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| Radio-Controlled Cyborg Beetles Become Reality
October 1, 2009 at 11:14 pm
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| | holy_calamity writes "DARPA's plans to create brain chips for insects so they can be steered like an RC plane are bearing fruit. Videos show that a team at Berkeley can use radio signals to tell palm-sized African beetles to take off and land, and to lose altitude and steer left or right when in flight. They had to use the less-than-inconspicuous giant beetles because other species are too weak to take off with the weight of the necessary antenna and brain and muscle electrodes." 
Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
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| OpenSSH Going Strong After 10 Years With Release of v5.3
October 1, 2009 at 10:26 pm
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| | An anonymous reader writes "OpenSSH is a 100% complete SSH protocol version 1.3, 1.5 and 2.0 implementation and includes sftp client and server support. It encrypts all traffic (including passwords) to effectively eliminate eavesdropping, connection hijacking, and other attacks. Additionally, OpenSSH provides secure tunneling capabilities and several authentication methods, and supports all SSH protocol versions. Version 5.3 marks the 10th anniversary of the OpenSSH project." 
Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
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| OpenSSH Going Strong After 10 Years With Release of v5.3
October 1, 2009 at 8:03 pm
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| | An anonymous reader writes "OpenSSH is a 100% complete SSH protocol version 1.3, 1.5 and 2.0 implementation and includes sftp client and server support. It encrypts all traffic (including passwords) to effectively eliminate eavesdropping, connection hijacking, and other attacks. Additionally, OpenSSH provides secure tunneling capabilities and several authentication methods, and supports all SSH protocol versions. Version 5.3 marks the 10th anniversary of the OpenSSH project." 
Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
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| Relaunched Recovery.gov Fails Accessibility Standards
October 1, 2009 at 6:27 pm
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| | SethGrimes writes with this excerpt from Information Week's Intelligent Enterprise: "Recovery.gov, a showcase government-transparency Web site that relaunched on Monday, fails to meet US federal government Section 508 accessibility standards and accessibility best practices. The non-compliance issues relate to display of data tables — an essential point given the site's promise of 'Data, Data & More Data' — despite on-site compliance claims. Other elements including navigation maps, while compliant, are poorly designed. Sharron Rush, co-founder and executive director of accessibility-advocacy organization Knowbility, goes so far as to state, 'The recovery.gov Web site is a good example of what NOT to do for accessibility in my opinion.' Louise Radnofsky explains in the Wall Street Journal's Washington Wire blog, 'Expectations are high for the site, not least because of its hefty price tag: Smartronix, a Maryland contractor, is being paid $9.5 million for its initial overhaul and is likely to get another $8.5 million to keep the site running through 2014.' Compliance with Section 508 of the federal Rehabilitation Act — a baseline expectation — is a long-standing federal-government requirement for information-systems accessibility to persons with disabilities. The site's accessibility failures — which are shared by another showcase government-transparency site, USAspending.gov — are nonetheless easily seen." 
Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
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| Initial Reviews of Google Wave; Neat, but Noisy
October 1, 2009 at 5:28 pm
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| | bonch writes "Reviews of Google Wave are out, and opinions are that it has potential as a development platform but is noisy to use for real-time communication. Robert Scoble calls it overhyped, claiming it's useful for little more than personal IM or small-scale project collaboration. He complains about the noisiness of tracking dozens of people chatting him at once in real-time and calls trying to use it a 'productivity killer' compared to simpler mediums like email and Twitter." 
Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
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| Initial Reviews of Google Wave; Neat, But Noisy
October 1, 2009 at 5:28 pm
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| | bonch writes "Reviews of Google Wave are out, and opinions are that it has potential as a development platform but is noisy to use for real-time communication. Robert Scoble calls it overhyped, claiming it's useful for little more than personal IM or small-scale project collaboration. He complains about the noisiness of tracking dozens of people chatting him at once in real-time and calls trying to use it a 'productivity killer' compared to simpler mediums like email and Twitter."
Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
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| A Mobile Phone Mesh That Can Survive Carrier Network Failure
October 1, 2009 at 4:37 pm
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| | bennyboy64 writes "iTnews reports that researchers from Australia and Singapore are developing a wireless ad-hoc mesh networking technology that uses mobile handsets to share and carry information. The mesh network will make use of Bluetooth or Wi-fi to swap information between handsets — even if the mobile phone network was offline. One potential scenario could be during an emergency where the mobile phone network was unavailable or clogged. In a city centre, users could set up the network to share information, video, photographs and, depending on the final client applications, even locate friends and loved ones. One benefit of developing such a technology would be that users sharing content between their devices would use the wireless communications technology already built into their phones and not bandwidth from their mobile provider. The researchers from the National ICT Australia and Singapore's A*STAR Institute for Infocomm Research hope to demonstrate the technology within two years, according to NICTA project leader Dr Roksana Boreli.'This is an early stage in the research project,' she said. 'We are addressing how you would quickly establish trust between devices, how you would discover them and share the information,' Boreli said." 
Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
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| Fossil Primate Ardipithecus Ramidus Described (Finally)
October 1, 2009 at 3:52 pm
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| | Omomyid writes "I wasn't actually aware that Dr. Tim White of UC Berkeley had been 'sitting' on A. ramidus but apparently he has (I remember the original flurry of interest back in the '90s when it was announced), but now Dr. White and others have assembled a nearly complete skeleton of the 4.4mya specimen and the descriptions being carried by the NY Times and the AP are intriguing. Ramidus is clearly differentiated from the other Great Apes and also more primitive than A. afarensis (Lucy), providing a nice linkage backwards to the last shared ancestor between humans and chimpanzees. According to the NY Times, a whole passel of papers will be published in tomorrow's Science magazine describing A. ramidus." 
Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
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| Fossil Primate Ardipithecus Ramidus Described (Finally)
October 1, 2009 at 3:52 pm
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| | Omomyid writes "I wasn't actually aware that Dr. Tim White of UC Berkeley had been 'sitting' on A. ramidus but apparently he has (I remember the original flurry of interest back in the '90s when it was announced), but now Dr. White and others have assembled a nearly complete skeleton of the 4.4mya specimen and the descriptions being carried by the NY Times and the AP are intriguing. Ramidus is clearly differentiated from the other Great Apes and also more primitive than A. afarensis (Lucy), providing a nice linkage backwards to the last shared ancestor between humans and chimpanzees. According to the NY Times, a whole passel of papers will be published in tomorrow's Science magazine describing A. ramidus." Update — 10/01 at 22:05 GMT by SS: Reader John Hawks provided a link to his detailed blog post about Ardipithecus, which contains a ton of additional details not covered in the above articles.
Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
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| Americans Don't Want Targeted Ads
October 1, 2009 at 3:01 pm
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| | itwbennett writes "A survey by the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology at the University of California Berkeley School of Law and the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania finds that U.S. residents do not want to receive Web advertising tailored to their interests. 66% of those surveyed said they don't want tailored, or targeted, online ads and when asked if online ad vendors should deliver targeted ads by tracking customers' behavior across multiple Web sites, 86% of the 1,000 respondents said no. 35% percent of respondents said executives of companies that use personal information illegally should face jail time, and 18% said those companies should be put out of business. 'While privacy advocates have lambasted behavioral targeting for tracking and labeling people in ways they do not know or understand, marketers have defended the practice by insisting it gives Americans what they want: advertisements and other forms of content that are as relevant to their lives as possible,' the study said. 'In high percentages, [US residents] stand on the side of privacy advocates.'" 
Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
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| New Bill Proposes Open Source Requirement for Publicly Funded Books
October 1, 2009 at 2:08 pm
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| | fsufitch writes "On September 30th, the 'Open College Textbook Act of 2009' was introduced to the Senate and referred to committee. The bill proposes that all educational materials published or produced using federal funds need to be published under open licenses. The reasoning behind it takes into account the changing way information is distributed because of the Internet, the high price of college and textbooks, and the dangerously low college graduation rates in the US. Will a bill such as this endanger publishing companies in the same way Internet journalism endangers traditional journalism?" 
Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
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| GE Developing 1Tb Hologram Disc Readable By a Modified Blu-ray Drive
October 1, 2009 at 1:14 pm
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| | Globally Mobile writes "The Register has this article concerning GE announcement that it has been developing a 1 terabyte DVD-size disk that can be read by a modified Blu-ray player. Peter Lorraine, GE's lab manager, talking at an Emerging Tech conference last week, said that license announcements could be expected soon. He also mentioned the notion of disks having the capacity of 100 Blu-ray disks, implying a 2.5TB or even 5TB capacity, gained by increasing the number of layers used for recording. The discs will be used for high-end commercial niches initially and then migrate to consumer markets in 2012-2015. Also here is a video of the technology explained. Wish we could see this sooner! Reminds me of the technology that Bowie's character came up with in The Man Who Fell to Earth ." 
Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
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| GE Developing 1TB Hologram Disc Readable By a Modified Blu-ray Drive
October 1, 2009 at 1:14 pm
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| | Globally Mobile writes "The Register has this article concerning GE's announcement that it has been developing a 1 terabyte DVD-size disk that can be read by a modified Blu-ray player. Peter Lorraine, GE's lab manager, talking at an Emerging Tech conference last week, said that license announcements could be expected soon. He also mentioned the notion of disks having the capacity of 100 Blu-ray disks, implying a 2.5TB or even 5TB capacity, gained by increasing the number of layers used for recording. The discs will be used for high-end commercial niches initially and then migrate to consumer markets in 2012-2015. Also here is a video of the technology explained. Wish we could see this sooner! Reminds me of the technology that Bowie's character came up with in The Man Who Fell to Earth ."
Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
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| Fake Antivirus Overwhelming Scanners
October 1, 2009 at 12:20 pm
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| | ChiefMonkeyGrinder writes "Rogue or bogus programs passing themselves off as real antivirus software have been one of the malware themes of 2009, but the APWG's numbers for the first half of the year show that the organisation's members detected 485,000 samples, more than five times the total for the whole of 2008." 
Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
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| Exoplanet Has Showers of Pebbles
October 1, 2009 at 11:39 am
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| | mmmscience writes "The newly-discovered exoplanet COROT-7b has an unusual form of precipitation: rocks. Because it orbits so close to its sun, the temperature on its sun-facing side is around 4220 degrees Fahrenheit. That's hot enough for rocks to vaporize--not unlike water evaporating on Earth. And, like Earth, when the vapor cools in the upper atmosphere, it forms clouds and begins to rain. But instead of water, COROT-7b gets a shower of pebbles." 
Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
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| Open Source Not Welcome At Palm App Catalog
October 1, 2009 at 11:02 am
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| | davidmwilliams writes "It appears Palm are seeking to follow Apple'ss footsteps in gaining a reputation for inconsistent and spurious rejections and removals of iPhone and iPod Touch applications. In this case, Palm have resisted including a free application because the source code is attainable elsewhere." 
Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
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| Choosing a Personal Printer For the Long Haul
October 1, 2009 at 10:17 am
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| | The Optimizer writes "After 16 years of service my laser printer, a NEC Silentwriter 95, is finally wearing its internals out and I need to find a replacement. It's printed over 30,000 pages and survived a half-dozen long-distance moves without giving me any trouble. I believe it's done so well for two reasons. First, it's sturdily built and hails from an era when every fraction of penny didn't have to be cost-cut out of manufacturing, The other reason was its software. Since it supported postscript Level II, it wasn't bound to a specific operating system or hardware platform, so long as a basic postscript level 2 driver was available. A new color laser printer with postscript 3 seems like a logical replacement, and numerous inexpensive printers are available. I'd rather get a smaller, personal-size printer than a heavy workgroup printer. Most of all, I would like it to still be usable and running well with Windows 9, OS X 11, and whatever else we will be using in 2020. Can anyone recommend a brand or series of printers that is built to last and isn't going to be completely dependent on OS specific proprietary drivers?" 
Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
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| Wireless Network Modded To See Through Walls
October 1, 2009 at 9:30 am
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| | KentuckyFC writes "The way radio signals vary in a wireless network can reveal the movement of people behind closed doors, say researchers who have developed a technique called variance-based radio tomographic imaging which processes wireless signals to peer through walls. They've tested the idea with a 34-node wireless network using the IEEE 802.15.4 wireless protocol (the personal area network protocol employed by home automation services such as ZigBee). The researchers say that such a network could be easily distributed by the police or military wanting to determine what's going on inside a building. But such a network, which uses cheap off-the-shelf components, might also be easily deployed by your neighbor or anybody else wanting to monitor movements in your home." 
Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
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| Comcast In Deal Talks With NBC Universal
October 1, 2009 at 8:49 am
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| | schwit1 sent us an LA Times article about another step in the seemingly unending media consolidation. This time it's Cable giant Comcast Corp. looking at NBC. NBC Owns a slew of channels including Bravo, USA and Syfy (who might have the single lamest rebranding since Spike). The article says that it would be far cheaper than the Disney deal Comcast tried to pull off 5 years ago. 
Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
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| Jack Thompson Sues Facebook For $40M
October 1, 2009 at 7:57 am
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| | angry tapir writes "Jack Thompson has sued Facebook for US$40 million, saying that the social networking site harmed him by not removing angry postings made by Facebook gamers. The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida. Thompson is best know for bringing suit against Grand Theft Auto's Take Two Interactive, Sony Computer Entertainment America, and Wal-Mart, arguing that the game caused violent behavior." 
Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
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| Jack Thompson Sues Facebook For $40M
October 1, 2009 at 7:57 am
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| | angry tapir writes "Jack Thompson has sued Facebook for US$40 million, saying that the social networking site harmed him by not removing angry postings made by Facebook gamers. The lawsuit was filed in the US District Court for the Southern District of Florida. Thompson is best known for bringing suit against Grand Theft Auto's Take Two Interactive, Sony Computer Entertainment America, and Wal-Mart, arguing that the game caused violent behavior."
Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
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| Wii Update 4.2 Tries (and Fails) To Block Homebrew
October 1, 2009 at 6:12 am
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| | marcansoft writes "On September 28, Nintendo released a Wii update, titled 4.2. This update was targeted squarely at homebrew, performing sweeping changes throughout the system. It hardly achieved that goal, though, because just two days later a new version of the HackMii installer was released that brings full homebrew capabilities back to all Wii consoles, including unmodified consoles running 4.2. However, as part of their attempt to annoy homebrew users, Nintendo updated the lowest level updateable component of the Wii software stack: boot2 (part of the system bootloader chain). Homebrew users have been using BootMii to patch boot2 in order to gain low level system access and recovery functions (running Linux natively, fixing bricks, etc). The update hasn't hindered this, as users can simply reinstall BootMii after updating (it is compatible with the update). But there's a much bigger problem: Nintendo's boot2 update code is buggy." Read on for more details. 
Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
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