VERY,VERY HOT READS, I Would Read The News In This Thread This Thead Is To post Any Thing Ye Want About The News,,NEWS WAS MOVED,READ MY FIRST POS...

Using Watermarks to Combat Piracy

February 13, @03:39PM
from the ears-just-need-better-training dept.
Music Software
TheEvilOverlord writes to tell us PC Advisor is reporting that researchers at the Fraunhofer Integrated Publication and Information Systems Institute have developed a new watermarking system to help track and combat piracy. From the article: "The system lets content providers, such as music studios, embed a watermark in their downloadable MP3 files. Watermark technology makes slight changes to data in sound and image files. For instance, the change could be a higher volume intensity in a tiny part of a song or a brighter colour in a minuscule part of a picture. Even the best-trained human eyes and ears, according to Kip, can't detect the change."

Using Watermarks to Combat Piracy | Log in/Cr

Fraunhofer makes tool to fight music piracy
Using digital watermarking technology

John Blau

The Fraunhofer Institute has developed prototype technology to help curb the sharp rise in online music piracy, which ironically has been enabled through another invention of the renowned German research group: MP3 audio compression.

Researchers at the Fraunhofer Integrated Publication and Information Systems Institute have successfully tested a software system, based on the group's own digital watermarking technology, for tracking pirated audio files in P2P (peer-to-peer) filesharing networks, said Michael Kip, a spokesman for the institute.

Kip referred to the Fraunhofer approach as an alternative to DRM (digital rights management) systems, which he said require special players and are prone to hacking.

While watermarking technology isn't new per se, this is the first time it has been used in a system to automatically track pirating in P2P networks, according to Kip.

The system lets content providers, such as music studios, embed a watermark in their downloadable MP3 files. Watermark technology makes slight changes to data in sound and image files. For instance, the change could be a higher volume intensity in a tiny part of a song or a brighter colour in a minuscule part of a picture. Even the best-trained human eyes and ears, according to Kip, can't detect the change.

The digital media watermark used in the Fraunhofer system also contains a 'hash value', which creates a link between the content provider and registered purchaser. "The hash value is like a fingerprint; it contains unique information about the user," Kip said. "The software we've developed can automatically search for fingerprints."

The Fraunhofer approach differs from others in that it doesn't monitor the individuals who illegally download music but rather scans for content that has been illegally uploaded.

"If, for instance, you purchase and download a CD, burn a copy and give it to a friend and that person puts it on a filesharing network, our system will trace that music back to you and, depending on the legal system of the country you're in, you could be [hit] with an expensive fine," Kip said. "This could certainly help deter online music piracy."

Fraunhofer envisions the prototype software as an application that content providers can install on their own servers for automatically monitoring P2P networks around the clock.

The institute will demonstrate the technology next month at the CeBit trade show in Germany.

Asked if widely used MP3 technology isn't partly to blame for online music piracy, he said: "Yes and no. You can use a knife to cut bread or kill someone. It's a tool that can be misused."

Research on compression of music files was conducted in the 1980s by a team of scientists at the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits. Their development, the Mpeg1 Layer 3 algorithm, was first shortened to Mpeg Layer 3 and later to MP3.
http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/news/index.cfm?newsid=5671

 

Oil Change - Men vs. Women
One of our Admin’s sent this to me and I was rolling after I read it.

Trust me folks, as an “older” man this is not far off at all.

Oil Change - Men vs. Women
Author: Digital Dave
Date: 13-Feb-2006

Oil Change instructions for Women:
1) Pull up to Jiffy Lube when the mileage reaches 3000 miles since the last oil change.
2) Drink a cup of coffee.
3) 15 minutes later, write a check and leave with a properly maintained vehicle.

Money spent:
Oil Change $20.00
Coffee $1.00
Total $21.00


Oil Change instructions for Men: (#28 is my FAVORITE)......BUT go in order....
1) Wait until Saturday, drive to auto parts store and buy a case of oil, filter, kitty litter, hand cleaner and a scented tree, write a check for $50.00.
2) Stop by 7 - 11 and buy a case of beer, write a check f or $20, drive home.
3) Open a beer and drink it.
4) Jack car up. Spend 30 minutes looking for jack stands.
5) Find jack stands under kid's pedal car.
6) In frustration, open another beer and drink it.
7) Place drain pan under engine.
8) Look for 9/16 box end wrench.
9) Give up and use crescent wrench.
10) Unscrew drain plug.
11) Drop drain plug in pan of hot oil: splash hot oil on you in process. Cuss.
12) Crawl out from under car to wipe hot oil off of face and arms. Throw kitty litter on spilled oil.
13) Have another beer while watching oil drain.
14) Spend 30 minutes looking for oil filter wrench.
15) Give up; crawl under car and hammer a screwdriver through oil filter and twist off.
16) Crawl out from under car with dripping oil filter splashing oil everywhere from holes. Cleverly hide old oil filter among trash in trash can to avoid environmental penalties. Drink a beer.
17) Buddy shows up; finish case of beer with him. Decide to finish oil change tomorrow so you can go see his new garage door opener.
18) Sunday: Skip church because "I gotta finish the oil change." Drag pan full of old oil out from underneath car. Cleverly dump oil in hole in back yard instead of taking it back to Kragen to recycle.
19) Throw kitty litter on oil spilled during step 18.
20) Beer? No, drank it all yesterday.
21) Walk to 7-11; buy beer.
22) Install new oil filter making sure to apply a thin coat of oil to gasket surface.
23) Dump first quart of fresh oil into engine.
24) Remember drain plug from step 11.
25) Hurry to find drain plug in drain pan.
26) Remember that the used oil is buried in a hole in the back yard, along with drain plug.
27) Drink beer.
28) Shovel out hole and sift oily mud for drain plug. Re-shovel oily dirt into hole. Steal sand from kids sandbox to cleverly cover oily patch of ground and avoid environmental penalties. Wash drain plug in lawnmower gas.
29) Discover that first quart of fresh oil is now on the floor. Throw kitty litter on oil spill.
30) Drink beer.
31) Crawl under car getting kitty litter into eyes. Wipe eyes with oily rag used to clean drain plug. Slip with stupid crescent wrench tightening drain plug and bang knuckles on frame.
32) Bang head on floorboards in reaction to step 31.
33) Begin cussing fit.
34) Throw stupid crescent wrench.
35) Cuss for additional 10 minutes because wrench hit bowling trophy.
36) Beer.
37) Clean up hands and forehead and bandage as required t o stop blood flow.
38) Beer.
39) Beer.
40) Dump in five fresh quarts of oil.
41) Beer.
42) Lower car from jack stands.
43) Accidentally crush remaining case of new motor oil.
44) Move car back to apply more kitty litter to fresh oil spilled during steps 23 - 43.
45) Beer.
46) Test drive car.
47) Get pulled over: arrested for driving under the influence.
48) Car gets impounded.
49) Call loving wife, make bail.
50) 12 hours later, get car from impound yard.

Money spent:

Parts: $50
DUI $2500.00
Impound fee $75.00
Bail $1500.00
Beer $40.00
Total - - $4,165.00

But you know the job was done right!

http://www.winxpcentral.com/jokes/oilchange.php

 

The trouble with rootkits

security2 Rootkits are a fast emerging security threat which can hide malware from conventional security tools. So how do they do this, and what can you do about them?

Powerful Windows rootkits are a potential problem for PC users in the future. Rootkits can hide files, processes and services belonging to malicious files such as backdoors and keyloggers which can later be used to gain access to everything on the system. Typically, rootkits penetrate personal computers and servers via viruses or vulnerabilities. After the rootkit is installed, conventional security products including anti-virus and spyware programs are unable to detect them or the files they are hiding. Virus Bulletin


The trouble with rootkits


Patrick Runald
F-Secure, UK
Editor: Helen Martin

Abstract

Rootkits are a fast-emerging security threat which can hide malware from conventional security tools. So how do they do this, and what can you do about them?

Copyright © 2005 Virus Bulletin
Table of Contents

What is a rootkit?
Roots of rootkits
Ghost in the machine
Rootkits for sale
Uprooting rootkits
Tools
Bibliography

What is a rootkit?

Powerful Windows rootkits are a potential problem for PC users in the future. Rootkits can hide files, processes and services belonging to malicious files such as backdoors and keyloggers which can later be used to gain access to everything on the system. Typically, rootkits penetrate personal computers and servers via viruses or vulnerabilities. After the rootkit is installed, conventional security products including anti-virus and spyware programs are unable to detect them or the files they are hiding.

Rootkits are an increasingly common 'stealth' technique used by malware authors to conceal their dark handiwork and intentions. Put simply, they are specialised toolkits that can hide malicious programs - whether they be viruses, Trojans, spyware, keyloggers and so on - from detection by conventional anti-virus and anti-spyware tools. Think of a rootkit as a cloaking device for malware, the kind that allows a hacker to move around your computer with complete impunity, undetected and unchallenged, doing as he pleases.

