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Science

Human Eye Could Detect Spooky Action At a Distance 255

Posted by samzenpus from the I-seen-things dept.
KentuckyFC writes "The human eye is a good photon detector--it's sensitive enough to spot photons in handfuls. So what if you swapped a standard photon detector with a human eye in the ongoing experiments to measure spooky-action-at-a-distance? (That's the ability of entangled photons to influence each other, no matter how far apart they might be.) A team of physicists in Switzerland have worked out the details and say that in principle there is no reason why human eyes couldn't do this kind of experiment. That would be cool because it would ensure that the two human observers involved in the test would become entangled, albeit for a short period time. The team, led by Nic Gisin, a world leader on entanglement, says it is actively pursuing this goal (abstract) so we could have the first humans to experience entanglement within months."
Security

Security Researcher Kaminsky Pushes DNS Patching 57

Posted by samzenpus from the protect-ya-neck dept.
BobB-nw writes "Dan Kaminsky, who for years was ambivalent about securing DNS, has become an ardent supporter of DNS Security Extensions. Speaking at the Black Hat DC 2009 conference Thursday, the prominent security researcher told the audience that the lack of DNS security not only makes the Internet vulnerable, but is also crippling the scalability of important security technologies. 'DNS is pretty much our only way to scale systems across organizational boundaries, and because it is insecure it's infecting everything else that uses' DNS, the fundamental Internet protocol that provides an IP address for a given domain name, said Kaminsky, director of penetration testing at IOActive. 'The only group that has actually avoided DNS because it's insecure are security technologies, and therefore those technologies aren't scaling.'"
Google

Obama Anti-Trust Chief on Google the Monopoly Threat 364

Posted by CmdrTaco from the it-has-to-be-said dept.
CWmike writes "The blogosphere regularly excoriates Microsoft for being a monopoly, but Google may be in the cross-hairs of the nation's next anti-trust chief for monopolistic behavior, writes Preston Gralla. Last June, Christine A. Varney, President Obama's nominee to be the next antitrust chief, warned that Google already had a monopoly in online advertising. 'For me, Microsoft is so last century. They are not the problem,' Varney said at a June 19 panel discussion sponsored by the American Antitrust Institute, according to a Bloomberg report. The US economy will 'continually see a problem — potentially with Google' because it already 'has acquired a monopoly in Internet online advertising.' Varney has yet to be confirmed as antitrust chief, and she said all this before she was nominated. Still, it spells potentially bad news for Google. It may be time for the company to start adding to its legal staff."
Microsoft

Microsoft.com Makes IE8 Incompatibility List 358

Posted by CmdrTaco from the my-head-just-asplodered dept.
nickull writes "Microsoft is tracking incompatible Web sites for its upcoming Internet Explorer 8 browser and has posted a list that now contains about 2,400 names — including Microsoft.com. Apparently, even though Microsoft's IE8 team is doing the 'right' thing by finally making IE more standards-compliant, they are risking 'breaking the Web' because the vast majority of Web sites are still written to work correctly with previous, non-standards-compliant versions of IE."
The Courts

Pirate Bay Founder Begs For Hacker Ceasefire 243

Posted by CmdrTaco from the please-hammer-don't-hurt-'em dept.
Barence writes "Pirate Bay's co-founder has pleaded for hackers to stop attacking the sites of those organizations lined up against him. Peter Sunde is on trial with Pirate Bay's three other founders for allegedly distributing copyrighted material. The trial is about to enter its fourth day, and in a gesture of support for the four men hackers have begun assaulting plaintiff websites, beginning with that of the The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry. The campaign has caused concern in the Pirate Bay camp, prompting Sunde to write a post titled 'We're winning, stop hacking, please' on his blog."
The Internet

Black Hat Presentation Highlights SSL Encryption Flaws 152

Posted by timothy from the well-hey-nothin's-perfect dept.
nk497 writes "Hackers at the Black Hat conference have shown that SSL encryption isn't as secure as online businesses would like us to think. Independent hacker Moxie Marlinspike showed off several techniques to fool the tech behind the little padlock on your screen. He claimed that by using a real world attack on several secure websites such as PayPal, Gmail, Ticketmaster and Facebook, he garnered 117 email accounts, 16 credit card numbers, seven PayPal logins and 300 other miscellaneous secure logins."
Programming

Web-based IDEs Edge Closer To the Mainstream 244

Posted by timothy from the hope-your-connection-is-reliable dept.
snitch writes "Last week Mozilla released Bespin, their web-based framework for code editing, and only a few days later Boris Bokowski and Simon Kaegi implemented an Eclipse-based Bespin server using headless Eclipse plug-ins. With the presentation of the web-based Eclipse workbench at EclipseCon and the release of products like Heroku, a web-based IDE and hosting environment for RoR apps, it seems that web-based IDEs might soon become mainstream."

