itwbennett writes "The problem: Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) enables routers to communicate about the best path to other networks, but routers don't verify the route 'announcements.' When routing problems erupt, 'it's very difficult to tell if this is fat fingering on a router or malicious,' said Joe Gersch, chief operating officer for Secure64, a company that makes Domain Name System (DNS) server software. In a well-known incident, Pakistan Telecom made an error with BGP after Pakistan's government ordered in 2008 that ISPs block YouTube, which ended up knocking Google's service offline. A solution exists, but it's complex, and deployment has been slow. Now experts have found an easier way."
ananyo writes "Individual neurons in birds' brains can relay crucial information about Earth's magnetic field, possibly providing the animals with an 'internal GPS.' Pigeons' remarkable navigational feats have long been pegged to the birds' ability to sense magnetic fields, but pinning down how they do so has frustrated scientists for years. Work published in Science (abstract) shows that individual cells seem to encode information on a magnetic field's direction, intensity and polarity. The work also suggests that these signals come from a part of the inner ear called the lagena, further complicating matters for researchers in the field. The Science paper comes just days after a report in Nature (abstract) revealed that cells in pigeons' upper beaks, previously thought to be magnetoreceptors, are actually immune cells called macrophages."
An anonymous reader writes "The Houston Chronicle is reporting that Amazon.com will soon start collecting sales tax from buyers in state of Texas. 'Seattle-based Amazon, which had $34 billion in sales in 2010, has long opposed collecting taxes. That has drawn fire from state governments facing budget shortfalls and from traditional brick-and-mortar retailers, who say online sellers essentially give customers an automatic discount when they don’t collect taxes. Combs has estimated the state loses $600 million a year from untaxed online sales. However, Amazon has recently begun making deals with a number of states to collect sales tax. Those deals have usually included a one- to three-year window exempting Amazon from sales tax collection.'
rtfa-troll writes "Tomi Ahonen reports that Samsung has become the largest manufacturer of smartphones (overtaking Apple) and of mobile phones (overtaking Nokia). During the first quarter of 2012 Samsung sold 93.5 million phones, with 44.5 million (48%) of those being smartphones. Apple would still lead on 'smart mobile devices' with 52 million sales including iPads, but not iPods. The last time the lead in mobile phone sales changed was in 14 years ago, in 1998, when Nokia overtook Ericsson. Ericsson never recovered and began leaving the mobile phone market three years later, creating Sony Ericsson, later Sony Mobile. It looks like the mobile phone market is going to be brutal, with Apple and Samsung crushing everybody else except possibly HTC, which is still rising, and Motorola (which has Google to look after it)."
MojoKid writes "The PC and console game industry is in desperate need of an overhaul. With skyrocketing costs to develop games, consumers aren't going to accept $80-$100 game titles, especially not with mobile game prices in the 99 cent — $4.99 range. Not to mention, how games are designed these days needs some serious rethinking. This list of some of the industry's most annoying gaming clichés, from scripted sequences to impossibly incompetent NPCs, and how they might be solved, speaks to a few of the major ailments in modern gameplay with character and plot techniques that are older than dirt."
New submitter eetc writes "This article surveys the sorry state of car makers' stereo and navigation systems: 'It's clear that most of the auto companies that offer more than a car stereo want to lock you into their interface and services — as awful as they are. The rest don't care. The aftermarket stereo and nav systems are no better. Stuffed with even more buttons and light-show gewgaws, they're sure to keep your eyes off the road and may not work easily with your stuff. Add to that mix the split focus of also having to use a separate GPS unit in most vehicles, and you have to wonder what keeps our roads so relatively safe.' The answer in one word: iCar. This is just the sort of broken market that Apple specializes in taking over."
CowboyRobot writes "Space junk has increased to the point where pieces of it are colliding and breaking into smaller pieces. The problem is now so bad that NASA has had to modify the design of satellites to protect them from flying debris. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) wants to turn disabled satellites and their components, including antennas and solar arrays, into functioning systems. They are hosting a conference on June 26 to explore how to build 'refurbished' satellites from already-orbiting material for less than what it would cost to build them from scratch and launch them from the surface of the Earth."
An anonymous reader writes "If you are looking for small niche features such as interactive word count, bundled report designer, or command line filtering etc – LibreOffice beats OpenOffice hands down. 'Noting the important dates of June 1, 2011, which was when Oracle donated OOo to Apache; and Apache OpenOffice 3.4 is due probably sometime in May 2012; Meeks compared Apache OpenOffice 3.4 new features to popular new features from LibreOffice: 3.3, 3.4, 3.5. It wasn't surprising to find that LibreOffice has merged many features not found in Apache OO given their nearly year long head start.'"
zrbyte writes "Fusion research would get a major boost in a Department of Energy (DOE) spending bill approved today by the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Appropriations. The panel rejected an Obama Administration proposal to cut funding for domestic fusion research in the 2013 fiscal year, which begins 1 October. It would also give more money than requested to an international collaboration building the ITER fusion reactor in France. This will allow the Alcator C-Mod fusion facility at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge to be kept open, which the Administration had proposed closing."
