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BBC News | News Front Page | World Edition Mon, 12 May 2008 10:27:55 GMT |
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China in 'all-out' quake effort Chinese President Hu Jintao calls
for "all-out" efforts to rescue victims of an earthquake measuring 7.8.
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First US aid plane lands in Burma The first US relief flight lands in Burma, but agencies warn the amount of aid getting to people is inadequate.
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Tough talks loom after Serb polls Serbia's election results point to a victory for the pro-EU bloc, but the nationalists say they could still form the next government.
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Putin announces cabinet line-up Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin announces the names of ministers in his new cabinet.
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Lebanon tense after new clashes Hezbollah keeps up attacks on a pro-government leader in Lebanon as the Arab League prepares to send mediators.
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Sudan shooting after rebel raid Shots are heard in Sudan's capital following a rebel attack, as the main Islamist opposition leader is arrested.
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Hacker leaks 6m Chileans' records A computer hacker in Chile posts confidential data belonging to six million people on the internet.
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Pakistan coalition crisis talks The party of former Pakistani PM Nawaz Sharif is expected to decide whether to remain in government.
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Food prices drive China inflation China's consumer price inflation nears a 12-year high in April, as the cost of food continues to take its toll.
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Locusts may swarm out of fear of being eaten by each other Locusts swarm in such numbers because of a panicking fear they will be eaten by each other, scientists suggest.
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Chelsea to sign £16.2m Bosingwa Chelsea reach an agreement with Porto for the £16.2m transfer of right-back Jose Bosingwa.
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Ferguson turns sights to Europe Man Utd manager Sir Alex Ferguson sets his sights on the Champions League final after clinching his 10th league title.
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China torch relay The Olympic flame reaches Xiamen, close to Taiwan
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Tricky issue The tangled row over Pakistan's sacked judges
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Inside Zimbabwe Orla Guerin meets people determined to survive Mugabe
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Patriotic pirates Profiting from sailors and books in national interest
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China torch relay The Olympic flame reaches Xiamen, close to Taiwan
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In pictures Aid starts reaching victims of Burma's devastating cyclone
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Zimbabwe election may be delayed The second round of Zimbabwe's presidential election may be delayed, says the Electoral Commission.
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Tornado wrecks central US towns Tornadoes and severe storms sweep the central US, severely damaging two towns and killing at least 22 people.
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Australian military clears troops Australia's military clears its troops of wrongdoing in an Afghan battle that left two women and a baby dead.
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Renault plans cheap Indian car Renault-Nissan announces a joint venture with Indian firm Bajaj to produce a $2,500 (£1,276) car.
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Baghdad district calm after truce A ceasefire between the Iraqi government and Shia militias seems to be holding in Baghdad's Sadr City.
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Call to set free rights activist A group of Nobel laureates appeal to India to release jailed human rights activist Binayak Sen.
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Brown vows to make care 'fairer' Gordon Brown pledges to reform the social care system to cope with England's ageing population.
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HSBC in new sub-prime writedown HSBC writes down $3.2bn in the first three months of 2008 as a result of its exposure to the US sub-prime market.
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Clue to early pre-eclampsia test A gene found to be linked with pre-eclampsia may lead to diagnostic test and early treatment, say US researchers.
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Microwaves 'cook ballast aliens' A microwave system that kills "invasive species" lurking in ships' ballast water is developed by a team of US researchers.
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Judge ends McCartney's marriage A High Court judge pronounces a decree nisi, ending the marriage of Sir Paul McCartney and Heather Mills.
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Alarm at Google Yahoo partnering US advocacy groups urge regulators to block any deal Google and Yahoo might strike after a two-week experiment.
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Have you got a good story? What do you want to talk about? Are there topics you want to get the world to talk about? What do you want to comment on or find out what others think about? Set the agenda for global conversations and have your say.
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Slashdot |
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Dealing With Dialup An anonymous reader writes "It looks like my parents may end up stuck having to use dialup to access the Internet from their cottage inside the Cape Cod National Seashore. Neither Comcast nor Verizon want to bother upgrading the hardware required to get them faster service. They could put a satellite dish on their roof, but it's a 300-year-old house and they feel a dish would be as prohibitively ugly as running dedicated lines would be prohibitively expensive. I've suggested they get familiar with a text-only email client; I also suggested they talk with their senators and local political reps. , Are there other ways they can increase the functionality despite the pitiful bandwidth? Any other good ideas? Any success stories you can share where people have finally got the bandwidth they crave?"