It is believed that this invisible form of malicious code will become a growing problem in the future. At the 2005 RSA security conference in San Francisco, Microsoft Corporation and security industry experts all expressed their concerns about the rising problem related to rootkits. To give one example, the Windows XP operating system is unable to show files or processes deployed by many rootkit programs. This leaves the user or administrator unaware of their presence. These types of stealth spyware program are believed to have been involved in some high-profile industrial espionage cases.

Since a rootkit can hide its presence on your system for a longer time than conventional malware, it is almost certain that ultimately it will be able to take your most confidential data. There are a number of different rootkits available on the market: some are feature-rich and include such functionality as the ability to log keystrokes, create secret backdoors and alter system log files, as well as offering administrative tools to prevent detection. Others are just tools to hide third-party files.

So, as is the case with many modern malware exploits, a PC or network could be fully protected against conventional malware with the latest in AV software, yet still unwittingly become infected with a rootkit - and therefore, completely vulnerable to attack. What's more, you may not even realise the attack is happening until it is too late and you have suffered loss of valuable data and money.
Roots of rootkits

So where do rootkits come from? Rootkits originally came from the *NIX world where the purpose of an attack was to give the attacker the control level of an administrator or 'root' - hence the name - and keep that access for as long as possible.

In the beginning, rootkits were mainly replacements for system tools. For example, the login program would be replaced by a modified version that stored the username and password combinations or the 'ls' tool that is used to list directory contents would be replaced by a rootkit version that would not print out certain file names.

Naturally enough, the malware community quickly found a window for exploits from rootkits, which led to the creation of integrity checking tools such as TripWire [ 1 ]. Such programs were designed to detect these first-generation rootkits by alerting the user to the modification of any system file.

Later generations of rootkits are, however, far more advanced in their range and functionality and have the ability to load themselves as kernel-loadable modules, thus avoiding detection by integrity checks.

Following the evolution of the PC market since Unix days, the latest generation of rootkits targets Windows-based machines. Nowadays there are a number of malware programs that use rootkits to hide from conventional detection, including the CoolWebSearch, Win-Spy, PC Spy, ActMon, ProBot SE, Invisible Keylogger and Powered Keylogger spyware programs. Some viruses themselves use rootkits to avoid detection and happily deliver their payloads, including Maslan and Padodor.

In addition to viruses and direct hacking via rootkits, there are several variants of backdoor Trojans, like SDBot and RBot, which incorporate the computer into a botnet that can be used by malicious people to send spam, perform denial of service attacks and all the other types of exploit for which we typically see botnets being used.

The sophistication and speed with which rootkit techniques are now being applied to spyware and viruses may highlight the growing influence of organised online criminal groups in their bid to develop stealthy, invasive software, as opposed to the typical '15 minutes of fame' exploits performed by geeks and script kiddies. Whatever the ultimate reason, the intention is clear - to circulate malware into the online community which does not register on the users' security radar.

Rootkits have many entry paths to their intended host: they can be planted on a system by a hacker through an unpatched vulnerability, arrive as an attachment or as a download URL in an email. Once activated, the rootkit can be used to hide backdoors and tools that help the hacker maintain access to the hacked computer. This computer can later be used to attack other computers in the same network. Most crucial, however, is the fact that the rootkit will hide the hacker's tracks from current security software.

Having gained access to a computer hacked with a rootkit, the intruder is free to interact with network resources, files and systems with either the same or sometimes even higher privileges than the legitimate user. And if, for example, they gain access to an administrator's username and password, then they have all the keys to the kingdom - with the potential to cause widespread damage.
Ghost in the machine

How do rootkits enable all this? Well, that depends on the type of rootkit that is being used. There are two types: user-mode rootkits and kernel-mode rootkits. To understand how they hide themselves in a system, let's look at how these two pieces of malware differ.

User-mode rootkits. A user-mode rootkit typically intercepts API calls in the system and modifies their output to hide files, registry keys and processes. A good example of this is a product called 'Golden Hacker Defender' sold openly on the Internet by its author, which also incorporates a Trojan that includes a built-in hidden door.

Kernel-mode rootkits. A kernel-mode rootkit, on the other hand, can be even more powerful than a rootkit running in user-mode. It can still filter the output of system API calls, similar to that of a user-mode rootkit, but it can also do much more. A common technique to hide a malware process is to remove the process from the kernel's list of active processes. As the kernel does not use this list to actually run the process (that is handled through the kernel scheduler) it's a very effective way of concealing the processes run by a hacker in your system.

Whichever way the rootkit operates, the goal is to stay hidden from security scanners. As most rootkits are also able to intercept the queries that are passed to the kernel and filter out the queries generated there, in effect, they are able to clean up any trace of their own activities. The result is that the typical footprints of a program, such as an executable file name, a named process that uses some of the computer's memory, or configuration settings in the OS registry, are invisible both to administrators and to all types of detection tool - even intrusion detection systems (IDS).

This ability of rootkits to clean log files and erase evidence of the actions it performs can make a hacker truly a 'ghost in the machine'. There are also tools for hiding the files and processes that the intruder may place on the system and even to hide port and protocol connections.

Some security pundits say that rootkits do not pose a significant problem, since more and more systems are effectively protected from outside intrusion which means it is difficult for a rootkit to be planted on a machine in the first place through the normal routes of infection. While this is true to some extent, no modern-day company would want to risk having an invisible backdoor into their network that could be accessed without any warning and used for any number of malicious purposes.
Rootkits for sale

As the whole malware-writing scene is shifting quite rapidly towards an economic model where virus writers and botnets are available for hire at the right price, it is no surprise that you can buy your own version of a rootkit. Authors such as Holy Father (Hacker Defender) and Aphex (AFX Rootkit) both have custom undetected versions of their rootkits available for sale.

On the Hacker Defender website, a customer can select which rootkit detection programs he/she wants to buy 'undetection' from, where each application and version is bought separately. Or the customer can just simply buy the Gold or Silver version, which comes with undetection for the most common detection systems.

Spy applications such as ProAgent 2.0 even come with a one-year warranty where the buyer will get a new undetected version if any of the security vendors adds detection for your customized version. But as a lot of the rootkits are open source, an attacker doesn't even need to pay for an undetected rootkit: with some basic programming skills he/she can just recompile it and thereby avoid detection.
Uprooting rootkits

So if, once they are installed, rootkits can evade conventional security tools, what can you do if you do discover you are harbouring a rootkit infection? Until recently, the prognosis was not good.

Although there have been some techniques for detecting rootkits, they are intended only for very IT-literate users who are conversant with code and all the other tricks of the trade: they certainly are not plug-and-play. What's more, they do not remove or quarantine rootkits. The standard advice for rootkit removal is to 'repave' - an innocent-enough-sounding euphemism which stands for completely scrubbing all data, applications and the operating system from the infected machine, and then reinstalling from scratch.

Repaving is simply not an option for most computer users who have stored all of their most precious material for safe-keeping in one repository. And if it is the case that more than one PC in a company is infected, the prospect of repaving multiple machines is still less attractive with all the attendant loss of business that follows.
Tools

However, new tools to help manage and contain the rootkit problem are emerging. Tools like SysInternals' RootkitRevealer [ 2 ] and F-Secure's BlackLight [ 3 ] technology are able to scan a machine and detect hidden rootkit files. Some of them can even eliminate the files by renaming them, even though some people think that the only solution to remove a rootkit is to reinstall the system completely.

But, while these applications will detect rootkits, it will not be until these detection capabilities are built into existing anti-virus and anti-spyware applications, with centralized management, that users and corporations will be protected fully from the growing rootkit threat.
Bibliography

[1] TripWire: http://www.tripwire.com/

[2] SysInternal's RootkitRevealer can be downloaded from http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/RootkitRevealer.html

[3] A beta version of F-Secure's BlackLight Rootkit Elimination Technology is available free of charge from http://www.f-secure.com/blacklight/

http://www.virusbtn.com/Session-165...ve/2005/09/vb200509-the-trouble-with-rootkits

 

Robot moved by a slime mould's fears

* 18:21 13 February 2006
* NewScientist.com news service
* Will Knight

A bright yellow slime mould that can grow to several metres in diameter has been put in charge of a scrabbling, six-legged robot.

The Physarum polycephalum slime, which naturally shies away from light, controls the robot's movement so that it too keeps out of light and seeks out dark places in which to hide itself.

Klaus-Peter Zauner at the University of Southampton, UK, who developed the slime-controlled bot with colleagues from Kobe University in south-central Japan, says the idea is to find simpler ways to control a robot’s behaviour.
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"The computers we have today are very good for what we built them for," he told New Scientist. "But, in a complex or paradoxical environment, things tend not to work out."

