Friday, September 29, 2006

FT.com / Comment & analysis / Columnists - A view from (under) the long tail

FT.com / Comment & analysis / Columnists - A view from (under) the long tail:

"I sometimes imagined the Amazon customer service folk borrowing the Tardis to deliver apologies for their incredibly rare mistakes before they even happened. But that was as a purchaser. As a vendor I entered into a shadowy different universe. Where Amazon’s normal customer service seems to be run by suspiciously cheerful MBAs from Stanford, who break off from counting their stock options to write apologies and deliver refunds, “Amazon Advantage”, the ironically named system for selling wares, is clearly based on the last days of the Soviet system.

The problem with their representatives is not that their native language is not English, it is that their native planet is not Earth. Only that could explain the strange delays of weeks in replying to emails, the apparent time distortions that will suddenly lead them to re-enter a months-long dispute in the middle, and the curiously non-terrestrial logic of their replies. When the Amazon system inserted random hieroglyphics into the description of our comic book it took many e-mails to reach a human – or at least sapient – being. When we did we were told reassuringly that Amazon’s system for updating web pages was broken and that there was no prospect of fixing it. For this, we give them 55 cents out of every dollar and an annual fee?"

ScienceDaily: Tarantulas Produce Silk From Their Feet

ScienceDaily: Tarantulas Produce Silk From Their Feet:

"The researchers placed tarantulas on a vertical glass surface. Though ground dwelling, these spiders can normally hang on to vertical surfaces by using thousands of spatulate hairs and small claws. However, the scientists noticed that when the spider started to slip down the surface, it produced silk from all four pairs of legs, allowing it to adhere to the glass for more than 20 minutes. The silk secretions were clearly visible on the glass. Using scanning electron microscopy, the scientists also were able to see the openings on the legs that resemble the silk-producing spigots on spider abdominal spinnerets."

Thursday, September 28, 2006

Seed: White House Said to Bar Hurricane Report

Seed: White House Said to Bar Hurricane Report:

"The Bush administration has blocked release of a report that suggests global warming is contributing to the frequency and strength of hurricanes, the journal Nature reported Tuesday. The possibility that warming conditions may cause storms to become stronger has generated debate among climate and weather experts, particularly in the wake of the Hurricane Katrina disaster.

In the new case, Nature said weather experts at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration—part of the Commerce Department—in February set up a seven-member panel to prepare a consensus report on the views of agency scientists about global warming and hurricanes.
In May, when the report was expected to be released, panel chair Ants Leetmaa received an e-mail from a Commerce official saying the report needed to be made less technical and was not to be released, Nature reported.
According to Nature, a draft of the statement said that warming may be having an effect."

Tuesday, September 26, 2006

Think Progress » FULL TRANSCRIPT: Clinton Takes On Fox News

Think Progress » FULL TRANSCRIPT: Clinton Takes On Fox News

FULL TRANSCRIPT: Clinton Takes On Fox News

Today, President Bill Clinton taped an interview with Fox News’ Chris Wallace, which is scheduled to be aired Sunday. He was told the interview would focus on his nonpartisan efforts to raise over $7 billion to combat the world’s biggest problems.

Early in the interview, Wallace attempted to smear Clinton with the same kind of misinformation contained in ABC’s Path to 9/11. Clinton was having none of it.

ThinkProgress has obtained a transcript of the interview. Here are some highlights –

Wallace repeats Path to 9/11 misinformation, Clinton fights back:

Rechargeable Batteries Battery Chargers Rechargeable Lithium Digital Camera Batteries Maha Ansamann Energizer Sanyo

I purchased a POWEREX MH-C808M battery charger from Thomas Distributing and after a couple of months one of the charging circuits became permanently on. So with great trepidation I called, the phone was answered on the first ring and I was promised that a new unit would be shipped today. All told my call lasted less than a minute. I am just stunned with the quality of service I received.

Rechargeable Batteries Battery Chargers Rechargeable Lithium Digital Camera Batteries Maha Ansamann Energizer Sanyo

Linux hackers re-claim the Linksys WRT54G

Linux hackers re-claim the Linksys WRT54G

Jun. 26, 2006

As predicted, the open source community has come up with a way to convert VxWorks-based LinkSys wireless WRT54G routers to Linux. The process does not require hardware hacking, and installs a recent version of "DD-WRT micro."

