eldavojohn writes "Here's a short update on the Novell Vs. SCO case we've been following. Our good friend Darl McBride made some interesting comments in court yesterday. He stated (under oath): 'Many Linux contributors were originally UNIX developers... We have evidence System V is in Linux... When you go to the bookstore and look in the UNIX section, there's books on "How to Program UNIX" but when you go to the Linux section and look for "How to Program Linux" you're not gonna find it, because it doesn't exist. Linux is a copy of UNIX, there is no difference [between them]." This flies directly in the face of what SCO found in extensive investigations in 2002 and contradicts what SCO Senior Vice President Chris Sontag had just finished testifying earlier that day (testimony that McBride did not hear)."

Don Wolf writes "Computer forensics is a rapidly growing discipline and an even faster growing business. Whether it's the natural progression of technological science pertaining to crime or perhaps the digression of a few elite information security professionals, computer forensics is every so slowly gaining credibility in the otherwise PhD dominated field of criminal science. Computer evidence continues to be showcased in some of the most high-profile and controversial court cases in history, from the murder case of Lasie Peterson to the multi-billion dollar Enron scandal. Whether society will allow it or not, computer forensics geeks will play pivotal roles in the prevalence of justice." Keep reading for the rest of Don's review.

Anonymous writes "Security researchers Greg Hoglund and Gary McGraw poked around in World of Warcraft and other online games, finding vulnerabilities and exploiting the system using online bots and rootkit-like techniques to evade detection. Their adventures in online game security became fodder for the book, Exploiting Online Games. McGraw discussed with securityfocus the state of security in modern video games, cheating and anti-cheating systems, how the market for cheats, exploits, and digital objects is growing, what we could learn from the design of these huge systems, and how game developers react to submissions of security vulnerabilities."

4T writes "Forget about monitoring your computers with spyware, now they're going to monitor the users as well! 'Microsoft is developing Big Brother-style software capable of remotely monitoring a worker's productivity, physical wellbeing and competence. The Times has seen a patent application filed by the company for a computer system that links workers to their computers via wireless sensors that measure their metabolism. The system would allow managers to monitor employees' performance by measuring their heart rate, body temperature, movement, facial expression and blood pressure. Unions said they fear that employees could be dismissed on the basis of a computer's assessment of their physiological state.'"

Romana Reynolds writes "The CES 2008 Innovations Design and Engineering Awards Showcase honored the Atom Chip Corporation, which was exhibiting the same 100GB, 500GB, and 1TB 'quantum optical' memory chips back in 2006. We actually wandered by, but long gone are the 'SolarMemory' chips, and he didn't know anything about Duke Nuk'em Forever. A little easy digging shows that they'd been making the same extraordinary claims and exhibiting prototypes at CES during the past three years, long enough to make 'atom chip hoax' the fourth suggestion on typing 'atom chip' into Google. I'm amused that the 'preeminent' panel of judges failed their vetting and gatekeeping functions. But I fear that Atom Chip will gather investors based on their recognition at CES, and continue in the game for many years to come, while honors at CES become a Hall of Shame."

An Anonymous reader noted that some folks at GNU Citizen have been researching UPNP Vulnerabilities in home routers, and have produced a flash swf file capable of opening open ports into your network simply by visiting an unfortunate URL. Looks like Firefox & Safari users are safe for now.

KDan writes to share an article he has written about what some of the key factors in recognizing a good programmer. "It's not as easy as it sounds. CV experience is only of limited use here, because great programmers don't always have the 'official' experience to demonstrate that they're great. In fact, a lot of that CV experience can be misleading. Yet there are a number of subtle cues that you can get, even from the CV, to figure out whether someone's a great programmer."