Physarum polycephalum is a large single-celled organism that responds to food sources, such as bacteria and fungi, by moving towards and engulfing it. It also moves away from light and favours humid, moist places to inhabit. The mould uses a network of tiny tubes filled with cytoplasm to both sense its environment and decide how to respond to it. Zauner's team decided to harness this simple control mechanism to direct a small six-legged (hexapod) walking bot.
Mechanical embodiment

They grew slime in a six-pointed star shape on top of a circuit and connected it remotely, via a computer, to the hexapod bot. Any light shone on sensors mounted on top of the robot were used to control light shone onto one of the six points of the circuit-mounted mould – each corresponding to a leg of the bot.

As the slime tried to get away from the light its movement was sensed by the circuit and used to control one of the robot's six legs. The robot then scrabbled away from bright lights as a mechanical embodiment of the mould. Eventually, this type of control could be incorporated into the bot itself rather than used remotely.

Zauner believes engineers will need to look towards this type of simple control mechanism, especially as components are scaled down. "On the nanoscale, we have to learn how to work with autonomous components," he says. "We have to let molecules do what they naturally do."
Available energy

Biology is already influencing the evolution of robots in other ways. For example, researchers led by Chris Melhuish at the University of the West of England in Bristol, UK, have developed robots that generate power by consuming flies.

"Computational autonomy has been studied for some time,” says Ioannis Ieropoulos of the University of Western England team. “For a truly autonomous robot, the level of computational complexity will depend on the available energy.”

Details of the slime-bot project were presented at the Second International Workshop on Biologically Inspired Approaches to Advanced Information Technology, held in Osaka, Japan, on 26 and 27 January.
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The Rules of Attraction in the Game of Love
By Bjorn Carey
LiveScience Staff Writer
posted: 13 February 2006
12:05 pm ET


To figure out how we pick mates, scientists have measured every shape and angle of the human face, studied the symmetry of dancers, crafted formulas from the measurements of Playboy models, and had both men and women rank attractiveness based on smelling armpit sweat.

After all this and more, the rules of attraction for the human species are still not clearly understood. How it all factors into true love is even more mysterious.

But a short list of scientific rules for the game of love is emerging. Some are as clearly defined as the prominent, feminine eyes of a supermodel or the desirable hips of a well-built man. Other rules work at the subconscious level, motivating us to action for evolutionary reasons that are tucked inside clouds of infatuation.

In the end, lasting love depends at least as much on behavior as biology. But the first moves are made before you're even born.

Symmetry equals sex

Starting at conception, the human body develops by neatly splitting cells. If every division were to go perfectly, the result would be a baby whose left and right sides are mirror images. But nature doesn't work that way. Genetic mutations and environmental pressures skew symmetry, and the results have lifelong implications.

Good symmetry shows that an individual has the genetic goods to survive development, is healthy, and is a good and fertile choice for mating.

"It makes sense to use symmetry variation in mate choice," said evolutionary biologist Randy Thornhill of the University of New Mexico. "If you choose a perfectly symmetrical partner and reproduce with them, your offspring will have a better chance of being symmetric and able to deal with perturbations."

Thornhill has been studying symmetry for 15 years and scanned faces and bodies into computers to determine symmetry ratios. Both men and women rated symmetrical members of the opposite sex as more attractive and in better health than their less symmetrical counterparts. The differences can be just a few percent—perceivable though not necessarily noticeable.

By questioning the study participants, Thornhill also found that men with higher degrees of symmetry enjoy more sexual partners than men of lower symmetry.

"Women's sex-partner numbers are dependent on things other than attractiveness," Thornhill told LiveScience. "Because of the way that the sexual system in humans works, women are choosey. They are being sexually competed for. They have to be wooed and all that."

Those hips

Body shape is of course important, too. And scientists have some numbers to prove it. Psychologist Devendra Singh of the University of Texas studied people's waist-to-hip ratio (WHR).

Women with a WHR of 0.7—indicating hips significantly narrower than the waist—are most desirable to men.

And an analysis of hourglass figures of Playboy models and Miss America contestants showed that the majority of these women boast a WHR of 0.7 or lower.

In general, a range of 0.67 to 1.18 in females is attractive to men, Singh concluded in a 2004 study, while a 0.8 to 1.0 WHR in men is attractive to women, although having broad shoulders is more of a turn-on.

What exactly is encoded in the hip ratio? A big fat clue to whether the person will have enough energy to care for offspring.

Where fat is deposited on the body is determined by sex hormones; testosterone in men and estrogen in women. If a woman produces the proper amount and mixture of estrogen, then her WHR will naturally fall into the desired range. The same goes for a male's testosterone.

People in the ideal hip-ratio range, regardless of weight, are less susceptible to disease such as cardiovascular disorders, cancer, and diabetes, studies have shown. Women in this range also have less difficulty conceiving.

"The idea is that beauty is conveying information about health and fertility, and we admire that," Singh said in a telephone interview.

Face it

The structure of a person's face also gives insight to fertility.

Estrogen caps bone growth in a woman's lower face and chin, making them relatively small and short, as well as the brow, allowing for her eyes to appear prominent, Thornhill explained. Men's faces are shaped by testosterone, which helps develop a larger lower face and jaw and a prominent brow.

Men and women possessing these traits are seen as attractive, Thornhill said, because they advertise reproductive health.

Thornhill also points to the booming nip-‘n'-tuck business—which is very much about improving a person's symmetry—as evidence that people find the quality attractive.

Another recent study revealed that symmetrical dancers are seen as more attractive.

Sniff this

Research reported last month found women both smell and look more attractive to men at certain times of the month.

And symmetrical men smell better.

Borrowing sweaty undershirts from a variety of men, Thornhill offered the shirts to the noses of women, asking for their impressions of the scents. Hands down, the women found the scent of a symmetrical man to be more attractive and desirable, especially if the woman was menstruating.

By now you might be wondering how much of this we're consciously aware of. The rules of attraction, it turns out, seem sometimes to play out in our subconscious.

In some cases, women in Thornhill's study reported not smelling anything on a shirt, yet still said they were attracted to it.

"We think the detection of these types of scent is way outside consciousness," Thornhill said.

A 2002 study found women prefer the scent of men with genes somewhat similar to their own over the scent of nearly genetically identical or totally dissimilar men.

These subconscious scents might be related to pheromones, chemical signals produced by the body to communicate reproductive quality. The human genome contains more than 1,000 olfactory genes—compared to approximately 300 genes for photoreceptors in the eyes—so pheromones have received a lot of attention from basic research scientists as well as perfume manufacturers.

But the role of pheromones in the human realm remains controversial.

Animal attraction

Pheromones clearly act as sexual attractants in the animal world. Older male elephants, for example, exude sexual prowess with a mix of chemicals the younger bulls can't muster.

Milos Novotny of the Institute of Pheromone Research at Indiana University has shown that special molecules produced by male mice can simultaneously attract females and repel, and even anger, rival males. Other studies have found similar responses throughout the animal kingdom.

Yet many researchers are not sold on the idea that these odorless compounds play a role in human attraction. Count evolutionary biologist Jianzhi Zhang of the University of Michigan among the skeptical.

In 2003, Zhang showed that a gene mutated 23 million years ago among primates in Africa and Asia that are considered to be human ancestors, allowing them to see color. This let the males notice that a female's bottom turned bright red when she was ready to mate.

"With the development of a sexual color scheme, you don't need the pheromone sensitivity to sense whether a female monkey is ready to mate," Zhang said. "It's advantageous to use visual cues rather than pheromones because they can be seen from a distance."

A study last year, however, suggested that human pheromones affect the sexual area of the brains of women and gay men in a similar manner.

Sex goes visual

Pheromones, like other scents, hitch a ride through the air on other particles, such as water droplets. They generally hover just 10 inches off the ground, however. So odds are slim they'll waft up to a human nose and fuel sudden passion at a nightclub.

Watch any construction worker whistling at a passing woman from half a block away, and you can see how visual cues can be more powerful.

And while they enter the nose like other scents, that's where the comparison stops. A pheromone's destination is a special organ called the volmeronasal organ, which humans now lack. From here the sexy scent travels along a neural pathway to the brain separate from other scents.

Evolution played a role in this, too.

After our ancestors began to see color, a gene important in the pheromone-signaling pathway suffered a deleterious mutation, making it impossible for the scent signals to reach the brain, Zhang said. Imagine a train, leaving from Los Angeles to New York, discovers that the tracks in St. Louis are destroyed.

Although the classical pheromone pathway in both Old World primates and humans is dysfunctional, the mechanism for producing pheromones still works. Some scientists believe human pheromones might be influencing our decisions along the normal olfactory pathway.

Lasting relationships

The rules of attraction might drive our initial decisions, for better or worse. But lasting relationships are about much more than what we see and smell.

Behavior plays a key role, with biology an intriguing contributing factor.

One of the oldest theories about attraction is that like begets like. It explains that eerie perception that married couples sometimes look awfully similar.

Last year, J. Philippe Rushton, a psychologist at the University of Western Ontario, looked into the relationships of people's genes. Based on a set of heritable personality traits, having similar genetics plays 34 percent of the role in friendship and mate selection, he found.