A version of Linux that supports the VxWorks-based "series 5" WRT54G has been available since April, when the DD-WRT project created its "micro" edition, with a 1.7MB footprint. However, the firmware could only be installed on routers modified to expose their JTAG ports (complicated instructions here).

Recording Industry vs The People

Recording Industry vs The People:

"Lime Wire alleged that the RIAA's

goal was simple: to destroy any online music distribution service they did not own or control, or force such services to do business with them on exclusive and/or other anticompetitive terms so as to limit and ultimately control the distribution and pricing of digital music, all to the detriment of consumers. (Counterclaim, paragraph 26, page 18).
"

Wednesday, September 20, 2006

news @ nature.com - Little 'Lucy' fossil found - Toddler hominin has arms for swinging and legs for walking.

news @ nature.com - Little 'Lucy' fossil found

Little 'Lucy' fossil found

The 3.3-million-year-old bones of a female toddler from Ethiopia are telling scientists a story about the route human ancestors took from the trees to the ground.

In today's issue of Nature, an Ethiopian-led international team reports the discovery of a juvenile skeleton of the species commonly known as 'Lucy', or Australopithecus afarensis.1,2 The researchers have named her Selam, after an Ethiopian word for 'peace'.
The specimen, which is the oldest and most complete juvenile of a human relative ever found, has features that stand as striking examples of part-way evolution between primitive apes and modern humans.

Pharyngula

Pharyngula

These six medical professionals:

Ashraf al-Hajuj
Valya Chervenyashka
Snezhana Dimitrova
Nasya Nenova
Valentina Siropulo
Kristiyana Valtcheva

were working at the al-Fateh Children's Hospital in Banghazi, Libya in the late 1990s. A year later, about 400 children were diagnosed with HIV; the doctors and nurses were accused of conspiring with Israel and the USA to intentionally infect children with the disease, and were thrown into jail.

Five years later — five years spent in a Libyan jail, where they were tortured with electric shocks and beatings, and two of the nurses were raped! — defenders were able to show that the children were largely victims of HIV exposure prior to the arrival of the accused, and that the real culprit was a policy of poorly trained staff, unsterilized equipment, and generally shoddy hygiene. It didn't matter; they were convicted in a sham trial, and sentenced to death by firing squad....

Articles of Impeachment presented against Presdient Andrew Johnson

Articles of Impeachment presented against Presdient Andrew Johnson

Slashdot | Brave New Ballot

Slashdot | Brave New Ballot:

"The take away point is this:

The most reliable, secure way to vote in the USA today is to use voter-correctable precinct-based optical scanners. That means paper ballots at poll sites fed into a ballot scanner."

Avi Rubin's Blog

Avi Rubin's Blog

Welcome to my blog. Here, I will post items of interest to me most likely focusing on:
  • Electronic Voting Security
  • Computer and Network Security
  • Independent Security Evaluators
  • Sports: Soccer, tennis, golf, football, Michigan sports

Slashdot | Hotel Minibar Key Opens Diebold Voting Machines

Slashdot | Hotel Minibar Key Opens Diebold Voting Machines

"As if Diebold doesn't have enough to worry about! On the Freedom To Tinker blog, Ed Felten, one of the co-authors of the recent report 'Security Analysis of the Diebold AccuVote-TS Voting Machine', reveals an even more bizarre finding related to the initial report. It turns out that you can gain access to an AccuVote-TS machine using a hotel minibar key. In fact, the key in question is a utilitarian type used to open office furniture, electronic equipment, jukeboxes, and the like. They might as well hand them out like candy."

Slashdot | Brave New Ballot

Slashdot | Brave New Ballot:

"Brave New Ballot (BNB) is Rubin's story of how in 2003, he and his graduate students at Johns Hopkins University demonstrated that the Diebold Election Systems electronic voting technology in wide use was full of security problems. It was just in 2002 that Sherron Watkins of Enron was named Time magazine person of the year for her work in uncovering fraud at Enron. It would have been thought that Rubin's work would have immediately won him some sort of patriot of the year award for his work."

