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Comment funny story (Score 1) 103

by xyph0r (#32436990) Attached to: Police Investigating Virtual Furniture Theft
Funny story, back when I as a young-mid teen, I made a simple little phishing site aimed at habbo. Made accounts, told people to visit it. Filled rooms with furniture, used the acquired accounts to tell all their friends... I'm sure I could've worked out how much it was all worth, but who's stupid enough to spend money on virtual furniture anyway?
Earth

Satellites Keep Aircraft Away From Volcanic Cloud 109

Posted by timothy from the hope-it's-not-opposite-day dept.
coondoggie writes "A range of satellites from a host of different nations are pumping out images and data on the Icelandic volcano currently wreaking havoc on commercial airline traffic and aviation in general. The European Space Agency today noted four major satellites that are monitoring the volcano that erupted this week under Iceland's Eyjafjallajoekull glacier. They include NASA's Aqua and Aura as well as the European Space Agency's Envisat and MetOp spacecraft. Other satellites such as NASA's Terra and NOAA's GOES satellite also provide images." Updated 20100416 01:17 GMT by timothy: Apropos that, 2Y9D57 writes with this "Image of the Icelandic volcano, Eyjafjallajökull, after it began erupting on 15 April. Acquired by the German TerraSAR-X synthetic aperture radar satellite from a height of about 500 kilometers / 300 miles."
Biotech

UK Scientists Create a Three-Parent Embryo 201

Posted by kdawson from the like-changing-the-battery dept.
Troll-Under-D'Bridge writes "The BBC reports that British scientists have manufactured embryos containing genetic material from a man and two women. Under the procedure developed by scientists from Newcastle University, the nuclei from a father's sperm and a mother's egg are transferred into a second woman's egg 'from which the nucleus had been removed, but which retained its mitochondria.' The research, which may 'help mothers with rare genetic disorders have healthy children,' used embryos left over from in-vitro fertilization treatment."

Comment Re:Fishing(yes "f"ishing) for ideas... (Score 2, Insightful) 394

by xyph0r (#31715022) Attached to: # of wireless APs (w/ SSID shown) in range now:
WPA2 with a well-chosen password (ie, not vulnerable to a dictionary attack) is more than trivial to break and so probably not worth it just for 'cred'. If someone has to get into a network like that, they're probably going to be up to something. And if someone breaks in just for cred anyway, they're not going to do any damage. So I guess you could say the *only* people that matter are people who intend to do something malicious/illegal, not the ones just looking for a challenge.
The Courts

UK Internet Filtering Bill Watered Down 183

Posted by kdawson from the still-siding-with-the-man dept.
superapecommando writes in with news that in the UK, Liberal Democratic peers will soften their filtering amendment to the Digital Economy Bill, to allow those wrongfully accused of illegal filesharing to sue the rightsholders in court. The previous version of the Bill had drawn instant criticism from some of the world's largest technology companies, including eBay, Google, and Yahoo, who signed an open letter against the filtering proposal. Blogger Glyn Moody summed up opposition to the Bill, stating that in its previous form, it was "utterly one-sided, where the only winners are a music recording industry too lazy to change, and the losers are everyone else."
Australia

Hackers Attack AU Websites To Protest Censorship 334

Posted by CmdrTaco from the and-it-has-a-funny-name-too dept.
An anonymous reader writes "A band of cyber-attackers has taken down the Australian Parliament House website and hacked Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's website in coordinated protests against government plans to filter the Internet. The group responsible, called Anonymous, is known for coordinated Internet attacks against Scientology and other groups in the past. It recently turned its attention against the AU government after it said in December that it would block access to sites featuring material such as rape, drug use, bestiality and child sex abuse."
Communications

First Room-Temperature Germanium Laser Completed 80

Posted by timothy from the please-keep-your-comments-germanium dept.
eldavojohn writes "MIT researchers have built and demonstrated the first room-temperature germanium laser that can produce light at wavelengths suited for communication. This achievement has two parts: '[U]nlike the materials typically used in lasers, germanium is easy to incorporate into existing processes for manufacturing silicon chips. So the result could prove an important step toward computers that move data — and maybe even perform calculations — using light instead of electricity. But more fundamentally, the researchers have shown that, contrary to prior belief, a class of materials called indirect-band-gap semiconductors can yield practical lasers.' While these are only the initial steps in what may become optical computing devices, the article paints it as very promising. The painful details will be published in the journal Optics Letters."

Comment Re:Let's face it (Score 1) 342

by xyph0r (#30970058) Attached to: UK Gov't Says "No Evidence" IE Is Less Secure

While market share might be a factor (infact almost definitely IS a factor) in the security of Windows vs OS X/Linux, IE vs Firefox, etc, it's more likely the architecture.

The architecture of Unix systems (running as root, user permissions, etc) makes/made it very hard for malware to be written for it. At least, to cause any significant damage.

Though in the case of Firefox vs IE, I'm not so sure. I know little about either browser's architecture. But it might not be just market share that's the reason for the huge number of sploits for IE as opposed to firefox.

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