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Government Efficiency and Network Theory Science News reports on a study relating (in a loose way) the efficiency of a national government with the size of its cabinet. Researchers in Vienna found that the development level of countries, as a proxy for the efficiency of their governments, is in general lower for countries with more members in the national cabinets. They then went on to model cabinet members as nodes in a network and found support for the observed correlation. There was even specific evidence for the decades-old observation of English historian Cyril Northcote Parkinson that decision-making is severely impaired in committees of more than 20 people. The US is getting close to Parkinson's cutoff, at 17.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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DataStorm V1.0, a Full-Auto Floppy Disk Cannon Bob Loblaw writes "I ran across a huge stash of floppies at our office, and after some discussion, it became clear that rather than throw them away, we should build a gun that fires floppies. I had just bought a welder so this was a challenging first project. After about a month of work in my garage at night the DataStorm was born. It was constructed of scrap metal, a kid's bike, a weed-eater motor, and an electric screwdriver. The most difficult task ended up being how to add spin to the disk without significantly reducing its velocity. After a week and a half of trying different options, a stack of zip ties was found to work best. Since we had so much time in it we elected to shoot an infomercial showcasing the device, and had to learn to shoot & edit video as we went. It was basically an office joke that spiraled out of control. My wife is not amused. At all. I hope you like it."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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XP SP3 Crashes Some AMD Machines Stony Stevenson alerts us to new information on the XP SP3-induced crashes that we discussed a few days back. Jesper Johansson, a former program manager for security policy at Microsoft, is maintaining an ongoing log and support site for users affected by any of several problems triggered by XP3. Machines using AMD hardware, particularly HP desktops, seem to have several modes of failure; others affect Intel machines.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Recruitment Options For a Small-Scale FOSS Project? thermian writes "I've been developing my open source project for several years now, and I've never found a solution to one fairly important issue. How can a small-scale project attract new members? My project is pretty specialist, (no URL, sorry, I can't afford to get my server nuked) and I find that while it gets a fair bit of use, most users come to my software out of a need to solve their problem, or use my tutorials to learn about the subject, and none seem inclined to stick around and help make the product better. This is a fairly serious problem for me now, because my software has recently been adopted by a university, and I'm just not in a position to manage the entire set of applications and update everything on my own. Just preparing a version for release to students has been especially hard. The open source maxim 'Many eyes make all bugs shallow' only works if those 'many eyes' are available. So do you have any suggestions as to how, and where, to find people who fancy joining open source projects?"
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Hiding a Rootkit In System Management Mode Sniper223 notes a PC World article on a new kind of rootkit recently developed by researchers, which will be demoed at Black Hat in August. The rootkit runs in System Management Mode, a longtime feature of x86 architecture that allows for code to run in a locked part of memory. It is said to be harder to detect, potentially, than VM-based rootkits. The article notes that the technique is unlikely to lead to widespread expoitation: "Being divorced from the operating system makes the SMM rootkit stealthy, but it also means that hackers have to write this driver code expressly for the system they are attacking."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Changes In Store For PHP V6 An anonymous reader sends in an IBM DeveloperWorks article detailing the changes coming in PHP V6 — from namespaces, to Web 2.0 built-ins, to a few features that are being removed.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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VIA Releases 16K-Line FOSS Framebuffer Driver billybob2 writes "VIA has released 16,434 Lines Of Free & Open Source code that enables Linux natively to use the framebuffer on VIA's graphics chipsets. This comes a month after VIA announced that it will provide Open-Source drivers and documentation on its Web site so that its hardware will work out of the box with Linux distributions. This gives VIA-powered systems that come pre-installed with Linux — such as the gPC, 15.4" gBook, CloudBook, and Zonbu — the ability to output graphics through digital connections such as HDMI, and probably makes them the best-supported framebuffers Linux has ever had. Look forward to documentation and X.org drivers from VIA as well in the near future."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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What Is the Oldest Code Written Still Running? Consul writes "What is the oldest piece of code that is still in use today, that has not actually been retyped or reimplemented in some way? By 'piece of code,' I'm of course referring to a complete algorithm, and not just a single line." The question would have a different answer if emulation, in multiple layers, is allowed.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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DDR3 RAM Explained Das Capitolin sends us to Benchmark Reviews for an in-depth feature on DDR3 memory that begins: "These are uncertain financial times we live in today, and the rise and fall of our economy has had [a] direct [effect] on consumer spending. It has already been one full year now that DDR3 has been patiently waiting for the enthusiast community to give it proper consideration, yet [its] success is still undermined by misconceptions and high price. Benchmark Reviews has been testing DDR3 more actively than anyone... Sadly, it might take an article like this to open the eyes of my fellow hardware enthusiast[s] and overclocker[s], because it seems like DDR3 is the technology nobody wants [badly] enough to learn about. Pity, because overclocking is what it's all about."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Developing New Materials With Space Science Scientists at the European Space Agency are using techniques inspired by their experience with outer space to make new and better products here on Earth. Certain compounds and alloys which are not normally viable can be made in different ways once forces such as gravity are removed from the equation. From BBC News: "The near absence of gravity (microgravity) has a profound influence on the way molten metals come together to form intermetallics and 'standard' alloys. With no 'up' and 'down' in the space environment, a melt doesn't rise and sink as it would at the planet's surface and that means solidification can turn out very differently. 'Gravity induces a lot of segregation of the elements,' explains IMPRESS scientist Dr Guillaume Reinhart. 'For instance, tantalum and niobium are heavy atoms and in doing the solidification process on the ground, they will segregate in different places and produce a very heterogeneous material. If you do this in microgravity, you obtain a very homogenous material because you prevent separation; and you have a much more efficient material, mechanically.'"
