All Things News

Straight from Engadget: ” While not the first bunch to try and mesh invisibility with military equipment, the British Army is reportedly staying busy by “testing technology it claims makes tanks and troops invisible.” Apparently, the (previously) uber-secret trials were conducted by the Royal Engineers and scientists from QinetiQ, and if eyewitness reports are to be believed, they were able to “make a vehicle seem to completely disappear.” The illusion (read: we’re no closer to actual invisibility cloaks) was reportedly created by utilizing “cameras and projectors to beam images captured from the surrounding landscape onto a specially-adapted tank coated with silicon to maximize their reflective qualities,” and if things go as planned, these elusive machines could make their way onto the battlefield “within five years.” ‘Course, it’s not like anyone will have visual proof of that, but we suppose that’s just the nature of the beast.”

Straight from Engadget: “NASA sure loves the wacky vehicles, and the agency is mighty proud of its latest effort, the Chariot lunar truck. Designed from start to finish in just a year, the Chariot features 12 wheels driven by two electric motors through a two-speed transmission, allowing it to perform in a “bulldozer” mode with up to 4000 pounds or force or cruise at up to fifteen miles an hour. The modular design also means that the steel alloy frame can be fitted with several different crew / payload combinations, including a small pressurized cabin and a sample collector. There’s no telling when the Chariot might be deployed, of course, but we’re not going to be convinced until we see it stop a plane or drive through a swinging girder obstacle course.”

Straight from Gizmodo: “We’ve already covered a couple of Leopard’s uh-ohs and their fixes, but researchers have kicked up the dirt to reveal a few security-related flaws. First, according to Jürgen Schmidt, editor in chief at Heise Security, if you enable Leopard’s firewall (it’s disabled by default) and set it to “block all incoming connections,” some internal system services are still allowed access from the internet, making it a mite porous. And according to Thomas Ptacek from Matasano Security, two of its security features—sandboxing and library randomization—are half-baked in execution.The problem with its implementation of sandboxing—where an app is placed in a “sandbox” so it can’t get rough with the rest of the OS if it’s hacked—is that a lot of the most commonly hacked apps like the browser, mail client and IM app aren’t run in a sandbox. To top it off, the sandbox walls aren’t as thorough as they should be, mostly applying to network access. Library randomization has similar problems—it wasn’t implemented everywhere it should have been, like the Dynamic Link Library, according to Ptacek.”

Straight from Ars Technica: “SlySoft, the Antigua-based company behind AndDVD HD, has claimed that it knows how to defeat the additional BD+ encryption available on Blu-ray devices and that BD+ movies will be cracked by the end of the year.

In a press release, the company appears to relish its outlaw status in Hollywood. “I should really think about hiring a bodyguard now, since this product won’t please everybody,” said James Wong, the company’s head developer. He’s certainly right about that.

AACS, the “advanced” copy protection system deployed on both high-def disc formats, proved itself to be something less than hacker proof when it was cracked in a couple of months. Back in April, hackers announced a set of “non-revocable cracks” and then promptly cracked AACS again a day after it was “fixed.”

BD+ is a second layer of encryption that can be slapped on top of AACS. It wasn’t used with initial Blu-ray releases because, well, it wasn’t actually done. The specs and licensing arrangements weren’t worked out until June of this year, and it wasn’t long after that BD+ went to work annoying legal users.

The technology allows special code to run in a virtual machine that is created on Blu-ray devices. This code runs continuously in the background while a disc is playing and examines the player environment for traces of tampering or copying. The code is disc-specific and is deleted from memory once a disc is ejected.

Despite its complexity, BD+ may soon join AACS on the “PWN3D!” list. SlySoft has a good track record when it comes to handling AACS, and the company’s newest release of AnyDVD HD includes a bypass for the recent upgrade to the media key block (MKBv4) that is used to protect new HD DVD and Blu-ray films.”

With all of the available ammo to slam President Bush with, why do we constantly see liberals jump on the mental illness bandwagon? This is ridiculous and only discredits those that take this path.

Straight from Fox News: “Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich questioned President Bush’s mental health in light of comments he made about a nuclear Iran precipitating World War III.

“I seriously believe we have to start asking questions about his mental health,” Kucinich, an Ohio congressman, said in an interview with The Philadelphia Inquirer’s editorial board on Tuesday. “There’s something wrong. He does not seem to understand his words have real impact.”

Kucinich, known for his liberal views, trails far behind the leading candidates in most Democratic polls. He was in Philadelphia for a debate at Drexel University.