Yogi_Stewart_4 writes "More OLPC/Intel love — apparently Intel used 'underhanded' tactics to try to block sales' contracts of the OLPC, trying to reach the customer directly after an agreement had been reached. "They would go in even after we had signed contracts and try to persuade government officials to scrap their contract and sign a contract with them instead. That's not a partnership." Mr Negroponte cited an example in Peru where Intel sales staff tried to persuade the country's vice-minister of education, Oscar Becerra Tresierra, to buy the Intel Classmate PC."

cweditor writes "A former Medco Health systems administrator was sentenced to 30 months in federal prison and ordered to pay $81,200 in restitution for planting a logic bomb on a network that held customer health care information. The code was designed to delete almost all information on about 70 company servers. This may be longest federal prison sentence for trying to damage a corporate computer system, although Yung-Hsun Lin faced a maximum of 10 years." How long before the disgruntled sysadmin replaces the disgruntled postal worker in the zeitgeist?

An anonymous reader writes "ZDNet Aus reported on a new low-noise chip that could help in building the $1.6B Square Kilometer Array, the world's largest radio telescope. Wikipedia claims the telescope will be 50 times as sensitive as current instruments. It will have a resolution able to detect every active galactic nucleus out to a redshift of 6, when the universe was less than 1 billion years old and way crazy. It will have the sensitivity to detect Earth-like radio leakage at a distance of several hundred to a few thousand light years, which could help greatly with the search for extraterrestrial life. The chip's designer, Prof. Jack Singh, commented on the chip's ability to help with quantum computing research, due to its ability to operate at millikelvin temperatures, necessary to prevent quantum decoherence."

ceide2000 writes "The government contends that it is perfectly free to inspect every laptop that enters the country, whether or not there is anything suspicious about the computer or its owner. Rummaging through a computer's hard drive, the government says, is no different from looking through a suitcase. One federal appeals court has agreed, and a second seems ready to follow suit." This story follows up on a story about laptop confiscation at the borders from a few months ago.

Lucas123 writes "BitMicro has unveiled an 832GB NAND flash drive that will begin shipping later this year. The E-Disk Altima drive is expected to have sustained read rates of up to 100MB/sec and up to 20,000 I/O operations per second. The device features a SATA 3.0 G/bps interface. No pricing as of yet."

Ian Lamont writes "Mike Elgan has an interesting take on surveillance technology, and how audio and video recordings should be used in private and public life. He cites the case of a New York City Police Detective who was secretly taped by a suspect during an interrogation that the detective initially denied took place during the suspect's murder trial, as well as a case involving two parents in Wisconsin who slipped a voice-activated recorder in their son's backpack after suspecting he was being abused by his bus driver. In the first case, even though the detective was later charged with 12 counts of perjury, Elgan notes that the police interrogation probably would not have taken place had the suspect announced to the detective that he was recording the session. In the second case, the tape was initially ruled inadmissible in court because Wisconsin state law prohibits the use of 'intercepted conversations' (it was later allowed as evidence). Elgan argues that there should be no questions about members of the public being allowed to record such interactions."

Hugh Pickens writes "NASA's new Space Science Division Director, Dr. S. Alan Stern, appears to be making headway in keeping in space projects like the Kepler Mission at their original budgeted costs. The New York Times reports that Stern's plan is to hold projects responsible for overruns, forcing mission leaders to trim parts of their projects, streamline procedures or find other sources of financing. 'The mission that makes the mess is responsible for cleaning it up,' Stern says. Because of management problems, technical issues and other difficulties on the Kepler Mission, the price tag for Kepler went up 20% to $550 million and the launch slipped from the original 2006 target date to 2008. When the Kepler team asked for another $42 million, Stern's team threatened to open the project to new bids so other researchers could take it over using the equipment that had already been built."

lgmac writes "A new survey on the results of Enterprise use of virtualization shows that the process is seeing wide and appreciative use. Technical hurdles are obviously the biggest problem facing corporate IT shops. Just the same, political squabbles among IT staffers fighting for turf after being forced to work together in new ways seems to be a going concern as well. 'Technical woes rank higher--to be expected when CIOs deploy a new technology such as virtualization. However, the politics pain many of you. Remember, virtualization not only asks people to cede some control over their physical server kingdoms, but also asks IT experts from different realms to work more closely together.'"