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Upgrading From Windows 1.0 To Windows 7 499

Posted by timothy from the wait-for-the-rickrolling dept.
An anonymous reader writes "YouTube user Andrew Tait has uploaded a video titled Chain of Fools: Upgrading through every version of Windows. Tait starts with MS DOS 5.0 running Windows 1.0 and keeps upgrading the operating system until he reaches Windows 7, taking note of the changes to system settings and application compatibility along the way."
Biotech

Microsoft Seeks Do-Let-The-Bed-Bugs-Bite Patent 176

Posted by timothy from the you'll-feel-a-slight-pinch dept.
theodp writes "In its just-published patent application for Adapting Parasites to Combat Disease, Microsoft lays out plans to unleash 'altered parasitic organisms' on humans, including mosquitoes, fleas, ticks, bed bugs, leeches, pinworms, tapeworms, hookworms, heart worms, roundworms, lice (head, body, and pubic), and the like. 'Irradiated mosquitoes can be used to deliver damaged Plasmodium to individuals,' explains Microsoft. 'Instead of contracting malaria, an individual receiving the damaged Plasmodium develops an immune response that renders the individual resistant to contracting malaria.' Don't worry about runaway breeding, advises Microsoft — 'a termination feature [that] can include programmed death' makes this impossible. As David Spade might say, I liked this movie the first time I saw it — when it was called Jurassic Park."
Science

Scientists Create Mice From 2 Fathers 435

Posted by samzenpus from the heather-has-two-mommies dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Using stem cell technology, reproductive scientists in Texas, led by Dr. Richard R. Behringer at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, have produced male and female mice from two fathers. The study was posted Wednesday at the online site of the journal Biology of Reproduction. The achievement of two-father offspring in a species of mammal could be a step toward preserving endangered species, improving livestock breeds, and advancing human assisted reproductive technology. It also opens the provocative possibility of same-sex couples having their own genetic children, the researchers note."
Education

A Robot In Every Korean Kindergarten By 2013? 136

Posted by timothy from the here-robot-teachers-are-normal-already dept.
kkleiner writes "Elementary school children in Korea in the cities of Masan and Daegu are among the first to be exposed to EngKey, a robotic teacher. The arrival of EngKey to Masan and Daegu is just a small step in the mechanization of Korean classrooms: the Education Ministry wants all 8400 kindergartens in the nation to have robotic instructors by the end of 2013. Plans are already under way to place 830 bots in preschools by year's end. EngKey can hold scripted conversations with students to help them improve their language skills, or a modified version can act as a telepresence tool to allow distant teachers to interact with children."
Intel

Intel CTO Says Future Phones Will Sense Your Mood 127

Posted by samzenpus from the love-your-phone-and-it-will-loive-you-back dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Ultra-smartphones that react to your moods and televisions that can tell it's you who's watching are in your future as Intel Corp's top technology guru sets his sights on context-aware computing. Chief technology officer Justin Rattner stuffed sensors down his socks at the annual Intel Develop Forum in San Francisco on Wednesday to demonstrate how personal devices will one day offer advice that goes way beyond local restaurants and new songs to download. 'How can we change the relationship so we think of these devices not as devices but as assistants or even companions?' he asked."
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Military Develops "Green" Cleaners For Terrorist Attack Sites 97

Posted by samzenpus from the ultra-concentrated dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Chemists with the US military have developed a set of ultra-strength cleaners to be used in the aftermath of a terrorist attack. The formulas are reportedly tough enough to get rid of nerve gas, mustard gas, radioactive isotopes, and anthrax. But they are also non-toxic, based on ingredients found in foods, cosmetics, and other consumer products."
Image

Scientists Implant Biofuel Cells Into Rats 164

Posted by samzenpus from the welcome-to-the-matrix dept.
RedmondChris writes "A team of scientists from Joseph Fourier University in France have successfully implanted biofuel cells into rats, generating 6.5 microwatts by harnessing the power of glucose. From the article: 'The device uses enzymes to harvest energy from glucose and oxygen found naturally in the body. Past attempts at using such a device in animals have failed because the enzymes have required acidic conditions or were inhibited by charged particles in the fluid surrounding cells. But Philippe Cinquin and his team from Joseph Fourier University in Grenoble, France, overcame these obstacles by confining selected enzymes inside graphite discs that were placed into dialysis bags. Glucose and oxygen flowed into the device, but enzymes stayed in place and catalyzed the oxidation of glucose to generate electrical energy.'"
Power

Can World's Largest Laser Zap Earth's Energy Woes? 372

Posted by samzenpus from the what-could-go-wrong dept.
newviewmedia.com writes "Scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory plan on using a laser the size of three football fields to set off a nuclear reaction so intense that it will make a star bloom on the surface of the Earth. If they're successful, the scientists hope to solve the global energy crisis by harnessing the energy generated by the mini-star."
Wireless Networking

Killer Apartment Vs. Persistent Microwave Exposure? 791

Posted by kdawson from the will-it-fry-an-egg dept.
An anonymous reader writes "I am considering buying a penthouse apartment in Manhattan that happens to be about twenty feet away from a pair of panel antennas belonging to a major cellular carrier. The antennas are on roughly the same plane as the apartment and point in its direction. I have sifted through a lot of information online about cell towers, most of which suggest that the radiation they emit is low-level and benign. Most of this information, however, seems to concern ground-level exposure at non-regular intervals. My question to Slashdot is: should the prospect of persistent exposure to microwave radiation from this pair of antennas sitting twenty feet from where I rest my head worry me? Am I just being a jackass? Can I, perhaps, line the walls of the place with a tight metal mesh and thereby deflect the radiation? My background is in computer engineering — I am not particularly knowledgeable about the physics of devices such as these. Please help me make an enlightened decision."
Programming

The State of Ruby VMs — Ruby Renaissance 89

Posted by Soulskill from the take-your-pick dept.
igrigorik writes "In the short span of just a couple of years, the Ruby VM space has evolved to more than just a handful of choices: MRI, JRuby, IronRuby, MacRuby, Rubinius, MagLev, REE and BlueRuby. Four of these VMs will hit 1.0 status in the upcoming year and will open up entirely new possibilities for the language — Mac apps via MacRuby, Ruby in the browser via Silverlight, object persistence via Smalltalk VM, and so forth. This article takes a detailed look at the past year, the progress of each project, and where the community is heading. It's an exciting time to be a Rubyist."

Comment Source code: sloppy or clean? (Score 1) 167

by whamett (#24435383) Attached to: Creating a Security Test Environment?

One method I use to assess software quality is to skim through the source code. If the source is clean, organized, elegant, and well thought out, I have greater confidence. If the source is sloppy, uses inconsistent indentation/spacing, and is generally a mess, then it's obvious the author(s) lacked attention to detail and didn't put much care into it.

This doesn't fully answer the question—notably, clean-looking code can still contain bugs—but it can yield surprising insight in a short time.

After all, security is part of correctness, which in turn is part of building software with ability and care.

Security

Journal Journal: sudo stores password in plaintext 3

Journal by nocomment

OK I'll admit it. I was bored. I was just tinkering around with various /dev/* and piping the output to various others.

That's when I came across a few interesting things (namely xchat leaves all kinds of stuff in memory for days after you last logged on).

But most scary was this command 'strings /dev/mem', which revealed to me my own password. This is particalarly scary since this is an ubuntu system and my user is essentially 'root'.

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