Tuesday, September 19, 2006

BBC NEWS | Middle East | Women graduates challenge Iran

BBC NEWS | Middle East | Women graduates challenge Iran

By Frances Harrison
BBC News, Tehran

The number of women graduating from Iran's universities is overtaking the number of men, promising a change in the job market and, with it, profound social change.

Twenty postgraduate students are sitting in a plush modern classroom listening to a lecture on environmental management at the Islamic Azad University - a private institution with 1.6 million students across Iran.

The room is darkened so the students can watch the lecturer's slide show comparing energy consumption around the world.

Three quarters of the students in this class are women - the five men in the class are huddled together in a corner.

Off the Kuff: February 2005 Archives

Off the Kuff: February 2005 Archives:

" Tracking what happened to $175,000 contributed by two Indian tribes to a political group called CREA leads from a disgraced lobbyist to an elusive environmental organization spawned by Gale Norton before she became secretary of the Interior.

The money, which the tribes say they contributed to the group at the direction of a Washington, D.C., lobbyist now under federal investigation, is unaccounted for in public records where federal regulations say it should be listed.

The absence of an accounting adds another layer to the mystery of what became of more than two dozen contributions missing among $300,000 in checks issued by a Texas tribe to 79 political committees selected by lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

CREA stands for Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy. According to its filings with the Internal Revenue Service as a tax-exempt organization, it has operated for more than four years without receiving any contributions or making any expenditures.

The Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana said it issued checks for $50,000 to CREA in 2001 and $100,000 in 2002.

Also, the Tigua Indians, whose Ysleta del Sur Pueblo adjoins El Paso, said they issued a $25,000 check to CREA in 2002 and included it in a bundle of other political contributions they sent to Abramoff to distribute. Tribal Lt. Gov. Carlos Hisa said the check was cashed, but he would not disclose how it was endorsed.
"

Burnt Orange Report - From the email bag

Burnt Orange Report - From the email bag

Another letter regarding the Dallas County Democratic Party Executive Committee Meeting:

[ed. note: The following letter is in response to this letter by Chair Susan Hays to the precinct chairs of Dallas County which arrived in the mail of precinct chairs today. The letter from Hays also included a letter (PDF file) signed by State Rep. Rafael Anchia, State Sen. Royce West, County Commissioner John Wiley Price and Sheriff Lupe Valdez. State Rep. Jesse Jones wrote a seperate letter (PDF file).]


CONCERNED DEMOCRATS OF DALLAS COUNTY

February 26, 2005

Dear Fellow Democrat:

By now you have no doubt received a letter from Dallas County Democratic Party Chair Susan Hays about the County Executive meeting called for 6:30 p.m. Monday at the CWA Hall. We write in response....

Monday, September 18, 2006

OpenDNS > Get Started

Changing your DNS settings

OpenDNS > What We Do

OpenDNS > What We Do

Rolling Stone : Was the 2004 Election Stolen?

Rolling Stone : Was the 2004 Election Stolen?:

"Immediately after the polls closed on Election Day, GOP officials -- citing the FBI -- declared that the county was facing a terrorist threat that ranked ten on a scale of one to ten. The county administration building was hastily locked down, allowing election officials to tabulate the results without any reporters present.

In fact, there was no terrorist threat. The FBI declared that it had issued no such warning, and an investigation by The Cincinnati Enquirer unearthed e-mails showing that the Republican plan to declare a terrorist alert had been in the works for eight days prior to the election."

Sunday, September 17, 2006

Rolling Stone : Was the 2004 Election Stolen?

Rolling Stone : Was the 2004 Election Stolen?

exit polls, which predicted an overwhelming victory for John Kerry, had gotten it so wrong. By midnight, the official tallies showed a decisive lead for George Bush -- and the next day, lacking enough legal evidence to contest the results, Kerry conceded.