nonprofiteer writes "What has been left out of the CISPA debate thus far is the FBI's long time workaround for information sharing with private industry: 'In 1997, long-time FBI agent Dan Larkin helped set up a non-profit based in Pittsburgh that "functions as a conduit between private industry and law enforcement." Its industry members, which include banks, ISPs, telcos, credit card companies, pharmaceutical companies, and others can hand over cyberthreat information to the non-profit, called the National Cyber Forensics and Training Alliance (NCFTA), which has a legal agreement with the government that allows it to then hand over info to the FBI. Conveniently, the FBI has a unit, the Cyber Initiative and Resource Fusion Unit, stationed in the NCFTA's office. Companies can share information with the 501(c)6 non-profit that they would be wary of (or prohibited from) sharing directly with the FBI.'"
nbauman writes "WW2 veteran 'Big Hy' Strachman, 92, pirated 300,000 DVD movies and sent them to soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq, where they were widely distributed and deeply appreciated. Soldiers would gather around personal computers for movie nights, with mortars blasting in the background. 'It's reconnecting to everything you miss,' said one. Strachman received American flags, appreciative letters, and snapshots of soldiers holding up their DVDs. He spent about $30,000 of his own money. Strachman retired from his family's window and shade business in Manhattan in the 1990s. After his wife Harriet died in 2003, he spent sleepless nights on the Internet, and saw that soldiers were consistently asking for movie DVDs. He bought bootlegged disks for $5 in Penn Station, and then found a dealer at his local barbershop. He bought a $400 duplicater that made 7 copies at once, and mailed them 84 at a time, to Army Chaplains. The MPAA said they weren't aware of his operation. The studios send reel-to-reel films to the troops."
Ogi_UnixNut writes "The Skylon spaceplane is an ambitious project to develop a single-stage-to-orbit craft that can take off and land like a normal airplane. Part of this project requires an engine that can work both as a rocket engine and a normal air-breathing engine (a hybrid approach, essentially). This would reduce the amount of oxidizer required to send stuff into space, and thus greatly reduce the cost. Now, some key experimental parts of the engine have been built, and are to be tested in public at the Farnborough Air Show in the UK in July. The BBC has video of the cooling system being tested"
MrSeb writes "According to reports from various industry sources, the Chinese government has begun the process of picking a national computer chip instruction set architecture (ISA). This ISA would have to be used for any projects backed with government money — which, in a communist country such as China, is a fairly long list of public and private enterprises and institutions, including China Mobile, the largest wireless carrier in the world. The primary reason for this move is to lessen China's reliance on western intellectual property. There are at least five existing ISAs on the table for consideration — MIPS, Alpha, ARM, Power, and the homegrown UPU — but the Chinese leadership has also mooted the idea of defining an entirely new architecture. What if China goes the DIY route and makes its own ISA or microarchitecture with silicon-level censorship and monitoring, or an always-open backdoor for the Chinese intelligence agencies?"
suraj.sun writes "Microsoft quietly fixed a flaw in Hotmail's password reset system that allowed anyone to reset the password of any Hotmail account last Friday. The company was notified of the flaw by researchers at Vulnerability Lab on April 20th and responded with a fix within hours — but not until after widespread attacks, with the bug apparently spreading 'like wild fire' in the hacking community. Hotmail's password reset system uses a token system to ensure that only the account holder can reset their password — a link with the token is sent to an account linked to the Hotmail account — and clicking the link lets the account owner reset their password. However, the validation of these tokens isn't handled properly by Hotmail, allowing attackers to reset passwords of any account. Initially hackers were offering to crack accounts for $20 a throw. However, the technique became publicly known and started to spread rapidly with Web and YouTube tutorials showing the technique popping up across the Arabic-speaking Internet."
judgecorp writes "The UK government's consultation about the use of open source in public sector IT has been sent back to square one, with discussion results scrapped because the facilitator, Andy Hopkirk, is involved with Microsoft. Hopkirk is well regarded, but the open source community feels the debate dismissed RF (royalty free) standards in favor of the FRAND definition, which is more favorable to proprietary vendors."
U.S. Senator Charles Grassley plans to drop a hold he placed on two FCC nominees because of a tussle with the agency over documents related to its treatment of...
About 5.9 percent of AT&T shareholders have voted for a proposal calling on the company to commit to net neutrality principles on its wireless networks, but...
A new prototyping board for the Raspberry Pi opens up all sorts of doors for hacking this new, tiny Linux-based PC.
The U.S. Federal Communications Commission has voted to require telephone carriers to provide their customers more billing information in an effort to crack down...
In recent years, consultants Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton kept hearing the same lament from corporate clients: "It we can't get our culture right, nothing...
Mac OS X has caught the attention of malicious developers, and the threat is just going to increase. The free Avast for Mac security software can protect your Mac system against malware.
Faster page loads are on the way, as is heightened browsing security.
