School Sued Over MySpace Photo Response
Be careful how you portray yourself on the Internet. One day you may regret it or, alternatively, possibly make some money with a nice lawsuit.
Stacy Snyder posted a photo entitled "Drunken Pirate" on her MySpace site which showed her at a 2005 Halloween party wearing a pirate hat while drinking from a plastic "Mr. Goodbar" cup. Although Snyder apologized, she learned the day before graduation at Millersville University that she would not be awarded an education degree or teaching certificate. "I dreamed about being a teacher for a long time," said Snyder, 27, who now works as a nanny. So now, she's suing the university. Jane S. Bray, dean of the School of Education, accused Snyder of promoting underage drinking, the suit states. The federal lawsuit seeks at least $75,000 in damages. 
News source: Physorg
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'Rabbit Ears' Find New Life in HDTV Age
Consumers who are spending thousands of dollars on LCD or plasma TVs are saving their money elsewhere: their TV programs. Antennas for a high-definition television may seem like a ludicrous idea but local TV channels, broadcast for free in HD over-the-air, offer superior picture quality over the often-compressed signals sent by cable and satellite TV companies. Compression involves removing some data from the digital signal in order to have enough room to send hundreds of other channels through the same cable line or satellite transmission.
Before cable and satellite existed, people relied on antennas to receive analog signals from local TV stations' broadcasting towers. Stations still send out analog signals, but most now transmit HD digital signals as well. One major difference with a digital over-the-air signal is it doesn't get snowy and fuzzy like the old analog signal. Instead, the picture will turn into tiny blocks and go black. "You either get it or you don't. Some people can receive it with rabbit ears, it depends where you are," said Dale Cripps, founder and co-publisher of HDTV Magazine. Schneider recommends indoor antennas only for customers within 25 miles of a station's broadcast tower. An outdoor antenna will grab a signal from up to 70 miles away as long as no mountains are in the way.
The disadvantage to using just an antenna is that only local channels are available. Some consumers partner an antenna with cable or satellite service. HD antenna prices range from $20 to $150 for indoor and outdoor versions. The advantage is that it's a one-time fee; you won't be paying monthly for local television channels. 
Link: Forum Discussion (Thanks Hum) News source: The New York Times
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Chile: Google Earth Moves a Village to Argentina
The Chilean government wants Google to fix its geographical search program that places village Villa O'Higgins, named after Chilean independence hero Bernardo O'Higgins, Santiago, on the Argentine side of the border. "Chile has asked for this to be rectified, and it can only be hoped they do it soon," a Foreign Ministry spokesman in Santiago. Chile and Argentina share the southern cone of South America, where the border between the two nations runs through a complex landscape of islands, fjords and mountains. "We have received the request and are working with our partners to get more precise data for the region. We're constantly working to improve the quality and accuracy of our maps. This is an ongoing process as we receive new information from third party data providers and as names and borders around the world continue to evolve," said Google spokeswoman Megan Quinn. News source: eWeek
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Could Black Holes be Portals to Other Universes?
The objects scientists think are black holes could instead be wormholes leading to other universes, a new study says. If so, it would help resolve a quantum conundrum known as the black hole information paradox, but critics say it would also raise new problems, such as how the wormholes would form in the first place.
A black hole is an object with such a powerful gravitational field that nothing, not even light, can escape it if it strays within a boundary known as the event horizon. Einstein's theory of general relativity says black holes should form whenever matter is squeezed into a small enough space.
Though black holes are not seen directly, astronomers have identified many objects that appear to be black holes based on observations of how matter swirls around them.
But physicists Thibault Damour of the Institut des Hautes Etudes Scientifiques in Bures-sur-Yvette, France, and Sergey Solodukhin of International University Bremen in Germany now say that these objects could be structures called wormholes instead.
Wormholes are warps in the fabric of space-time that connect one place to another. If you imagine the universe as a two-dimensional sheet, you can picture a wormhole as a "throat" connecting our sheet to another one. In this scenario, the other sheet could be a universe of its own, with its own stars, galaxies and planets.
Damour and Solodukhin studied what such a wormhole might look like, and were surprised to discover that it would mimic a black hole so well that it would be virtually impossible to tell the difference.
More information in link... News source: NewScientist.com
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Phishers Use Call Forwarding to Mask Fraud
Researchers at Atlanta-based security vendor SecureWorks have uncovered a new type of phishing attack that circumvents a bank's attempt to detect fraud by tricking victims into forwarding their telephone calls to the attacker. The attack begins with an e-mail sent from the phisher telling the potential victim their bank needs to verify their phone number immediately, and their account will be suspended if they do not confirm the number. The victim is told to confirm their number by dialing *72 and then another number, effectively forwarding their calls to the phisher's telephone.
The victim is then asked in the e-mail to update their personal information, such as bank account and Social Security numbers. If the victim's bank calls to question an unusual transaction while the calls are being forwarded, the phisher need only confirm the illegal transaction is legitimate. SecureWorks researcher Don Jackson said these types of attacks are currently not widespread, but may become so in the future as more banks use out-of-band authentication to check the validity of suspicious transactions. News source: Physorg
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Mouse brain simulated on computer
US researchers James Frye, Rajagopal Ananthanarayanan and Dharmendra S. Modha ran a "cortical simulator" that was as big and as complex as half of a mouse brain on the BlueGene L supercomputer. In other smaller simulations the researchers say they have seen characteristics of thought patterns observed in real mouse brains. In these other tests the team saw the groups of neurons form spontaneously into groups. They also saw nerves in the simulated connections firing in a ways similar to the staggered, co-ordinated patterns seen in nature.