Nearly half of the 6 million American voters living abroad(3) never received their ballots -- or received them too late to vote(4) -- after the Pentagon unaccountably shut down a state-of-the-art Web site used to file overseas registrations.(5) A consulting firm called Sproul & Associates, which was hired by the Republican National Committee to register voters in six battleground states,(6) was discovered shredding Democratic registrations.(7) In New Mexico, which was decided by 5,988 votes,(8) malfunctioning machines mysteriously failed to properly register a presidential vote on more than 20,000 ballots.(9) Nationwide, according to the federal commission charged with implementing election reforms, as many as 1 million ballots were spoiled by faulty voting equipment -- roughly one for every 100 cast.(10)

The reports were especially disturbing in Ohio, the critical battleground state that clinched Bush's victory in the electoral college. Officials there purged tens of thousands of eligible voters from the rolls, neglected to process registration cards generated by Democratic voter drives, shortchanged Democratic precincts when they allocated voting machines and illegally derailed a recount that could have given Kerry the presidency. A precinct in an evangelical church in Miami County recorded an impossibly high turnout of ninety-eight percent, while a polling place in inner-city Cleveland recorded an equally impossible turnout of only seven percent. In Warren County, GOP election officials even invented a nonexistent terrorist threat to bar the media from monitoring the official vote count.(11)

Any election, of course, will have anomalies. America's voting system is a messy patchwork of polling rules run mostly by county and city officials. ''We didn't have one election for president in 2004,'' says Robert Pastor, who directs the Center for Democracy and Election Management at American University. ''We didn't have fifty elections. We actually had 13,000 elections run by 13,000 independent, quasi-sovereign counties and municipalities.''

But what is most anomalous about the irregularities in 2004 was their decidedly partisan bent: Almost without exception they hurt John Kerry and benefited George Bush. After carefully examining the evidence, I've become convinced that the president's party mounted a massive, coordinated campaign to subvert the will of the people in 2004. Across the country, Republican election officials and party stalwarts employed a wide range of illegal and unethical tactics to fix the election. A review of the available data reveals that in Ohio alone, at least 357,000 voters, the overwhelming majority of them Democratic, were prevented from casting ballots or did not have their votes counted in 2004(12) -- more than enough to shift the results of an election decided by 118,601 votes.(13) (See Ohio's Missing Votes) In what may be the single most astounding fact from the election, one in every four Ohio citizens who registered to vote in 2004 showed up at the polls only to discover that they were not listed on the rolls, thanks to GOP efforts to stem the unprecedented flood of Democrats eager to cast ballots.(14) And that doesn’t even take into account the troubling evidence of outright fraud, which indicates that upwards of 80,000 votes for Kerry were counted instead for Bush. That alone is a swing of more than 160,000 votes -- enough to have put John Kerry in the White House.(15)

''It was terrible,'' says Sen. Christopher Dodd, who helped craft reforms in 2002 that were supposed to prevent such electoral abuses. ''People waiting in line for twelve hours to cast their ballots, people not being allowed to vote because they were in the wrong precinct -- it was an outrage. In Ohio, you had a secretary of state who was determined to guarantee a Republican outcome. I'm terribly disheartened.''

Indeed, the extent of the GOP's effort to rig the vote shocked even the most experienced observers of American elections. ''Ohio was as dirty an election as America has ever seen,'' Lou Harris, the father of modern political polling, told me. ''You look at the turnout and votes in individual precincts, compared to the historic patterns in those counties, and you can tell where the discrepancies are. They stand out like a sore thumb.''


Saturday, September 16, 2006

ScienceDaily: Researchers Reveal 'Extremely Serious' Vulnerabilities In E-voting Machines

Classified under common knowledge nobody does anything about.
Researchers Reveal 'Extremely Serious' Vulnerabilities In E-voting Machines

In a paper published on the Web this week, a group of Princeton computer scientists said they created demonstration vote-stealing software that can be installed within a minute on a common electronic voting machine. The software can fraudulently change vote counts without being detected.

Edward Felten (center), director of the Center for Information Technology Policy, has coauthored a paper with graduate students Ariel Feldman (left) and Alex Halderman on a demonstration vote-stealing software that highlights security vulnerabilities in electronic voting machines. (Credit: John Jameson, Princeton University)

"We have created and analyzed the code in the spirit of helping to guide public officials so that they can make wise decisions about how to secure elections," said Edward Felten, the director of the Center for Information Technology Policy, a new center at Princeton University that addresses crucial issues at the intersection of society and computer technology.

Friday, September 15, 2006

BBC NEWS | Technology | Europe gets glimpse of HD future

BBC NEWS Europe gets glimpse of HD future

Japanese scientists have shown Ultra High Definition TV for the first time in Europe.
The system has 16 times the resolution of current HDTV. However, it is unlikely to be available to the public for at least 25 years.
The demonstration comes less than six months after cable firm Telewest launched Britain's first high-definition TV service.
Consumers are still getting to grips with the technology needed to watch its super-sharp pictures but researchers from Japanese state broadcaster NHK have already developed its successor.