You can now get in on 3D printing on the (relatively) cheap thanks to Solidoodle, the first sub-$500 3D printer.
Iran may be turning to cyber attacks as a channel to attack corporate and government entities in the U.S., especially since the attacks are relatively easily launched against much larger adversaries.
Which cloud storage service should you use, Google Drive, Dropbox, or SkyDrive? Our side-by-side-by-side comparison can help you choose which is best for you.
The wording of the terms of service for Google Drive seems to suggest Google owns any content you upload, and has many up in arms.
Analysis: Wonder how much of your personal data Facebook apps like Cityville or Words With Friends are sucking down? PrivacyScore has the answer.
British and U.S. cybercrime investigators have shut down 36 websites accused of selling stolen bank account information during a crackdown.
Instructions on how to exploit an unpatched Oracle Database Server vulnerability in order to intercept the information exchanged between clients and databases...
UPDATE: LG Electronics will start selling the Optimus True HD LTE in Germany, Portugal, and Sweden, helping the number of available LTE devices to grow in Europe.
With Apple leading the revenue charge midweek and Amazon providing a kick to trading in tech shares Friday morning, bright spots appeared in what has otherwise...
The 802.11ac Wi-Fi standard is not yet finalized, but draft 802.11ac equipment will soon be available. Get ready with this primer on the "gigabit Wi-Fi" standard.
We go hands-on with the upcoming Borderlands 2 and deliver our impressions on the new characters, skills and weapons.
Japan's Casio has released an experimental app for the iPhone and iPad that encodes and sends data using colors.
Germany could face court action for failing to implement the E.U.'s Data Retention Directive it was confirmed on Friday.
In this unique art project, a hacked Kinect helps translate singing into light patterns.
The decline in monthly downloads occurred in the same month that Apple celebrated jumping the 25 billion mark for App Store downloads.
Research in Motion will focus on simplifying development for its soon-to-be-unveiled BlackBerry 10 OS at next week's developer conference.
Comscore credits Amazon's popular tablet with more than half of Android tablet sales, but the results are skewed by a significant omission.
Google's latest Easter Egg is a nod to the enemy alien species (Zerg) from the video game Starcraft by Blizzard Entertainment.
"Everything fails, all the time," so says Amazon.com CTO Werner Vogels.
Evernote will launch a business program in the coming months, allowing administrators to better control security and data, company CEO Phil Libin said on Friday...
The bottom line for enterprises: The public cloud is neither private nor secure.
The legislation gives the government and corporations broad latitude to share your information and digital communications in the name of security. How does that work?
European lawmakers have asked for help and advice on how to roll out high-speed Internet across the E.U. more cheaply.
Huawei Technologies is aiming to bring touch-free smartphones and more inexpensive cloud storage to users, as the company boosts its research and development...
UPDATE: Former Sun boss Scott McNealy sided with Oracle on Thursday in its dispute with Google over Android, testifying in court that companies needed a license to use Sun's Java programming interfaces.
UPDATE: Samsung beat Nokia to the top position in the global handset market in the first quarter of 2012, research firms Strategy Analytics and IHS iSuppli say.
Feeling the competitive pressure, Dropbox beefs up its free storage limit with the introduction of a new digital image offering.
The European Commission on Thursday asked six E.U. countries to explain their delay in enforcing the binding e-money Directive.
We bring you another weekend of free games, including a typing game about being a bad speller and a simulation title built in 48 hours.
Don't make the mistake of using all of the cloud storage services just because they're free. "Free" comes with its own price when you scatter your data around on the Internet.
AT&T and Verizon Wireless want Windows Phone smartphones to succeed in the U.S., partly to provide leverage against Apple.
At the request of Computerworld UK the story headlined "ICO received 10,000 data protection complaints in 2011" and posted 04/25/2012 has been removed from the...
Nintendo will launch sales of digital versions of mainstream 3DS titles through retailers, beginning with a new Super Mario Brothers game in August, it said...
IT engineers are studying what may be an easier way to fix a long-existing weakness in the Internet's routing system that has the potential to cause major...
The U.S. House of Representatives has passed a cyberthreat information-sharing bill that critics say will give U.S. government agencies access to the private communications of millions of Internet users.
Advanced Micro Devices is cutting costs and reducing the number of its data centers worldwide with the help of the cloud and hardware upgrades, an AMD executive...
This huge version of the classic Space Invaders proves playing the game on an arcade machine is for chumps--this one scales a building!
Clearwire will launch its LTE network early next year with service in high-demand "hot zones" in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Seattle and San Francisco, the...
Putting on a major convention like Interop Las Vegas requires Herculean efforts on several fronts.
For all the apprehension they may bring, public clouds demand a position in the enterprise IT strategy.
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has hired an outside litigator to lead its antitrust investigation of Google, a possible sign that the FTC is preparing to file...
Google Translate translates "roughly as much text as you'd find in 1 million books," Google says.
Twitter released updated iPhone and Android apps Thursday that make it easier for users to search and find new information.