Hackers targeting Georgia in the midst of its conflict with Russia have started sending out a new batch of malicious spam messages, apparently with the aim of building a new botnet network of remote-controlled computers
Several industry sources have said that Western Digital is working on a 20,000 RPM Raptor hard drive.
According to several sources close to the hard drive industry, Western Digital is working on a 20,000 RPM Raptor hard drive to combat the increasing pressure from SSD manufacturers
Gmail users, including those who use it for work as part of the Google Apps hosted suite, are again reporting problems accessing the service. Reports started streaming into the official Gmail and Google Apps discussion forums on Thursday and continued Friday morning. It’s the third time in the past two weeks that Gmail users have been locked out of their accounts due to the 502 Server Error
login problem
In the ever-growing desire to product smaller, less costly yet more powerful and faster computers and storage devices, researchers today said they are looking at a way to use self-growing fabrics that will let manufacturers build nano-sized high resolution semiconductors and arrays that answer that craving said
Well, Phase I of the RIAA’s misguided pursuit of an innocent, disabled Oregon woman, Atlantic vs Andersen, has finally drawn to a close, as the RIAA was forced to pay Ms Andersen $107,951, representing the amount of her attorneys fee judgment plus interest. But as some have pointed out, reimbursement for legal fees doesn’t compensate Ms Andersen for the other damages she’s sustained. And that’s where Phase II comes in, Andersen vs Atlantic. There the shoe is on the other foot, and Tanya is one doing the hunting, as she pursues the record companies and their running dogs for malicious prosecution — via Slashdot
Researchers have devised an inexpensive way to produce plastic sheets containing billions of nanoantennas that collect heat energy generated by the sun and other sources. The technology, developed at the US Department of Energy’s Idaho National Laboratory, is the first step toward a solar energy collector that could be mass-produced on flexible materials
In a crucial win for the free software movement, a US federal appeals court has ruled that even software developers who give away the programming code for their works can sue for copyright infringement if someone misappropriates that material. The decision by the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington, DC, helps clarify a murky area of the law concerning how much control programmers can exert over their intellectual property once it’s been released for free into the so-called open source
software community
To most of us it has always seemed obvious that an octopus has eight arms. But experts have now revealed that this assumption is wrong — as two of their long tentacle-like limbs are in fact legs. A study by scientists at Sea Life centres across Europe found that the invertebrates move across the sea bed using their two rearmost limbs, leaving the other six free for the important business of feeding. Researchers who observed the creatures in action found they push off with the legs
and then employ the other tentacles to pump themselves along. The study, the largest of its type carried out, was designed to show if octopuses favoured one side or the other. But it found that octopuses are ambidextrous, though many seem to favour their third arm from the front to eat with
In the warm, bubbling pools of Mono Lake in California, scientists have isolated a bacterium that fuels itself on arsenic
They may be first to see the sun, but they’ve been waiting quite a while for movie rentals and purchases from the iTunes store — now that patience has paid off, as movies have now arrived in a land down under. Aussie and Kiwi iTunes users can purchase and rent movies to their hearts’ content. New releases on DVD will premiere day-and-date on the iTunes store at the same time as they’re on sale in physical form in the two new countries of service
A huge increase in the speed of the internet could be produced by slowing parts of it down, say researchers. Applying the brakes could be the metamaterials
that may make it possible to create invisibility cloaks. The net’s speed limit comes about not in transporting information, but in routing it to its various destinations. Metamaterials could replace the bulky and slow electronics that do the routing, paving the way for lightning fast speeds
Scientists at the University of California, Davis, have recently designed a contact lens prototype with a built-in pressure sensor using a novel process that etches tiny electrical circuits within a soft polymer material. The new development could help glaucoma patients to measure their current risk factor, thus replacing the current methods which require the constant visit of a clinician
A new SQL injection attack started circulating last week, and appears to have infected several thousand web servers as of late Friday evening. The attacks look similar to the one below, and attempt to query random valid files on the web server. The sysobjects and syscolumns tables queried are the give away: the attack is targeting machines running MSSQL server and storing the malicious HTML code in the database. It’s also possible that web servers with Sybase database backends could also conceivably be exploited, as Sybase is largely using the same SQL syntax and table structure as MSSQL server
Several Internet and broadband companies have acknowledged using targeted-advertising technology without explicitly informing customers, according to letters released yesterday by the House Energy and Commerce Committee. And Google, the leading online advertiser, stated that it has begun using Internet tracking technology that enables it to more precisely follow Web-surfing behavior across affiliated sites. The revelations came in response to a bipartisan inquiry of how more than 30 Internet companies might have gathered data to target customers. Some privacy advocates and lawmakers said the disclosures help build a case for an overarching online-privacy law
BigPond is stepping up its presence in the digital music business with a new MP3 music download store that does away with restrictive copy protection locks. Telstra’s ISP today announced it had made an Australian-first deal to offer music from Sony BMG, Universal, Warner Music and EMI, as well as independent labels such as MGM and Liberation. It will see the number of tracks on BigPond’s online store grow from 20,000 to more than a million by January 2009
While the RIAA is busy changing its image to a snake eating its own tail, one man is busy digitising out-of-print 78s. There’s a whole world of music that you don’t hear anymore, and it’s on 78 RPM records,
he stated to Wired. Right now, you can find about 4,000 MP3s on his site, with no digital noise reduction implemented yet — via Slashdot
Georgia and security experts have accused Russian state-sponsored hackers of breaking into Georgian government and commercial websites as part of a cyber war to supplement Russia’s military operations in South Ossetia
A federal judge has blocked three MIT students from presenting a paper at the Defcon 16 security conference on hacking the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority’s CharlieCard
system
Google said it has resolved an issue with its contacts system that caused many users of its Gmail service to have trouble accessing their online e-mail. The problems began at about 5.00pm EDT and an announcement on the company’s Gmail Help Centre
site said the issue is now resolved
In about 30 percent, the coils of their DNA carry a glitch, one that leaves their brains with few dopamine receptors, molecules that act as docking ports for one of the neurochemicals that carry our thoughts and emotions. A paucity of dopamine receptors is linked to an inability to avoid self-destructive behavior such as illicit drug use. But the effects spill beyond such extremes. Children with the genetic variant are unable to learn from mistakes. No matter how many tests they blow by partying the night before, the lesson just doesn’t sink in
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