Friday Open Thread

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced that beginning today, it would publish on its public website a list of FCC Items on Circulation. On Friday, November 30, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin informed Congress of his intent to take steps to ensure equal access to information, particularly in regard to the disclosure of information about proposed rules that are scheduled to be considered by the Commission.

said by grobinette:

And it seems like just yesterday..

said by Air WAV:

Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy...yep, the memories.

Hackers have succeeded in breaking into the computer systems of two of the U.S.' most important science labs, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in Tennessee and Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.

In what a spokesperson for the Oak Ridge facility described as a "sophisticated cyber attack," it appears that intruders accessed a database of visitors to the Tennessee lab between 1990 and 2004, which included their social security numbers and dates of birth. Three thousand researchers reportedly visit the lab each year, a who's who of the science establishment in the U.S.

"Because of the sensitive nature of this event, the laboratory will be unable for some period to discuss further details until we better understand the full nature of this attack," he added.
Less is known about the attacks said to have been launched against the ORNL's sister-institution at Los Alamos, but the two are said to be linked.

The ORNL is a multipurpose science lab, a site of technological expertise used in homeland security and military research, and also the site of one of the world's fastest supercomputers. Los Alamos operates a similar multi-disciplinary approach, but specializes in nuclear weapons research, one of only two such sites doing such top-secret work in the U.S.

A "sophisticated cyberattack" has been detected at Oak Ridge National Laboratory over the last several weeks, and authorities suspect the hackers are based in China.

Investigators have not been able to determine whether the attacks came from government or private entities in China.

Other federal labs, including Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and California's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, have also been targeted in the scheme.

said by Jeffrey:

Is anyone else besides me terribly disturbed at what sort of adversary China will be in 20 years?

said by OldschoolDSL:

China and The US will go to war. This is the third time China as been into our nuke program and/or defense systems. Their army has been growing out of control for 10yrs. Friends? With friends like this, who needs enemies?

said by OldschoolDSL:

China and The US will go to war. This is the third time China as been into our nuke program and/or defense systems. Their army has been growing out of control for 10yrs. Friends? With friends like this, who needs enemies?

said by Jeffrey:

Is anyone else besides me terribly disturbed at what sort of adversary China will be in 20 years?

said by PolarBear03:

Yes. And here we are blowing all we got on a pissant-of-a-country like Iraq.

FYI, I DO support our country, so please flame lightly.

said by gaforces:

And dont forget getting our asses kicked in Afghanistan.

said by Jeffrey:

Is anyone else besides me terribly disturbed at what sort of adversary China will be in 20 years?

said by Dominokat:

In that case, I need a beer.

said by Dominokat:

In that case, I need a beer.

IBM (IBM.N) says it has made a breakthrough in converting electrical signals into light pulses that brings closer the day when supercomputing, which now requires huge machines, will be done on a single chip.

In research published in the journal Optics Express, IBM said it had reached a milestone in the quest to connect hundreds or thousands of processing cores on a tiny chip by eliminating the wires required to connect them.

The semiconductor industry is evolving multi-core chips that take up less space than multiple single-core chips but they are extremely power-hungry and produce large amounts of heat, factors that are holding back improvements in computing power.

IBM's Cell processor which powers the Sony (6758.T) PlayStation 3 -- one of the most advanced chips there is today -- has nine cores, or "brains."

Using light instead of wires to send information between the cores by using a silicon Mach-Zehnder electro-optic modulator can be as much as 100 times faster and use 10 times less power than wires, IBM says.

The new modulator IBM has developed is 100 to 1,000 times smaller than previously demonstrated comparable modulators, IBM said on Thursday, paving the way for significant reductions in cost, energy and heat while increasing bandwidth.

"Just like fiber optic networks have enabled the rapid expansion of the Internet by enabling users to exchange huge amounts of data from anywhere in the world, IBM's technology is bringing similar capabilities to the computer chip," IBM's lead scientist on the project, Will Green, said in a statement.

"We believe this is a major advancement in the field of on-chip silicon nanophotonics."

A program which can mimic online flirtation and then extract personal information from its unsuspecting conversation partners is making the rounds in Russian chat forums, according to security software firm PC Tools.

The artificial intelligence of CyberLover's automated chats is good enough that victims have a tough time distinguishing the "bot" from a real potential suitor, PC Tools said. The software can work quickly too, establishing up to 10 relationships in 30 minutes, PC Tools said. It compiles a report on every person it meets complete with name, contact information and photos.

Among CyberLover's creepy features is its ability to offer a range of different profiles from "romantic lover" to "sexual predator." It can also lead victims to a "personal" Web site, which could be used to deliver malware, PC Tools said.

Robot chatters are just one type of social engineering attack that uses trickery rather than a software flaw to access victim's valuable information. Such attacks have been on the rise and are predicted to continue to grow.

said by PetePuma:

Funny, I just went out a few weeks ago and got a 1571 disk drive and a XE/XM1541 cable to pull files off of old disks. Funny to look at code I wrote (and games I played) in 1985. Some of the former is better than what I can write now, and it's my job!

said by PetePuma:

Just bad naming:

»sta.c64.org/xe1541.html

It's a parallel-to-Commodore interface that can then be used to read disks (actually using an XM1541 cable and the "opencbm" tools on Sourceforge to read disks. Very neat.)

said by Gizmo_piper:

Don't forget Operation Just Cause in 89

said by swinn:

Compute! was a great magazine. I also spent hours typing in the source code for games. The machine code programs were tedious and one mistake would cause the whole thing to not work but it was fun. I still have my C64 in working condition as well as all my floppies. Every so often I'll pull it out and play Jumpman Jr.

I agree, those were the days