The three researchers laid out how they went about it in a very short research note entitled "Towards Real-Time, Mouse-Scale Cortical Simulations". Half a real mouse brain is thought to have about eight million neurons - each one of which can have up to 8,000 connections, with other nerve fibres. The team, from the IBM Almaden Research Lab and the University of Nevada, ran the simulation thanks to the supercomputer's 4096 processors, each one of which used 256MB of memory. Using this machine the researchers created half a virtual mouse brain that had 8,000 neurons that had up to 6,300 connections. The vast complexity of the simulation meant that it was only run for ten seconds, at a speed ten times slower than real life.
For future tests the team aims to speed up the simulation, make it more neurobiologically faithful, add structures seen in real mouse brains and make the responses of neurons and syna-pses more detailed. Link: Forum Discussion (Thanks Hum) News source: BBC News
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SanDisk: Price cut to persist & ramp up 56nm mass production
About 98-99% of SanDisk NAND flash are of multi-level cell structure. As there still is a considerable amount of low-price MLC NAND flash being sold in the market, prices are being affected. Once the inventory clears, a more moderate pricing environment should be seen, company chairman and chief executive officer Eli Harari stressed. Continuous adjustments in price have to be made in the second quarter despite the anticipated improving pricing situation, Harari said. In response to the price pressure, SanDisk is gearing up its pace on 56nm NAND flash production. The company has already ramped up volume production of MLC NAND flash on 56nm. Higher density, including 8Gb and 16Gb chips, will be introduced for 56nm production. Fab 3 is expected to ramp up to a monthly capacity of 150,000 wafers per month by year-end of 2007, which beats the original plan of 135,000 wafers, Harari detailed. Fab 4 is expected to contribute to sales in the first half of 2008. SanDisk also plans to start 45nm NAND flash in the first half of 2008.
Excess supply and sharp price declines dampened the performance of SanDisk, prompting it to take price actions in the second quarter to narrow the price gap with competitors. In the first quarter of 2007, the NAND flash industry experienced excess supply, especially for MLC NAND flash, sharper price declines from competitors and depressed margins, which resulted in a quarterly loss of US$575,000 for SanDisk, compared to a net income of US$35.1 million a year ago. Gross margins in the first quarter was 14.2%, compared to 28.4% last year. Despite seeing average retail card capacity jump by 87% on year and 11% on quarter to 1231MB, average price per megabyte sold declined 62% on an on-year basis and 23% on an on-quarter basis. News source: DigiTimes
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Microsoft: All operating systems should use Vista's UAC
Microsoft Australia has defended the company's User Account Control (UAC) system as being "misunderstood" and said it should be the type of technology that all operating systems aspire towards.
"There has been a lot of misunderstanding in the market around User Account Control (UAC). If you look at it from an architectural direction User Account Control is a great idea and strategically a direction that all operating systems and all technologies should be heading down," Peter Watson, Microsoft Australia's chief security advisor said.
UAC is a security feature introduced with Microsoft's Windows Vista operating system. The aim is to provide increased security when using Windows as a standard user by informing them when possible security breaches could be undertaken. The technology has been a source of irritation for Vista users, with Apple going as far as to make fun of UAC in a recent commercial.
As Vista and the latest edition of Office were developed with Microsoft's Secure Development Lifecycle (SDL), "the number of exploits has been extremely low", he added. News source: Builder AU
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UK government 'loses' $1.7 billion in data transfer fiasco
Around $1.7 billion of unpaid VAT did not appear on a U.K. Revenue and Customs debt case management system because of a failure to transfer data from the main VAT computer system. Edward Leigh, chair of the powerful Commons public accounts committee, told MPs: "We found that not all information on VAT debt recorded on the main VAT computer system had been transferred to the so-called trader register. That may appear to be an obscure point, but it meant that some $1.7 billion of debt failed to appear on the debt case management system. That is hardly a first-rate example of financial management by a department that should be at the forefront of such matters."
Leigh cited evidence given to the committee earlier this month by Ian Taylor, a past president of the Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply who is now director of the center for procurement performance at the Department for Education and Skills. Taylor had told the PAC "that in his view, public sector people are every bit as skilled as those in the private sector, but the information systems in the public sector are so bad that no private sector firm could afford to put up with them. They would simply go out of business. They do not provide the data that public sector leaders need to manage effectively or to develop robust strategies for delivery." News source: ComputerWorld
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Court decision allows imminent termination of RegisterFly
Under a preliminary injunction issued on Thursday 26 April 2007, ICANN now has the right to terminate RegisterFly's accreditation as soon as possible. RegisterFly failed to meet the conditions of a temporary restraining order (TRO) which the Court issued on 16 April. ICANN is immediately inviting statements of interest from accredited registrars to act as a transfer provider, so domain name registrants can gain full access to their domains. The registrar handling the transfers will temporarily hold the names and help registrants transfer to any ICANN accredited registrar of their choice.
"Registrants are our first concern. ICANN is following a very determined approach to returning access to domain name registrants impacted by the collapse of RegisterFly," said Dr Paul Twomey, ICANN President and CEO. "ICANN knows that many registrants are anxious for a transfer to occur. We are committed to making sure this process is put in place as quickly as possible. While we understand that this process may be frustrating for some RegisterFly customers, it is the first time that ICANN has had to intercede in such a way and these steps are being taken to ensure that the system introduced works as effectively as possible."
More information on the RegisterFly situation can be found on this dedicated webpage on ICANN's public participation site.
View: Full Story News source: ICANN Blog
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