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Government agencies around the world make billions of bits of raw data available to the public each day, but this data is often in difficult formats or so widely spread around the Web it is virtually unusable to the public and scientists who seek to use this valuable information in their research. Computer scientists within the Tetherless World Research Constellation at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have developed an application to help solve the problem. A collaboration with scientific publisher Elsevier, the application utilizes the U.S. government data warehouse, Data.gov, to provide scientists with easy and direct access to government data sets...

IDG News Service - Authorities in the U.S. and Germany have raided Internet Service Providers in hopes of tracking down the hackers who launched distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks against Web sites such as Visa.com, PayPal.com, and Mastercard.com earlier this month. In documents posted Wednesday to the Smoking Gun Web site, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation describes the complex path its investigation has taken as it has searched for the computers that served as a central meeting point for the attacks.

Another mammoth Microsoft security update will fix the final bug that allowed the Stuxnet d. But as news that Stuxnet r problem in Iran, Congress n warned that it could be a cyber warfare. update has 17 bull

Officials looking into NASA's “sanitisation and disposal processes” said they discovered that 10 machines containing potentially classified information had been sold on, while another four were only properly processed once an emergency investigation caught them leaving the facility. -snip- The report said that although it was impossible to know what was on the ten computers released from the site, an inspection of the four PCs that were caught at the last minute showed at one contained material that would be subject to International Traffic in Arms Regulations.

RVINE, Calif.—David Norris wants to collect the digital equivalent of fingerprints from every computer, cellphone and TV set-top box in the world. He's off to a good start. So far, Mr. Norris's start-up company, BlueCava Inc., has identified 200 million devices. By the end of next year, BlueCava says it expects to have cataloged one billion of the world's estimated 10 billion devices. -snip- It might seem that one computer is pretty much like any other. Far from it: Each has a different clock setting, different fonts, different software and many other characteristics that make it unique. Every time a...

In a highly anticipated report, the Federal Trade Commission advocated safeguards, including a "do not track" list that would give consumers the option of keeping their Web surfing private. It has similar intent to the do-not-call list that helped curb telemarketing phone calls. While the purpose of "do not track" is similar to "do not call," it's unlikely to be a centralized registry maintained by the government. Instead, it would be a function of Web browsers that would send notice to Web site trackers, essentially saying, "Leave me alone." It might be a feature on browsers to be turned on...

WikiLeaks, the website that published a quarter-million sensitive diplomatic cables on Sunday, is using Amazon.com Inc. servers in the U.S. to help deliver its information. It sounds like an odd choice, but it could make sense. The site cablegate.wikileaks.org, which WikiLeaks is using for the diplomatic documents, is linked to servers run by Amazon Web Services in Seattle, as well as to French company Octopuce. Wikileaks.org, the site’s front page, links back to Amazon servers in the U.S. and in Ireland. Several Internet watchers, including technologist Alex Norcliffe, reported earlier on WikiLeaks’ use of Amazon services. Amazon and WikiLeaks did...

Despite Iranian claims in October that their nuclear systems were cleansed of the Stuxnet virus, Iranian sources confirm that the invasive malworm is still making trouble. It shut down uranium enrichment at Natanz for a week from Nov. 16 to 22 over breakdowns caused by mysterious power fluctuations in the operation of the centrifuge machines enriching uranium at Natanz. The shutdown was reported by the director of the International Atomic Energy Agency Yukiya Amano to the IAEA board in Vienna on Tuesday, Nov. 23. Rapid changes in the spinning speed of the thousands of centrifuges enriching uranium to weapons-grade can...

In the 20th century, this would have been a job for James Bond. The mission: Infiltrate the highly advanced, securely guarded enemy headquarters where scientists in the clutches of an evil master are secretly building a weapon that can destroy the world. Then render that weapon harmless and escape undetected. But in the 21st century, Bond doesn't get the call. Instead, the job is handled by a suave and very sophisticated secret computer worm, a jumble of code called Stuxnet, which in the last year has not only crippled Iran's nuclear program but has caused a major rethinking of computer...

The Electrolytic Fluid Antenna has a range of 30 miles and could be used on sea or land. The average U.S. Navy vessel has 80 different antennae bristling out of it like a spiny beetle. But it's often hard to find adequate space for all of them without interference, and their height can expose the ship to radar detection. What if they could be replaced using something a ship always has plenty of: seawater? Daniel Tam, an engineer at Spawar Systems Center (sort of a DARPA for the Navy), exploited the magnetic induction properties of salt water to create an...

More than half of all combat-related injuries sustained by U.S. troops are the result of explosions, and many of those involve injuries to the head. According to the U.S. Department of Defense, about 130,000 U.S. service members deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan have sustained traumatic brain injuries — ranging from concussion to long-term brain damage and death — as a result of an explosion. Raul Radovitzky, an associate professor in MIT’s Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, is among the researchers looking at ways to prevent these injuries. In a paper published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of...