Media ownership study ordered destroyed - Politics - MSNBC.com

Media ownership study ordered destroyed

WASHINGTON - The Federal Communications Commission ordered its staff to destroy all copies of a draft study that suggested greater concentration of media ownership would hurt local TV news coverage, a former lawyer at the agency says.
The report, written in 2004, came to light during the Senate confirmation hearing for FCC Chairman Kevin Martin. Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif. received a copy of the report "indirectly from someone within the FCC who believed the information should be made public," according to Boxer spokeswoman Natalie Ravitz.
Note: In June of 2006, the FCC announced the start of a new review of media ownership, including a "series of public hearings on media ownership issues at diverse locations across the nation". That review is still ongoing.)
'Every last piece' destroyed
Adam Candeub, now a law professor at Michigan State University, said senior managers at the agency ordered that "every last piece" of the report be destroyed. "The whole project was just stopped - end of discussion," he said. Candeub was a lawyer in the FCC's Media Bureau at the time the report was written and communicated frequently with its authors, he said.

In a letter sent to Martin Wednesday, Boxer said she was "dismayed that this report, which was done at taxpayer expense more than two years ago, and which concluded that localism is beneficial to the public, was shoved in a drawer."

The report, written by two economists in the FCC's Media Bureau, analyzed a database of 4,078 individual news stories broadcast in 1998. The broadcasts were obtained from Danilo Yanich, a professor and researcher at the University of Delaware, and were originally gathered by the Pew Foundation's Project for Excellence in Journalism.

The analysis showed local ownership of television stations adds almost five and one-half minutes of total news to broadcasts and more than three minutes of "on-location" news. The conclusion is at odds with FCC arguments made when it voted in 2003 to increase the number of television stations a company could own in a single market. It was part of a broader decision liberalizing ownership rules.

Monday, September 11, 2006

1080P is history, the industry wants 4096x2160

1080P is history, the industry wants 4096x2160

Recording Industry vs The People

If they do not have enough evidence why did they go to trial?

Recording Industry vs The People

RIAA Says That Without Pretrial Discovery, It Does Not Have Enough Facts to Oppose Paul Wilke's Summary Judgment Motion

In Elektra v. Wilke, the Chicago RIAA case in which defendant Paul Wilke has moved for summary judgment, the RIAA has filed a motion for "expedited discovery", alleging that it does not have sufficient evidence to withstand Mr. Wilke's motion. The RIAA's lawyer said

"Plaintiffs cannot at this time,
without an opportunity for
full discovery
present by affidavit
facts essential to justify
their opposition to Defendant's motion.

Friday, September 08, 2006

New Numa





Wednesday, September 06, 2006

Science

Science

The Fuel Cycle
If nuclear power is to expand by such an extent, what kind of nuclear plants should be built? A chief consideration is the fuel cycle, which can be either open or closed. In an open fuel cycle, also known as a once-through cycle, the uranium is "burned" once in a reactor, and spent fuel is stored in geologic repositories. The spent fuel includes plutonium that could be chemically extracted and turned into fuel for use in another nuclear plant. Doing that results in a closed fuel cycle, which some people advocate [see "Smarter Use of Nuclear Waste," by William H. Hannum, Gerald E. Marsh and George S. Stanford; Scientific American, December 2005].

Some countries, most notably France, currently use a closed fuel cycle in which plutonium is separated from the spent fuel and a mixture of plutonium and uranium oxides is subsequently burned again. A longer-term option could involve recycling all the transuranics (plutonium is one example of a transuranic element), perhaps in a so-called fast reactor. In this approach, nearly all the very long lived components of the waste are eliminated, thereby transforming the nuclear waste debate. Substantial research and development is needed, however, to work through daunting technical and economic challenges to making this scheme work.

Tuesday, September 05, 2006

Pharyngula: Even wingnuts respond to culture shock

Pharyngula: Even wingnuts respond to culture shock:

"When I get into discussions of this topic with evangelical acquaintences, which is not often enough from my perspective because I think they might be shunning me, I like to point out that I live in San Francisco.

When they say, 'What?'

