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Domain: networkworld.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to networkworld.com.
Stories · 2,229
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Elevation Plays a Role In Memory Error Rates
alphadogg writes "With memory, as with real estate, location matters. A group of researchers from AMD and the Department of Energy's Los Alamos National Laboratory have found that the altitude at which SRAM resides can influence how many random errors the memory produces. In a field study of two high-performance computers, the researchers found that L2 and L3 caches had more transient errors on the supercomputer located at a higher altitude, compared with the one closer to sea level. They attributed the disparity largely to lower air pressure and higher cosmic ray-induced neutron strikes. Strangely, higher elevation even led to more errors within a rack of servers, the researchers found. Their tests showed that memory modules on the top of a server rack had 20 percent more transient errors than those closer to the bottom of the rack. However, it's not clear what causes this smaller-scale effect." -
Researcher Shows How GPUs Make Terrific Network Monitors
alphadogg writes "A network researcher at the U.S. Department of Energy's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory has found a potential new use for graphics processing units — capturing data about network traffic in real time. GPU-based network monitors could be uniquely qualified to keep pace with all the traffic flowing through networks running at 10Gbps or more, said Fermilab's Wenji Wu. Wenji presented his work as part of a poster series of new research at the SC 2013 supercomputing conference this week in Denver." -
Hammerhead System Offers a Better Way To Navigate While Cycling
Mark Gibbs writes "If you've ever tried to navigate using a smartphone while cycling you'll know full well that you took your life in your hands. By the time you've focused on the map and your brain has decoded what you're looking at you've traveled far enough to be sliding on gravel or go careening into the side of a car. What's needed is a way that you can get directions from your smartphone without having to lose your focus and possibly your life and Hammerhead Navigation have one of the most interesting answers I've seen." -
Amazon Hints At Details On Its CIA Franken-Cloud
coondoggie writes "Amazon Web Services recently won a reported $600 million contract to build the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) a cloud. But that cloud will not look like any other cloud on the planet. Amazon will build the cloud using AWS architectures and AWS will manage it, but executives hinted that it will not be accessed the way other customers use AWS services through the public Internet. 'We're managing the operations in the data center,' Andy Jassy, Amazon's senior vice president and the head of the company's cloud computing division AWS said about the CIA deal. 'It's our hardware, it's our networking.'" -
US Intelligence Wants To Radically Advance Facial Recognition Software
coondoggie writes "Identifying people from video streams or boatloads of images can be a daunting task for humans and computers. But a 4-year development program set to start in April 2014 known as Janus aims to develop software and algorithms that erase those problems and could radically alter the facial recognition world as we know it. Funded by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence's 'high-risk, high-payoff research' group, Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) Janus 'seeks to improve face recognition performance using representations developed from real-world video and images instead of from calibrated and constrained collections.'" -
Music Industry Issues Take Down Notices to 50 Major Lyrics Sites
alphadogg writes "A music industry group is warning some 50 website that post song lyrics that they need to be licensed or face the music, possibly in the form of a lawsuit. The National Music Publishers Association said Monday that it sent take-down notices to what it claims are 50 websites that post lyrics to songs and generate ad revenue but may not be licensed to do so. The allegedly infringing sites were identified based on a complicated algorithm developed by a researcher at the University of Georgia." The "complicated algorithm" (basis statistics using Excel and Google) is described in the NMPA's "Undesirable Lyric Website List." Anyone remember lyrics.ch? -
Researchers Dare AI Experts To Crack New GOTCHA Password Scheme
