Schneier on Security: Data Mining Software from IBM

In the long term, corporate data mining efforts are more of a privacy risk than government data mining efforts. And here's an off-the-shelf product from IBM:

IBM Entity Analytic Solutions (EAS) is unique identity disambiguation software that provides public sector organizations or commercial enterprises with the ability to recognize and mitigate the incidence of fraud, threat and risk. This IBM EAS offering provides insight on demand, and in context, on "who is who," "who knows who," and "anonymously."

Schneier on Security: Data Mining Software from IBM

Get 10 Copies of New Ubuntu Linux on CD Shipped Free

The New Ubuntu Linux 6.06 (Dapper Drake) will be released in early June. You can get up to 10 copies shipped to you absolutely free including 64 bit and Mac versions.

Get 10 Copies of New Ubuntu Linux on CD Shipped Free

Firefox 2.0 Bakes in Anti-Phish Antidote

Mozilla has reached the latest development milestone for its next-generation Firefox 2.0 "Bon Echo" browser with a little anti-phishing help from Google.

Anti-phishing capability, which Mozilla has branded "Safe Browsing," is one of the marquee features in Firefox 2.0 and one of the reasons a third alpha is necessary. Now baked into Firefox 2.0 alpha 3, Google Safe Browsing is triple-licensed under the Mozilla Public License (MPL) 1.1, the GPL 2.0 (define) and the LGLP (define).

It is also built into the Google Toolbar, which is available for both Firefox and IE.
Firefox 2.0 Bakes in Anti-Phish Antidote

Inhabitat » Blog Archive » GROUNDBREAKING MATERIAL: OLED illuminated surfaces

Imagine a house without a single light fixture - but instead walls, ceilings, furnishings, and accessories all sources of light. Thanks to research at Princeton University and the University of Southern California (USC), almost any surface in a building can become a light source with OLEDs.
Inhabitat » Blog Archive » GROUNDBREAKING MATERIAL: OLED illuminated surfaces

TechEBlog » Top 10 Strangest Gadgets of the Future

This week, our editors have compiled a list of the “Top 10 Strangest Gadgets of the Future”, from solar powered LEDs to memory LCD screens, it’s all here. Which ones are your favorites?
TechEBlog » Top 10 Strangest Gadgets of the Future

Growing glowing nanowires to light up the nanoworld

The nano world is getting brighter. Nanowires made of semiconductor materials are being used to make prototype lasers and light-emitting diodes with emission apertures roughly 100 nm in diameter--about 50 times narrower than conventional counterparts. Nanolight sources may have many applications, including "lab on a chip" devices for identifying chemicals and biological agents, scanning-probe microscope tips for imaging objects smaller than is currently possible, or ultra-precise tools for laser surgery and electronics manufacturing.
Growing glowing nanowires to light up the nanoworld

Carbon Nanotube Computers

Researchers at IBM have overcome an important obstacle to building computers based on carbon nanotubes, by developing a way to selectively arrange transistors that were made using the carbon molecules. The achievement, described in the current issue of Nano Letters, could help make large-scale integrated circuits built out of carbon nanotubes possible, leading to ultrafast, low-power processors.
Technology Review: Emerging Technologies and their Impact

Schneier on Security: El Al Doesn't Trust the TSA

El Al Doesn't Trust the TSA

They want to do security themselves at Newark Airport, as they already do at four other U.S. airports.

No other airline has such an arrangement with U.S. officials, authorities acknowledged. At the four other airports, El Al has installed its own security software at bomb-detection machines, which authorities said is more sensitive than that used by American carriers.

Schneier on Security: El Al Doesn't Trust the TSA

Schneier on Security: The Problems with Data Mining

The Problems with Data Mining

Great op-ed in The New York Times on why the NSA's data mining efforts won't work, by Jonathan Farley, math professor at Harvard.

Schneier on Security: The Problems with Data Mining

Schneier on Security: Smart Profiling from the DHS

Smart Profiling from the DHS

About time:

Here's how it works: Select TSA employees will be trained to identify suspicious individuals who raise red flags by exhibiting unusual or anxious behavior, which can be as simple as changes in mannerisms, excessive sweating on a cool day, or changes in the pitch of a person's voice. Racial or ethnic factors are not a criterion for singling out people, TSA officials say. Those who are identified as suspicious will be examined more thoroughly; for some, the agency will bring in local police to conduct face-to-face interviews and perhaps run the person's name against national criminal databases and determine whether any threat exists. If such inquiries turn up other issues countries with terrorist connections, police officers can pursue the questioning or alert Federal counterterrorism agents. And of course the full retinue of baggage x-rays, magnetometers and other checks for weapons will continue.

Schneier on Security: Smart Profiling from the DHS

Schneier on Security: Diebold Doesn't Get It

Diebold Doesn't Get It

This quote sums up nicely why Diebold should not be trusted to secure election machines:

David Bear, a spokesman for Diebold Election Systems, said the potential risk existed because the company's technicians had intentionally built the machines in such a way that election officials would be able to update their systems in years ahead.

"For there to be a problem here, you're basically assuming a premise where you have some evil and nefarious election officials who would sneak in and introduce a piece of software," he said. "I don't believe these evil elections people exist."

If you can't get the threat model right, you can't hope to secure the system.

