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Printer

New Technology Could Lead To 3D Printers 62

Posted by kdawson from the chemical-origami dept.
nomoreself writes "PhysicsWeb reports that a team of scientists in Jerusalem has come up with a method for creating self-assembling 3-dimensional models from a single sheet of paper. The 'chemical origami' is created by etching a pattern of monomer onto the paper and then heating it. The chemical's reaction to the heat causes bends of varying degree in the paper, molding the sheet into the patterned model. A professor in the US with no apparent ties to the study says in the article that the technique could be used to create self-assembling prototypes, or even a printer that prints 3D objects."
Privacy

Pendulum Swinging Toward Privacy 72

Posted by kdawson from the watch-that-swing dept.
netbuzz writes "The New York Times reports this morning on a gathering movement to remove Social Security numbers from online public records. While justifiable, given the reality of and concerns about identity theft, it also doesn't take much to imagine how such concerns will be abused by public officials who are strapped for cash and/or ethically challenged."
Security

Submission + - Dealing with Security Bugs: A Primer

Submitted by
CowboyRobot
CowboyRobot writes: "ACM Queue's current issue on Open Source Security includes a short article by Eric Allman of Sendmail on how to handle security bugs in your code. "Patch with full disclosure. Particularly popular in the open source world (where releasing a patch is tantamount to full disclosure anyway), this involves opening the kimono and exposing everything, including a detailed description of the problem and how the exploit works... Generally speaking, it is easier to find bugs in open source code, and hence the pressure to release quickly may be higher.""
Google

Submission + - YouTube set to filter content

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Computer world reports that Google is racing to head off a media industry backlash over its video Web site YouTube and will soon offer antipiracy technologies to help all copyright holders thwart unauthorized video sharing. But YouTube has also said the process of identifying copyrighted material is not automated and requires the cooperation of media company partners.
The Internet

Telecom Refunds $8 Million for Bad Service 57

Posted by CowboyNeal from the whoops-our-bad dept.
Gearu writes in with an article about a hefty refund coming to New Zealanders. It opens, "Telecom New Zealand has admitted it made an error with its Go Large broadband plan and is to credit customers of the service. An internal technical review of the service, launched in October, identified an issue with how internet traffic was being managed on the plan. The Go Large plan was promoted as having traffic management applied to certain applications, but since December the traffic management process had affected all forms of activity. With around 60,000 customers on the Go Large service, the refunds were expected to total $7.5 million to $8.5 million."
Databases

Submission + - MSFT Plays up Open Source

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: One of the longest running open source databases — Postgres — has been around for nearly 11 years (I think.) The powerful object-relational database is a direct competitor to other OSS databases, as well as Microsoft's SQL Server 2005. So why is Microsoft promoting it? Thursday, Microsoft's open source software lab posted PostgreSQL on Windows: A Primer. At first, I get Redmond's interest in promoting anything that runs on Windows as a platform. But looking at this week's news: Ian Murdock visits Redmond, Microsoft and Novell announced their technical roadmap & Red Hat joins Microsoft's Interop Vendor program — is something bigger brewing in Bill's backyard? And how does Ballmer feel about this? The post is located at: http://port25.technet.com/archive/2007/02/22/postg resql-on-windows-a-primer.aspx
Google

Submission + - Second Google Desktop vulnerability uncovered

Submitted by
zakkie
zakkie writes: "According to InfoWorld, Google's Desktop indexing engine is vulnerable to an exploit (the second such flaw to be found) that could allow crackers to read files or execute code. By exploiting a cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability on Google.com, an attacker can grab all the data off a Google Desktop. Google is said to be "investigating"."
Software

Software Deletes Files to Defend Against Piracy 544

Posted by CowboyNeal from the users-delete-software-to-defend-against-idiocy dept.
teamhasnoi writes "Back in 2004, we discussed a program that deleted your home directory on entry of a pirated serial number. Now, a new developer is using the same method to protect his software, aptly named Display Eater. In the developers's own words, 'There exist several illegal cd-keys that you can use to unlock the demo program. If Display Eater detects that you are using these, it will erase something. I don't know if this is going to become Display Eater policy. If this level of piracy continues, development will stop.'"
Patents

Amazon Using Patent Reform to Strengthen 1-Click 71

Posted by Zonk from the song-and-dance-routine dept.
theodp writes "As some predicted, lawyers for Amazon.com have recently submitted 1-Click prior art solicited by Tim O'Reilly under the auspices of Jeff Bezos' patent reform effort to the USPTO, soliciting a 'favorable action' that would help bulletproof the patent. Last June, an Amazon lobbyist referred to deficiencies with the same prior art as he tried to convince Congress that 1-Click was novel, prompting Rep. Howard Berman to call BS."
Books

Submission + - Wordpress Complete

Submitted by
Ravi
Ravi writes: "Anyone who is net savvy will be aware that there are special software available which make it possible to publish ones thoughts on the web without even an iota of coding skills. These new fangled tech tools are popularly known as blogs. In recent times, blogs have empowered numerous individuals and groups by allowing them a platform to air their thoughts. This has been made possible because of the development of numerous blogging tools and one of the foremost blogging tool which has gained mass appeal in the blogging community is Wordpress. What is exciting about this tool or blog engine is that even a lay person can easily master its use and get his or her blog up and running in no time. More over, for its basic use, you do not need any coding skills.

The book titled "Wordpress Complete" authored by Hasin Hayder and published by Packt Publishing is a book ideal for any beginner in blogging who intends to set up his/her own Wordpress blog. The book is divided into 10 distinct chapters with each chapter describing a particular feature of the Wordpress blog.