alphadogg writes "If you can't tell the difference between an inkblot that looks more like 'body builder lady with mustache and goofy in the center' than 'large steroid insect with big eyes,' then you can't crack passwords protected via a new scheme created by computer scientists that they've dubbed GOTCHA. GOTCHA, a snappy acronym for the decidedly less snappy Generating panOptic Turing Tests to Tell Computers and Humans Apart, is aimed at stymying hackers from using computers to figure out passwords, which are all too often easy to guess. GOTCHA, like its ubiquitous cousin CAPTCHA, relies on visual cues that typically only a human can appreciate. The researchers don't think that computers can solve the puzzles and have issued a challenge to fellow security researchers to use artificial intelligence to try to do so. You can find the GOTCHA Challenge here." -
Bizarre Six-Tailed Asteroid Dumbfounds Scientists
coondoggie writes "Many images from deep space are so cool, weird and unusual it is hard to believe they are real sometimes. This is one of them. Astronomers looking deep into the asteroid belt through NASA's Hubble Space Telescope say they have spotted an asteroid, designated P/2013 P5, with six comet-like tails of dust radiating from it like spokes on a wheel or a spinning garden sprinkler." -
High-Gain Patch Antennas Boost Wi-Fi Capacity In Crowded Lecture Halls
An anonymous reader writes "To boost its Wi-Fi capacity in packed lecture halls, Georgia Institute of Technology gave up trying to cram in more access points with conventional omni-directional antennas, and juggle power settings and channel plans. Instead, it turned to new high-gain directional antennas. They look almost exactly like the bottom half of a small pizza box, and focus the Wi-Fi signal from the ceiling-mounted access point in a precise cone-shaped pattern, covering part of the lecture hall floor. Instead of the flaky, laggy connections, about which professors had been complaining, users now consistently get up to 144Mbps (if they have 802.11n client radios). 'Overall, the system performed much better' with the new antennas, says William Lawrence, IT project manager principal with the university's academic and research technologies group. 'And there was a much more even distribution of clients across the room's access points.'" -
As IPO Nears, Do Twitter's Active User Claims Add Up?
netbuzz writes "With Twitter's IPO looming, an independent developer who is intimately familiar with the makeup and behavior of the site's users says his analysis of 1 million random accounts does not support the company's claims of 215 million active monthly users and 100 million active daily users. In fact, Si Dawson, who until March ran Twit Cleaner, a popular app used to weed deadwood and spammers from Twitter accounts, puts those numbers at 112 million and 48 million, respectively, or about half of what Twitter claims." -
Chinese Professor Builds Li-Fi System With Retail Parts
alphadogg writes "The equipment is big and expensive, with the research costs at almost $500,000. But by just using retail components, Chinese professor Chi Nan has built her own Li-Fi wireless system that can use LED lights to send and receive Internet data. "I bought the lights from Taobao," she said, referring to the Chinese e-commerce site. The professor from Fudan University showed off the technology on Tuesday at the China International Industry Fair in Shanghai. Unlike traditional Wi-Fi routers that use radio signals, Chi's system relies on light to send and receive data wirelessly. Others scientists, especially in the U.K., have also been researching the technology, and dubbed it "Li-Fi". But rather than develop specialized hardware, Chi bought off-the-shelf retail parts to create her system." -
'Morris Worm' Turns 25: Watch How TV Covered It Then
netbuzz writes "On Nov. 2, 1988, mainstream America learned for the first time that computers get viruses, too, as the now notorious "Morris worm" made front-page headlines after first making life miserable for IT professionals. A PBS television news report about the worm offers a telling look at how computer viruses were perceived (or not) at the time. 'Life in the modern world has a new anxiety today,' says the news anchor. 'Just as we've become totally dependent on our computers they're being stalked by saboteurs, saboteurs who create computer viruses.'" -
Microsoft To Can Skype API; Third-Party Products Will Not Work
Mark Gibbs writes "If you've recently fired up Skype you may have noticed a dialog box with a warning appear briefly (at least on OS X) then vanish. If you're fast enough to catch it you'll find that it's warning you that some application you're using that works with Skype will stop working in December, 2013. This applies to all sorts of software supporting headsets, cameras, ... you name it." -