"The main theory is that some genes work well in combination with each other," Rushton told LiveScience. "If these genes evolved to work in combination, then you don't want to break that up too much for your offspring. Finding a mate with similar genes will help you ensure this."

If your spouse is genetically similar, you're more likely to have a happy marriage, for example. Child abuse rates are lower when similarity is high, and you'll also be more altruistic and willing to sacrifice more for someone who is more genetically like you, research shows.

It probably comes as little surprise people are drawn to individuals with similar attitudes and values, as psychologist Eva Klohnen at the University of Iowa found in a 2005 study of newlywed couples. These characteristics are highly visible and accessible to others and can play a role in initial attraction.

When it comes to sticking together for the long haul, researchers have shown that likeness of personality, which can take more time to realize, means more.

Comedy can also help a relationship. But the importance of humor is different for men and women, says Eric Bressler of McMaster University.

A woman is attracted to a man who makes her laugh, Bressler found in a 2005 study. A man likes a woman who laughs at his jokes.

True love

Somewhere amid attraction and sex, we all hope, are strong feelings of love. But which of all the motivations really drives us?

Interestingly, brain scans in people who'd recently fallen in love reveal more activity related to love than sex. "Romantic love is one of the most powerful of all human experiences," says Helen Fisher, an anthropologist at Rutgers University. "It is definitely more powerful than the sex drive."

The rules of attraction make up a pretty long list. No scientist knows the order of the list. But near the top is perhaps one of the toughest characteristics to gauge in advance in the search for the perfect partner.

Despite all their differences, men and women place high value on one trait: fidelity.

Cornell University's Stephen Emlen and colleagues asked nearly 1,000 people age 18 to 24 to rank several attributes, including physical attractiveness, health, social status, ambition, and faithfulness, on a desirability scale.

People who rated themselves favorably as long-term partners were more particular about the attributes of potential mates. After fidelity, the most important attributes were physical appearance, family commitment, and wealth and status.

"Good parenting, devotion, and sexual fidelity—that's what people say they're looking for in a long-term relationship," Emlen says.

 

Love More Powerful than Sex, Study Claims
By Robert Roy Britt
LiveScience Senior Writer
posted: 31 May 2005
11:52 am ET


Sex and romance may seem inextricably linked, but the human brain clearly distinguishes between the two, according to a new study. The upshot: Love is the more powerful emotion.

The results of brain scans speak to longstanding questions of whether the pursuit of love and sex are different emotional endeavors or whether romance is just warmed over sexual arousal.

"Our findings show that the brain areas activated when someone looks at a photo of their beloved only partially overlap with the brain regions associated with sexual arousal," said Arthur Aron of the State University of New York-Stony Brook. "Sex and romantic love involve quite different brain systems."

The study, announced today, will be detailed in the July issue of the Journal of Neurophysiology.

Left side, right side

The study was small, however, involving 17 young men and women, all of whom had recently fallen madly in love. They filled out questionnaires while their brains were hooked up to a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) system.

Romance seems to steep in parts of the brain that are rich in dopamine, a chemical known to affect emotions. These brain regions are also linked by other studies to the motivation for rewards.

"To our surprise, the activation regions associated with intense romantic love were mostly on the right side of the brain, while the activation regions associated with facial attractiveness were mostly on the left," said Lucy Brown of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine.

The study also revealed that as a romance matures, so does the mind.

"We found several brain areas where the strength of neural activity changed with the length of the romance," Brown said. "Everyone knows that relationships are dynamic over time, but we are beginning to track what happens in the brain as a love relationship matures."

Love wins

The processing of romantic feelings involves a "constellation of neural systems." The researchers -- neuroscientists, anthropologists and social psychologists -- declare love the clear winner versus sex in terms of its power over the human mind.

"Romantic love is one of the most powerful of all human experiences," said study member Helen Fisher, an anthropologist at Rutgers University. "It is definitely more powerful than the sex drive."

Fisher said the study might suggest some of the physiology of stalking behavior. Other studies suggest that up to 40 percent of people who are rejected in love slip into clinical depression, she said.

"Rejected men and women in societies around the world sometimes kill themselves or someone else," Fisher said.

Animals, too

There are hints in the study that romance is not a uniquely human trait.

Some of the changes seen with mature romances were in regions of the brain also associated with pair-bonding in prairie voles. Other studies have found that expressions of attraction in a female prairie vole are linked to a 50 percent hike in dopamine activity in the brain region that corresponds to the location where human romance is processed.

"These and other data indicate that all mammals may feel attraction to specific partners, and that some of the same brain systems are involved," Fisher said.

 

The Origin of Sex: Cosmic Solution to Ancient Mystery
By Robert Roy Britt
Senior Science Writer

Comets and asteroids have been blamed for a lot of things before. Shaping Earth. Jumpstarting life. Wiping out dinosaurs. Even possibly altering human evolution.

But never sex.

Roughly 1 billion years after the first organisms romped in the hay, the origin of sex remains one of biology's greatest mysteries. Scientists can't say exactly why we do it, or what triggered those initial terrestrial flirtations. Before sex, life seemed to manage fine by employing asexual reproduction -- the cloning of offspring without the help of a partner.

Now a new study out of Caltech and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory has used digital organisms to simulate life before sex and yielded a possible mechanism for instigating Earth's first courtship.

Intimacy never sounded so stressful.

Comet or asteroid impacts could have stressed asexual organisms enough to send them down the path of sexual reproduction after forcing a flurry of genetic mutations, the study shows. Heavy doses of radiation might also have done the trick.

While these potential catalysts for mutations are highly speculative, researchers Claus Wilke and Chris Adami announced Monday night that they have determined with certainty one possible way that organisms could have managed such a chaotic environment to their advantage in opening the original door to sexual liberation.

The key to this mutation management, Adami told SPACE.com, is the discovery that when things get rough, a population of organisms adapts to handling a few mutations, while also ensuring that many mutations will be self-destructive.

"Mutations can and do still occur," he said, "but they lead to dead organisms and therefore do not affect the future."

Before sex

Sex never should have happened, biologists often say.

Though the ultimate act of affection has been around longer than anyone can remember, it wasn't always so. On the early Earth, all organisms reproduced asexually.

Any gardener is familiar with how asexual production works. Underground runners can create multiple clones (not to mention destroy a good lawn). Potatoes give up an eye to create another potato. Bulbs divide. Cacti, exhibiting no creativity in this area but managing to foster progeny nonetheless, simply let pieces of themselves fall to the ground and hope for the best.

Some animals get in on the asexual act, too. Sponges and sea anemones produce little ones via buds. Flatworms, if cut in two, grow a new head on one of their severed ends and a new tail on the other.

These are handy and powerful ways to leave a legacy.

For one thing, there's no need for a partner -- no butting of horns, no beating of the chest, no late nights at the bar. Reproduction is virtually guaranteed. Also, when desirable traits evolve, they are not quickly diluted by evolution. Your offspring are just like you. Exact clones.

Sex, on the other hand, combines myriad mutations with each pairing of genes, and the process "can wash out the good and accumulate the bad," Adami says. Just ask any failed child of successful parents.

The age of sex

Despite all these advantages for asexual reproduction, somewhere along the evolutionary line sex became all the rage.

Thankfully so, for we humans owe our existence to that first melding of the genes. Asexual reproduction provides for a plodding style of evolution, relying solely on accidental mutations to effect change. It's an evolutionary slow train that might never have gotten around to delivering humans. It can also limit a population's ability to survive severe environmental change.

Sex, on the other hand, allows plants and animals to evolve quickly, because the gene pool mixes and the fitter survive.

Yet as any parent knows, sex is a rather inefficient way to make babies. Biologically speaking, the man spends nine months doing absolutely nothing productive while the woman does all the work (in some households, this problem is known to persist far longer).

So in an evolutionary sense, why would sex ever have become so popular? More to the point, why would any asexual organism have bothered to try out sex in the first place?

We're all mutants

Researchers have long known that mutations rewrite portions of an organism's genetic code. Some mutations can be good, in fact helping a species to thrive at the expense of others. But the effect can sometimes be deadly. Since sex involves two parents, there is twice the number of mutations to muck up the genetic scripts.

Wilke and Adami created two different simple, computerized life forms that "share many characteristics with bacteria," then placed them in a stressful environment where the rate of mutations was high. By studying digital creatures, they were able to zip through many generations in a short time.

The scientists found a natural throttle to the number of mutations a population of asexual bacteria can handle. The throttle can be thought of as a conservation law. The law dictates that a population capable of adapting to the harmful effects of a few mutations cannot possibly handle a bunch of mutations. Past a critical limit, the accumulated mutations make gibberish out of the genetic code and the organisms die.

Conversely, the new law also shows that a population which can handle many mutations would be highly vulnerable to the first few. "In fact there are such organisms [today]," Adami said. "Sex could, however, never evolve" in such a population. The offspring would be too vulnerable to the initial flurry of mutations that would be written into its code, combined from two organisms.