Schneier on Security: Diebold Doesn't Get It

Strange New Products: A Camera That You Can Download

Linatree claims to have made the first free downloadable pinhole camera that you can print out, cut out, and assemble together. Check out their Flash animation instructions.

Strange New Products: A Camera That You Can Download

Top 10 must-haves - CNET.com

You may be shocked not to find an iPod on the list below. Well, here comes some more shocking news. The iRiver Clix, thanks to its excellent compatibility with the revamped Windows Media Player 11 and MTV Urge music service, joins the party this week. Yup: no iPod, no iTunes...and no doubt about it. Oh, and the Windows Treo shouldn't get comfy, because the Treo 700p looks mighty promising. Mighty promising indeed.

Top 10 must-haves - CNET.com

The Command Line in Windows XP: commands that everybody can use

The Windows command line is a mainstay for systems administrators and power users but is relatively unknown to many PC users. The purpose of this site is to make the power and utility of the command line more familiar to a wider community of computer users. Also under-appreciated are the related resources of batch files and scripts and these will be discussed as well.

The Command Line in Windows XP: commands that everybody can use

Technology Review: Emerging Technologies and their Impact

Carbon nanotubes -- incredibly strong, electrically conductive, hollow molecules of carbon about a nanometer in diameter -- have for more than a decade been prized by materials scientists. They've added them to batteries to increase their surface area and are developing light-emitting nanotubes for telecommunications.

Technology Review: Emerging Technologies and their Impact

HOW TO: Get Through Having Your Identity Stolen - Consumerist

After our last post on identity theft, regular Consumerist commenter trixare4kids sent us a great, well-crafted email detailing her own experience having her identity stolen. Better yet, she wrote us a personalized How To for getting through an identity theft crisis.

HOW TO: Get Through Having Your Identity Stolen - Consumerist

Digital Air - Camera Array Imaging and Image Processing Technologies

The links below detail a variety of Digital Air's innovative visual effects techniques. Each page includes technical notes, an example, and a brief description of the equipment and process used to produce the example.

Digital Air - Camera Array Imaging and Image Processing Technologies

Transparent VW Phaeton Factory in Dresden | NetworkWorld.com Community

No, it really is transparent! This has to be the world's cleanest car building factory! (Be patient, the page that loads from the VWvortex Forums is huge -- not a good format choice.)

Transparent VW Phaeton Factory in Dresden | NetworkWorld.com Community

BBC NEWS | Americas | 'Brazilian Stonehenge' discovered

Brazilian archaeologists have found an ancient stone structure in a remote corner of the Amazon that may cast new light on the region's past.

The site, thought to be an observatory or place of worship, pre-dates European colonisation and is said to suggest a sophisticated knowledge of astronomy.

BBC NEWS | Americas | 'Brazilian Stonehenge' discovered

Technology Review: Emerging Technologies and their Impact

A novel process for squeezing hydrogen out of biomass could mean a cheaper and easier way to make hydrogen for fuel cells.
By Duncan Graham-Rowe

A small company in Madison, WI has developed a novel way to generate hydrogen cheaply and cleanly from biomass.

In the next couple of weeks, the technology, developed by Virent Energy Systems, will be used for the first time to continuously produce electricity from a small 10-kilowatt generator at the company's facility in Madison. The unit is fueled by corn syrup, similar to the kind used by soft drinks manufacturers, says CEO Eric Apfelbach.

Technology Review: Emerging Technologies and their Impact

Popular Science: Mini Machines Photo Gallery

Today’s advanced micromachining techniques give scientists the ability to fabricate complex objects on a scale never before possible. And things just keep getting more interesting. See for yourself in this gallery of tiny wonders, from miniature submarines capable of sailing through your blood vessels to tiny eyeglasses for houseflies.

Popular Science: Mini Machines Photo Gallery

Schneier on Security: Major Vulnerability Found in Diebold Election Machines

May 11, 2006
Major Vulnerability Found in Diebold Election Machines

This is a big deal:

Elections officials in several states are scrambling to understand and limit the risk from a "dangerous" security hole found in Diebold Election Systems Inc.'s ATM-like touch-screen voting machines.

The hole is considered more worrisome than most security problems discovered on modern voting machines, such as weak encryption, easily pickable locks and use of the same, weak password nationwide.

Armed with a little basic knowledge of Diebold voting systems and a standard component available at any computer store, someone with a minute or two of access to a Diebold touch screen could load virtually any software into the machine and disable it, redistribute votes or alter its performance in myriad ways.
Schneier on Security: Major Vulnerability Found in Diebold Election Machines

Pursuing the Invisible with Einstein's Lens

Though he couldn't be observed directly, the Invisible Man knew his presence could be betrayed by his effect on visible things. Employing a similar principle, a team led by Andrew Gould of Ohio State University will hunt for hard-to-see celestial objects, like black holes and dark matter, by observing how they affect light coming from stars behind them.
Pursuing the Invisible with Einstein's Lens

Schneier on Security: Computer Problems at the NSA

Computers are integral to everything NSA does, yet it is not uncommon for the agency's unstable computer system to freeze for hours, unlike the previous system, which had a backup mechanism that enabled analysts to continue their work, said Matthew Aid, a former NSA analyst and congressional intelligence staff member.
Schneier on Security: Computer Problems at the NSA