Why NASA Launched Millions of Tiny Copper Wires In Orbit
coondoggie writes "Imagine 500 million short copper wires — no longer than the tip of your index finger — floating in space creating what amounts to an antenna belt that could be used to send messages and conduct other space communications research. That would describe the 1960s era Project Space Needles or Project West Ford as it was sometimes called that NASA and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology last undertook in 1963 which saw the blasting of millions of those copper hairs into space. NASA's Orbital Debris Program Office this month did a 'Where are they now' look at those copper wires and said that after 50 years, some of them indeed still make up a small amount of orbital debris." -
Cable Lobbyist Tom Wheeler Confirmed As New FCC Chief
An anonymous reader writes "The U.S. Senate confirmed Tuesday the nomination of a new chairman to the Federal Communications Commission. Wheeler is a former investor and head of telecommunications industry groups. President Barack Obama said, when announcing Wheeler as his choice in May, that 'for more than 30 years, Tom has been at the forefront of some of the very dramatic changes that we've seen in the way we communicate and how we live our lives.'" -
Oracle Eyes Optical Links As Final Frontier of Data-Center Scaling
An anonymous reader writes "Oracle is exploring silicon photonics, an optical technology drawing widespread interest, as a potential weapon in the battle against data-center power consumption. Advances in CPU and memory design could boost efficiency dramatically over the next few years. When they do, the interconnects among components, servers and switches will effectively become the power hogs of the data center, according to Ashok Krishnamoorthy, architect and chief technologist in photonics at Oracle. Oracle isn't often associated with networking and may not even manufacture or sell the technologies it's now studying. But as a big player in computing and storage, it could benefit from fostering a future technology that helps make faster, more efficient data centers possible." -
Antigua Looks Closer To Legal "Piracy" of US-Copyrighted Works
Mark Gibbs writes "Shiver me timbers: Antigua and Barbuda's 'WTO Remedies Implementation Committee', is said to be recommending the establishment by the Government of Antigua & Barbuda of a statutory body to own, manage and operate the ultimate platform to be created for the monetisation or other exploitation of the suspension of American intellectual property rights authorised earlier this year by the WTO ... Additionally, an announcement regarding the opening of tenders for private sector participation in the operating of the platform should be announced shortly. Arghhh ... matey!" See also this Slashdot post (from 2007) for some background. -
Knight Capital Fined $12M For a Software Bug That Cost $460M
Mark Gibbs writes "Knight Capital monumentally fouled up a software update. According to the SEC, 'Knight did not have supervisory procedures to guide its relevant personnel when significant issues developed.' In other words, not only was Knight's code management inadequate but their human management processes were just as bad. The fine for what could have been a biblical financial disaster? A measly $12 million." -
Researchers Tout Electricity Storage Tech That Could Recharge Devices In Minutes
coondoggie writes "Vanderbilt University researchers say they have come up with a way to store electricity on a silicon-based supercapacitor that would let mobile phones recharge in seconds and let them continue to operate for weeks without recharging. The Vanderbilt team said they used porous silicon -- a material with a controllable and well-defined nanostructure made by electrochemically etching the surface of a silicon wafer. This let them create surfaces with optimal nanostructures for supercapacitor electrodes, but it left them with a major problem: Silicon is generally considered unsuitable for use in supercapacitors because it reacts readily with some of chemicals in the electrolytes that provide the ions that store the electrical charge, the researchers said." -
Firefox's Blocked-By-Default Java Isn't Going Down Well
JG0LD writes "The Firefox web browser will, henceforth, require users to manually activate Java objects on sites that they visit, Mozilla has confirmed. This even affects up-to-date versions of Java, which you can see on the block list. The change is aimed at improving security and moving away from a dependence on proprietary plug-ins, but critics say it will cause untold headaches for developers, admins and less-technical end-users. " -