The birth of sex

Now imagine simple organisms long ago that just happened to share genetic information in a loose and uncoordinated fashion. Such sharing goes on today without leading to reproduction.

If such a population of organisms were suddenly faced with the stress of high mutation rates, it would over the course of many generations develop a capacity to handle a few mutations. But by the new law, numerous mutations would be intolerable.

The effect of all this, Adami says, is that bad mutations would be weeded out of the population.

When multiple mutations are intolerable, bad mutations cannot accumulate, because each successive bad mutation has an increasingly deadly effect on an already weakened organism. Useful mutations, however, do not harm a population in these conditions, Adami said.

Put another way: "When multiple mutations are intolerable, bad mutations cannot accumulate, while the good ones still can."

This could pave the way for the benefits of sex to be enjoyed.

A theoretical door would be open to sexual freedom, and if a pair of organisms mutated enough to go behind that door, then their newfound ability to share beneficial mutations, via sex, would give them a Darwinian advantage over their asexual cousins in the highly stressful environment.

"You can imagine a path that leads from the uncorrelated exchange of genetic material to the completely orchestrated recombination process," he says, referring to the birth of sex.

Any number of catastrophes might have fueled a changed environment and a rate of high mutations, Adami explains. A cosmic impact could have altered Earth's atmosphere for millions of years, exposing the planet to high doses of radiation. Increased volcanic activity is another possible source.

But Adami stressed that these possibilities, while useful to consider, were not a part of the study and so remain highly speculative.

Not actually living organisms

Clifford W. Zeyl, who studies evolutionary genetics at Wake Forest University, called the work surprising and interesting, but added a further caution:

"Since the idea came from a study of digital organisms and not from any historical evidence that such stresses actually acted on living organisms, or that they would have had the effect of selecting for sex, I think it's highly speculative," Zeyl said.

Adami is confident that the computer experiment renders an accurate picture, and he suspects that if such a test could be carried out on real organisms (it can't, because it would take too long) similar results might be found.

"The digital organisms actually live in the memory of the computer, so all we do is set up the experiment and then observe," he said. He added that some biologists are skeptical of any research carried out using digital organisms, but says there is "no reason whatsoever" to think that the findings would not apply in real-life situations.

The study results are published in the July 22 issue of the Royal Society journal Proceedings: Biological Sciences B.

 

The Lover's Moon: Go Ahead and Swoon
By SPACE.com Staff

posted: 13 February 2006
06:55 am ET

The Moon was officially full late Sunday night, but to the untrained eye it appears full for a day or two on each side. In reality, the Moon is never really full. So go ahead, swoon to the "Full Moon" with your Valentine.

At full Moon, the satellite is exactly opposite the Sun in our sky. From our surface perspective at sunset, the Moon is rising and it reflects a full disk of sunlight directly to our eyes. The Moon arcs across the sky and sets at sunrise.

The night after it is full, the Moon rises later, typically by about 50 minutes, depending on the season and your latitude.

At last quarter—a week after the full phase—the Moon appears as a backward "D" and does not rise until midnight, remaining in the morning sky until Noon.

Hard to tell

But tonight and Tuesday night, you’d have to look closely to tell if it is still full or not.

The Moon was officially full Feb. 12 at 11:44 p.m. EST.

One minute before that time, it was a waxing gibbous; one minute after that time, it was in the waning gibbous phase.

Here’s the tricky part: The Moon can appear 100 percent sunlit from Earth only if it is diametrically opposite to the Sun in the sky. But at that moment the Moon would be positioned in the middle of Earths shadow—and in total eclipse. So in any month when there is no eclipse, there is an ever-so-slight sliver of darkness somewhere on the lunar limb throughout those hours—or that moment—when the Moon is passing through "full" phase.

The Moon is never really full.

Because the plane of the Moon's orbit is inclined 5 percent with respect to the plane of Earth's orbit around the Sun, eclipses occur only every few months when the orbits are lined up just right.

Snow Moon

From lore, this month’s full Moon had the name of the Snow Moon, appropriate in light of the weekend weather in the Northeast. The name was given to a Moon that comes during a time when the heaviest snows typically fall. Hunting is difficult this time of year, so it also carries the name of the Hunger Moon.

The next full Moon will be March 14 at 6:35 p.m. EST. It will be the Worm Moon, coming at a time when the ground tends to soften and earthworm casts reappear, inviting the return of the robins. It’s also known as Crow, Crust and Sap Moon, marking the time of tapping maple trees

With the March 14 full Moon comes a very minor penumbral lunar eclipse. The Moon will pass through the Earth’s outer shadow and cause a slight tarnishing or smudginess to appear on its lower rim. The darkest phase of this eclipse comes at 6:48 p.m. EST. For about 40 minutes before and after this time, the subtle penumbral shading may be detected with binoculars and even the naked eye.

This article is part of SPACE.com’s weekly Mystery Monday series. SPACE.com’s Senior Science Writer Robert Roy Britt and Night Sky columnist Joe Rao contributed.

 

AACS copy protection for Blu-ray disc and HD DVD delayed
Posted by Dan Bell on 14 February 2006 - 14:49 - Source: Heise

Let's just hope that the struggle to lock down content does not kill both these awesome formats. But, we must admit it is taking a long time to hammer out the copy protection on the blue laser format. This must be a nightmare for the developers of both camps!

Last Friday, the meeting of the AACS LA was to resolve the final specifications of the new Advanced Access Content System (AACS). But insiders are reporting that no such agreement was reached. Instead, it is said that an important member of the Blu-ray Disc Association is still voicing concerns about the interaction of AACS and the additional BD+ protection for Blu-ray movies. The next meeting is scheduled for February 23rd and 24th.

Without the AACS specification, the copy protection keys that manufacturers of drives and media need cannot be produced. For instance, manufacturers such as NEC, Pioneer, Samsung, and Toshiba are eagerly awaiting the specifications so they can implement AACS in their equipment.
This is an excellent article and we just have a small snippet here. We strongly urge you read the whole thing, as it has a lot of very important information. Especially if you are not sure what is going on with AACS. They seem to hit all the most pertinent points in this article and you can really grasp the situation as it applies to the end user and the content providers by reading it.
http://www.cdfreaks.com/news/13064


AACS copy protection for Blu-ray disc and HD DVD delayed again

Last Friday, the meeting of the AACS LA was to resolve the final specifications of the new Advanced Access Content System (AACS). But insiders are reporting that no such agreement was reached. Instead, it is said that an important member of the Blu-ray Disc Association is still voicing concerns about the interaction of AACS and the additional BD+ protection for Blu-ray movies. The next meeting is scheduled for February 23rd and 24th.

Without the AACS specification, the copy protection keys that manufacturers of drives and media need cannot be produced. For instance, manufacturers such as NEC, Pioneer, Samsung, and Toshiba are eagerly awaiting the specifications so they can implement AACS in their equipment.

Hollywood movie studios are insisting that such protection be included in all drives. Without AACS, high-resolution movies can't be played back. A Mandatory Managed Copy (MMC) can, however, be made. Only if the holder of the copyright gives explicit consent may a limited number of copies of the original disc be created; the movie may also not be streamed via a Media Center or to mobile devices without express consent. An online connection is required to check for rights to make a permitted copy. The holder of the copyright may, however, completely rule out copies or demand a fee.

AACS can renew device keys, thereby blocking manipulated drives. BD+ provides additional protection for Blu-ray discs: here, a program in a Java Virtual Machine constantly monitors the movie's data stream and stops playback if there is any manipulation. To prevent the data stream from being grabbed on its path from the player software to the graphics card, Microsoft's Certified Output Protection Protocol (COPP) will monitor the connection. Among other things, COPP is designed to prevent movies from being output to a virtual graphics card that redirects the data into a file. Graphics cards can be upgraded to COPP by means of a driver update; Windows XP supports COPP upwards of Service Pack 2, as will the upcoming Windows Vista.

In turn, HD output is only possible if the graphics card encrypts the digital monitor signal at the DVI output via HDCP or if it has an HDMI output. Likewise, the monitor must support HDCP / HDMI. Without this encryption, the movie will only be played in standard resolutions. The first graphics cards that support HDCP are to hit stores in the 2nd quarter; current models cannot be upgraded because they lack the special BIOS chip required.

Now that the AACS specification has been postponed once again, the sales releases announced for the first Blu-ray burners, HD DVD drives, and stand-alone players at the beginning of March will probably not be possible; we can expect the delay to move the schedule back at least one month. As one Blu-ray manufacturer told heise online, "We need at least two or three weeks to apply for the keys and implement the system." (Craig Morris) / (jk/c't)
Print version
http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/69559

 

Monday, 13 February 2006
Electric Super Car Tops 180 MPH
Topic: New Vehicles
Would you believe an emission free car that can blows away almost every vehicle the road? That's the claim from Hybrid Technologies, which says it will soon start selling the Lithium Carbon Fiber Super Car.

The vehicle uses lithium batteries and will reach 180 mph, and go 0 to 60 mph in just over 3 seconds, according to the Hybrid Technologies, which is building the car in partnership with exotic sports car maker Mullen Motors.

