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Background images were the temporary default look for Google.com before being pulled earlier than expected.
Nautilus Science &Technology News
June 10, 2010 By: Marco A. Ayllon
Fourteen hours into a 24-hour experiment with background imagery, Google's home page is once again stark white.
Design guru Marissa Mayer confirmed that Google was ending the experiment early due to what she called a "bug," which erased a link underneath the search bar on google.com that explained why Google's famously spartan home page had taken on a colorful look. Apparently many searchers on Google.com Thursday morning missed the company's blog post Wednesday night, and were confused and annoyed at the change, turning "remove google background" into the seventh-most-popular search on Google Thursday.
Last week Google announced that it would begin providing its users with the option of setting their own background image behind the home page, but last night it forced an image to appear for all users signed into a Google account to highlight the feature. That didn't sit well with many grown used to Google's clean white design, especially when Google's explanation of why it was forcing this look vanished from the home page.
It also gave fans of Microsoft's Bing search engine a chance to crow, given that one of Bing's most noticeable features is a striking background image behind Bing.com that contains links to searches about the image.
AT&T confirmed that at least 114,000 people's private data had been compromised by the iPad security breach Wednesday.
Nautilus Science &Technology News
June 10, 2010
By: Marco A. Ayllon
The harvesting of over 100,000 iPad 3G owners' e-mail addresses was not a hack or a classic data breach, but a brute-force attack of a minor feature AT&T offered to Apple customers, experts said Wednesday.
According to New York-based Praetorian Security Group, which obtained a copy of the PHP script used to scrape e-mail addresses from AT&T's servers, the attack succeeded because the mobile carrier used poorly designed software.
A nine-person hacking group known as Goatse Security claimed responsibility for the script, which amassed 114,000 e-mail addresses.
"There's no hack, no infiltration, and no breach, just a really poorly-designed Web application that returns e-mail address when ICC-ID is passed to it," Praetorian said in a late Wednesday entry on its security blog.
An ICC-ID (Integrated Circuit Card Identifier) is the unique number assigned to each SIM card. A mobile device's SIM stores information that identifies the specific wireless customer to his or her carrier. The iPad 3G contains a SIM card.
AT&T confirmed the nature of the attack to technology blog Gizmodo. Gawker, Gizmodo's parent Web site, first reported the e-mail harvesting Wednesday.
The script Praetorian made public was a "brute-force attack," according to AT&T's chief security officer Ed Amoroso, who spoke with Gizmodo.
When iPad 3G owners sign up for wireless data service with AT&T, the carrier detects the SIM's 19-digit ICC-ID -- essentially a serial number -- then asks for a contact e-mail address. AT&T uses the e-mail address to populate one of two log-in fields in the iPad's settings screen so that the user has to enter only a password to check his or her account status.
That same e-mail address was what the script harvested. E-mail addresses apparently belonging to New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and top executives at Dow Jones, The New York Times Co. and Time Warner were among those collected.
AT&T turned off access to the feature Tuesday and apologized to customers in a statement it issued Wednesday. It also said that only e-mail addresses linked to each ICC-ID, not financial information or other personal data, was snatched from its servers.
AT&T did not respond to a request for further comment late Wednesday.
The disclosure of iPad owners' e-mail addresses was the second embarrassing story linked to Apple published by Gawker Media since April.
Two months ago, Gizmodo published photographs and an analysis of an iPhone prototype that it had bought from a California man who found it in a bar. Gizmodo was later denied a press pass to Apple CEO Steve Jobs' keynote at the Worldwide Developers Conference, where he introduced the already familiar-looking iPhone 4 on June 7.
Nautilus Science and Technology February 6, 2010 By: Marco Ayllon
The Shenzhen Great Loong Brother Company of China has alleged the Apple iPad design that CEO Steve Jobs triumphantly unveiled last week is based on its own P88 tablet and is threatening Apple with an injunction.
Spanish newspaper El Mundo has reported that the Chinese company’s president, Xialong Wu, said that if Apple releases the iPad in March it will report the company and seek an injunction because of the effect the device will have on its sales.
Wu said the P88 is not based on the design of the smaller iPod touch and said the P88 has entirely different functions.
Apple has refused to comment on the allegations. But could such a legal action succeed?
Wu said he presented the P88 at the International Electronics Fair in Berlin six months ago.
The P88 uses a resistive touchscreen, not the multi-touch screen of the Apple iPad and uses a 250GB hard drive compared to the iPad’s flash memory.
Wu has admitted he would find it difficult to sue Apple in the United States but has threatened that if the iPad enters China he will go to town on Apple.