Comment least privilege (Score 1) 823

by cyberbian (#26222357) Attached to: Configuring a Windows PC For a Senior Citizen?
Having spent days (weeks, months, years?) configuring Windows XP over the years I tend to follow a pattern that works for me, ymmv.
Windows still installs broken (imco) in that the first user installed becomes an Administrator by default. With Windows, we all know by now that running as Administrator is asking for it (some have likened it to pulling ones pants down and bending over the chair.) So it's important to remove Administrator group privileges from the primary user, having them run as Users only. This prevents a host of malware and other malfeasants from gaining illegitimate access to the computer.
Install a good anti-virus software, my personal favourite is Symantec Corporate for it's ease of configuration and automation for updates. I set the software to live update daily, perform a startup scan of files loading into memory at boot time, and a weekly full scan of everything on the hdd.
Ensure that you're running Windows Update to the last iteration and get all of the updates installed correctly. Turn on automatic updates, and set it to install automatically.
Run MBSA... follow the directions provided.
Install Firefox, and the NoScript add-on. Make it the default browser in all profiles by logging on and making that choice. Ensure NoScript is up and running correctly.
The base system has excellent accessibility tools, ensure the user is familiar with them, and perhaps ensure that accessibility shortcuts are available from the desktop if necessary.
Teach... (who says old dogs can't learn new tricks?)
Wash, rinse, repeat.

Comment built to suit both purposes (Score 3, Insightful) 1117

by cyberbian (#26161743) Attached to: What Restrictions Should Student Laptops Have?
Having worked extensively with a private school in this situation exactly, we chose to have roaming profiles, which allowed the student to log in to each machine locally, but their work was synched to their class server next login on campus. While logged in on campus, all internet content is filtered, we use jabber and bonjour messaging locally and the kids love it, these services are not given wan access.

When the student is logged in off-campus they can make documents, and use the internet as their local administrator (parent/guardian) deems appropriate. In those environments, it is considered the responsibility of the parents/guardians to provide content filtering and/or monitoring of their child's internet use. As the students are just plain users, they have few rights with respect to system modification on their local accounts, any software that they wish to install is handled via a parental request form. Machine software images are netbootable so it's quite trivial to refresh each machine.

It's important to remember that if the student and their parents ostensibly 'own' the machines, they should be granted any leeway they request, yet not undermine the local regime. Well implemented network services can ensure that your local rulesets are followed.

Comment HDD (Score 1) 716

by cyberbian (#23857901) Attached to: Most Hated Computer Component
Despite the recent increases in capacity, long term storage continues to be the bottleneck in todays high powered computing. Your new super fast quad-core still needs to wait while the arm seeks and reads the data stored on disk. Even with the newest hard drives they are still orders of magnitude slower than the rest of the system, chug power and consistently keep data-recovery labs in business. Not that I mind data-recovery labs, it's just the prices...
Enlightenment

Submission + - Humans hardwired to believe in supernatural deity?

Submitted by dohcrx
dohcrx writes: According to a New York Times article published March 4, 2007 6 in 10 Americans believe in the devil and hell, 7 in 10 believe in angels, heaven and the existence of miracles and life after death while 92% believe in a personal God.

"When a trait is universal, evolutionary biologists look for a genetic explanation and wonder how that gene or genes might enhance survival or reproductive success."

"Which is the better biological explanation for a belief in God — evolutionary adaptation or neurological accident? Is there something about the cognitive functioning of humans that makes us receptive to belief in a supernatural deity?"

"Religion made incursions into the traditional domain of science with attempts to bring intelligent design into the biology classroom and to choke off human embryonic stem-cell research on religious grounds. Scientists responded with counterincursions. Experts from the hard sciences, like evolutionary biology and cognitive neuroscience, joined anthropologists and psychologists in the study of religion, making God an object of scientific inquiry."
Education

Submission + - Ocean Floor Crust Wound to Be Explored

Submitted by
eldavojohn
eldavojohn writes: "A group of scientists are disembarking right now to study an open gash in the ocean floor where earth's mantle lays exposed without any crust covering it. The scientists describe these as similar to stretch marks that a person might experience on their skin from a growth spurt. Either that or the mantle was never covered by the crust and just has always been like this. From the article, "Regardless of how they formed, the exposed mantle provides scientists with a rare opportunity to study the Earth's rocky innards. Many attempts to drill deep into the planet barely get past the crust.""
Censorship

Submission + - FCC report: TV violence should be regulated

Submitted by tanman
tanman writes: CNN reports that a draft FCC report circulating on Capitol Hill "suggests Congress could craft a law that would let the agency regulate violent programming much like it regulates sexual content and profanity — by barring it from being aired during hours when children may be watching, for example ... 'In general, what the commission's report says is that there is strong evidence that shows violent media can have an impact on children's behavior and there are some things that can be done about it,' FCC Chairman Kevin Martin said Thursday. The issue is bipartisan. Martin, a Republican, gave a joint interview to The Associated Press with Democratic Commissioner Michael Copps."
Encryption

Submission + - Macrovision responds to Steve Jobs on DRM

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Macrovision Corporation, best known for its long history of DRM implementations, (everything from VCRs to software copy protection), has responded to Steve Jobs open letter regarding DRM. With ample experience and despite the obvious vested interests, it's great to hear their point of view.

In the letter they acknowledge the "difficult challenges" of implementing DRM that is truly "interoperable and open"; but they also feel that DRM "will increase electronic distribution", if implemented properly, because "DRM increases not decreases consumer value", such as by enabling people to "rent" content at a lower price than ownership, and lowering risks for content producers.

While I'm impressed they responded, I can't say I'm impressed by lofty goals that might not be reached for years. The reality is, current DRM implementations often leave users with the bad end of the deal. What do you think? Should people give DRM manufacturers more time to overcome the challenges and get it right?

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