But something doesn't add up. If it is truly emission free, then it should be powered by a fuel cell vehicle and not an ICE. But a sporty fuel cell vehicle with lithium batteries for $124,900 would be quite the bargain.

More details will be available when the car debuts at the NY International Auto Show in April.
Posted by John at 9:21 AM PST | post your comment (5) | link to this post

 

MovieBeam to offer HD movies with online delivery

2/14/2006 11:53:47 AM, by Ken "Caesar" Fisher

MovieBeam Inc. is hoping that you'll adopt a TiVo-like service model to tap into HD movies delivered right to your TV. But TiVo isn't under threat from MovieBeam. Netflix, get off the couch and come in here and meet your new competition!

Well, MovieBeam isn't exactly new. The company and its eponymous service are the fruits of a Disney spin-off. Back in 2003, Disney attempted to build excitement for the service when it was being trialed in a handful of major US cities. The service was simple, yet seemingly powerful: a set-top box capable of storing 100 movies would be "loaded" with content via over-the-air digital signals that would piggyback on TV towers. On the surface, the deal sounded great: tons of movies, no late fees, not wiring, and no trips to the video store. But the monthly charge of US$7 was too high for a service that still charges for rentals, and it dampened interest in the offering. Last year it appeared that Disney had written the experiment off for good, but the company apparently is a true believer. Spun-off with a cash infusion from Disney and three other major investors, MovieBeam is going to try to make it on its own.

The new MovieBeam has had a bit of a make-over. Gone is the monthly service charge. Now users pay $3.99 for recent standard definition movies, $1.99 for classics, or $4.99 for HD titles—all roughly on par with what you can expect to pay at your local video store. What's more, MovieBeam has movies from all of the major studios except Sony, which is still in negotiations with the company.

But that vanquished service charge was hiding something: the cost of the set-top box. MovieBeam customers will now have to pony-up $199 (after $50 rebate) and a $29 activation fee to get their hands on the set-top box necessary to use the service. The set-top box is manufactured by Linksys, and comes pre-loaded with movies (that you need to unlock by paying for them).

The set-top player has 160GB of storage and features AV connections for HDMI, component, S-video, composite and audio connection ports including digital coaxial, SP/DIF, HDMI and left/right stereo audio. The service utilizes Windows Media TM 9/VC-1 and Dolby Digital 5.1 as its video and audio codecs, respectively. The unit also includes an Ethernet port, which will eventually be updated to support delivery by broadband.

"We have built MovieBeam to directly address what’s most important to our target customers: convenience, quality and choice," said Tres Izzard, president and CEO of MovieBeam, Inc. "Our target customers are movie lovers who want a more convenient way to rent the movies they want to watch when they want to watch them and value the overall quality of the experience. MovieBeam provides an attractive alternative to other options – bringing the sizable selection of the back wall of the video store directly into customers’ living rooms. Movies are always available for instant viewing, with no trips to video store, no out-of-stock titles, no damaged discs, no late return fees and no waiting by the mailbox for DVDs."

MovieBeam has a lot going for it, but it is also stifled by the typical kinds of lame limitations that make a service like this look like a gold dig. Most notably, "rentals" are only good for 24 hours. Despite the fact that it's brain-dead easy for them to deliver a movie to you and despite the fact that there's nothing to return to them, they're adopting this ridiculously small viewing window. The only justification for a viewing window this small is that they're obviously concerned about multiple viewings, either by you or someone else in your home. Oh, the horror!!

MovieBeam plans to roll out additional accessories in the future, including a USB antenna and software service so that MovieBeam could be used on a computer. The company says that they also hope to develop a service where renters could actually buy movies and burn them to a portable format, but such is easier said than done. To date, buying movies from the major studios has been strictly a brick-and-mortar affair.

MovieBeam is an interesting idea, but it's debuting in a tight space. Cable and satellite have been pushing "on demand" content for years now, using the same equipment that users are largely already familiar with. Netflix, while low-tech, can offer a better value for frequent movie watchers. The service shows some promise in the HD department, but will that be enough to push it on to success? We'll see. MoviBeam is being rolled out in 29 US cities right now, and they hope to have national coverage within the year.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060214-6175.html

 

New Microchips Shun Transistors

By John Hudson | Also by this reporter
02:00 AM Feb, 14, 2006

For the first time researchers have created a working prototype of a radical new chip design based on magnetism instead of electrical transistors.

As transistor-based microchips hit the limits of Moore's Law, a group of electrical engineers at the University of Notre Dame has fabricated a chip that uses nanoscale magnetic "islands" to juggle the ones and zeroes of binary code.

Wolfgang Perod and his colleagues turned to the process of magnetic patterning (.pdf) to produce a new chip that uses arrays of separate magnetic domains. Each island maintains its own magnetic field.

Because the chip has no wires, its device density and processing power may eventually be much higher than transistor-based devices. And it won't be nearly as power-hungry, which will translate to less heat emission and a cooler future for portable hardware like laptops.

Computers using the magnetic chips would boot up almost instantly. The magnetic chip's memory is non-volatile, making it impervious to power interruptions, and it retains its data when the device is switched off.

The magnetic architecture of the chip can be reprogrammed on the fly and its adaptability could make it very popular with manufacturers of special-purpose computing hardware, from video-game platforms to medical diagnostic equipment.

"The value of magnetic patterning in storage devices such as hard drives has been known for a long time," said Wolfgang Porod, Freimann professor of electrical engineering at the University of Notre Dame. "What is unique here is that we've applied the patterning concept to the actual processing."

The chip's nanomagnets -- on the order of 110-nanometers wide -- can be assembled into arrays that mirror the function of transistor-based logic gates, in addition to storing information. These logic gates are the building blocks of computer technology, giving microchips the power to process the endless rivers of binary code.

A NAND logic gate for example, accepts two inputs to arrive at one output. If both inputs are one, the NAND gate spits out a zero. If one or the other or both inputs are a zero, the NAND gate provides a one as an output.

Porod and his colleagues equipped their new chip with a universal logic gate -- a combination of the NAND and NOR gates. Together, these two logic gates can perform any of the basic arithmetic functions intrinsic to all computer processing.

This exotic method of transistorless processing -- known as magnetic quantum cellular automata -- originally used individual electrons as quantum dots, arranged in a matrix of cells to handle logic operations. But nanoscale magnets proved to be a much better alternative because they were not subject to stray electrical charges, and they were easier to fabricate.

"The magnets were created from ferromagnetic nickel/iron alloy," said Porod. "We evaporated a thin layer of the alloy onto a silicon surface, then patterned the islands using electron-beam lithography."

Logic operations within the processor commence with a pulsed magnetic field on the input magnet, which alters the orientation of its magnetic field. This creates a cascade effect across the array, as magnetostatic attraction and repulsion cause the fields of adjacent magnets to "flip".

"To read the output, we used a scanning probe to infer what the magnetization was," said Porod. "Ideally, in the future, we would like to achieve this (input and output) with the simple application of an electric current."

Although existing technologies use magnetic fields to store information on small chips called MRAMs, this is the first application to produce a chip that can process digital information in addition to storing it.

The potential of chips driven by nanoscale magnets was considered five years ago at London's Imperial College. Russell Cowburn, professor of nanotechnology -- along with his colleagues -- observed that the magnets could exchange information as their fields interacted with each other.

Cowburn is encouraged by the technological leaps made at the University of Notre Dame. "What's really exciting here is that you can implement all of the Boolean functions without using a single transistor," he said.

The new chips also have some important characteristics that might make them ideal candidates for use in future space hardware. "You can't just put a regular DRAM into space, because it won't tolerate the environment. The magnetic technology is radiation-hard, and will be a huge improvement on what they're using now," Cowburn said.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,70190-0.html?tw=rss.index

 

Don't Buy This! Worst Valentine's Gifts

Americans will dish out a staggering $13.7 billion on Valentine's Day, according to the National Retail Federation. That's a lot of red roses and chocolate hearts.

But there are some things you should never buy your sweetie on this day of love, such as nose hair trimmers for men or PMS relief pills for women. The retail team ShopInPrivate.com, an online site where you can purchase all sorts of embarrassing products for constipation, warts and hemorrhoids to name a few, has issued a helpful list for lovers that is unlike any other Valentine's Day shopping guide. It tells you what NOT to buy.

