Archive for October, 2008

Fraud Threat Halts Knuth’s Hexadecimal-Dollar Checks

Friday, October 31st, 2008

Barence writes "You may be aware of Donald Knuth, the creator of TeX and author of The Art of Computer Programming, who used to post checks to anyone who spotted an error in one of his books — one hexadecimal dollar, or $2.56. No one cashed them though. This blogger ...

Now From Bruce Schneier, the Skein Hash Function

Friday, October 31st, 2008

An anonymous reader writes "Bruce Schneier and company have created a new hash function called Skein. From his blog entry: 'NIST is holding a competition to replace the SHA family of hash functions, which have been increasingly under attack. (I wrote about an early NIST hash workshop here.) Skein is ...

Discuss the US Presidential Election & Health Care

Friday, October 31st, 2008

Yesterday we discussed the war and how foreign policy will matter in your decision next Tuesday. Today our series of election discussion pieces continues with Health Care. With an obesity epidemic, a failing economy, and ballooning health care costs, which candidate has the best answers to making sure that Americans ...

Why We Need Unlicensed White-Space Broadband Spectrum

Friday, October 31st, 2008

pgoldtho writes "PC Mag has a story about why the 'white-space' spectrum that will be freed when TV broadcasts switch to digital should be available for unlicensed use. This would allow it to be used to deliver broadband connectivity in rural areas and create a 'third pipe' alternative to the ...

Boeing 747 Modified To Act As Infrared Telescope

Friday, October 31st, 2008

xyz writes "A joint project of NASA and the German Aerospace Center has developed a highly modified Boeing-747SP aircraft to carry a 2.5-meter (98.4 inch) infrared telescope. The project SOFIA (Stratospheric Observatory For Infrared Astronomy) will observe radiation in the wavelengths from 0.3 microns to 1.0 millimeters, spanning the visible, ...

Examining the Role of Video Games In the US Election

Friday, October 31st, 2008

Gamasutra is running an article discussing the influence of games and gamers on the 2004 and 2008 presidential elections. The connection, while minor, is continuing to strengthen, from allowing people to register to vote through their consoles, to in-game advertising, to games about and involving the candidates. However, it may ...

Game Makers Accusing Innocent People of Piracy in the UK

Friday, October 31st, 2008

eldavojohn writes "It's a topic that a lot of game makers like Atari don't want the public hearing. Game makers wrongfully accusing clearly innocent people of piracy. From the article, 'According to Michael Coyle, an intellectual property solicitor with law firm Lawdit, more and more people are being wrongly identified ...

Sprint Cuts Cogent Off the Internet

Friday, October 31st, 2008

superbus1929 writes "I work as a security analyst at an internet security company. While troubleshooting an issue, we learned why our customer couldn't keep his site-to-site VPN going from any location that uses Sprint as its ISP: Sprint has decided not to route traffic to Cogent due to litigation. This ...

EA Forum Ban Will Now Mean EA Game Ban

Friday, October 31st, 2008

An anonymous reader writes "A post on the EA Support Forums from APOC, online community manager for Electronic Arts, outlines a new policy for their new forums, saying users who earn a ban based on their behavior in the forums will be locked out of all of the EA games ...

MTV Bleeps Filesharing Software Names In Weird Al Video

Friday, October 31st, 2008

An anonymous reader writes "We've all heard Weird Al Yankovic's 'Don't Download This Song,' which came out a couple years ago, but did you know that MTV is apparently so afraid that kids listening to the song will discover for the first time that file sharing offerings exist that in ...