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Repulsive Force Discovered In Light
Aurispector writes in with news that the Yale team that recently discovered an attractive force between two light beams in waveguides has now found a corresponding repulsive force. "'This completes the picture,' [team lead Hong] Tang said. 'We've shown that this is indeed a bipolar light force with both an attractive and repulsive component.' The attractive and repulsive light forces Tang's team discovered are separate from the force created by light's radiation pressure, which pushes against an object as light shines on it. Instead, they push out or pull in sideways from the direction the light travels. Previously, the engineers used the attractive force they discovered to move components on the silicon chip in one direction, such as pulling on a nanoscale switch to open it, but were unable to push it in the opposite direction. Using both forces means they can now have complete control and can manipulate components in both directions. 'We've demonstrated that these are tunable forces we can engineer,' Tang said."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Judge May Take "Fair Use" Away From Jury
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "In what I can only describe as a shocker, the Judge in SONY BMG Music Entertainment v. Tenenbaum has, on her own, issued an order questioning whether the jury will be allowed to decide the 'fair use' issue at all, or whether the Judge herself should decide it. Judge Nancy Gertner's decision (PDF) notes that the courts have traditionally submitted the fair use defense to the jury, but questions whether that was appropriate, since the courts have referred to it as an 'equitable' — as opposed to a 'legal' — defense. This decision came from out of the blue, as neither party had raised this issue. IMHO the Judge is barking up the wrong tree. For one, all across the legal spectrum in the US, 'equitable' defenses to 'legal' claims are triable to a jury. Secondly, as the Judge herself notes, the courts have traditionally submitted the issue to the jury. It also seems a bit unfair to bring up a totally new issue like that and give the parties only 6 days to do their research and writing on the subject, at a time when they are feverishly preparing for a July 27th trial."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
US Postal Service Moves To GNU/Linux
twitter writes "The US Postal Service has moved its Cobol package tracking software to HP machines running GNU/Linux. 1,300 servers handle 40 million transactions a day and cost less than the last system, which was based on a Sun Solaris environment." The migration took a year. The USPS isn't spelling how big the savings are, except that they are "significant."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Attacks Against Unpatched Microsoft Bug Multiply
CWmike writes "Attacks exploiting the latest Microsoft vulnerability are quickly ramping up in quantity and intensity, several security companies warned today as they rang alarms about the developing threat. Symantec, Sunbelt Software, and SANS' Internet Storm Center bumped up their warnings yesterday after Microsoft announced that attackers were exploiting a bug in an ActiveX control used by IE to display Excel spreadsheets. There is no patch for the vulnerability; Microsoft didn't release one in today's Patch Tuesday. A temporary fix that sets the 'kill bits' of the ActiveX control is available, but experts believe it's likely most users won't take advantage of the protection. Symantec raised its ThreatCon ranking to the second of four steps. "We're seeing it exploited, but currently on a limited scale," said Symantec's Ben Greenbaum. Sunbelt also bumped up its ranking, to high." Firefox users can't be too complacent; Secunia is warning of a 0-day in version 3.5.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Expanding the Electricity Grid May Be a Mistake
Perhaps T. Boone Pickens was onto something. Al writes "An article in Technology Review argues that plans to string new high-voltage lines across the US to bring wind power from the midsection of the country to the coasts, could be an expensive mistake. What's needed instead are improved local and regional electricity transmission, the development of an efficient and adaptable smart grid, and the demonstration of technology such as carbon capture and sequestration, which could prove a cheaper way to reduce carbon dioxide emissions than transmitting power from North Dakota to New York City."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Faulty Marvell Chips Delay SATA 6G Launch
Vigile writes "The SATA 6G standard offers more than simply a faster 6.0 Gb/s data throughput speed, to wit: improved NCQ support, better power management, and a new connector to support 1.8-inch drives. While modern-day, spindle-based hard drives struggle to keep up with SATA 3G speeds, modern SSDs are nearly saturating the existing standard, and a move to SATA 6G was welcome in the hardware community. It looks like that technology will be delayed, though. The only chip supporting the standard today, the Marvell 88SE9123, is having major issues. Motherboard vendors including ASUS and Gigabyte, which had planned on releasing SATA 6G technology using the chip on Intel Lynnfield platform motherboards later this summer, are having to remove the Marvell 88SE9123 and redesign their boards at the last minute due to significant speed and reliability issues."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Wikipedia Debates Rorschach Censorship
GigsVT writes "Editors on Wikipedia are engaged in an epic battle over a few piece of paper smeared with ink. The 10 inkblot images that form the classic Rorschach test have fallen into the public domain, and so including them on Wikipedia would seem to be a simple choice. However, some editors have cited the American Psychological Association's statement that exposure of the images to the public is an unethical act, since prior exposure to the images could render them ineffective as a psychological test. Is the censorship of material appropriate, when the public exposure to that material may render it useless?"Read more of this story at Slashdot.
