All Things News

Straight from Slashdot: “MadPenguin has taken a quick look at Plasma, the next gen. KDE environment. ‘Plasma is an ambitious project being pursued by the KDE 4 team which aims at providing a workflow-sensitive design of the user interface that improves productivity of an average KDE user. The focus is on improving the clarity and reducing the clutter present in today’s desktops. The plasma development will bring together key contributors, such as the visual artists, usability experts, technology experts, programmers, and enthusiasts at a very early stage during the development process. This will enable them to create a new desktop environment that meets the requirements of novices and experts alike.’”

Straight from Engadget: “Remember those guys from Princeton who recently dissected a Diebold voting machine and wrote a serious academic paper laying the smack downon our favorite shady e-voting company? The plot thickens with those Jersey brainiacs: after giving a presentation to some computer science colleagues last week, Prof. Ed Felten was approached by Chris Tengi, a member of the department’s technical staff, who pointed out that the key that opens the AccuVote-TS voting machine is very similar to a key that he has at home. Tengi’s key opened the voting machine, and upon further investigation, the Princeton posse discovered that both keys are actually a common office furniture type used for hotel minibars, electronic equipment and jukeboxes. Furthermore, said keys can easily be bought on eBay or from various online retailers. So, all you need to hack Diebold’s crackerjack security is to spend a little cash on these keys, bring ‘em to your next local election along with a cheap-o flash drive, and you can easily open the lock that houses that Diebold memory card while you’re in the voting booth — good times, hey? If your locality uses these machines, you may want to write your Congressional representative and your county authorities to alert them to this, erm, “feature” — better yet, buy them one of these keys and send it along with your letter, inviting them to test it out for themselves!”

Straight from Ars Technica: “Technology is advancing to a point where copper connections over small distances cannot achieve throughputs needed for high-performance computing. The electrical characteristics of wire at these high frequencies usually cause more problems that it’s worth. In order to expand bus transmission rates to a terabit scale, optical connections are necessary. However, photonic semiconductor components have traditionally been expensive and difficult to manufacture in high volume. This is why most fiber-optic equipment is expensive and only used when transmission distances make it more costly to use copper. This is why you’d never see an optical bus in many high performance computing scenarios, let alone someone’s desktop.Intel has been working on ways to solve these problems and through a partnership with the University of California Santa Barbara, they’ve achieved a method of producing components using standard semiconductor processes that are reliable and cost-effective. They call this technology hybrid silicon lasers. A hybrid silicon laser is a laser that small enough to be built on modern electronic scales (nanometers) and allows for the conversion of electronic signals into highly efficient optical signals.”

Straight from Slashdot: “Eric Sites writes to tell us that a new zero-day IE exploit has been found in the wild. It looks to be a bug in VML in IE. The Sunbelt blog notes, “This exploit can be mitigated by turning off Javascripting.”

Straight from Ars Technica: “Last month, Ars reported that Microsoft’s Windows Media Audio (WMA) digital rights management protection had been cracked, and a program called FairUse4WM had been written that would strip DRM data from purchased audio files. Microsoft was aware of the workaround, but did not seem too concerned, merely stating that “we designed the Windows Media DRM system to be renewable, so that if such events occur the system can be refreshed to address them.” Now it seems that the company has gone a little further than that, sending out cease and desist orders to web sites hosting the FairUse4WM program. According to the owner of the web site BG4G, the orders came in via e-mail.”

Straight from Gizmodo: “the Discovery 1000 from US Subs, a serious underwater yacht that can dive to 1000 feet. This one’s good for overnight adventure, where you can stay underwater for up to 28 hours and cruise with a range of 56 nautical miles. It’s available in a few different sizes, accommodating from two to 10 people on board, and it resembles a private jet inside with its luxo-sport furnishings. It’s easy to steer the thing, too—it’s similar to a video game with its joystick control and animated touchscreen display. These subs were designed for launching off uber-yachts, but they can also cast off from the shore, too.”

Straight from Ars Technica: “AllofMP3 has faced legal pressure for some time, but Russian authorities have never moved against the site. It operates using a loophole in Russian law that allows it to take out a “license” to distribute music, even if the group doing the licensing has no permission to do so from the artists involved. The Duma actually passed legislation in July of 2004 that gave works distributed on the Internet the same protections as those published in traditional formats, but the law did not take effect until September 1, 2006, according to Russian daily Kommersant. The delay was so that sites like AllofMP3 could have the time needed to come into compliance, but that would have required AllofMP3 to spend a significant chunk of change, so the site didn’t bother.”

Straight from Gizmodo: “Systemax has three new Mini PCs in their line of Impact Media Centers. The Core2 Impact VXR2 Media Center has a built-in TV Tuner, and retails for $899, the Core Duo Impact VXR also has a tuner, and goes for $799, and the Impact2 runs Windows XP Home, and has 256MB and a 40GB hard drive, but no tuner.The VXR2 and the VXR, the two with tuners, have a remote control, an S-Video port, FireWire, two USB 2.0 ports, DVI, and SPDIF audio. All three units will ship October 1, and have a footprint of 6.5-inches square and are 2-inches in height.”

Straight from Slashdot: “A group from Switzerland will soon attempt the first Atlantic crossing in a solar-powered boat. This ship, named SUN21, is a 14-meter-long catamaran able to sleep 5 or 6 persons. The goal is to leave Seville, Spain, in December 2006 and to reach ports in Florida and New York in the spring of 2007. This boat will achieve its 7,000-mile trip at a speed of 5-6 knots, about the speed of a sailing yacht, by using photovoltaic cells and without burning a single gallon of fuel. The consortium behind this project wants to demonstrate that the time has come for solar boats.”

Straight from Slashdot: “Marking the 25th anniversary of Banned Books Week, Google is inviting users to celebrate their freedom to read by making Banned Books available to all. From the Google Blog: “…you can use Google Book Search to explore some of the best novels of the 20th century which have been challenged or banned.” Those books challenged this year include ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ and ‘Lolita’.”

Straight from Slashdot: “As Microsoft moves to offer software-as-a-service with Windows Live, online companies are moving to challenge Microsoft on the desktop. In a decision that would have been seen as foolish a few years ago, file sharing and social networking company TransMedia plans to release desktop productivity apps (in conjunction with online ones) as lightweight Microsoft Office alternatives. Google, meanwhile, through its deal with Intuit, is colonizing desktop apps as it has done with browsers and search toolbars. Microsoft used to have a home field advantage on the desktop, thanks to Windows. Lately, operating system ownership is looking a lot less valuable.”