Ubuntu Touch On a Nexus 7: "Almost Awesome"
colinneagle writes "I installed Ubuntu Touch "1.0" on my first-generation Nexus 7 tablet and have been using it as my main tablet system for the last four days. Here's how it went. First off, the installation was surprisingly painless. I followed the official instructions and didn't encounter a single problem. That being said, the installation is really geared toward software developers, power users or people already comfortable on a Linux command line. If you're not in one of those categories, I recommend holding off for the time being. Once installed, Ubuntu Touch booted up rather quickly — in only just a few seconds (a fair bit faster than Android 4.x on the same tablet). And, immediately, I was presented with a short tutorial that appears the first time the system is booted, which, I might add, has got to be one of the slickest, least annoying tutorials I've seen. But... there were problems. The battery life was, to put it mildly, terrible. Performance has been mixed, and the OS was prone to what I call 'The Pulsating Seizure Feature' a few dozen times over the weekend. In a nutshell: launching apps (and, occasionally, moving between apps) can cause the device to freeze and begin flashing the screen rapidly." -
How You Too Can Be Shut Down By the Feds For Flying Drones
An anonymous reader writes "University of Nebraska-Lincoln professor Matt Waite waived a government cease and desist letter recently received for his experiments using 3-pound, $500 drones for news reporting (specifically, for a story about drought in Nebraska). He gave journalism organizations the lowdown on what they can expect from the government on this front going forward and said he's posting his experience in trying to get certified by the FAA on GitHub so they can follow along." -
Most Parents Allow Unsupervised Internet Access To Children At Age 8
colinneagle writes "The timing for this study is interesting, given the arrests of two teenagers believed to have bullied a 12-year-old classmate until she committed suicide, but Microsoft found that 94% of parents said they allow their kids unsupervised access to at least one device or online service like email or social networks. The average age at which most children are allowed access to at least one online service, such as email or social media, was 8 years old, while 40% allow children under the age of 7 to access a computer unsupervised." -
Ethernet's 400-Gigabit Challenge Is a Good Problem To Have
alphadogg writes "As it embarks on what's likely to be a long journey to its next big increase in speed, Ethernet is in some ways a victim of its own success. Years ago, birthing a new generation of Ethernet was relatively straightforward: Enterprises wanted faster LANs, vendors figured out ways to achieve that throughput and hashed out a standard, and IT shops bought the speed boost with their next computers and switches. Now it's more complicated, with carriers, Web 2.0 giants, cloud providers, and enterprises all looking for different speeds and interfaces, some more urgently than others. ... That's what the IEEE 802.3 400Gbps Study Group faces as it tries to write the next chapter in Ethernet's history. ... 'You have a lot of different people coming in to the study group,' said John D'Ambrosia, the group's chair, in an interview at the Ethernet Alliance's Technology Exploration Forum in Santa Clara, California, on Tuesday. That can make it harder to reach consensus, with 75 percent approval required to ratify a standard, he said." -
Would You Secure Personal Data With DRM Tools?
museumpeace writes "From its own EmTech conference, Technology Review reports on a privacy strategy from Microsoft's Craig Mundie: When sharing music online took off in the 1990s, many companies turned to digital rights management (DRM) software as a way to restrict what could be done with MP3s and other music files — only to give up after the approach proved ineffective and widely unpopular. Today Craig Mundie, senior advisor to the CEO at Microsoft, resurrected the idea, proposing that a form of DRM could be used to prevent personal data from being misused." Mundie also thinks it should be a felony to misuse that data. He thinks larger penalties would help deter shady organizations from harvesting data the user isn't even aware of. "More and more, the data that you should be worried about, you don’t even know about." -
Will Cloud Services One Day Be Traded Just Like Stocks and Bonds?