The German computer security expert who first reported that the Stuxnet worm was designed to attack targets in Iran said the virus specifically attacked the country's nuclear program, in a report posted Friday. In his analysis, Ralph Langner said Stuxnet contained two distinct "digital warheads," specifically designed to attack military targets: Uranium enrichment plants and the Bushehr nuclear power plant. Langner said that the portion of the worm that targeted Uranium enrichment plants manipulated the speeds of mechanical parts in the enrichment process, which would ultimately "result in cracking the rotor, thereby destroying the centrifuge." He said the strategic importance...

IMPORTANT NOTICE: 3:30 PM, Saturday, November,13th - On Friday, November 12th we were hit by a distributed denial of service attack (ddos). We are actively working to mitigate the attack and restore services as soon as possible. Every available resource has been deployed to address this malicious attack. If you are having trouble accessing your webmail, please try the below alternative webmail access points in order: webmail01.register.com, webmail02.register.com, webmail03.register.com. Please note, only one of these 3 webmail access points will work for your specific Register.com email address. If you require further assistance please contact customer service at 1888.734.4783. We will...

I am new to the world of MacBook and while I love it, I don't really like downloading my photos from my Nikon D60 with IPhoto. The process to be able to finish them in Photoshop is tedious (at least as far as I can tell--maybe there is a better way that I don't know about!). Or, maybe there is a better software. I was working with Photoshop 7, so I am also having to learn the new things of CS5 too (altho I'm loving everything except the lack of lighting effects) so far. But, I would really like to...

Best of Linux So far, in my look at Linux compared to Mac and Windows, I've covered music players, photo organizers, and video editors. But all those apps – and all the documents they create – are lost if your hard drive crashes, your laptop takes a spill, or some other catastrophe strikes. If you have documents, you must have a backup solution - Mac users at least have the option of Time Machine and Windows offers Live Drive. In this final installment of my look at the Linux desktop, I'll assess how Linux stacks up against backup solutions for...

Back in June 2008, PrimeSense was looking to sell the technology that would eventually be engineered into what we now know as Xbox Kinect. The first company in Silicon Valley that PrimeSense CEO, Inon Beracha tried to demonstrate the sensor that powers Kinect to was none other than Apple. The technology had been developed by engineers in the Israeli military. When asked about why he thought of Apple first, Beracha told Cult of Mac that "It was the most natural place for the technology." The negotiations didn't go so well. Beracha figured the technology was so good that he would...

Dr. Long Que, assistant professor of electrical engineering at Louisiana Tech University, has reported success in designing and fabricating a device that allows microscale electronic devices to harvest their own wasted energy. The work was described in a paper published in the September edition of Applied Physics Letters, co-authored by students Pushparaj Pathak, Tianhua Zhang, Yuan He, and Shashi Yadav. Developed at Louisiana Tech and described in the paper, this technology uses a cantilever made out of piezoelectric material -- material capable of converting distortions to itself into electrical energy -- and is coated with a carbon nanotube film on...

LOS ANGELES -- The three major broadcast networks, uneasy about viewers bypassing cable and satellite providers -- and the networks' own websites -- to watch their TV shows, have begun blocking a new service from Google Inc. that is designed to make it easy for people to watch programming online. ABC, CBS and NBC confirmed that this week they began blocking Google TV from accessing full-length episodes of prime-time shows such as "NCIS: Los Angeles," "Dancing With the Stars" and "Parks and Recreation," a move aimed at forestalling the technology giant's entry into the living room. Google TV seeks to...

The ITU has given its stamp of approval only to the next versions of those technologies If someone is trying to sell you 4G wireless these days, don't believe them.The truth is, neither WiMax nor LTE (Long-Term Evolution) qualify as 4G (fourth-generation) technologies, according to the International Telecommunication Union Radiocommunication Sector (ITU-R). On Thursday, the group announced it had finished its assessment of submissions for the 4G standard, also called IMT-Advanced. Based on that group's decision, to really be selling 4G, carriers will have to get going with one of two future technologies, called LTE-Advanced and WirelessMAN-Advanced. The latter, also...

Amid the mass of published analysis of the Stuxnet virus, Iran's most obvious vulnerability to cyber-war has drawn little comment: much of the Islamic Republic runs on pirated software. The programmers who apparently cracked Siemens' industrial control code to plant malware in Iran's nuclear facilities needed a high degree of sophistication. Most Iranian computers, though, run on stolen software obtained from public servers sponsored by the Iranian government. It would require far less effort to bring about a virtual shutdown of computation in Iran, and the collapse of the Iranian economy. The information technology apocalypse that the West feared on...