I say, 'San Francisco is where the Temple of Set is headquartered, which is the largest congregation of openly avowed Satanists in the world [I know that's not really true, but it's close enough to true for my purposes].'

They usually look at me with mounting horror at this point.

Then I drive home the point. 'I can't wait until the government starts giving me vouchers to pay for sending my child to private parochial schools, because then your tax dollars will be going to teaching my kid the freaking Dark Arts. How does that sound, Mike?'

They never talk to me after that."

Being an Atheist in America Isn't Easy - Newsweek Society - MSNBC.com

Being an Atheist in America Isn't Easy - Newsweek Society - MSNBC.com:

"'Breaking the Spell,' by the philosopher Daniel C. Dennett, which asks how and why religions became ubiquitous in human society. The obvious answer—'Because they're true'—is foreclosed, Dennett says, by the fact that they are by and large mutually incompatible. Even to study 'religion as a natural phenomenon,' the subtitle of Dennett's book, is to deprive it of much of its mystery and power. And next month the British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins ('The Selfish Gene') weighs in with 'The God Delusion,' a book that extends an argument he advanced in the days after 9/11. After hearing once too often that '[t]o blame the attacks on Islam is like blaming Christianity for the fighting in Northern Ireland,' Dawkins responded: Precisely. 'It's time to get angry,' he wrote, 'and not only with Islam.'"

Saturday, September 02, 2006

ESA - Space Science - Cassiopeia A - The colourful aftermath of a violent stellar death

ESA - Space Science - Cassiopeia A - The colourful aftermath of a violent stellar death

The image is a composite made from 18 separate images taken using Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), and it shows the Cas A remnant as a broken ring of bright filamentary and clumpy stellar ejecta, showing the complex and intricate structure of the star’s shattered fragments.

A family today revealed how they narrowly escaped injury when a laptop computer exploded in their home.

A family today revealed how they narrowly escaped injury when a laptop computer exploded in their home.:

"BY SHIRLEY ELSBY

10:15 - 31 August 2006
A family today revealed how they narrowly escaped injury when a (Dell) laptop computer exploded in their home.

The incident, at a house in Eskdale Road, Hinckley, sent small batteries from the device around the room, setting fire to carpets and a settee.

The family of six, including a 12-year-old boy who had suffered a scalding accident a few days previously, were terrified."

Iomega's REV Loader 280: The Ultimate Backup Master? | Tom's Hardware

A good idea but with too little capacity for way too much money. Just getting a USB hard drive makes more sense.

Iomega's REV Loader 280: The Ultimate Backup Master? | Tom's Hardware

The REV Loader 280 is compact and lightweight (1.8 kg) compared to the footprint of tape autoloaders, and it provides a welcome freeing of space in the server room. The physical dimensions of the unit are 7" x 5" x 11", which are smaller than most printers, and the unit fairly unobtrusive. As tested, the REV loader has space for eight REV disks at 35 GB each (up to 70 GB compressed at a 2:1 compression ratio), leading to a total net unit capacity of 280 GB uncompressed.

CPU core control key to power efficiency, says AMD | TG Daily

CPU core control key to power efficiency, says AMD | TG Daily:

"Sunnyvale (CA) - AMD's quad-core architecture won't be released until mid-2007, but the company is already discussing some features of the new Opterons and Athlons. Power consumption will remain a center piece of AMD's product strategy: Clock speed control of the individual cores will allow the chips to remain in the same power envelope as their dual-core predecessors.

About a year ago, dual-core processors were just about becoming available to the enthusiast computer buyer. Within another year, a dual-core system will be making its way deep into the entry-level segment of the desktop and notebook PC market. By then, quad-core systems are expected to dominate the high-end range of PC and x86 server systems.
"

A wireless hacking computer that can't be hacked | TG Daily

A wireless hacking computer that can't be hacked | TG Daily:

"Williams is improving the Janus computer to crack wireless networks even faster. He is optimizing software routines to use the C7 chip to crack WPA and WPA2 protected networks without the use of Rainbow tables. He is also working on breaking SHA1 and RSA encryption in a single processor instruction cycle. Previous methods have required multiple clock cycles to go through one cracking pass."

Friday, September 01, 2006

Michael Sutton's Blog : Why All The Hype About 0day?