I found the book unique in that instead of straight away jumping into installing and configuring Wordpress, the author takes time to explain the concept of a blog and the different ways in which you can blog. All the blogs irrespective of the blogging engine being used share some common terminology. And this is also clearly explained in the very first chapter. In the same chapter, the readers are given a bird's eye view of the different blogging engines — both the free ones and those which cost money. And in limited words the readers are made aware of the pros and cons of each of them.

Installing Wordpress is considered easy. More so because it is a two step install process. But when you intend to host a Wordpress blog on a remote host, a few factors come into play depending upon what is offered by your web hosting provider. So there is more than one way of installing a Wordpress blog on a remote host which is dealt with clearly in the second chapter.

Each individual chapters of the book address a specific part of Wordpress. The third chapter dwells on choosing and installing themes where the author goes into the details of themes, the different types of themes and their file composition.

Having gone through the book, I am of the opinion that each and every aspect of Wordpress has been given due weightage by the author. Each chapter includes numerous screenshots of the Wordpress interface where ever applicable with a description of the options seen on the screenshot. I feel, this sort of reduce the learning curve of the person new to the blogging world.

In the fourth chapter titled "Blogging your heart out", the author embarks on an extensive trip explaining the concept of posts and different ways of adding posts in Wordpress such as posting via email. Apart from that, this chapter contains an exhaustive introduction to the rich text editing interface which is the default editor used to write the posts. One also gets to know more about the features common to all blogs such as trackbacks, pinging as well as some Wordpress specific features.

While at first glance, one might be tempted to think why one should buy a Wordpress book when the bulk of the documentation is freely available online, on further reading, you will find this book to be a very good asset for beginner Wordpress bloggers because the author introduces a wealth of information which will require a lot of digging online to find it that too only if you know what you are looking for. For example, the author explains how to put together an image gallery in Wordpress which I was not aware of before I read the book.

Chapter 6 deals with the all important topic of Feeds and Podcasts. There are four different feed formats and Wordpress supports all of them. Feeds are an easy way for the visitors of a site to keep track of the most recent changes in the content of a website.

While the first 6 chapters are targeted at Wordpress users, the remaining 4 chapters are more useful for Wordpress developers. On that note, developing themes form the basis of the 7th chapter of this book. Here the author demonstrates how to build a theme from grounds up by starting from scratch. Wordpress is essentially an amalgamation of PHP code, CSS and standards compliant HTML and this chapter has a fair sprinkling of code snippets with explanation. After going through the chapter, I was able to get a very good idea of the different files and their contents which form the heart of Wordpress.

Another very good feature of this book is that while explaining the concepts, the author has liberally used snippets of PHP code which imparts an idea about the different programming functions which play a specific role in Wordpress.

The next chapter titled "Community Blogging" provides a brief outline of a parallel project of Wordpress which is the Multi-user Wordpress which goes by the name Wordpress MU.

Chapter 9 titled "Developing plug-ins and widgets" is a very interesting chapter with the author explaining the process of creating ones own widgets which are small bits of code which incorporate third party functionality.

There is also an exclusive chapter which acts as an administrative reference where a number of problems that Wordpress administrators might face and their possible solutions are listed.

The book takes a reader right from the installation to the configuration of each and every aspect of Wordpress to eventually give some troubleshooting tips. There is no dearth of relevant screenshots. And the language used in explaining the concepts is clear and to the point. The author also provides Web references in many places which will help in broadening ones knowledge of Wordpress. In short, I found this book to be an ideal resource for bloggers who wish to host their blog on Wordpress.

Ravi Kumar likes to share his thoughts on all things related to GNU/Linux, Open Source and Free Software on his blog linuxhelp.blogspot.com."
Space

Fuel Efficient Five-Gear Rocket Engine Designed 122

Posted by Zonk from the next-they-need-to-make-a-death-ray-for-peaceful-purposes dept.
Roland Piquepaille writes "Georgia Tech researchers have had a brilliant idea. Rocket engines used today to launch satellites run at maximum exhaust velocity until they reach orbit. For a car, this would be analog to stay all the time in first gear. So they have designed a new space rocket which works as it has a five-gear transmission system. This rocket engine uses 40 percent less fuel than current ones by running on solar power while in space and by fine-tuning exhaust velocity. But as it was designed with funds from the U.S. Air Force, military applications will be ready before civilian ones. Here is how this new rocket engine works."
Education

One Desktop per Child - miniPCs for Schools? 72

Posted by Cliff from the uncomplicated-unobtrusive-computing-for-class dept.
gwjenkins asks: "I'm a teacher in charge of IT in a small school. We would like to bust out of the computer lab model but don't want a trolley of laptops wheeled from class to class. I've drooled over wi-fi PDAs but just can't afford a set for class (and the batteries drain too fast). In a classroom, space is at a premium and teachers won't use a technology that takes too long to set up. Most of the time the kids are just researching (Google), or typing (Google Docs), the rest of the time they can go to a lab. I would love to have a desk-based solution. Can you run a wi-fi mini-pc (sitting under the desk) from a 12-volt rechargeable battery (also sitting under the desk) with a 7" LCD (sitting on the desk), that boots from flash card into FireFox? No wires! No setup time! Has anyone done this? How? Alternatively can anyone say why this is silly?"

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DISCLAIMER: Use of this advanced computing technology does not imply an endorsement of Western industrial civilization.

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