YouTube Phasing Out Support For IE6
Oracle Goddess sends word that YouTube is presenting IE6 users with a banner exhorting them to upgrade to a modern browser, and TechCrunch is reporting that YouTube will be phasing out support for IE6 soon. This Twitter search reflects the jubilation breaking out all over the Net at the imminent demise of this most despised and non-standards-compliant browser. The market share for IE6 is now well down in the single digits.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
BOINC Exceeds 2 Petaflop/s Barrier
Myrrh writes "Though an official announcement has not yet been made, it would appear that the BOINC project as a whole has exceeded two petaflop/s performance. The top page features this legend: '24-hour average: 2,793.53 TeraFLOPS.' According to last month's Top500 list of supercomputers, BOINC's performance is now beating that of the fastest supercomputer, RoadRunner, by more than a factor of two (with the caveat that BOINC has not been benchmarked on Linpack)."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
UK, Not North Korea, Is Source of DDoS Attacks
angry tapir writes "The UK was the likely source of a series of attacks last week that took down popular Web sites in the US and South Korea, according to an analysis performed by a Vietnamese computer security researcher. The results contradict assertions made by some in the US and South Korean governments that North Korea was behind the attack. Security analysts had been skeptical of the claims, which were reportedly made in off-the-record briefings and for which proof was never delivered." The Vietnamese security site's blog is linked from the article, but it is very slow even before Slashdotting. The researchers observed 166,908 zombies participating in the attacks — a number far larger than most earlier estimates. Update: 07/14 21:24 GMT by KD : Wired is reporting that the UK owner of the IP address in question is pointing a finger at a server in Florida, which it says opened a VPN to the UK machine for the attacks. Once again, the attacker could be anywhere.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Aion Shaping Up For US Launch
One of the most promising MMORPGs in development these days is NCSoft's Aion, a fantasy-based offering built on CryEngine. It makes heavy use of flight as a gameplay mechanic, allowing aerial combat and easy travel around the visually stunning game world. There are four basic classes — Warrior, Priest, Mage, and Scout — each of which have two subclasses. For example, Warriors can be tank-like Templars, or berserker-like Gladiators, while Mages can turn into a scholarly Sorcerer or command the elements as a Spiritmaster. Early previews of Aion almost universally comment on how polished the game seems — this is partly due to the fact that it has been up and running since November in South Korea. "Being stable, scalable, reliable and fuss-free is far from a given in MMOs, but Aion is all those things, and can already stand alongside the genre's usability kings, EVE Online and World of Warcraft. Its expansive, zone-free open-world environments look terrific and run smoothly on a wide variety of systems. It just works." Since the game is already in a relatively complete state, NCSoft has been running closed beta "events," where a portion of the game is opened for testing. MMOGamer has a write-up from the latest such event. Aion is due out in September.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Suggestions For Learning FPGA Development At Home?
Doug writes "I've recently been inspired to take up amateur electronics, specifically with FPGAs. I have an understanding of the basics, plus a solid programming background. From my research so far I've concluded that I should start with a simple FPGA development board and a couple of books on Verilog and/or VHDL and go from there. I found this Ask Slashdot discussion on Verilog vs VHDL very useful, but it focuses more on the development language rather than hardware. I'd be very interested in hearing peoples' recommendations for an entry-level kit that is simple, flexible, and affordable (sub-£200), and preferably Linux-friendly, and indeed any other wise words that experienced FPGA developers (professional or amateur) might have for a novice just starting out in the world of circuit design."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The Amazing World of Software Version Numbers
Harry writes "In theory, software version numbers should be incredibly mundane. In reality, companies have long twisted them for marketing purposes, avoided ones they didn't like, and even replaced them with things other than numbers. I've prepared a tribute to them with some facts and ruminations, but there's a lot I don't know, and I'd appreciate help on the historical side of things. (Anyone know when the standard decimal point-based system came into use?)"Read more of this story at Slashdot.
German Health Insurance Card CA Loses Secret Key
Christiane writes "The SSL Root CA responsible for issuing the German digital health insurance card lost its secret private key during a test enrollment. After their Hardware Security Module (HSM) dutifully deleted its crypto keys during a power outage, it was all 'Oops, why is there no backup?' All issued cards must be replaced: 'Gematik spokesman Daniel Poeschkens poured scorn on the statement that Gematik had insisted on the service provider carrying out a test without backing up the root CA private keys. "We did not decide against a back-up service. The fact of the matter is that the service provider took over the running of the test system, so it also has to warrant its continuous operation. How it fulfills this obligation is its own responsibility."'"Read more of this story at Slashdot.
6 Reasons To License Software Under the (A/L)GPL
Henry V .009 writes with a link to Zed Shaw's "newest rant," which gives a cogent description of his reasons for choosing the not-always-popular GPL for his own code: "Honestly, how many of you people who use open source tell your boss what you're using? How many of you tell investors that your entire operation is based on something one guy wrote in a few months? How many of you out there go to management and say, 'Hey, you know there's this guy Zed who wrote the software I'm using, why don't we hire him as a consultant?' You don't. None of you. You take the software, and use it like Excalibur to slay your dragon and then take the credit for it. You don't give out any credit, and in fact, I've ran into a vast majority of you who constantly try to say that I can't code as a way of covering your ass."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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