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Author Topic: Stephen's Weekly Tech News - Edition 8  (Read 6187 times)

KynloStephen66515

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Stephen's Weekly Tech News - Edition 8
« on: April 04, 2010, 12:50 PM »
StephensMasthead (Rev01).gif

Hey Guys, hope you all enjoy this Easter Weekend's edition of the Weekly Tech News!

-Stephen



Deep challenges for offshore wind

A Rhode Island project vying to beat out Cape Wind as the first offshore wind farm in the U.S. hit a major roadblock this week, a sign of the tough technical and economic issues developers face as they go farther offshore.

The state's Public Utilities Commission on Tuesday blocked a power purchase agreement to purchase electricity from an eight-turbine installation off the coast of Block Island. Regulators ruled that the proposed purchase price--24.4 cents per kilowatt-hour in 2013, which is almost double the retail rate in the state--was too high, a move which casts doubt on whether the project will move forward.
 

A GE offshore wind turbine being tested in Europe, where offshore wind is projected to grow rapidly this decade.
(Credit: General Electric)

Cape Wind, meanwhile, on Wednesday announced...Read More...


Analyst expects 700,000 iPads to sell this weekend - Apply iPad Launch Day

Analyst revises sales estimates, more than doubling the number of tablets he expects Apple to sell the first weekend it's available....Read More...


Fraudsters Can Easily Buy SSL Certificates, Researcher Finds

Two university researchers discovered at a recent security conference that security companies often deal with governments that can compel certificate authorities to produce SSL security keys for them. Those keys can then be used to sign certificates as any other Web site, enabling a law enforcement authority -- hypothetically speaking, of course -- to spoof virtually any other site. However, you don't need to be a government to compel a certificate authority to issue an SSL certificate for a major Web mail service of your choice. You just need a...Read More...


Sharp's Next-Gen Mobile Touchscreens: 3-D for the Naked Eye

Japanese electronics giant Sharp on Friday unveiled a liquid crystal display touchscreen that lets viewers see three-dimensional images without special glasses. That announcement kicked off speculation that the screen will be used in Nintendo's forthcoming 3DS game console, which will have the same kind of...Read More...


From the DC Forums - How I’d Hack Your Weak Passwords

* You probably use the same password for lots of stuff right?
    * Some sites you access such as your Bank or work VPN probably have pretty decent security, so I'm not going to attack them.
    * However, other sites like the Hallmark e-mail greeting cards site, an online forum you frequent, or an e-commerce site you've shopped at might not be as well prepared. So those are the ones I'd work on.
    * So, all we have to do now is unleash Brutus, wwwhack, or THC Hydra on their server with instructions to try say 10,000 (or 100,000 – whatever makes you happy) different usernames and passwords as fast as possible.
    * Once we've got several login+password pairings we can then go back and test them on targeted sites.
    * But wait… How do I know which bank you use and what your login ID is for the sites you frequent? All those cookies are simply stored, unencrypted and nicely named, in your Web browser's cache. (Read this post to remedy that problem.)

And how fast could this be done? Well, that depends on three main things, the length and...Read More... - Read Forum Topic


The Great Firewall of China Will Engulf the Gutless

For anyone thinking that the Google-China dynasty war would be resolved quickly -- and that mutual economic concerns would ultimately force both armies to ratchet down this uniquely 21-century cyberduel -- this was the week for the rudest of awakenings. The hacking hits just keep...Read More


Prefab May Give Any Software Open Sourciness

A new tool developed at the University of Washington has the potential to make all software effectively open source -- in a way. Rather than manipulating the software's code, however, the application -- dubbed "Prefab" -- hijacks what it displays and makes it...Read More...


Opera alerts EU to hidden Windows browser-ballot

Just when it seemed like Microsoft's European anti-trust tangle on browser choice in Windows was over, trouble is stirring again.

Opera Software has told The Reg that it has informed the European Union of a possible problem with a fix that was designed to make Internet Explorer in Windows comply with EU antitrust law. Opera has also informed Microsoft.

Opera said the browser-ballot screen Microsoft introduced to Windows so users could pick a browser rather than take Internet Explorer by default is being almost completely hidden by a set of 10 IE configuration screens. Opera illustrated the problem at The Reg's San-Francisco, California, offices with a set of screen shots taken from a Thinkpad X31 running Windows XP SP2.

The fear is that PC users will...Read More...

Computer pioneer and Gates mentor Ed Roberts dies

Ed Roberts, the pioneering computer engineer and early mentor to Bill Gates and Paul Allen, died Thursday at age 68.

Roberts will perhaps be best remembered for the Altair 8800, developed and marketed in both kit and assembled forms by his company, Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems, better known by its acronym, MITS.

Roberts founded MITS during a stint...Read More...


April Fools 2010 - All the gags, after the fact

Word that the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) - the most powerful atomsmasher ever assembled by the human race - caused a hyperdimensional portal leading to an inhabited parallel universe to open up deep beneath Switzerland, in what may be the...Read More...





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Visit the Tech News Archive Here.
« Last Edit: April 08, 2010, 05:45 PM by Stephen66515 »

Lutz_

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Re: Stephen's Weekly Tech News - Edition 7
« Reply #1 on: April 04, 2010, 10:21 PM »
Thanks for the news!
The Prefab project looks very interesting.

Edvard

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Re: Stephen's Weekly Tech News - Edition 7
« Reply #2 on: April 05, 2010, 10:08 PM »
Moar April Fools here:
http://aprilfoolsdayontheweb.com/

Maybe I'm getting old, but 2008 & 9 were the best for web jokes on Apr 1.
Seems like the number went up exponentially this year, but none were as good...

P.S. One of my favorites:
Star Wars: The Old Republic game gets a new character class - The Sarlaac Enforcer ;D

http://www.swtor.com...ses/sarlacc-enforcer
Patient, Calculating, & Elusive

The galaxy is filled with every sort of riffraff, refuse and space trash imaginable. For thousands of years the brave souls who answer to the name Sarlacc have made sure it doesn’t pile up....

(hint: watch the "combat tactics" videos... hehe)
« Last Edit: April 05, 2010, 10:11 PM by Edvard »

KynloStephen66515

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Re: Stephen's Weekly Tech News - Edition 8
« Reply #3 on: April 09, 2010, 06:33 AM »
Your Sig - All children left unattended will be given a mocha and a puppy.

completely off topic, i know, but it made me giggle...just thought you might wanna know  :Thmbsup:

haha