A collection of stories tagged 'engineering' from Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/ Copyright 2006 RoomforMilk.com. RoomforMilk is not affiliated with Slashdot.org. Thu, 20 Nov 2008 23:46:05 EST Meeting in Minneapolis this week, the Internet engineering community is debating whether to aggressively fashion and apply fixes for the so-called Kaminsky bug in the DNS discovered this summer, or to simply let its threat stand as motivation for all to move with greater speed toward DNSSEC, which is considered the best long-term security solution. Problem with the latter approach is that DNSSEC has been in the works for a decade already, no one is confident it will be universally embraced, and the Kaminsky flaw is causing real problems today.Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/26295 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/M9hTjV7ziuw/article.pl Thu, 20 Nov 2008 17:05:01 EST Apple has sent a DMCA takedown notice to the IpodHash project, claiming it circumvents their FairPlay DRM scheme. Some background: Apple first added a hash to the iTunesDB file in 6th-gen iPods, but it was quickly reverse-engineered. They changed it with the release of iPhone 2.0 and a project was started to reverse the new hash, but weren't successful yet. My guess is Apple used the same algorithm as FairPlay for the new hash, so Apple could use the DMCA to prevent competing apps like Songbird and Banshee from talking to iPods/iPhones. BTW, don't tell Apple, but the project uses a wiki, so the old page versions from before the takedown are still there."Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/26294 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/puogsP2aPA4/article.pl Thu, 20 Nov 2008 16:05:04 EST With the release of the Mozilla Foundation's 2007 financial report, questions have been raised by the IRS who are due to perform an audit on the non-profit organization behind the massively popular Firefox browser. Last year the Foundation received $66 million of its total $75 million revenue (88 percent) from search engine maestro's Google, so the IRS are looking for blood over the organizations tax exempt status. Back in 2006, Mozilla got $59.5 million from Google — around 85 percent of the organizations revenue. Google and Mozilla are part of a 'you scratch my back, I'll pay your bills' sort of agreement with the Google search bar firmly placed in the toolbar, and on the default homepage. Things were a bit rocky a couple of months back when Google unveiled the Beta-run of its Chrome browser, but Mozilla and Google hugged it out and sealed a deal that will last for a further three years. That deal will expire in November 2011."Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/26284 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/czLxSy6q-8M/article.pl Thu, 20 Nov 2008 09:05:01 EST NASA has successfully tested the first deep space communications network modeled on the Internet. Working as part of a NASA-wide team, engineers from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA, used software called Disruption-Tolerant Networking, or DTN, to transmit dozens of space images to and from a NASA science spacecraft located about 20 million miles from Earth. The store-and-forward protocol was designed by NASA in consultation with Vint Cerf. Here's a discussion from last July before the test began."Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/26241 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/wqH8M3f9FUE/article.pl Tue, 18 Nov 2008 20:05:01 EST A startup company based in Vancouver has developed a new kind of generator that could harvest much more energy from the wind. The design could not only lower the cost of wind turbines but increase their power output by 50 percent to as much as 100 percent, in some locations. Normally, when wind speeds drop, a turbine's engine becomes less efficient. The new engine, from ExRo Technologies, runs efficiently over a wider range of conditions. The design replaces a mechanical transmission with what amounts to an electronic one. Magnets attached to a rotating shaft create a current, but individual coils can be turned on and off electronically at different wind speeds." The company will begin field-testing a small, 5KW wind turbine by early next year.Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/26235 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/D5x9yABuAlE/article.pl Tue, 18 Nov 2008 15:05:06 EST Chinese-born physicist Shu Quan-Sheng Monday pleaded guilty before a US court to violating the Arms Export Control Act by illegally exporting American military space know-how to China. The 68-year-old naturalized US citizen, pictured here on his company profile, admitted handing over the design of fueling systems between 2003 and 2007. Also, in 2003 he illegally exported a document with the impossibly long name of 'Commercial Information, Technical Proposal and Budgetary Officer — Design, Supply, Engineering, Fabrication, Testing & Commissioning of 100m3 Liquid Hydrogen Tank and Various Special Cryogenic Pumps, Valves, Filters and Instruments.' This contained the design of liquid hydrogen tanks for space launch vehicles. He also admitted to a third charge of bribing Chinese officials to the tune of some 189,300 dollars for a French space technology firm." Here's the FBI press release regarding Shu's plea.Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/26232 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/7wANvRv8VWg/article.pl Tue, 18 Nov 2008 12:05:09 EST From yesterday's New York Times: ' What Has Driven Women Out of Computer Science?' In many US universities, over the past decade, there has been deliberate effort to integrate and encourage women and girls to get more involved in the 'hard' sciences, engineering, and math. However, instead of the proportion of women to men increasing, in Computer Science the opposite is actually true. Specifically, in 2001-2, only 28 percent of all undergraduate degrees in computer science went to women. Now many computer science departments report that women now make up less than 10 percent of the newest undergraduates. What's going on here, folks?"Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/26231 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/1ELWjdeQsik/article.pl Tue, 18 Nov 2008 12:05:07 EST In the final report published by the Australian Senate inquiry into 'The Current State of Australia's Space Science & Industry Sector' entitled 'Lost in Space? Setting a new direction for Australia's space science and industry sector,' it calls for the formation of a 'Space Industry Advisory Council' to oversee the creation of a fully-fledged Australian Space Agency. Of the top 20 GDP nations, Australia is the only one without a Space Agency, which impacts on many aspects of ordinary life, not to mention Research and Engineering endeavors. Every satellite operated by Australia is owned by another party and the costs of this alone are comparable to that of a Space Agency. The report is a tidy piece that drew upon submissions form Andy Thomas, and an impressive collection of Australian Academics and Space Science entities frustrated by successive generations of government apathy. While this report is welcome, lethargic Government action in a climate of competing concerns is not expected to stem the flow of Space Science brain drain out of Australia any time soon."Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/26226 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/KdU_8SPlVi8/article.pl Tue, 18 Nov 2008 07:05:01 EST Engineers at Polytechnic University Brooklyn have discovered that digital snaps shorn of any metadata still reveal the make and model of camera used to take them. It is possible to work backwards from the relationships of neighboring pixel values in a shot to identify the model-specific demosaicing algorithm that combines red, green, and blue pixels on the sensor into color image pixels. Forensics teams are already licking their chops."Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/26223 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/Jg5wffOUJbI/article.pl Mon, 17 Nov 2008 23:05:02 EST Do you contribute to open source projects under your real name or a nickname? The openness of open source can be encouraging, but software patents you have never heard of can become a nightmare if a patent troll sues for implementing 'their' scroll bar. A real name also means you end up in the big index we call search engines. An assumed name could be an additional layer of protection, but what are its pros and cons and is it worth the hassle when asked to participate in a meatspace meeting?"Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/26213 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/E8wTzNTqjQ8/article.pl Mon, 17 Nov 2008 15:05:01 EST For the 37th anniversary of Intel's 4004, the world's first off-the-shelf, customer-programmable microprocessor, vintage computer enthusiast Bill Kotaska has successfully built a replica of Busicom's historic 141-PF printing calculator using vintage Intel chips. Decades before the ubiquitous 'Intel inside' sticker, Japanese calculator maker Busicom introduced the first product ever built around an Intel microprocessor. Bill's homebrew replica includes a rare Shinshu Seiki Model-102 drum printer and runs firmware extracted from the original Busicom ROMs. Schematics and photos of his re-creation are available at the unofficial 4004 web site, along with Tim McNerney's new PIC-based emulator of the Model-102 printer. The site includes the Busicom 'source code', 4004 details, interactive simulators, and other goodies for students, engineers, and computer historians." We discussed the 36th 4004 anniversary project here last year.Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/26191 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/vU2GPdZ3ijg/article.pl Sun, 16 Nov 2008 07:05:00 EST My niece just took the ACT and got a perfect score on the math section. 25 years ago, when I took the test, the kids who aced the math section were pretty special. Her score, combined with straight A's so far in high school, suggest to me that she might be able to go to a top university (MIT?) based on her math aptitude. The rub is that she doesn't like math or science, even though she finds them easy. She doesn't want to be an engineer or scientist. I thought the folks here would be a great group to ask: What are some creative, not too nerdy professions that nonetheless require a talent for math, engineering, or science?"Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/26189 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/54CFBt6ezO8/article.pl Sun, 16 Nov 2008 01:05:01 EST lobo235 writes to tell us that a new underground data center designed by Sweden's largest ISP is fit for a classic supervillain, complete with greenhouses, waterfalls, German submarine engines, simulated daylight and can withstand a hit from a hydrogen bomb. "'Rather than just concentrating on technical hardware we decided to put humans in focus,' he said. 