Nautilus Science and Technology February 6, 2010 By; Marco Ayllon
January was an exceptionally light month for Microsoft security bulletins, with only one released on schedule on Patch Tuesday. However, revelations about an Internet Explorer zero-day exploit being used to launch attacks against Google and other companies in China led Microsoft to also issue an out-of-band update addressing the vulnerability in the Web browser.
Tyler Reguly, senior security engineer for nCircle expressed some "sticker shock". "As an information security professional, the first word that comes to mind when I see this advanced notice is "yikes!". nCircle VERT works all night to deliver local and remote detection to customers and this many bulletins means a long night requiring plenty of caffeine."
Reguly added "I'm most intrigued by bulletin number nine in the advanced notification. I'm curious to know what issue it is that plagues only Server 2008 and Server 2008 R2 in x64 configurations."
Jerry Bryant, senior security communications manager for Microsoft, described the upcoming Patch Tuesday in a blog post. "This month, we will be releasing 13 bulletins--five rated Critical, seven rated Important, and one rated Moderate--addressing 26 vulnerabilities. Eleven of the bulletins affect Windows and the remaining two affect Office."
Bryant's blog post also contains a table which lays out a grid describing Microsoft's guidance for urgency of deployment based on platform. Windows 2000 and Windows XP, the oldest operating systems tracked on the grid, are impacted the most by security issues rated as Critical.
Microsoft is scheduled to end all support for Windows 2000 and for Windows XP SP2 effective July 13, 2010. Bryant says "We encourage customers to upgrade to the latest versions of both Windows and Office. As this bulletin release shows, the latest versions are less impacted overall due to the improved security protections built in to these products."
Businesses still on Windows 2000 will be forced to upgrade to some other version of Windows, or an alternate operating system, or simply continue to rely on the archaic platform with the knowledge that Microsoft will no longer support or update it.
Companies that use Windows XP SP2 have a much easier solution because they can simply apply Service Pack 3. It is also worth noting that support for Windows Vista RTM ends April 13, 2010, so businesses that have deployed Windows Vista need to ensure systems are updated to Service Pack 1.
The Internet Explorer flaw identified in Microsoft Security Advisory 980088, released from Microsoft yesterday, will not be patched this month. Microsoft states in the security advisory that the vulnerability is not currently being exploited in the wild, and provides some steps to mitigate the threat and protect your systems pending an actual patch.
As Reguly suggested, IT administrators may want to start a pot of coffee and make sure the break room fridge is stocked with Mountain Dew. Next Tuesday will be the beginning of some long hours testing and patching.
Nutilus Science and Technology News By:Marco Ayllon February 6,2010 Facebook Marks 6th Birthday With Redesign 05.02.2010 Popular social-networking site Facebook has spruced up its homepage again. A clever step to mark six years or a mid-life crisis comb-over?
This time, the redesign plants more of Facebook's core features and settings on the homepage, in order to prevent users from having to jump from page to page to access their favourite items.
The first group of Facebook members would have noticed the redesign on Thursday night - the day Facebook marked its sixth anniversary.
Facebook has another fix-up in the works, as well. The company is reportedly also ready to revamp its internal e-mail program and replace it with a full-featured web mail application.
The new e-mail system will support both POP and IMAP, so users can use it outside Facebook and be able to set up their own Facebook vanity URL as their address, for example, joe.smith@facebook.com.
The popular social-networking site has tweaked its home page yet again. This time around, the redesign puts more of Facebook's core features and settings right on the home page. The goal is to spare users from having to jump from one page to another to access their favorite features.
The redesign was rolled out to the first group of users on Thursday, Facebook's 6th birthday. As of Thursday evening, 80 million out of Facebook's 400 million customers should have received the new home page, according to Inside Facebook.
The top menu of the Facebook home page now displays icons for requests, messages, and other notifications. The icons turn into red bubbles when you've got new requests waiting for your attention. Just click on one of the icons, and a drop-down menu appears showing you all the items in that list.
The right side of the top menu now displays links that take you home or to your profile page. A new account menu lets you quickly access your account settings, help center, and related pages.
In the middle of the top menu is a new search field, through which you can find names, subjects, and other items of interest. Type the name of a friend, for example, and you'll find recent posts, photos, and other content for that person. Type the name of a subject, such as Haiti earthquake, and you'll also find groups and pages devoted to that cause.
The left side of the new home page offers links to your news feed, messages, friends, and photos. But there's a twist here as well. Click on the Friends link, and the Friends page pops up in the center. Click on the Photos link, and your own photo albums and those of your friends appear. The center of the home page essentially stays the same by displaying your news feed, though you can now bounce between top news and most recent news.
