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Security

Houston Courts Shut Down By Malware 126

Posted by timothy from the full-employment-for-compsec-types dept.
Conficker is still at it: dstates writes "The municipal courts of Houston were shut down yesterday after a computer virus spread through the courts' computer systems. The shutdown canceled hearings and suspended arrests for minor offenses and is expected to extend through Monday. The disruption affected many city departments, the Houston Emergency Center was briefly disconnected and police temporarily stopped making some arrests for minor offenses. The infection appears to be contained to 475 of the city's more than 16,000 computers, but officials are still investigating. Gray Hat Research, a technology security company, has been brought in on an emergency contract to eradicate the infection. In 2006, the City spent $10M to install a new computer system and bring the Courts online, but the system has been beset by multiple problems. After threatening litigation, the city reached a $5 million settlement with the original vendor, Maximus, and may seek another vendor."
Cellphones

EU Wants Removable Batteries In iPhones 320

Posted by CmdrTaco from the so-do-i dept.
MojoKid writes "Current regulation, introduced with the Restriction of Hazardous Substances Directive (RoHS) in July of 2006, primarily sought to prevent the unnecessary use of toxic metals in batteries as well as making it easier to recycle and dispose of used batteries. The updated 'New Batteries Directive,' as discussed in New Electronics by Gary Nevision, would go much further. Article 11 of the directive, as currently written, would require that devices must be made in such a way as to allow batteries, either for replacement or at end of life for disposal to be 'readily removed.' Of course, Apple's iPhones and iPods wouldn't meet this requirement, as it stands. It's obvious that an iPhone battery replacement program could be considered a cash cow for Apple as well."

Comment Re:So where have you failed the gaming community (Score 1) 89

by tomblag (#24623667) Attached to: Rare Q&A With Rockstar Games Head Sam Houser

Well in GTA:4, although there is lots of eye candy, where are all the cool side missions? No cash for wheelies?stoppies? Heck, where is the TANK, i spent hours upon hours just seeing how long i could go before i blew up or the tank flipped, cant do that now :( Can't even take the Dodo for a joy-ride. I dont think i will be purchasing any further games in the series, if you think that you can sell me a game for $60 then turn around and sell me all the good content for more $$$.

How was taking the dodo for a joy ride fun? While their automobile controls are really good. The controls they put in for any type of airplanes were always worthless.
Encryption

Submission + - When Is a Self-Signed SSL Certificate Acceptable? 5

Submitted by UltraLoser
UltraLoser writes: When is it acceptable to encourage users to accept a self-signed SSL cert? Recently the staff of a certain website turned on optional SSL with a self-signed and domain mismatched certificate for its users and encourages them to add an exception for this certificate. Their defense of this certificate is that it is just as secure as one signed by a commercial CA and because their site exists for the distribution of copyrighted material the staff do not want to have their personal information in the hands of a CA. In their situation is it acceptable to encourage users to trust this certificate or is this giving users a false sense of security?
Networking

Submission + - Mapping Our Brain's Neural Network

Submitted by
Ponca City, We Love You
Ponca City, We Love You writes: "New technologies could soon allow scientists to generate a complete wiring diagram of a piece of brain. "The brain is essentially a computer that wires itself up during development and can rewire itself," says Sebastian Seung, a computational neuroscientist at MIT. "If we have a wiring diagram of the brain, we might be able to understand how it works." With an estimated 100 billion neurons and 100 trillion synapses in the human brain, creating an all-encompassing map of even a small chunk is a daunting task. Winfried Denk, a neuroscientist at the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research in Heidelberg, Germany, has developed a new technique to make more fine-scaled wiring maps using electron microscopy. Starting with a small block of brain tissue, the researchers bounce electrons off the top of the block to generate a cross-sectional picture of the nerve fibers in that slice. They then take a very thin — 30-nanometer — slice off the top of the block and repeat the process going through slice by slice to trace the path of each nerve fiber. "Repeat this [process] thousands of times, and you can make your way through maybe the whole fly brain," says Denk. The researchers train an artificial neural network to emulate the human tracing process to speed the process about one hundred- to one thousand-fold."
Displays

Stretching Crystals Promise Bendy, Full-Color Displays 117

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the less-eye-stress dept.
NewScientist is reporting that a new approach to crystal formation could help create power-efficient, flexible color displays. These new photonic crystals, structured similar to opals, can be tuned by adjusting the gaps between the crystals. "The beauty of the device is that it can produce the whole spectrum of colors, even ultraviolet and infrared light, using only incident light. As a result, the expensive color filters used in every other color display on the market today, are no longer needed. And because the displays use only reflected ambient light, no power is wasted on back-lighting, as in today's mobile phones, for example. 'They can be viewed just as well in bright sunlight as in indoor light,' team member André Arsenault of the University of Toronto told New Scientist."