'Of course, the security, power, cooling, network, etc, are all top notch, but the people designing data centers often (always!) forget about the humans that are supposed to work with the stuff.'"Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/26170 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/NejnysT_ydQ/article.pl Fri, 14 Nov 2008 19:05:14 EST The National Center for Computational Sciences (NCCS), located at Oak Ridge National Labs (ORNL) in Tennessee, has upgraded the Jaguar supercomputer to 1.64-petaflops for use by scientists and engineers working in areas such as climate modeling, renewable energy, materials science, fusion and combustion. The current upgrade is the result of an addition of 200 cabinets of the Cray XT5 to the existing 84 cabinets of the XT4 Jaguar system. Jaguar is now the world's most powerful supercomputer available for open scientific research."Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/26169 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/hf1oaHoEMUI/article.pl Fri, 14 Nov 2008 19:05:10 EST The New York Times is reporting that Google has added a voice interface to their iPhone search software. Expected to make its debut as early as Friday, users will be able to speak into their phone and ask any question they could type into Google's search engine. The audio will be digitized and results will be returned via the normal search interface. "Google is by no means the only company working toward more advanced speech recognition capabilities. So-called voice response technology is now routinely used in telephone answering systems and in other consumer services and products. These systems, however, often have trouble with the complexities of free-form language and usually offer only a limited range of responses to queries."Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/26165 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/sPzkPQUw1jc/article.pl Fri, 14 Nov 2008 17:05:02 EST George Washington University has today released a three-volume history of NSA activities during the Cold War (major highlights). Written by agency historian Thomas R. Johnson, the 1,000-page report, 'Cryptology During the Cold War, 1945-1989,' details some of the agency's successes and failures, its conflict with other intelligence agencies, and the questionable legal ground on which early American cryptologists worked. The report remained classified for years, until Johnson mentioned it to Matthew Aid, an intelligence historian, at an intelligence conference. Two years later, an abstract and the three current volumes of the report are now available (PDF) from GWU and the National Security Archive. Aid, author of the forthcoming history 'The Secret Sentry: The Top Secret History of the National Security Agency,' says Johnson's study shows 'refreshing openness and honesty, acknowledging both the NSA's impressive successes and abject failures during the Cold War.' A fourth volume remains classified. Johnson says in an audio interview: 'If you are performing an operation that violates a statute like FISA, it's going to come out. It always comes out.'" And reader sampas zooms in on a section in Document 6 about the growth of NSA's IT: their first Cray purchase in 1976, the growth of circuits between facilities, and internal feuds over centralized IT development vs. programmers-in-departments. "A young systems engineer named [redacted] was urging NSA to look at some technology that had been developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). In 1969 DARPA had developed a computer internetting system called ARPANET... NSA quickly adopted the DARPA solution. The project was called platform."Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/26163 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/HkpZWnlHkdI/article.pl Fri, 14 Nov 2008 14:05:01 EST The state of Washington is suing a search engine optimization and Web services outfit, based in Redmond, that has done business under the names Visible.net, Captures.com, and WebMarketingSource.com. In essence, the state says these entities have deceived mostly mom-and-pop sites through unfulfilled performance promises and financial shenanigans after charging up to $10,000 in up-front charges and more in monthly fees. About 90 complaints have been lodged over four years, the state says."Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/26157 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/TOxpUqjpCVs/article.pl Fri, 14 Nov 2008 12:05:02 EST Lost creator JJ Abrams has unveiled footage from his Star Trek prequel at a press event in London. The clips featured US actor Chris Pine as the young Captain Kirk, Heroes star Zachary Quinto as Mr Spock and Simon Pegg as Enterprise engineer Scotty. The audience also saw Leonard Nimoy reprise his role as the older Mr Spock in one of four excerpts from the film. In his introduction, Abrams said he wanted the film to be released in May 2009, to feel 'legitimate and real.' Speaking at London's Vue West End cinema on Tuesday morning, the film-maker admitted he had 'never really been a huge Star Trek fan.'" Note that the article doesn't actually contain the footage, just brief descriptions of it. The video clip included is just the old trailer that we saw many moons ago. But that won't stop me from lusting.Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/26130 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/3vIxtM9XI3c/article.pl Thu, 13 Nov 2008 00:05:20 EST DeepDyve has launched its free search engine that can be used to access databases, scholarly journals, unstructured information and other data sources in the so-called 'Deep Web' or 'Dark Web,' where traditional search technologies don't work. The company partnered with owners of private technical publications, databases, scholarly publications and unstructured data to gain access to content overlooked by other engines. Google said earlier this month that it was adding the ability to search PDF documents. In April, Google said it was investigating how to index HTML forms such as drop-down boxes and select menus, another part of the Dark Web."Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/26118 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/fASpy2g1YwI/article.pl Wed, 12 Nov 2008 16:05:22 EST sturgeon and other readers let us know that Arbor Networks has released their annual survey of tier-1 / tier-2 ISP security engineers. This year they got responses from 70 lead engineers. While DDoS attacks are reaching new heights of backbone-crushing traffic — 40 Gbps was seen this past year — the insiders are also worried about emerging threats to DNS and BGP. The summary notes that "Most believe that the DNS cache poisoning flaw disclosed earlier this year was poorly handled and increased the danger of the threat," but doesn't spell out what a better way of handling it might have been. All in all, the ISPs sound a bit pessimistic — one says "fewer resources, less management support, and increased workload." You can request the full PDF report here, but it will cost you contact information. In related news, an anonymous reader passes along a survey by Secure Computing of 199 international security experts and other "industry insiders" from utilities, oil and gas, financial services, government, telecommunications, transportation and other critical infrastructure industries. They are worried too.Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/26105 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/gOT3cHP9dsw/article.pl Tue, 11 Nov 2008 21:05:08 EST ComputerWorld reports a federal judge has ordered former IBM executive Mark Papermaster, recently hired as Apple's vice president of hardware devices engineering, to stop working for Apple. The judge's ruling is based on a motion for preliminary injunction made by IBM, which states Papermaster's new job violates a non-compete agreement he signed in 2006. In response, Papermaster asserted to the court that 'Nothing about his new job will implicate any trade secrets from IBM.'"Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/26087 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/TOWTP4AHgi8/article.pl Mon, 10 Nov 2008 19:05:06 EST SpuriousLogic sends in a sad note from the BBC: "NASA says its Phoenix lander on the surface of Mars has gone silent and is almost certainly dead. Engineers have not heard from the craft since Sunday 2 November when it made a brief communication with Earth. Phoenix, which landed on the planet's northern plains in May, had been struggling in the increasing cold and dark of an advancing winter. The US space agency says it will continue to try to contact the craft but does not expect to hear from it."Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/26086 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/BG-z_a6KyxA/article.pl Mon, 10 Nov 2008 19:05:05 EST This distinction goes to a future autonomous version of the 700-tons Caterpillar mining truck. In this article, Discovery News reports that Caterpillar engineers and computer scientists from Carnegie Mellon University have teamed up to develop this autonomous truck. Japan-based Komatsu already has already delivered autonomous mining trucks to its customers, but these are smaller than the Caterpillar ones. Both companies are transforming their trucks into 'robots' for three reasons. Improvements in safety, efficiency and productivity will reduce costs and increase availability."Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/26068 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/_6ZZUDl17_M/article.pl Sun, 09 Nov 2008 20:05:11 EST Dean Kamen, (inventor of the Segway) has combined a Stirling engine with a battery-powered electric vehicle based on the Ford Think to provide a fully decoupled electric hybrid car which can run on any fuel which can provide enough heat to run the Stirling generator. Think are also producing a purely battery 'Think City' car which is capable of 62mph and with a range of 126miles." Some stats on the Ford Think: Top speed, 55mph; 0-30, 6.5 seconds; Range, 60 miles on battery.Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/26066 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/DaOEiJPH7lU/article.pl Sun, 09 Nov 2008 18:05:07 EST China is not new to censoring the Internet, but up until now, BitTorrent sites have never been blocked. Recently however, several reports came in from China, indicating that popular BitTorrent sites such as Mininova, isoHunt and The Pirate Bay had been hijacked. The sites became inaccessible, instead redirecting to the leading Chinese search engine Baidu."Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/26054 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/WMvA8Fh_IVM/article.pl Sun, 09 Nov 2008 00:05:03 EST