`A Pierce County man is in jail for a botched attempt at kidnapping a young girl. It happened March 8th on a rural road near Yelm.
According to court documents, a 12-year-old girl was walking home after getting off the school bus when a man wearing a camouflage mask grabbed her from behind and tied a towel around her head to keep the girl from seeing his face. [..]
The blindfolded victim apparently recognized the phone’s unique ringtone and said, “Jimmy you are scaring me. If it’s you Jimmy, stop it.”
The startled attacker ran off, leaving the girl bound and alone in the woods. She managed to free herself and ran home where she reported the attack to her dad, who called police.’
`German and Japanese scientists recently collaborated to achieve just such a quantum leap in obliterating the world record for data transmission. By transmitting a data signal at 2.56 terabits per second over a 160-kilometer link (equivalent to 2,560,000,000,000 bits per second or the contents of 60 DVDs) the researchers bettered the old record of 1.28 terabits per second held by a Japanese group. By comparison, the fastest high-speed links currently carry data at a maximum 40 Gbit/s, or around 50 times slower.’
`The Pleasure Periscope is a vibrator and a periscope! Enter into the anus or vagina and watch what’s inside from a 1-inch square window. The rounded clear plastic tip lights up. The 1-inch shaft is hollow with a mirror inside its base. Insertable to about 4.5 inches. It has separate on/off switches for both the vibrator and the light, so you can use either one independently of the other. Total height 8.5 inches.
Uses 2 AA batteries (not included).’
`XG, a division of MGE, has launched an external high-end 600 W fanless power supply, called Magnum 600 External. Yes, you read it right: external. The idea is to provide “true” 600 W power and, at the same time, to help lowering the temperature inside the PC, since high-end power supplies increase the PC internal temperature. Let’s take a look on this new concept.’
I want one. I don’t need one, but that doesn’t stop me. 🙂
`In short, virtually all keypad entry systems – as used in various applications, including building access control, alarm system control, electronic lock safes, ATM input, etc – are susceptible to a trivial low-profile passphrase snooping scheme. This attack enables the attacker to quickly and unobtrusively recover previously entered passphrases with a high degree of success. This is in contrast to previously documented methods of keypad snooping; these methods were in general either highly intrusive – required close presence or installation of specialized hardware – or difficult to carry out and not very reliable (e.g., examining deposited fingerprints – works in low-use situations only, and does not reveal the ordering of digits).’
`Yahoo’s decision to invite Tom Cruise to speak today at company headquarters has generated some snide comments among employees, some of which are being aired in the blogosphere. The responses seem to highlight resentment among some in the rank and file toward the general perception that the company is trying to go Hollywood.
Yahoo may have been eclipsed by Google in search, but there are plenty of people on campus who remain proud to work at a company that is one of the true pioneers of the Information Age. The invitation of Cruise–both because of its Tinsletown symbolism and the actor’s somewhat-flaky reputation–has embarrassed and distracted some of those workers, who just want the company to stick to its knitting.’
`The State Government may be forced to repay drivers up to $100 million in fines after the Roads and Traffic Authority lost a Supreme Court appeal over speed camera photos yesterday.
Justice Michael Adams said digital photographs tendered in court against a motorist, Timothy Mitchell, did not contain the markings stipulated by the Road Transport Safety and Traffic Management Act.
Mr Mitchell’s lawyer, Dennis Miralis, is investigating a class action on behalf of thousands of motorists since digital technology was introduced in 1999.’
`Fifty minutes, 35USD, and four humans later, I’d filed my first bug report with Microsoft. I don’t think I’ll be doing that again. Since I started this process, I’ve received six e-mails from Microsoft: one describing my new Passport account, one asking me to activate my Passport account, two receipts for 35USD (I hope that doesn’t mean I paid twice), and two form mails from Kim, one saying she was taking charge of my case and one saying my case had been resolved by filing a bug report. I hope that means I get my money back.’
`Laser communications chips capable of pumping data through the veins of gargantuan “petaflop” supercomputers have been demonstrated by NEC in Japan.
The communications chips can transfer information through optical fibres at a blistering 25 gigabits per second (a gigabit is a billion bits). This is a record for such components, according to NEC, and is many times faster that the purely electronic interconnects used in today’s supercomputers.
Communications chips can convert electronic signals into optical ones. Using optical fibres to relay data between the chips is what may give this type of supercomputer the edge over previous ones using processors connected electronically.’
`A bus driver in Britain – who was caught playing video games at the wheel instead of watching the road – has been sacked, the transport authorities said on Monday.