Bush made the remarks at a news conference earlier this month.

He said: “I’ve told people that if you’re interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them (Iran) from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon.”

Kucinich said he doesn’t believe his comments about the president’s mental health are irresponsible, according to a story posted on the newspaper’s Web site.

“You cannot be a president of the United States who’s wanton in his expression of violence,” Kucinich said. “There’s a lot of people who need care. He might be one of them. If there isn’t something wrong with him, then there’s something wrong with us. This, to me, is a very serious question.”"

For the Moonbat pile-on, visit the Digg comments

Straight from Technology Guardian: “Operating loss at its game unit, which offers loss-making PlayStation 3 game gear, is estimated to exceed 100 billion yen ($876 million) for the current business year, compared with its original projection of 50 billion yen, a Sony spokeswoman said.”

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Straight from Fox News: “Rockets fired at a U.S. base southeast of Baghdad were manufactured in Iran, showing again that country’s continued logistical support for insurgents inside Iraq, U.S. military officials said on Saturday.

Nobody was injured in the October 23rd attack on Combat Outpost Cashe, but one U.S. vehicle was damaged, officials said.

According to the military, the 107mm rocket was made in Iran sometime in March. Troops investigating the launch site seized six rocket rails – used to aim and launch the rockets, an unfired rocket and a timing device.

The seized rocket is the 40th Iranian manufactured rocket that soldiers have captured in the last four months, the military said.”

Straight from the Debka File: “President Bashar Assad was personally involved in Damascus’ nuclear deal with Pyongyang. Documentary proofs of this, obtained from the presidential bureau and signed by Assad in person, are now in the hands of the US and Israeli intelligence services, DEBKAfile’s intelligence sources report. In one, Assad hands down a specific order in his own handwriting that North Korea not be charged for Syrian goods, including an annual shipment of 100,000 tons of Durham wheat for five years worth a total of $120 million. This is the equivalent of the value of the reactor for producing plutonium up to its most radioactive stage, which North Korea promised Syria.

A high-ranking Western intelligence source speaking to DEBKAfile described the evidence against Assad in US and Israeli hands as solid and much closer to a smoking gun than the West has turned up against Iran’s nuclear program.

The following sequence of events unfolds from the garnered documents:

Damascus and Pyongyang settled between them that the nuclear transaction would be masked as a joint venture to build a cement factory in northern Syria; meanwhile, North Korea would sell Syria cement for its development projects.

According to DEBKAfile’s sources, North Korean freighters, which began putting in at Syria’s Latakia and Tartus ports in January 2007, unloaded cargoes of cement in which nuclear reactor components and materials were concealed.

The North Korean traffic at these ports and the Durham wheat transaction attracted the attention of US and Israeli secret services.”

Straight from the Debka File: “This is the message prime minister Ehud Olmert is carrying urgently to French President Nicolas Sarkozy Monday and British premier Gordon Brown Tuesday, according to DEBKAfile’s military and intelligence sources.

Last week, Olmert placed the Israeli intelligence warning of an Iranian nuclear breakthrough before Russian president Vladimir Putin, while Israel’s defense minister Ehud Barak presented the updated intelligence on the advances Iran has made towards its goal of a nuclear weapon to American officials in Washington, including President Bush.

Olmert will be telling Sarkozy and Brown that the moment for diplomacy or even tough sanctions has passed. Iran can only be stopped now from going all the way to its goal by direct, military action.

Information of the Iranian breakthrough prompted the latest spate of hard-hitting US statements. Sunday, Oct. 21, US vice president Cheney said: “Our country, and the entire international community, cannot stand by as a terror-supporting state fulfills its grandest ambitions.”

Friday, the incoming Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Michael Mullen said US forces are capable of operations against Iran’s nuclear facilities or other targets. At his first news conference, he said: “I don’t think we’re stretched in that regard.”

It is worth noting that whereas Olmert’s visits are officially tagged as part of Israel’s campaign for harsher sanctions against Iran, his trips are devoted to preaching to the converted, leaders who advocate tough measures including a military option; he has avoided government heads who need persuading, like German Chancellor Angela Merkel or Italian prime minister Romano Prodi.

The Israeli prime minister hurried over to Moscow last Thursday after he was briefed on the hard words exchanged between Putin and Iran’s supreme ruler Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Tehran Tuesday, Oct. 16.

