ckswift - Slashdot User

Comment Re:Just the None! (Score 1) 485

by ckswift on Monday April 07, 2008 @08:33PM (#22995344) Attached to: How Many Unique Passwords Do You Remember

I wonder how secure modern fingerprint readers are.

Take a look at Impact of Artificial "Gummy" Fingers on Fingerprint Systems. Tsutomu Matsumoto; Proceedings of SPIE Vol. 4677 (2002)

Matsumoto gives a pretty simple method for attacking fingerprint scanners and achieved really high success rates on all 11 scanners he tested. It is hard to tell from the paper if the scanners he tested were just consumer level devices or something that is meant to be used in more secure situations.

Submission + - A replacement for the good old stethoscope?

Submitted by

Roland Piquepaille

on Wednesday August 08, 2007 @12:41PM

Roland Piquepaille writes: "According to BusinessWeek, an Israeli startup, aptly named Deep Breeze, has developed a high-tech replacement for the 200-year-old stethoscope. This noninvasive device can draw in seconds an image of your lungs by listening to its vibrations. The Vibration Response Imaging (VRI) system could already be used in Israel, in Europe and in South Korea. Last month, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved its introduction in the U.S. But don't expect to see one of these systems used by your local physician anytime soon. This VRI system will carry a price tag of over $40K. But read more for additional details and several pictures of what might one day replace the stethoscope."

Submission + - Replacing atime With relatime in the Kernel (kerneltrap.org)

Submitted by

eldavojohn

on Wednesday August 08, 2007 @09:35AM

eldavojohn writes: "Our friend Jeremy at the Kernal Trap has has dug up some interesting criticism of atime from god himself, Linus Torvalds. As Linus submitted patches to improve relatime he noted: "I cannot over-emphasize how much of a deal it is in practice. Atime updates are by far the biggest IO performance deficiency that Linux has today. Getting rid of atime updates would give us more everyday Linux performance than all the pagecache speedups of the past 10 years, _combined_." And later severely beat atime about the head with a pointed stick: "It's also perhaps the most stupid Unix design idea of all times. Unix is really nice and well done, but think about this a bit: 'For every file that is read from the disk, lets do a ... write to the disk! And, for every file that is already cached and which we read from the cache ... do a write to the disk!" Well, I guess I can expect my Linux machine to become a little bit faster!"

Feed Editors' Notes: Final Cut comes back to town (macworld.com)

From feed by macworldfeed on Sunday April 15, 2007 @08:12PM

Apple unveils a new version of its Final Cut video-production suite, and Jonathan Seff delivers some of the details from Las Vegas.

Submission + - LED forty years older than thought

Submitted by LED lover on Wednesday April 11, 2007 @01:23PM

LED lover writes: The discovery of the LED is usually credited to four US groups in 1962, but an unrecognised Russian genius got there forty years before. Oleg Losev even filed a patent on using his device to long range communications, and wrote to Einstein to ask for help with the theory — but got no reply.

New Nanoparticle Cancer Therapy 81

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday January 09, 2007 @05:43PM from the targeted-clots dept.

quixote9 tips us to a BBC story on a promising new cancer therapy using targeted nanoparticles. From the article: "The researchers used the nanoparticles to zero in on the network of blood vessels that supply the tumors in mice with nutrients and oxygen... [They] developed a technique for amplifying [the nanoparticles'] homing ability by designing a multifunctional nanoparticle that binds to a protein structure found only in tumors and associated blood vessels... The tests showed that within hours of the injection, the artificial platelets began blocking the supply without harming normal tissues. The scientists believe the nanoparticles could also be used to carry drugs to the tumor."

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