Michael Sutton's Blog : Why All The Hype About 0day?

We've always believed that Internet is plagued with unpatched machines to an extent far greater than most people realize. Today, I set out to prove this to myself. The challenge in doing this is to find a way to identify vulnerable machines without attacking them. I want to prove a theory but I don't want to do damage in the process (note: no web servers were harmed during the filming of this blog). Fortunately, web applications provide us with a unique means of identifying vulnerable applications. Due to the fact that search engines archive and index the content served by web apps, if we can identify a unique signature within a vulnerable application, we can locate vulnerable servers without ever needing to connect to them. Johnny Long created somewhat of a cult following doing just this with his Google Hacking Database.

Science & Technology at Scientific American.com: Global Warming Shows Up in Fly Genes

Science & Technology at Scientific American.com: Global Warming Shows Up in Fly Genes:

"Climate warming over the last quarter century is writ large in tiny fruit flies, according to a genetic analysis. In a species of fruit fly, the frequencies of so-called inversions, in which a piece of chromosome is flipped around, were observed decades ago to correspond to the latitude at which the flies were found. In nearly all the sites where the flies have recently been sampled--a span of three continents--the frequency of specific inversions has increased hand in hand with climbing temperatures. 'It's a very clear signal that climate warming is going to have a big impact on our environment,' says Raymond Huey of the University of Washington, co-author of a report in the September 1 Science that documents the change."

Lockheed Wins Job of Building Next Spaceship - New York Times

Lockheed Wins Job of Building Next Spaceship - New York Times


Published: September 1, 2006

WASHINGTON, Aug. 31 — Lockheed Martin won a multibillion-dollar contract from NASA on Thursday to build the nation’s next spaceship for human flight, a craft called Orion that is to replace the space shuttle and eventually carry astronauts to the moon and beyond.

The much-awaited announcement was a major victory for Lockheed and a startling setback for its rival, a joint venture of Boeing and Northrop Grumman.


MiamiHerald.com | 09/01/2006 | Iraq war's ties to Sept. 11 have unraveled

MiamiHerald.com | 09/01/2006 | Iraq war's ties to Sept. 11 have unraveled

...Indeed, there was an interesting exchange between Bush and a reporter at a news conference last week. In the process of answering a question about Iraq, Bush reflexively invoked Sept. 11, leading the reporter to interrupt him.

''What did Iraq have to do with that?'' the reporter asked.

''Nothing,'' Bush said irritably. ...

For the record: On Sept. 11, 2001, we were attacked by men directed from a terrorist base in Afghanistan. We quickly knocked over Afghanistan and just as quickly forgot about it, turning instead to the troublesome dictatorship the president just knew in his gut was behind the carnage. Now we find ourselves mired in a poorly defined, poorly designed mission in a nation which, with all due respect to the presidential gut, had no known connection to Sept. 11.

The Seattle Times: Nation

The Seattle Times: Nation

Gene-therapy results touted in 2 advanced-cancer cases

The Washington Post

WASHINGTON — Researchers from the National Cancer Institute on Thursday reported they have successfully treated two patients with advanced cancer using gene therapy.

Two men, both with the rapidly growing skin cancer melanoma, were given immune-system cells taken from their own blood and engineered to attack their tumors. They are alive, with no evidence of cancer, 18 months later. Fifteen other patients who got the same treatment died.

Inside Higher Ed :: Changing the Report, After the Vote

Inside Higher Ed :: Changing the Report, After the Vote

Except for David Ward, president of the American Council on Education, every member of the Secretary of Education’s Commission on the Future of Higher Education found enough to endorse in the draft the panel produced last month to support it over all. All of them, certainly, also found some aspects of the report objectionable, yet swallowed those objections and agreed, at a public meeting August 10, to sign the report. The panel’s members agreed at the time that the report would undergo only minor copy editing and “wordsmithing” between then and when it was formally presented to Education Secretary Margaret Spellings later this month.

That agreement was nearly imperiled last weekend, though. Gerri Elliott, corporate vice president at Microsoft’s Worldwide Public Sector division, sent an e-mail message to fellow commissioners Friday evening saying that she “vigorously” objected to a paragraph in which the panel embraced and encouraged the development of open source software and open content projects in higher education.

Edward A. Villarreal. Powered by Blogger.

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