Supercomputers pitted against one another in a high-stakes battle of attack and counterattack over a global network where predatory algorithms trawl the information stream, competing every millisecond to gain an informational advantage over rivals. It sounds like Hollywood fiction, but it’s just an average trading day on the stock market.
Microsoft has responded to the EU’s antitrust investigation into its bundling of its browser with Windows by deciding to ship Windows 7 in Europe without Internet Explorer 8 installed. Say hello to the spiritual successor of Windows XP N: Windows 7 E.
Kids these days have it all—their own laptops, cell phones, music players, and even digital cameras. A new report from the NPD Group says that use of these devices has grown by an “impressive” rate among 4 to 14 year olds, and that their usage is even changing over time as technology matures.
Jeff Moss, founder of the Black Hat and Defcon security conferences, is one of 16 people appointed to the Department of Homeland Security Advisory Council, as the government casts a wide net for perspectives on cybersecurity.
A government audit (PDF) has pinpointed more than 3,800 vulnerabilities — 763 of which are high-risk — in the Federal Aviation Administration’s Web-based air traffic control system applications, including some that could potentially put air travel at risk.
There’s a scene toward the end of the book Contact by Carl Sagan, where the protagonist Ellie Arroway finds a Message embedded deep in the digits of PI. The Message is perhaps an artifact of an extremely advanced intelligence that apparently manipulated one of the fundamental constants of the universe as a testament to their power as they wove space and time. I’m reminded of this scene by the Time.com 100 Poll where millions have voted on who are the world’s most influential people in government, science, technology and the arts. Just as Ellie found a Message embedded in PI, we find a Message embedded in the results of this poll. Looking at the first letters of each of the top 21 leading names in the poll we find the message “marblecake, also the game”. The poll announces (perhaps subtly) to the world, that the most influential are not the Obamas, Britneys or the Rick Warrens of the world, the most influential are an extremely advanced intelligence: the hackers.
Less than a year after leaving Silicon Valley for the Beltway, tech entrepreneur Rod Beckstrom has resigned his post as the head of the National Cyber Security Center at the Department of Homeland Security. In a sharply worded letter to DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano, Beckstrom complains of inadequate funding and cites efforts by the National Security Agency to “subjugate” the NCSC to its control.
Spending cuts are the theme of the Senate’s compromise draft of legislation meant to inject cash into a flagging economy. Those include a $2 billion reduction in money for rural broadband deployment, bringing the total down to $7 billion—though that’s still more than the $6 billion allocated for broadband in the House version of the bill.
The Internal Revenue Service should start taxing the fledgling virtual economy in Second Life, World of Warcraft, and other virtual worlds according to Taxpayer Advocate Nina Olson. In her annual report published on the IRS website, Olsen said that there are still a number of issues that the IRS should “proactively address” before they get out of control. And now that it’s on the IRS’ radar, it’s likely only a matter of time before Uncle Sam tries to figure out some way to get a cut of your gold.
At Twitpay, we obviously needed to work with Twitter, and since they don’t yet offer OAuth (or something similar) yet, we explored the options on how best to do this. There has been a proliferation lately of sites that ask you to provide your username and password to other sites in order to exploit some sort of functionality, usually searching through your address book. While this tradeoff of security for convenience may be worth it in the short term in order to “get something done”, unless you are using a different password for every site you visit (which is not the case for the VAST majority of users), it is NEVER a good idea.
White lists will be on every desktop within the next five years, according to Patrick Morley, CEO of Massachusetts-based Bit9. Morley was in town to address the Dow Jones VentureWire Technology Showcase in Redwood City, Calif., on Tuesday. He stopped by CNET News afterward to discuss why he believes white listing will be important in the next few years.
At long last, John McCain and Barack Obama can pantomime lightsaber duels or get their Numa Numa on like any other red-blooded American. In a move that a spokesperson for Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) called “a major step into the future,” the Senate Rules and Administration Committee has deigned to permit links to third-party sites like YouTube and Flickr from Senators’ official pages.
The demise of touch-screen voting has produced a graveyard of expensive corpses: Warehouses stacked with thousands of carefully wrapped voting machines that have been shelved because of doubts about vanishing votes and vulnerability to hackers.