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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How the NSA Took Linux To the Next Level An anonymous reader brings us IBM Developerworks' recent analysis of how the NSA built SELinux to withstand attacks. The article shows us some of the relevant kernel architecture and compares SELinux to a few other approaches. We've discussed SELinux in the past. Quoting: "If you have a program that responds to socket requests but doesn't need to access the file system, then that program should be able to listen on a given socket but not have access to the file system. That way, if the program is exploited in some way, its access is explicitly minimized. This type of control is called mandatory access control (MAC). Another approach to controlling access is role-based access control (RBAC). In RBAC, permissions are provided based on roles that are granted by the security system. The concept of a role differs from that of a traditional group in that a group represents one or more users. A role can represent multiple users, but it also represents the permissions that a set of users can perform. SELinux adds both MAC and RBAC to the GNU/Linux operating system."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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The 25-Year-Old BSD Bug sproketboy writes with news that a developer named Marc Balmer has recently fixed a bug in a bit of BSD code which is roughly 25 years old. In addition to the OSnews summary, you can read Balmer's comments and a technical description of the bug. "This code will not work as expected when seeking to the second entry of a block where the first has been deleted: seekdir() calls readdir() which happily skips the first entry (it has inode set to zero), and advance to the second entry. When the user now calls readdir() to read the directory entry to which he just seekdir()ed, he does not get the second entry but the third. Much to my surprise I not only found this problem in all other BSDs or BSD derived systems like Mac OS X, but also in very old BSD versions. I first checked 4.4BSD Lite 2, and Otto confirmed it is also in 4.2BSD. The bug has been around for roughly 25 years or more."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Creating Designer Isotopes Roland Piquepaille writes "According to a Michigan State University (MSU) news release, 'Made-to-order isotopes hold promise on science's frontier,' nuclear physicists can now start a new career as isotope designers. These scientists can build specific rare isotopes to solve scientific problems and open doors to new technologies. The lead researcher says this approach has already given us the Positron Emission Tomography (PET) scan technology. He's now going further, saying that he wants to build objects 100,000 times smaller than the atomic nucleus. He calls this 'femtotechnology.' Also available are additional details and pictures of the tools used for this kind of research, picked from a 415-page design paper." Update: 05/11 14:30 GMT by SS: Readers have noted that the summary inaccurately portrays the scale of the 'femtotechnology.' The MSU researcher refers to "the capacity to construct objects on an even more minute scale, that of the atomic nucleus 100,000 times smaller."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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NSA Takes On West Point In Security Exercise Wired is running a story about a recent security exercise in which the NSA attacked networks set up by various US military academies. The Army's network scored the highest, put together using Linux and FreeBSD by cadets at West Point. Quoting: "Even with a solid network design and passable software choices, there was an element of intuitiveness required to defend against the NSA, especially once it became clear the agency was using minor, and perhaps somewhat obvious, attacks to screen for sneakier, more serious ones. 'One of the challenges was when they see a scan, deciding if this is it, or if it's a cover,' says [instructor Eric] Dean. Spotting 'cover' attacks meant thinking like the NSA -- something Dean says the cadets did quite well. 'I was surprised at their creativity.' Legal limitations were a surprising obstacle to a realistic exercise. Ideally, the teams would be allowed to attack other schools' networks while also defending their own. But only the NSA, with its arsenal of waivers, loopholes, special authorizations (and heaven knows what else) is allowed to take down a U.S. network."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Who's this? It's one of our members working to get into acting. If you'd like to see him in action - Click the Picture - You'll need broadband since the movie weighs in at 45 megs - On the flipside - I actually met this guy! Here's hoping when he becomes the next Columbo - he mentions our site when he's cracking web cases!
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