said their creation could be a huge advantage in war zones. They say that the artificial blood is light to carry, does not need to be kept cool and can be kept for longer. The new blood is made up of plastic molecules that have an iron atom at their core, like haemoglobin, that can carry oxygen through the body. The scientists said the artificial blood could be cheap to produce and they were looking for extra funding to develop a final prototype that would be suitable for biological testing.

Dr Lance Twyman, of the university's Department of Chemistry, said: "We are very excited about the potential for this product and about the fact that this could save lives. "Many people die from superficial wounds when they are trapped in an accident or are injured on the battlefield and can't get blood before they get to hospital. "This product can be stored a lot more easily than blood, meaning large quantities could be carried easily by ambulances and the armed forces."

A sample of the artificial blood prototype will be on display at the Science Museum in London from 22 May as part of an exhibition about the history of plastics.
The Internet

Submission + - IPv6 flaw could greatly amplify DDoS attacks

tygerstripes writes: The Register has a story about the discovery of a flaw in part of the IPv6 specification which has experts scrambling to have the feature removed, or at least disabled by default. From the article:

The specification, known as the Type 0 Routing Header (RH0), allows computers to tell IPv6 routers to send data by a specific route. Originally envisioned as a way to let mobile users to retain a single IP for their devices... RH0 support allows attackers to amplify denial-of-service attacks on IPv6 infrastructure by a factor of at least 80.
Paul Vixie, president of the Internet Systems Consortium, described the fault bluntly. "It can be exploited by any greedy Estonian teenager with a $300 Linux machine."
Google

Submission + - Google search by employer not illegal, say judges

An anonymous reader writes: A court of appeals for the federal circuit has upheld a ruling (PDF) against a man who sued his former employer for Googling his name before firing him. He had accused his former employer of participating in "ex parte" communications — off-the-record communications that are used to play a part in the final outcome of a decision — that ultimately affected the decision to fire him from his job. However, the three-judge panel ruled that an ex parte communication did not occur in the case when the employer used Google.

The man in question, David Mullins, was a government employee at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Weather Forecast Office in Indianapolis, IN. Through a series of events, Mullins' employer found that he had misused his government vehicle and government funds for his own purposes — such as sleeping in his car and falsifying hotel documents to receive reimbursements, withdrawing unauthorized amounts of cash from the company card, traveling to destinations sometimes hundreds of miles away from where he was supposed to be (and using his company card to fill up on gas there), and spending company time to visit friends and/or his children. Mullins' supervisor provided a 23-page document listing 102 separate instances of misconduct.

Mullins took issue with a Google search that Capell performed just before authorizing his firing. During this Google search, Capell found that Mullins had been fired from his previous job at the Smithsonian Institution and had been removed from Federal Service by the Air Force. Mullins argued that his right to fundamental fairness was violated when Capell performed the search and that she committed perjury when she stated that the search did not influence her decision to fire him.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070510-goog le-search-by-employer-not-illegal-say-judges.html

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