Passengers in Blackburn, in the county of Lancashire in north-west Britain, reported the driver after hearing sound effects of the game coming from the driver’s compartment.
They claimed the driver was using a PlayStation Portable (PSP) when he should have been watching the road.’
`Budget constraints are forcing some FBI agents to operate without e-mail accounts, according to the agency’s top official in New York.
“As ridiculous as this might sound, we have real money issues right now, and the government is reluctant to give all agents and analysts dot-gov accounts,” Mark Mershon said when asked about the gap at a New York Daily News editorial board meeting.
“We just don’t have the money, and that is an endless stream of complaints that come from the field,” he said.’
How fucken much does it cost to run a mail server? Stupid.
`Samsung has launched what it reckons its the world’s first 32GB NAND Flash-based hard disk drive replacement unit. The company claimed the so-called “solid state disk” can access data three times faster than an HDD can and write files one-and-a-half times more quickly – though we don’t know what HDD spec it was comparing its product to.
The SSD is a 2.5in form-factor product that operates at 5V and connects across a 66MHz Ultra DMA parallel ATA bus. Samsung said the unit consumes just five per cent of the energy it takes to run a hard drive.’
`Strategy Page columnist James Dunnigan says that CROWS (Common Remotely Operated Weapons Systems) — which are big guns manned remotely by someone inside an armored vehicle with a joystick and live cam — have proved highly successful in Iraq because the soldiers operating them grew up playing (presumably first-person shooter) video games. Experienced gamers have no difficulty gaining total situational awareness and whipping around the video camera on the guns, spotting hints of trouble and blasting anything that moves.’
`Ben Worthen of CIO has an interesting post about who in the context of the Net Neutrality debate. He worked with Lumeta’s chief scientist Bill Cheswick to create a map of the North American Internet backbone, including 134,855 routers, colored by telecom company (Verizon, AT&T, Qwest, Level 3, Sprint Nextel, cable companies, smaller players).’
`Spoke POV is an easy-to-make electronic kit toy that turns your bicycle wheel into a customized display! The project includes a free schematic design, open source software for uploading and editing stored bitmap images, and a high-quality kit with all the parts necessary to build your own.
Tired: A red blinker on your seatpost
Wired: Programmable full-wheel images in any color’
`With almost daily reports of more private information being pumped from personal computers and splashed over the Internet, there is a growing unease that Japan is under insidious attack from within.
The culprit is a digital worm that infects computers using the file-sharing Winny software, a Japanese computer program that, like the infamous Napster, was designed to allow people to easily swap music and movie files. [..]
The list of betrayed secrets is long and getting longer: personal details of 10,000 prisoners from a Kyoto prison officer’s computer; information about crime victims, informants and statements from suspects uploaded from a policeman’s home computer; access codes to 29 airports from an airline pilot’s PC; and the details of surgical procedures on 2,800 patients at a private hospital from the computer of a clerk. All have found their way onto the Internet.’
`// Sonnet 18: Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
// by William Shakespeare
// ported to ActionScript 2.0 by Satori Canton – ActionScript.com [..]
var summer:Object = {};
var thee:Object = {};
summer.name = “Summer Day”;
thee.name = “Thee”;
summer.lovelyness = 9;
thee.lovelyness = 10;
summer.temperature = 98;
thee.temperature = 98.6; [..]’
`Internet service providers (ISPs) will be forced to block violent and pornographic material before it reaches home computers if Labor wins the next federal election.
Under the policy, announced by Opposition Leader Kim Beazley today, international websites would be banned by the Australian Communications and Media Authority if they contained graphic sexual or violent material, rated R or higher.
The bans would be maintained by ISPs.’
`MIT researchers have developed a tiny light detector that may allow for super-fast broadband communications over interplanetary distances. Currently, even still images from other planets are difficult to retrieve. [..]
The new detector improves the detection efficiency to 57 percent at a wavelength of 1,550 nanometers (billionths of a meter), the same wavelength used by optical fibers that carry broadband signals to offices and homes today. That’s nearly three times the current detector efficiency of 20 percent.’
`[..] it appears some courts are finally pointing out to the RIAA that they don’t have the right to do some of these things. The latest example involves one of the lawsuits, where the accused claims she never was involved in file sharing. The RIAA demanded full access to her computer — which she rightly felt was a violation of her privacy, as there was a lot more on her computer that obviously had nothing to do with the case. A judge has agreed and told the woman she can hire her own forensics expert, and bill the RIAA for any expenses.’