According to DEBKAfile’s sources, the Russian leader warned the ayatollah that the latest development in Iran’s nuclear program prevented him from protecting Tehran from international penalties any longer; the clerical regime’s options were now reduced, he said, to halting its clandestine nuclear activities or else facing tough sanctions, or even military action.

The Russian ruler’s private tone of speech was in flat contrast to his public denial of knowledge of Iranian work on a nuclear weapon. It convinced Olmert to include Moscow in his European itinerary.

Our sources in Iran and Moscow report that Putin’s dressing-down of Khamenei followed by his three-hour conversation with the Israeli prime minister acted as catalysts for Iranian hardliners’s abrupt action in sweeping aside senior nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani Saturday, Oct. 20 and the Revolutionary Guards General Mahmoud Chaharbaghi’s threat to fire 11,000 rockets and mortars at enemy targets the minute after Iran comes under attack.

Our military sources say Tehran could not manage to shoot off this number of projectiles on its own. Iran would have to co-opt allies and surrogates, Syria, Hizballah, Hamas and pro-Tehran militias in Iraq to the assault.

DEBKAfile’s US military sources disclosed previously that if, as widely reported, Syria is in the process of building a small reactor capable of producing plutonium on the North Korean model, Iran must certainly have acquired one of these reactors before Syria, and would then be in a more advanced stage of plutonium production at a secret underground location.”

Straight from Ars Technica: “With the ban on taxing Internet connections set to expire at the end of October, both houses of Congress are taking action. Last night, the Senate passed a bill that would extend the 1998 Internet Tax Freedom Act yet again, this time for seven years. A version of the legislation passed by the House earlier this week would only extend it for another four years. The moratorium was originally enacted in 1998 and has since been extended twice, in 2001 and 2004. Under the law, local governments are prohibited from levying access taxes on Internet connections (purchases can be subject to applicable state taxes). The nine states that managed to enact ‘Net access taxes prior to the moratorium’s enactment in 1998 are exempt from the ban, and would continue to be under the just-passed legislation.”

Straight from Slashdot: “Microsoft is spending a ‘non-trivial’ amount of money to get Windows XP working on the OLPC project’s XO laptop. But why? Despite the conjecture that the Linux-based XO could convince millions of people in the developing world that they don’t need Windows and build a huge base of developers for Linux, there still remains the question of how Microsoft would convince owners of XO laptops to buy and install Windows XP over the functional Linux-based OS already on it. It’s doubtful that Microsoft could encourage or coerce Negroponte to put XP on the machine, so whose arms will they twist?”

Straight from Slashdot: “In an article that will probably tick off a lot of PS3 owners, Will Wright calls the PS3 and 360 ‘incremental improvement(s)’. ‘The Wii feels like a major jump – not that the graphics are more powerful, but that it hits a completely different demographic. In some sense I see the Wii as the most significant thing that’s happened, at least on the console side, in quite a while … I still, for the most part, prefer playing games on the computer – to me the mouse is the best input device ever. Every generation it’s like ‘the PC’s dead! The PC’s dead!’. But it carries on growing when consoles are flat for five years. At the moment I can get better graphics on my PC than I can on the PS3.’”

Straight from Gizmodo: “No surprises here, really. Profits for Nintendo’s first fiscal half were ¥132.42 billion ($1.16 billion) on sales of ¥694.80 billion ($6.09 billion), destroying the same half last year’s profit of ¥54.35 billion on ¥298.82 billion in sales. Nintendo’s feeling pretty good, obviously, raising forecasted sales of the Wii this fiscal year by one million to 17.5 million consoles, with the DS’s sales target bumped 8 percent to 28 million units. Software-wise, it’s expecting 165 million DS titles and 97 million Wii games to roll for the year, up 8 and 35 percent, respectively. Consequently, they’re expecting to rake in ¥275 billion ($2.4 billion) in profits for the year on sales of ¥1.55 trillion ($13.59 billion). Bottom line: shitloads of systems, shitloads of games, shitloads of money.”

Straight from the Debka File: “The package was announced jointly by secretary of state Condoleezza Rice and treasury secretary Henry Paulson and include branding Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps proliferators of weapons of mass destruction and the al Qods Brigade sponsor of terrorists. These steps are unprecedented. DEBKAfile’s Iranian sources recall that the Islamic regime announced in advance that approval of these measures would be deemed tantamount to an American declaration of war on Iran and call forth retaliation. Tehran would target US interests in the Persian Gulf, Iraq and Afghanistan or Israel by means of Special Groups, i.e. Iran’s foreign intelligence networks, Hizballah or Hamas.