Brandon Butler writes "Today, cloud computing resources are bought and sold in a fairly straightforward process: A company needs extra compute capacity, for example, so they contract with a provider who spins up virtual machines for a certain amount of time. But what will that process look like in, say, 2020? If efforts by a handful of companies come to fruition, there could be a lot more wheeling and dealing that goes on behind the scenes. An idea is being floated to package cloud computing resources into blocks that can be bought and sold on a commodity futures trading market. It would be similar to how financial instruments like stocks, bonds and agricultural products like corn and wheat are traded on exchanges by investors. Blocks of cloud computing resources — for example a month's worth of virtual machines, or a year's worth of cloud storage — would be packaged by service providers and sold on a market. In the exchange, investors and traders could buy up these blocks and resell them to end users, or other investors, potentially turning a profit if the value of the resource increases." -
In Room With No Cell Service, Verizon Works On Future of Mobile
alphadogg writes "If you think your house has bad cellular coverage, Verizon Wireless has you beat: A small, windowless room high up in a San Francisco office building gets no service at all. That's not because carriers are neglecting the bustling South of Market business district where the room is located. Instead, it's because Verizon is paying so much attention to what's going on there. The room with zero bars is in the heart of the Verizon Innovation Center, where Verizon network and business experts help developers of new wireless devices and apps to turn their ideas into products." -
802.11ac 'Gigabit Wi-Fi' Starts To Show Potential, Limits
alphadogg writes "Vendor tests and very early 802.11ac customers provide a reality check on 'gigabit Wi-Fi' but also confirm much of its promise. Vendors have been testing their 11ac products for months, yielding data that show how 11ac performs and what variables can affect performance. Some of the tests are under ideal laboratory-style conditions; others involve actual or simulated production networks. Among the results: consistent 400M to 800Mbps throughput for 11ac clients in best-case situations, higher throughput as range increases compared to 11n, more clients serviced by each access point, and a boost in performance for existing 11n clients." -
California Outlaws 'Revenge Porn'
coondoggie writes "Call it a modern day love story: Boy meets girl; they 'like' each other; they privately sext naked pics of each other to celebrate; girl loses interest, breaks it off; guy responds by posting previously private pics to Internet site specializing in revenge; girl has little recourse, suffers much humiliation, ridicule. There is a lot of pressure to change the outcome of such wretched stories, which seem to be pervasive these days. Some relief is on the way the way, at least in California, where this week the governor signed one of the nation's first laws making so-called 'revenge porn' illegal. Specifically, the bill prevents people from electronically distributing or posting naked pictures of ex-romantic partners after a break-up with the intent to shame the person publicly." -
Tech In the Hot Seat For Oct. 1st Obamacare Launch
bednarz writes "In four days, the health insurance marketplaces mandated by the Obama administration's Affordable Care Act are scheduled to open for business. Yet even before the sites launch, problems are emerging. Final security testing of the federal data hub isn't slated to happen until Sept. 30, one day before the rollout. Lawmakers have raised significant concerns about the ability of the system to protect personal health records and other private information. 'Lots and lots of late nights and weekends as people get ready for go-live,' says Patrick Howard, who leads Deloitte Consulting's public sector state health care practice." -
Woz Expounds On His Hacking Shenanigans and Online Mischief
coondoggie writes "In his keynote address at a security conference today, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak admitted he has enjoyed many adventures in hacking often for the sake of pranks on friends and family, especially back in his college days and the early years of working on computers and the Internet. 'I like to play jokes,' said the Wozniak jovially as he addressed his audience of thousands of security professionals attending the ASIS Conference in Chicago. The famed inventor at Apple admitted he also had some fun with light-hearted forays into hacking computer and telecommunications networks several decades ago back in his college years and while learning about electronics and computers." -
Judge Orders Patent Troll To Explain Its 'Mr. Sham' To Jury
