Free Republic

The Dimona complex in the Negev desert is famous as the heavily guarded heart of Israel’s never-acknowledged nuclear arms program, where neat rows of factories make atomic fuel for the arsenal. Over the past two years, according to intelligence and military experts familiar with its operations, Dimona has taken on a new, equally secret role — as a critical testing ground in a joint American and Israeli effort to undermine Iran’s efforts to make a bomb of its own.

WASHINGTON -- Israel has tested a computer worm believed to have sabotaged Iran's nuclear centrifuges and slowed its ability to develop an atomic weapon, The New York Times reported Saturday. In what the Times described as a joint Israeli-U.S. effort to undermine Iran's nuclear ambitions, it said the tests of the destructive Stuxnet worm had occurred over the past two years at the heavily guarded Dimona complex in the Negev desert.

When will the mockery of the Catholic Church cease? Not anytime soon it seems. Penance – the new free iPhone application that allows users to anonymously “confess” their sins to other users, and to give “absolution,” makes a mockery not only of the Church and the Sacrament of Reconciliation, but also of the Church’s structure. By “confessing” and “absolving,” users are able to accrue “horns” or “halos.” The more notable “confessors” are ranked with titles such as “Saints” to “Bishops,” “Cardinals,” and “Holy Father/Mother of the Church.” The highest ranking users are allowed to issue week-long edicts to those below...

In a groundbreaking achievement that could help scientists "build" new biological systems, Princeton University scientists have constructed for the first time artificial proteins that enable the growth of living cells. The team of researchers created genetic sequences never before seen in nature, and the scientists showed that they can produce substances that sustain life in cells almost as readily as proteins produced by nature's own toolkit.

(PhysOrg.com) -- A Japanese scientist who "likes alcohol very much" has discovered that soaking samples of material in hot party drinks for 24 hours turns them into superconductors at ambient temperature. The scientist, Dr. Yoshihiko Takano of the National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS) in Tsukuba, Japan, made the discovery after a party, soaking samples of a potential superconductor in hot alcoholic drinks before testing them next day for superconductivity. The commercial alcoholic beverages, especially wine, were much more effective than either water or pure alcohol.

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...