But a home page redesign isn't the only thing on Facebook's mind. The company is reportedly also ready to jettison its internal e-mail program and replace it with a full-featured Web mail application, according to TechCrunch.
Known internally as Project Titan, the new e-mail effort could please many Facebook users who have complained about the limitations and clumsiness of the current e-mail feature. TechCrunch says the new e-mail system will support both POP and IMAP, so you can use it outside of Facebook.
By: Marco A. Ayllon Science and Technology News July 30, 2009
The major recording labels in the US are again going after an individual for swapping songs through file-sharing networks such as Kazaa.
In the previous case, in Minnesota, a single mother of four was fined more than $2 million for copyright infringement.
Tenenbaum is accused of downloading and distributing songs from bands such as Green Day and Aerosmith. The case centres on 30 shared songs, though the recording companies say he distributed many more than that.
The court heard that Tenenbaum was "a kid who did what kids do and loved technology and loved music".
The industry has typically offered to settle cases for about $US5000, though it has said that it stopped filing such lawsuits last August and is instead working with internet service providers to fight the worst offenders. However, cases already filed are proceeding to trial.
Charles Nesson, a Harvard Law School professor representing Tenenbaum, said his client - a graduate student in physics - started downloading music as a teenager, taking advantage of file-sharing networks that make it possible for computer users to share digital files with a network of strangers.
"He was a kid who did what kids do and loved technology and loved music," Nesson said in opening statements.
Nesson said the recording companies enjoyed decades of success but were slow to adapt to the advancements of the internet.
"The internet was not Joel's fault," Nesson said. "The internet sweeps in like the way the automobile swept into the buggy industry."
But Tim Reynolds, one of the lawyers representing the recording industry, said song-swappers such as Tenenbaum took a significant toll on the recording industry's revenues and on back-up singers, sound engineers and other people who make a living in music.
Reynolds said Tenenbaum used a computer in his parents' house in Providence and then at Goucher College in Baltimore, where he was a student, to download and distribute digital files.
He was flagged in August 2004 by MediaSentry, a private investigation company that was used by the recording industry to identify illegal song distribution.
Reynolds said that Tenenbaum continued distributing songs even after he had been confronted about it and that the defendant blamed his sister, friends and a foster child who had lived at the house.
"This defendant knew what he was doing was wrong at each step of the way," Reynolds said.
Under federal law, the recording companies are entitled to $US750 to $US30,000 per infringement but the law allows the jury to raise that to as much as $150,000 per track if it finds the infringements were wilful.
In the Minnesota case, the jury ruled Jammie Thomas-Rasset, 32, wilfully violated the copyrights on 24 songs and awarded damages of $US80,000 per song.
Nesson urged the jury to "find the minimum number of infringements" by Tenenbaum, if any at all.
The recording companies involved in the case are subsidiaries of Universal Music, Warner Music and Sony.
There's no subterfuge with Joel Tenenbaum.
The graduate student accused of copyright violations admitted in court on Thursday that he shared files and knew others were downloading the music he made available on Kazaa, according to a Twitter post from blogger Ben Sheffner.
Sheffner, a copyright lawyer who is covering the story from the courtroom, wrote "(Music industry) attorney getting scores of admissions from Tenenbaum. Joel doesn't resist."
The four major music labels, Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, EMI and Sony Music filed the copyright suit against Tenenbaum and in previous statements he denied sharing, according to Sheffner.
By admitting guilt, it appears Tenenbaum is going to take his chances that his attorney, Prof. Charles Nesson can convince the jury that sharing unauthorized music files doesn't cause that much harm and ordering defendants to pay big damages isn't justified.
Tenenbaum, along with Jammie Thomas-Rasset, are the only people accused of illegal file sharing that have taken their cases before a jury. In June, Thomas was found liable of copyright infringement and ordered to pay nearly $2 million.
By: Marco A. Ayllon Science and Technology News July 30, 2009
A robot that can open doors and find electrical outlets to recharge itself. Computer viruses that no one can stop. Predator drones, which, though still controlled remotely by humans, come close to a machine that can kill autonomously.
Impressed and alarmed by advances in artificial intelligence, a group of computer scientists is debating whether there should be limits on research that might lead to loss of human control over computer-based systems that carry a growing share of society’s workload, from waging war to chatting with customers on the phone.
Their concern is that further advances could create profound social disruptions and even have dangerous consequences.
As examples, the scientists pointed to a number of technologies as diverse as experimental medical systems that interact with patients to simulate empathy, and computer worms and viruses that defy extermination and could thus be said to have reached a “cockroach” stage of machine intelligence.