netbuzz writes "Judge William Alsup of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California has no problem calling Network Protection Sciences (NPS) a patent troll. What he does have a problem with is NPS telling a Texas court that NPS had an 'ongoing business concern' in that state run by a 'director of business development' when all it really had was a rented file-cabinet room and the 'director' was actually the building landlord who merely signed legal papers when NPS told him to do so. Judge Alsup calls the alleged business a 'sham' and the non-employee 'Mr. Sham,' yet he declined to dismiss the patent infringement lawsuit filed by NPS against Fortinet from which this information emerged. Instead, he told NPS, 'this jury is going to hear all of this stuff about the closet. And you're going to have to explain why "Mr. Sham" was signing these documents.'" -
FAA May Let You Use Electronic Devices During Airplane Takeoff and Landing Soon
colinneagle writes "Members of an FAA advisory panel are reportedly meeting this week to make changes to the ban on the use of electronic devices on an airplane during takeoff and landing. The new regulations will allow the use of electronic devices to access content stored on the devices, including e-books, music, podcasts, and video. Sending emails, connecting to Wi-Fi, and making phone calls will still be prohibited. The announcement is expected to be made later this month, and the rules put into effect next year, according to the report." -
Air Force Wants Technology That Will Let Drones Sense and Avoid Other Aircraft
coondoggie writes "With an eye toward letting drones share the nation's common airspace, the Air Force has set out to find the technology that will let unmanned aircraft sense and avoid other airplanes in flight. The ability to sense and avoid — common on all manned aircraft that fly the national airspace — is one of the trickier issues for drones which do not support such technology. It will be a major hurdle to jump as drone vendors and others press for common drone access to national airspace." -
DARPA Launches Military Spaceplane Project
RocketAcademy writes "The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has launched a new program to develop a reusable first-stage launch vehicle. Experimental Spaceplane 1 (XS-1) would be capable of flying 10 times in 10 days, with a small ground crew, reaching speeds of Mach 10, and deploying a small upper stage to place a 3,000-pound satellite into orbit. The XS-1 program is complementary to the Air Force's Boeing X-37, which is a reusable upper stage. The X-37 is currently launched by an expendable Atlas rocket but could be launched by a vehicle derived from XS-1 in the future. Military planners have dreamed of a two-stage, fully reusable Military Spaceplane for several years, but funding has not materialized up to now." -
Security Company Says NASDAQ Waited Two Weeks To Fix XSS Flaw
alphadogg writes "A Swiss security company said the NASDAQ website had a serious cross-site scripting vulnerability for two weeks before being fixed on Monday, despite earlier warnings. Ilia Kolochenko, CEO of the Geneva-based penetration testing company High-Tech Bridge, said he repeatedly emailed NASDAQ and warned of the XSS flaw. 'I can basically say I have spammed them,' Kolochenko said in an interview. A NASDAQ spokesman did not have immediate comment. NASDAQ.com lets users create accounts and build a profile to monitor stocks and news." -
Man Trying To Fly Across the Atlantic On Helium Balloons
coondoggie writes "f you've ever wondered if you could fly just by holding onto a bunch of helium balloons over your head, well then you might understand where Accenture IT Technical Projects Manager Jonathan Trappe is coming from. Trappe today set out today from Caribou, Maine to cross 2,500 miles of Atlantic Ocean using 370 helium balloons slung under a small gondola. According to a DailyMail.com story, Trappe is relying on state-of-the-art weather data from the meteorologist who advised Felix Baumgartner on his record-breaking skydive from the stratosphere last year. The latest weather reports before the launch suggested winds would take Trappe to western Europe, though the exact destination would be hard to predict." Update: 09/13 14:08 GMT by S : The attempt is already over and unsuccessful. Trappe landed safely in Newfoundland, saying he was having trouble controlling the balloons. -
Cisco Can't Shield Customers From Patent Suits, Court Rules