`Scientists have developed artificial, super-strength muscles powered by alcohol and hydrogen, which could eventually be used to make much better prosthetic limbs. The artificial muscles are 100 times more powerful than the body’s own, and researchers believe they could be modified one day to use in ‘exoskeletons’, to give superhuman strength to certain professions such as firefighters, soldiers and astronauts.’
`Researchers at Oregon State University have created the world’s first completely transparent integrated circuit from inorganic compounds, another major step forward for the rapidly evolving field of transparent electronics.
The circuit is a five-stage “ring oscillator,” commonly used in electronics for testing and new technology demonstration. It marks a significant milestone on the path toward functioning transparent electronics applications, which many believe could be a large future industry.’
`We know there are plenty of “secure” flash drives out there, but face it: if someone is really determined to get at your data, they’ll probably figure out a way. That’s where Kingston’s Data Traveler Elite Privacy Edition comes in. The 4GB flash drive encrypts all data with 128-bit AES, and then adds an extra layer of security: a self destruct feature. If anyone tries to use a brute-force attack to guess your password, the drive will automatically erase itself after 25 wrong guesses.’
`It’s almost two in the morning and I’m standing in the middle of Austin’s Sixth Street, hoping that I’m not going to get hit by a car.
On the other hand, I am hoping–as are 15 or so other people standing nearby–that one of the cars that keep rushing by will crush the tricked-out Roomba robot vacuum cleaner that Make Magazine associate editor Phillip Torrone and Eyebeam R&D fellow Limor Fried are sending back and forth across the street and through traffic.
This is Roomba Frogger, a modern, geek version of the famous 1981 video game “Frogger,” in which players had to get a frog across a street without it getting crushed by a car or truck.’
`Three computer science researchers are warning that viruses embedded in radio tags used to identify and track goods are right around the corner, a danger that so far has been overlooked by the industry’s high interest in the technology.
No viruses targeting radio frequency identification (RFID) technology have been released live yet, according to the researchers at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in the Netherlands. But RFID tags have several characteristics that could be engineered to exploit vulnerabilities in middleware and back-end databases, they wrote in a paper presented today at a conference in Pisa, Italy.
“RFID malware is a Pandora’s box that has been gathering dust in the corner of our ‘smart’ warehouses and home,” the paper stated.’
`When users take the specifications of an MP3 player into consideration, one very important factor most take into account is the rated battery life. However, as many are aware, the battery life stated is generally the runtime from a full charge in ideal conditions, such as when the player is left playing without any sound enhancements (EQ, bass-boost, etc.), volume set to a moderate level, all music is 128kbps MP3, backlit display goes out within a few seconds and so on. However, according to tests conducted by CNET, they found that while many players met or exceeded their claims, one feature that has a drastic affect on battery life is the infamous DRM.’
`The UK has warned America that it will cancel its £12bn order for the Joint Strike Fighter if the US does not hand over full access to the computer software code that controls the jets.
Lord Drayson, minister for defence procurement, told the The Daily Telegraph that the planes were useless without control of the software as they could effectively be “switched off” by the Americans without warning.’
`Virus hunters have discovered a new Trojan that encrypts files on an infected computer and then demands $300 in ransom for a decryption password.
The Trojan, identified as Cryzip, uses a commercial zip library to store the victim’s documents inside a password-protected zip file and leaves step-by-step instructions on how to pay the ransom to retrieve the files.
It is not yet clear how the Trojan is being distributed, but security researchers say it was part of a small e-mail spam run that successfully evaded anti-virus scanners by staying below the radar.’
`The University of Wisconsin – Madison has deployed 35 5.6TB Xserve RAID storage arrays in a single research installation as part of an ongoing scientific computing initiative.
The Grid Laboratory of Wisconsin (GLOW), a partnership between several research departments at the University of Wisconsin, have installed almost 200TB, or 200,000GB, of Xserve RAID arrays. As a comparison, 200TB of storage is enough to hold 2.75 years of high definition video, 25,000 full length DVD movies, 323,000 CDs, 20 printed collections of the Library of Congress, or over 1000 Wikipedias.’
with pictures.
`Late last week, anti-virus vendor McAfee acknowledged that its anti-virus software had mistakenly flagged hundreds of legitimate third-party programs as malware, prompting some customers to delete or quarantine these programs.
The error lay in McAfee’s daily virus definition file called DAT, causing genuine files to be identified as W95/CTX – a virus first discovered in 2004. [..]
The files that were dubbed malicious were Microsoft’s Excel spreadsheet, Adobe’s Flash, Google’s Toolbar installer, parts of Sun Microsystems’ Java Runtime Environment and several Adaptec drivers.’