The 5 Worst Valentine's Day Gifts for Men:

1. The Razorba back shaver
2. Premature ejaculation cream
3. Fart filters
4. Erectile dysfunction pump
5. Nose hair trimmers

The 5 Worst Valentine's Day Gifts for Women:

1. Weight loss pills
2. PMS relief pills
3. Pregnancy test
4. Hair removal wax
5. Man Catcher Voodoo Kit

If money is no object, and we really mean it's of no concern at all, you could take one of the suggestions of Jim Trippon, a certified public accountant and one of America's foremost authorities on the money habits of self-made millionaires. Here's his list of:

The Top 10 Most Outrageously Expensive Valentine's Day Gifts:

1. Annaliesse yacht, $95 Million
2. Satya Paul tie, $21 Million
3. Scott Henshall dress, $5 Million
4. Caran d'Ache's "La Modernista Diamonds" pen, $265,000
5. White Alba 2 lb. 10 oz. truffle, $112,000
6. Chateau d'Yquem Sauternes (1787) wine, $64,000 per bottle
7. Gucci "Genius Jeans," $3,134
8. Lee Stafford "Couture Haircut," $1,925
9. Golden Opulence Ice Cream Sundae, $1,000
10. Platinum Guild International "I Do" nail polish, $250 per bottle

Trippon's love advice? "Get real and deal with your budget. Be honest with each other about your money habits and come up with a plan to spend it as a couple. It will improve your love life!"

Chocolate and red roses probably sound like the perfect gifts now!

 

End of support for Windows 98 and Windows Me
Time to go Bye-Bye....

June 30, 2006 will bring a close to Extended Support for Windows 98, Windows 98 Second Edition, and Windows Me as part of the Microsoft Lifecycle Policy. Microsoft will retire public and technical support, including security updates, by this date.

Existing support documents and content, however, will continue to be available through the Microsoft Support Product Solution Center Web site. This Web site will continue to host a wealth of previous How-to, Troubleshooting, and Configuration content for anyone who may need self-service.

End of support for Windows 98 and Windows Me
Published: January 6, 2006 | Updated: January 18, 2006

June 30, 2006 will bring a close to Extended Support for Windows 98, Windows 98 Second Edition, and Windows Me as part of the Microsoft Lifecycle Policy. Microsoft will retire public and technical support, including security updates, by this date.

Existing support documents and content, however, will continue to be available through the Microsoft Support Product Solution Center Web site. This Web site will continue to host a wealth of previous How-to, Troubleshooting, and Configuration content for anyone who may need self-service.

Microsoft is retiring support for these products because they are outdated and can expose customers to security risks. We recommend that customers who are still running Windows 98 or Windows Me upgrade to a newer, more secure Microsoft operating system, such as Windows XP, as soon as possible.

Customers who upgrade to Windows XP report improved security, richer functionality, and increased productivity.

Need to upgrade your software?
Learn how to upgrade to Windows XP Professional

Buying a new computer?
Consider a Media Center PC with Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/support/endofsupport.mspx

 

MediaMax, XCP study

p2p news / p2pnet: Peter Jacob's US-based SunnComm MediaMax, and XCP from the UK's First 4 Internet, both flawed Digital Restrictions Management applications, have been written up for ongoing study as models of what not to.

"In the fall of 2005, problems discovered in two Sony-BMG compact disc copy protection systems, XCP and MediaMax, triggered a public uproar that ultimately led to class-action litigation and the recall of millions of discs," say Princeton University's professor Felten and Alex Halderman in their paper Lessons from the Sony CD DRM Episode, published today.

"We present an in-depth analysis of these technologies, including their design, implementation, and deployment. The systems are surprisingly complex and suffer from a diverse array of flaws that weaken their content protection and expose users to serious security and privacy risks. Their complexity, and their failure, makes them an interesting case study of digital rights management that carries valuable lessons for content companies, DRM vendors, policymakers, end users, and the security community."

Felten and Halderman ran draft sections on Felten's Freedom to Tinker blog, asking for ideas and comments.

"We also asked readers to help suggest a title for the paper," they say. "That didn’t work out so well - some suggestions were entertaining, but none were really practical. Perhaps a title of the sort we wanted doesn’t exist."

Their analysis of Sony-BMG’s CD DRM, "carries wider lessons for content companies, DRM vendors, policymakers, end users, and the security community," the say, drawing six main conclusions.

* First, the design of DRM systems is driven strongly by the incentives of the content distributor and the DRM vendor, but these incentives are not always aligned. Where they differ, the DRM design will not necessarily serve the interests of copyright owners, not to mention artists.
* Second, DRM, even if backed by a major content distributor, can expose users to significant security and privacy risks. Incentives for aggressive platform building drive vendors toward spyware tactics that exacerbate these risks.
* Third, there can be an inverse relation between the efficacy of DRM and the user’s ability to defend the computer from unrelated security and privacy risks. The user’s best defense is rooted in understanding and controlling which software is installed on the computer, but many DRM systems rely on undermining the user’s understanding and control.
* Fourth, CD DRM systems are mostly ineffective at controlling uses of content. Major increases in complexity have not increased their effectiveness over that of early schemes, and may in fact have made things worse by creating more avenues for attack. We think it unlikely that future CD DRM systems will do better.
* Fifth, the design of DRM systems is only weakly connected to the contours of copyright law. The systems make no pretense of enforcing copyright law as written, but instead seek to enforce rules dictated by the label’s and vendor’s business models. These rules, and the technologies that try to enforce them, implicate other public policy concerns, such as privacy and security.
* Finally, the stakes are high. Bad DRM design choices can seriously harm users, create major liability for copyright owners and DRM vendors, and ultimately reduce artists’ incentive to create.

(Tuesday 14th February 2006)
http://p2pnet.net/story/7919

 

Two-Tier Email

p2p news view / p2pnet: America Online and Yahoo!'s recent announcement of a new fee-based system for commercial email has generated enormous discussion within the Internet and marketing communities. Supporters argued that the plan represents an innovative marketing approach that will help reduce spam. Detractors, on the other hand, fear that the plan will choke off free speech by limiting the use of email to those who can afford to pay millions in new service fees.

Closer examination of publicly available information regarding the plan reveals that the proposed email fee-structure, commonly referred to as certified email, will actually do little to address spam and may not attract a large client base. Rather, its more significant impact lies in the fact that it is yet another step toward the two-tiered Internet that will ultimately shift new costs to consumers.

With spam now accounting for the majority of all email traffic, the reliability of email has greatly diminished. Where Internet users once trusted that their email correspondence would arrive at their intended destination, layers of spam filters designed to keep spam out of individual inboxes has also had the unfortunate effect of blocking legitimate email.

Large email providers such as AOL and Yahoo!, who together represent more than half of the email addresses on many U.S. consumer email lists, have sought to work with legitimate marketers by employing a "white list" that enables email sent from pre-identified addresses to arrive unhindered at no additional cost.

While that approach has been fairly successful, AOL and Yahoo! have floated plans to replace the white list approach with a certified email system managed by a company called Goodmail. Under the certified email system, marketers would pay a fraction of a cent per email in return for guaranteed delivery that by-passes spam filters (AOL initially indicated that would drop the free white list by the summer, though it backtracked soon after in the face of mounting criticism).

Notwithstanding the link between certified email and spam, it is important to note that it has little to do with reducing spam. Unlike spam, which is unsolicited commercial email, certified email only involves email that recipients have agreed to receive.

In fact, there is a danger that the plan could ultimately hinder the fight against spam, since there is an inverse relationship between the attractiveness of certified email and the effectiveness of spam filtering. In other words, as the accuracy of spam filtering decreases (ie. greater blocking of legitimate email), the desirability of a certified email system that guarantees delivery increases, creating incentives for email providers to reduce the effectiveness of their spam filters in favour of a lucrative certified email system.

While there is good reason for concern about the negative impact of certified email on spam filtering, there is also ample reason to doubt that it will prove popular with marketers. Marketers estimate that approximately 95 percent of legitimate email arrives at its intended destination. If AOL and Yahoo! account for half of consumer email addresses, marketers will have to balance the value of paying to deliver emails for half their list against the loss of 2.5 percent of intended recipients.

If certified email does little to reduce spam and may not present an attractive business model, why all the attention?

There are at least three reasons. First, many non-commercial organizations such as charitable or civil society groups may not have the resources to even engage in a cost-benefit analysis of certified email. For those groups, many of whom depend upon email as their primary method of communication, the shift from low-cost email to certified email could have a debilitating effect.

Second, while consumers enjoy considerable choice among email providers, switching costs remain high since advising contacts of an email address change is a laborious process that invariably results in lost connections and missing emails. In many respects, this market resembles the wireless phone market, where the lack of consumer mobility stems not from a lack of choice but rather from the ongoing delays in number portability that would allow consumers to switch providers but retain their existing cellphone number.

Third, this marks the continuing progression toward increased differentiation - or tiering - of Internet services. Users and websites are accustomed to a straightforward model that involves a flat fee for an established service. In recent months, ISPs and now email providers are challenging those assumptions by moving toward two-tiered pricing, two-tiered access, and two-tiered email delivery.

This movement represents a fundamental reshaping of the Internet. It requires the active involvement of regulatory agencies such as the CRTC and the Competition Bureau in order to ensure that the dominant Internet access and service providers do not harm the long-term potential of the online world.

Correction (Feb. 13/06): Yahoo! has advised that it is not planning, nor has the company ever planned, to replace its white list with a certified mail accreditation program. It is, however, planning to test the Goodmail certified email program in the coming months.