netbuzz writes "A federal appeals court in California has upheld a lower court ruling that Cisco lacks the necessary standing to seek dismissal of patent infringement lawsuits against some of its biggest customers – wireless network providers and enterprises – being brought by TR Labs, a Canadian research consortium. The appeals court agreed with TR Labs' that its patent infringement claims are rightfully against the users of telecommunications equipment – be it made by Cisco, Juniper, Ciena or others – and not the manufacturers. 'In fact, all of the claims and all of the patents are directed at a communications network, not the particular switching nodes that are manufactured by Cisco and the other companies that are subject of our claims,' an attorney for TR Labs told the court. The court made no judgment relative to the patents themselves or the infringement claims." -
The Ig Nobels Are Tonight
alphadogg writes "Harvard University's August Sanders Theater will play host tonight to a glittering collection of scientific luminaries, in a ceremony dedicated to recognizing some of the most important research of the year. And it will probably involve stuff like green hair, dead salmon brains, and monkey butts. Yes, it's time again for the annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony, where the weirdest and least useful scientific discoveries of the year are paraded before the public in a festival of bizarre nerd pageantry." Slashdot programmer David Hand will be in the crowd, too, triggering a flood of justified envy. Update: 09/13 14:23 GMT by S : Here are the winners. -
Former DHS Official Blames Privacy Advocates For TSA's Aggressive Procedures
colinneagle writes with an interesting excerpt from Senate testimony offered yesterday, on the 12th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, from Stewart Baker. Baker formerly served as DHS Assistant Secretary and NSA General Counsel, and gave his opinion on the source of the real problems within the TSA, opining: "Unlike border officials, though, TSA ended up taking more time to inspect everyone, treating all travelers as potential terrorists, and subjecting many to whole-body imaging and enhanced pat-downs. We can't blame TSA for this wrong turn, though. Privacy lobbies persuaded Congress that TSA couldn't be trusted with data about the travelers it was screening. With no information about travelers, TSA had no choice but to treat them all alike, sending us down a long blind alley that has inconvenienced billions." -
TSA Reminds You Not To Travel With Hand Grenades
coondoggie writes "Some of the travel recommendations posted on the Transportation Security Administration's blog seem stupefying obvious. This week's, entitled: 'Leave Your Grenades at Home' seemed like a no brainer, but alas. The TSA wrote about grenades in particular: Year to date, the agency's officers have discovered: 43 grenades in carry-on baggage and 40 grenades in checked baggage." -
MIT's Inflatable Antennae Could Boost Small Satellite Communications
coondoggie writes "Researchers at the Massachusetts's Institute of technology say they have developed an antenna for small satellites (known as cubesats) that can fold into a compact space and inflate when in orbit. The inflatable antenna lets a CubeSat transmit data back to Earth at a distance seven times farther than that of existing CubeSat communications." -
Drone Hunters Lining Up and Paying Out In Colorado
coondoggie writes "What might have started out a whimsical protest against government surveillance tactics has morphed into more as a small town in Colorado has found itself overwhelmed with requests and cash for a unmanned aircraft hunting license that doesn't exist." -
Windows 8's Picture Passwords Weaker Than Users Might Hope
colinneagle writes with word of work done by researchers at Arizona State University, Delaware State University and GFS Technology Inc., who find that the multiple-picture sequence security option of Windows 8 suffers from various flaws -- some of them specific to a password system based on gestures, and some analogous to weaknesses in conventional passwords entered by keyboard. "The research found that the strength of picture gesture password has a 'strong connection' to how long a person spent setting up that password gesture. The most common gesture combination is three taps, meaning it took about 4.33 — 5.74 seconds to setup. Passwords with two circles and one line took the longest average input time of about 10.19 seconds. After studying why people choose certain categories of images, the most common gesture types and direction patterns in PGA passwords, the researchers developed an attack framework that is 'capable of cracking passwords on previously unseen pictures in a picture gesture authentication system.'" -
Court Orders Retrial In Google Maps-Related Murder Case