While the computer scientists agreed that we are a long way from Hal, the computer that took over the spaceship in “2001: A Space Odyssey,” they said there was legitimate concern that technological progress would transform the work force by destroying a widening range of jobs, as well as force humans to learn to live with machines that increasingly copy human behaviors.
The researchers — leading computer scientists, artificial intelligence researchers and roboticists who met at the Asilomar Conference Grounds on Monterey Bay in California — generally discounted the possibility of highly centralized superintelligences and the idea that intelligence might spring spontaneously from the Internet. But they agreed that robots that can kill autonomously are either already here or will be soon.
They focused particular attention on the specter that criminals could exploit artificial intelligence systems as soon as they were developed. What could a criminal do with a speech synthesis system that could masquerade as a human being? What happens if artificial intelligence technology is used to mine personal information from smart phones?
The researchers also discussed possible threats to human jobs, like self-driving cars, software-based personal assistants and service robots in the home. Just last month, a service robot developed by Willow Garage in Silicon Valley proved it could navigate the real world.
A report from the conference, which took place in private on Feb. 25, is to be issued later this year. Some attendees discussed the meeting for the first time with other scientists this month and in interviews.
The conference was organized by the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, and in choosing Asilomar for the discussions, the group purposefully evoked a landmark event in the history of science. In 1975, the world’s leading biologists also met at Asilomar to discuss the new ability to reshape life by swapping genetic material among organisms. Concerned about possible biohazards and ethical questions, scientists had halted certain experiments. The conference led to guidelines for recombinant DNA research, enabling experimentation to continue.
The meeting on the future of artificial intelligence was organized by Eric Horvitz, a Microsoft researcher who is now president of the association.
Dr. Horvitz said he believed computer scientists must respond to the notions of superintelligent machines and artificial intelligence systems run amok.
The idea of an “intelligence explosion” in which smart machines would design even more intelligent machines was proposed by the mathematician I. J. Good in 1965. Later, in lectures and science fiction novels, the computer scientist Vernor Vinge popularized the notion of a moment when humans will create smarter-than-human machines, causing such rapid change that the “human era will be ended.” He called this shift the Singularity.
This vision, embraced in movies and literature, is seen as plausible and unnerving by some scientists like William Joy, co-founder of Sun Microsystems. Other technologists, notably Raymond Kurzweil, have extolled the coming of ultrasmart machines, saying they will offer huge advances in life extension and wealth creation.
“Something new has taken place in the past five to eight years,” Dr. Horvitz said. “Technologists are providing almost religious visions, and their ideas are resonating in some ways with the same idea of the Rapture.”
The Kurzweil version of technological utopia has captured imaginations in Silicon Valley. This summer an organization called the Singularity University began offering courses to prepare a “cadre” to shape the advances and help society cope with the ramifications.
“My sense was that sooner or later we would have to make some sort of statement or assessment, given the rising voice of the technorati and people very concerned about the rise of intelligent machines,” Dr. Horvitz said.
The A.A.A.I. report will try to assess the possibility of “the loss of human control of computer-based intelligences.” It will also grapple, Dr. Horvitz said, with socioeconomic, legal and ethical issues, as well as probable changes in human-computer relationships. How would it be, for example, to relate to a machine that is as intelligent as your spouse?
Dr. Horvitz said the panel was looking for ways to guide research so that technology improved society rather than moved it toward a technological catastrophe. Some research might, for instance, be conducted in a high-security laboratory.
The meeting on artificial intelligence could be pivotal to the future of the field. Paul Berg, who was the organizer of the 1975 Asilomar meeting and received a Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1980, said it was important for scientific communities to engage the public before alarm and opposition becomes unshakable.
“If you wait too long and the sides become entrenched like with G.M.O.,” he said, referring to genetically modified foods, “then it is very difficult. It’s too complex, and people talk right past each other.”
Tom Mitchell, a professor of artificial intelligence and machine learning at Carnegie Mellon University, said the February meeting had changed his thinking. “I went in very optimistic about the future of A.I. and thinking that Bill Joy and Ray Kurzweil were far off in their predictions,” he said. But, he added, “The meeting made me want to be more outspoken about these issues and in particular be outspoken about the vast amounts of data collected about our personal lives.”
Despite his concerns, Dr. Horvitz said he was hopeful that artificial intelligence research would benefit humans, and perhaps even compensate for human failings. He recently demonstrated a voice-based system that he designed to ask patients about their symptoms and to respond with empathy. When a mother said her child was having diarrhea, the face on the screen said, “Oh no, sorry to hear that.”
A physician told him afterward that it was wonderful that the system responded to human emotion. “That’s a great idea,” Dr. Horvitz said he was told. “I have no time for that.”
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