Feed Engadget: Haier's detergentless WasH20 washing machine (engadget.com)

From feed by engfeed

Filed under: Household

Washing machines that somehow remove the odors and spots from your garments sans the use of water have been around the block a time or two, and while we've heard a mad scientist claim that he discovered soap-free cleaning, it's Haier who's making him look brilliant. The detergentless WasH20 reportedly works by breaking down water molecules into OH- and H+ ions, and while we hardly recall the last chemistry course we took, we suppose we'll believe the claims for now. Apparently, the stains on the linens are "attracted and retained by ions of OH-, while the clothes are sterilized by the H+ ions." Word on the street has this one landing in France soon for around €699 ($957), but don't be surprised if your threads come out of the wash mutated, vaporized, or worst of all, smelling exactly like they did when they went in.

[Thanks, Philippe T.]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Feed Wired: How to Work (wired.com)

From feed by wiredfeed
Martha Stewart has DIY in her DNA, she's a gadget freak and she's been giving how-to instruction since most of us were messing with Play-Doh. We talk to Martha about home music setups, rude technologies and Marthapedia.


Microsoft

Submission + - MS to change desktop search after Google complaint (theglobeandmail.com)

Submitted by
Raver32
Raver32 writes: "Microsoft Corp. will make changes to the program that helps Windows Vista users search their hard drives, in response to antitrust complaints from Google Inc., according to a U.S. Justice Department report issued late Tuesday. Google filed a 49-page document with the Justice Department in April claiming Vista's desktop search tool slowed down competing programs, including Google's own free offering, and that it's difficult for users to figure out how to turn off the Microsoft program. Microsoft initially dismissed the allegations, saying regulators had reviewed the program before Vista launched. However, Brad Smith, Microsoft's general counsel, said in an interview last week that the company was willing to make changes if necessary."
Sun Microsystems

Submission + - ZFS on Linux: It's alive! (linuxworld.com)

Submitted by lymeca
lymeca writes: LinuxWorld reports that Sun Microsystem's ZFS filesystem has been converted from its incanartion in OpenSolaris to a module capable of running in the Linux user-space filsystem project, FUSE. Because of the license incompatibilities with the Linux kernel, it has not yet been integrated for distribution within the kernel itself. This project, called ZFS on FUSE, aims to enable GNU/Linux users to use ZFS as a process in userspace, bypassing the legal barrier inherent in having the filesystem coded into the Linux kernel itself. Booting from a ZFS partition has been confirmed to work. The performance currently clocks in at about half as fast as XFS, but with all the success the NTFS-3g project has had creating a high performance FUSE implementation of the NTFS filesystem, there's hope that performance tweaking could yield a practical elimination of barriers for GNU/Linux users to make use of all that ZFS has to offer.
Businesses

Tech Billionaire Boot Camp 178

Posted by Zonk from the getting-a-leg-up dept.
theodp writes "Forget the Summer of Code. If you've got a hot idea for a start-up, Newsweek says Y-Combinator, the boot camp where Silicon Valley meets 'American Idol', is the place you should be. 'Some critics scoff that Y Combinator's investment is peanuts for that amount of equity. But the opportunity is unparalleled -- total immersion into Silicon Valley start-up culture, advice from Graham and a fast track to the top angel investors and venture-capital funds. When Graham calls the winners, the founders have only five minutes to accept. "If people turn us down," he says, "as far as we're concerned they've failed an IQ test."'" We've previously discussed the program on the site, just over a year ago.

Feed IDF Kickoff with 8-80 Cores (pheedo.com)

From feed by thfeed
Intel has opened it's Spring IDF - The company revealed first performance numbers of its Penryn processors, half a dozen technology projects and a new enthusiast PC platform.

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