netbuzz writes "Ruling that a judge erred in blocking two computer security experts from testifying that an incriminating Google Maps search record found on the defendant's laptop was planted there, a North Carolina appeals court has ordered a new trial for ex-Cisco employee Bradley Cooper, convicted two years ago in the 2008 strangulation death of his wife Nancy. 'The sole physical evidence linking Defendant to Ms. Cooper's murder was the alleged Google Map search, conducted on Defendant's laptop, of the exact area where Ms. Cooper's body was discovered,' wrote the appeals court. 'We hold ... that erroneously preventing Defendant from presenting expert testimony, challenging arguably the strongest piece of the State's evidence, constituted reversible error and requires a new trial.'" -
IBM Uses Internal Kickstarters To Pick Projects
alphadogg writes "IBM is readying its fourth internal Kickstarter-like crowdfunding effort over the past year or so to inspire employees to innovate and collaborate, often across departments and the globe. According to IBM Research member Michael Muller, IBM has embraced the crowdfunding model popularized in recent years by Kickstarter, Indiegogo and hundreds of other such platforms that match up creators and financial backers from among the masses. But IBM's 'behind-the-firewall' form of crowdfunding, for which Muller has coined the term 'enterprise crowdfunding,' is unique in that it isn't open to the public. In an experiment held in the third quarter of last year, 500 Watson Research Center employees were each given $100 to invest exclusively in colleagues' proposals, which ranged from procuring a 3D printer to setting up a disc golf course to recording and sharing seminars." -
US Uncorks $16M For 17 Projects To Capture Wave Energy
coondoggie writes "The US Energy Department this week said it would spend $16 million for seventeen projects to help research and develop energy generating systems from waves, tides and currents. The energy agency says the US could generate up to 1,400 terawatt hours of potential power per year. One terawatt-hour of electricity is enough to power 85,000 homes, according to the agency." -
We All May Have a Little Martian In Us
coondoggie writes "Men are supposed to be from Mars as John Gray's iconic relationship book would have you think, but new research presented this week suggests that in reality; we all may hail from the Red Planet. 'The evidence seems to be building that we are actually all Martians; that life started on Mars and came to Earth on a rock. It's lucky that we ended up here nevertheless, as certainly Earth has been the better of the two planets for sustaining life. If our hypothetical Martian ancestors had remained on Mars, there might not have been a story to tell,' Professor Steven Benner of The Westheimer Institute for Science and Technology said." -
Wall Street Traders Charged With Copying Code To Start Their Own Company
coondoggie writes "Talk about starting a business on shaky ground. The Manhattan District Attorney's office says former Wall Street traders stole electronic trading source code and data from their then trading firm in an effort to start up their own financial business." Sending yourself pilfered code through your company email account is probably not the wisest plan. -
The Big Hangup At Burning Man Is Cell Phones
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "L. J. Williamson writes in the LA Times that with no running water, no plumbing, and no electrical outlets Burning Man isn't the kind of place to expect full bars on your smartphone and for many of the participants that's a big part of its charm. 'If you want to partake in the true Burning Man experience, you should leave your phone at home,' says Mark Hansen. In past years, the closest cellular towers, designed to serve the nearby towns of Empire (population 206) and Gerlach (population 217), would quickly get overwhelmed each August when Black Rock City (population 50,000 or so) rose from the featureless playa. Although Burning Man attracts a sizable Silicon Valley contingent including tech giants like Jeff Bezos, Larry Page, and Sergey Brin — the feeling of being 'unplugged' has become an integral part of the Burning Man experience. But another part of the event is an intrepid, DIY ethos, and in that spirit, David Burgess, co-creator of OpenBTS, an open-source cellular network software, brought a homemade in 2008, an 'almost comical' setup that created a working cellular network that routed a few hundred calls over a 48-hour period. In each subsequent year, Burgess has improved the system's reach and expects to have about three-quarters of this year's event covered. Burning Man proved an ideal test bed for development of Burgess' system, which he has since made available for use in other areas without cellular networks. 'People who have a lot of experience in international aid say Burning Man is a very good simulation of a well-organized refugee camp,' says Burgess. 'Because there's no infrastructure, it forces us to contend with a lot of problems that our rural customers have to contend with in very remote places.'"