Archive for the ‘Technology’ Category
2009
“As if AT&T wasn’t already bad enough. In an act that is sure to spark internet rebellions everywhere, AT&T has apparently declared war on the extremely popular imageboard 4chan.org, blocking some of the site’s most popular message boards, including /r9k/ and the infamous /b/. moot, who started 4chan and continues to run the site, has posted a note to the 4chan status blog indicating that AT&T is in fact filtering/blocking the site for many of its customers (we’re still trying to confirm from AT&T’s side).
Reports of the blocking began to surface on reddit this afternoon, and a number of blogs are beginning to pick up on the story, though it doesn’t seem like any have managed to get a comment from AT&T (we’ve reached out to the company and will update once we hear back)… “
source: techcrunch.com
“Scientists at DOE’s Argonne National Laboratory have devised a program that allows for Cyber Security defense systems to communicate when attacked and transmit that information to cyber systems at other institutions in the hopes of strengthening the overall cyber security posture of the complex.
‘The Federated Model for Cyber Security acts as a virtual neighborhood watch program. If one institution is attacked; secure and timely communication to others in the Federation will aide in protecting them from that same attack through active response,’ cyber security officer Michael Skwarek said.”
via sciencedaily.com
“Even Albert Einstein might have been impressed. His theory of general relativity, which describes how the gravity of a massive object, such as a star, can curve space and time, has been successfully used to predict such astronomical observations as the bending of starlight by the sun, small shifts in the orbit of the planet Mercury and the phenomenon known as gravitational lensing. Now, however, it may soon be possible to study the effects of general relativity in bench-top laboratory experiments.
Xiang Zhang, a faculty scientist with the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and professor at the University of California Berkeley, lead a study in which it was determined that the interactions of light and matter with spacetime, as predicted by general relativity, can be studied using the new breed of artificial optical materials that feature extraordinary abilities to bend light and other forms of electromagnetic radiation…”
via sciencedaily.com
“Germany is on the verge of censoring its Internet: The government – a grand coalition between the German social democrats and conservative party – seems united in its decision: On Thursday the parliament is to vote on the erection of an internet censorship architecture.
The Minister for Family Affairs Ursula von der Leyen kicked off and led the discussions within the German Federal Government to block Internet sites in order to fight child pornography. The general idea is to build a censorship architecture enabling the government to block content containing child pornography. The Federal Office of Criminal Investigation (BKA) is to administer the lists of sites to be blocked and the internet providers obliged to erect the secret censorship architecture for the government. “
via wikileaks.org
“Defense and intelligence contractor Raytheon is moving into the lucrative realm of cyber warfare, and wants to hire hundreds of ‘cyber warriors’ to ‘play offense and defense,’ according to an advertisement on the company’s web site.
‘President Obama recently announced that cyber security is one of our country’s most urgent national security priorities,’ reads the ad. ‘Raytheon is answering that call by hiring more cyber warriors this year to help fight the digital cyber war.’
The ad says the company has 250 positions available in its Intelligence and Information Systems (IIS) division. The jobs are for, among others, reverse engineers, kernel developers, and vulnerability and intrusion detection engineers. Raytheon also has positions available for something called “media sanitation specialists.””
via wired.com
“Just a few years ago, the Army was so down on the Land Warrior high-tech soldier get-up that it officially canceled the project. Now, Land Warrior is back from the dead — and considered so valuable that even the Army’s commando elite want the wearable electronics suites.
According to InsideDefense.com, an Army Special Forces battalion will start training with an upgraded version of Land Warrior in 2010, before it deploys to Iraq later in the year.”
via wired.com
“Two years ago, a military robot used in the South African army killed nine soldiers after a malfunction. Earlier this year, a Swedish factory was fined after a robot machine injured one of the workers (though part of the blame was assigned to the worker). Robots have been found guilty of other smaller offenses such as an incorrectly responding to a request…
For years, science fiction author Issac Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics were regarded as sufficient for robotics enthusiasts. The laws, as first laid out in the short story “Runaround,” were simple: A robot may not injure a human being or allow one to come to harm; a robot must obey orders given by human beings; and a robot must protect its own existence. Each of the laws takes precedence over the ones following it, so that under Asimov’s rules, a robot cannot be ordered to kill a human, and it must obey orders even if that would result in its own destruction.
But as robots have become more sophisticated and more integrated into human lives, Asimov’s laws are just too simplistic, says Chien Hsun Chen, coauthor of a paper published in the International Journal of Social Robotics last month. The paper has sparked off a discussion among robot experts who say it is time for humans to get to work on these ethical dilemmas.”
via wired.com
“The UK’s technology industry can pull the country out of its debt hole and make up for the decline in manufacturing.
So reckons Micro Focus, which is launching a manifesto called Making BrITain Great Again. The group is promoting five policy moves backed by its panel of three parliamentarians – Tory Lord Young of Graffam, Labour’s Lord Harris of Haringey and for the LibDems Lord Razzall of Mortlake.
The group notes the long-term decline of UK manufacturing and the recent collapse of financial services shows the need for the UK to have some basis for sustainable growth in the future. The group calls for all political parties to embrace the same five point strategy as follows.”
via theregister.co.uk