DEBKAfile’s sources reveal that these reprisals may be delayed some days because Iran’s leadership is in the throes of a profound power struggle between hardliners and pragmatists. However, since the supreme ruler, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is commander-in-chief of Iran’s armed forces, including the IRGC and its al Qods Brigade, Tehran cannot afford to let Washington’s accusations go unanswered.

The new sanctions package includes US financial penalties for any world firms trading with the Revolutionary Guards. They would apply to more than 1,000 companies in Europe, the Middle East, the Persian Gulf and Asia. Our Iranian sources note that since IRGC-owned companies control more than 35 percent of Iran’s economic activities, the new sanctions will have a crippling effect on its national economy. This is already hard hit by Washington’s systematic blockage of Iran’s dealings with international banks, which has left Tehran seriously short of cash flow, foreign currency and basic commodities.

According to DEBKAfile’s sources, Iran very recently sent Indonesia an “emergency appeal” for gasoline and heavy oil, because it has run out of currency to pay for imported refined oil products. Tehran offered to reward Jakarta with a concession for building big new oil refineries, which Iran lacks.

Indonesia has not yet replied. Its government must take into account that no serious world oil enterprise would be willing to cooperate in a refinery project in Iran for fear of a backlash from the American boycott.”

Straight from Slashdot: “Just a few months back, the Net Neutrality debate was all but dead. Luckily for fans of a free Internet, the telcos are their own worst enemies. Recent stories involving Verizon Wireless blocking pro-choice groups, AT&T censoring Pearl Jam’s anti-war comments from a streaming concert, and most recently, Comcast finally admitting to using anti-BitTorrent filters. The Net Neutrality debate would appear to be alive and kicking, with Congressman Rick Boucher (D-VA) being the first politician to make a public statement sharply criticizing Comcast’s actions.”

Run the latest Ubuntu Linux distro (7.10, the Gutsy Gibbon) from a USB key.

Straight from Pendrive Linux: “This tutorial enables you to install, boot and run Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon) from USB. In addition to installing Ubuntu to a USB device and then booting Ubuntu from USB, this tutorial will enable you to automatically save your changes and settings back to the stick and further restore them on each boot using a second “casper-rw” persistent partition. The tutorial was written for those already familiar with working from Ubuntu or another Linux desktop environment. If you do not have access to or prefer not to use a Windows computer, this Ubuntu Linux on a stick tutorial is for you.

Ubuntu 7.10 takes slightly longer to boot than previous releases. However, once it’s up and running, it performs much better than running from the Live CD.”

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Straight from Fox News: “NEW YORK — James Watson, the Nobel laureate who sparked an international furor last week with comments about intelligence levels among blacks, has retired from his post at a prestigious research institution.

Watson, 79, and the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York announced his departure Thursday.

Watson was chancellor of the institution, and his retirement was effective immediately.

Watson was widely condemned last week for remarks he made in the Sunday Times Magazine of London on Oct. 14.”

Straight from Joystiq: “Though that PS3 price may still require a little more wallet thickness that you feel comfortable with, it’s apparently been low enough to heavily impact Sony’s games division pocketbook. The company has just reported that in the second fiscal quarter of the year, operating losses in the division rose to $841 million, more than double the $381 million in losses for the same period last year.

Sony said losses came from selling PS3s lower than production costs and “the increase in PS3-related inventory write-downs,” which means that the value of the PS3 has dropped, perhaps due to recent price cuts. On the upside, the company as a whole pulled in $787 million, compared to a $182 million loss last year, so it doesn’t seem that Maw and Paw Sony will have to dip into their coffee can full of nickels just yet.”

Straight from Engadget: “It looks like New Mexico’s the place to be for anyone looking to catch a glimpse of a possible future mission to the moon, with the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge set to get underway tomorrow at the Holloman Air Force Base in Alamogordo. As an added incentive for competitors, NASA is ponying up $2M in prizes, although they’ll have their work cut out for them if they want to take that home. Specifically, they need to show off a rocket-propelled vehicle and payload that “takes off vertically, climbs to a defined altitude, flies for a pre-determined amount of time, and then land vertically on a target that is a fixed distance from the launch pad.” Then they have to do that all over again within a predetermined period of time. To open things up a bit, there’s also two difficulty levels but, as with all challenges of this sort, no one takes home a prize unless they fully meet all the requirements.”