Michael Geist
[Geist is the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law at the University of Ottawa. He can be reached by email at mgeist[at]uottawa.ca and is on-line at www.michaelgeist.ca.]

(Tuesday 14th February 2006)
http://p2pnet.net/story/7920

 

Windows Defender (Free Anti Spyware) Beta 2 released

windows defender Windows Defender (Beta 2) is a free program that helps protect your computer against pop-ups, slow performance, and security threats caused by spyware and other unwanted software. It features Real Time Protection, a monitoring system that recommends actions against spyware when it's detected, and a new streamlined interface that minimizes interruptions and helps you stay productive. Download details: Windows® Defender (Beta 2)

Windows® Defender (Beta 2) Genuine Windows download
Brief Description
Windows Defender (Beta 2) is a free program that helps you stay productive by protecting your computer against pop-ups, slow performance and security threats caused by spyware and other potentially unwanted software.

Overview
This release includes enhanced features that reflect ongoing input from customers, as well as Microsoft’s growing understanding of the spyware landscape.

Specific features of Windows Defender Beta 2 include:

* A redesigned and simplified user interface – Incorporating feedback from our customers, the Windows Defender UI has been redesigned to make common tasks easier to accomplish with a warning system that adapts alert levels according to the severity of a threat so that it is less intrusive overall, but still ensures the user does not miss the most urgent alerts.

* Improved detection and removal – Based on a new engine, Windows Defender is able to detect and remove more threats posed by spyware and other potentially unwanted software. Real Time Protection has also been enhanced to better monitor key points in the operating system for changes.

* Protection for all users – Windows Defender can be run by all users on a computer with or without administrative privileges. This ensures that all users on a computer are protected by Windows Defender.

* Support for 64-bit platforms, accessibility and localization - Windows Defender Beta 2 also adds support for accessibility and 64-bit platforms. Microsoft also plans to release German and Japanese localized versions of Windows Defender Beta 2 soon after the availability of the English versions. Use WindowsDefenderX64.msi for 64-bit platforms.



Important Notes

* Microsoft Windows AntiSpyware (Beta):
Windows Defender (Beta 2) is the final name for Microsoft’s antispyware solution. Current Windows AntiSpyware (Beta 1) customers will be notified automatically to upgrade.

* Globalization:
The current beta is in the English language although we will deliver German and Japanese localized versions. All versions can be installed on any locale but the user interface will only be delivered in these three languages for testing purposes.

* Beta Support Policy:
This is pre-release (beta) software distributed for feedback and testing purposes. Microsoft only provides best effort support through the newsgroups. If Windows Defender (Beta 2) is causing an issue with your system, we recommend removing it by using Add or Remove Programs and even using System Restore if the problem persists.

* Access to Newsgroups:
Although formal support is not offered for this beta, we have provided newsgroups to help get your questions answered.



For Users of Giant AntiSpyware
Current Giant AntiSpyware users with active subscriptions are advised to continue to use their existing software. Click here for more information.

If your subscription has expired, and you choose to download and install Windows Defender (Beta 2), you must first uninstall any previous versions of Giant AntiSpyware.

To remove Giant AntiSpyware:

1. Click Start and then choose Control Panel.
2. Click Add or Remove Programs and then click Remove a Program. (If your control panel is set to Classic View, click the Add or Remove Programs icon.)
3. When the Add or Remove Programs window appears, select the Giant AntiSpyware program from the list.
4. Click Remove.


For Additional Information:
Please see the Release Notes to learn more about known issues with Windows Defender (Beta 2).

Top of page
System Requirements

* Supported Operating Systems: Windows 2000 Service Pack 4; Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1; Windows XP Service Pack 2


* For more details, see the System Requirements page.

Top of page
Instructions
This download is available running genuine Microsoft Windows. Click the Continue button in the Validation Recommended section above to begin the short validation process. Once validated, you will be returned to this page with specific instructions for obtaining the download.

GO HERE TO DOWNLOAD
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...e7-da2b-4a6a-afa4-f7f14e605a0d&DisplayLang=en

 

Spyware Can Make Your PC Lie To You
spy2 ....Apparently, some novel forms of spyware are so good at hiding themselves, that if your PC is infected with these particularly nasty beasties, you can no longer trust anything the PC tells you. These new forms of spyware install themselves at the driver level, which give them a unique ability to "hide data, files, or actions."



Today @ PC World

News, opinion, and links from the PC World staff.
See all Today @ PC World.
Spyware Can Make Your PC Lie To You--Report

Posted by Andrew Brandt
Monday, February 13, 2006, 11:03 AM (PST)


Webroot, the software company that makes the SpySweeper anti-spyware tool, released its latest State of Spyware report (free download) last week. The quarterly reports the company issues summarize the steady technological advancement of spyware makers and their progeny. The report is a wrapup of the worst stuff that happened in spyware in 2005. As you could probably guess, 2005 was the worst year for spyware--and the best year for cybercriminals--ever.

But one small detail in the summary really caught my attention. Apparently, some novel forms of spyware are so good at hiding themselves, that if your PC is infected with these particularly nasty beasties, you can no longer trust anything the PC tells you.

These new forms of spyware install themselves at the driver level, which give them a unique ability to "hide data, files, or actions." The report goes on to say that it's hard to remove spyware that installs itself at the so-called "Ring-0" level, because "no data that Windows returns can be considered reliable."

Great. So, suddenly my laptop is like Neo in the first Matrix movie: Puttering along happily in Windows-land, blissfully unaware that beneath the surface lies a truer 'reality' that is much darker than the world it 'sees.'

I'll take the Red Pill, please.

This brave new world of spyware has its "Agent Smiths" as well, because another increasingly common technique for spyware applications is to attack the anti-spyware forces arrayed against them. This evolution seems to parallel a trend that became common in many malicious viruses about five years ago, where one of the first acts of the virus on a newly-infected host was to look for and disable any of a long list of antivirus programs.

Especially pernicious are keystroke loggers, which capture your passwords as you type them and send them to criminals elsewhere. "Keyloggers are becoming more aggressive and are no longer content to evade [Windows]. Anti-spyware as well as other detection programs are now common targets," the report says.

The report also named the ten worst offenders in the world of adware and spyware. Notably, two of these notorious top ten purport to be anti-spyware tools themselves; Webroot's report labels these apps as "rogue anti-spyware": SpywareStrike and PSGuard both can install themselves on your PC without your consent; PSGuard also redirects your Web searches through its own search engine, and changes your home page, in some instances. Other notable rogue anti-spyware apps listed in the report include SpyAxe, SpySheriff, and WorldAntiSpy. The report also recounts the FTC's recent actions to stop two US companies that were involved in distributing rogue anti-spyware.

(We detailed some examples of rogue anti-spyware apps more than a year ago. Our advice for folks shopping for an anti-spyware solution is to stick to the reputable products made by companies who have established their credentials through independent testing.)

The report also said that large corporations risk not only a PR nightmare, but also could violate one or more federal regulations if even a single PC on their network gets some sort of spyware infestation, and as a result companies are scrambling to contain infections quickly. Despite that, corporations reported a 9 percent increase in the detections of keystroke loggers on business PCs from October, 2005 to the end of the year. Enterprises are also falling victim to more sophisticated, targeted attacks, such as spear phishing and Trojan horse programs custom-built to attack a particular company's network.
http://blogs.pcworld.com/staffblog/archives/001448.html

 

Antsy researcher exposes Internet Explorer flaw months before the fix
ie In a post to the SecuriTeam blog, Gadi Evron warns of a new, unpatched security vulnerability affecting Internet Explorer (IE) 5.01, 5.5, and 6.0. By luring you to a malicious Web page, and enticing you into interacting with it, an attacker can exploit this vulnerability to install software onto your computer using your system privileges....Unfortunately, Evron,who says he's acting per Murphy's instruction, released this warning before Microsoft had time to patch the flaw. According to Murphy's alert, Microsoft has no plans to release a security update to fix this flaw.

Antsy researcher exposes Internet Explorer flaw months before the fix

In a post to the SecuriTeam blog, Gadi Evron warns of a new, unpatched security vulnerability affecting Internet Explorer (IE) 5.01, 5.5, and 6.0. By luring you to a malicious Web page, and enticing you into interacting with it, an attacker can exploit this vulnerability to install software onto your computer using your system privileges. If you have local administrative privileges, the attacker could exploit this flaw to gain complete control of your machine.

Evron didn't discover the new IE flaw. Rather, his blog post credits Matthew Murphy with finding the flaw, and links to a detailed alert. In a nutshell, the flaw stems from IE's inability to properly handle specially crafted drag-and-drop objects on a Web page. To exploit this classic "bait and switch," the attacker crafts a malicious Web page that contains some phony Web object (such as an image, a link, or a scroll bar) that he encourages you to interact with in some way. If you take the bait and interact with the phony Web object, the attacker's Web code quickly and silently switches the phony Web object with a malicious object, causing you to unwittingly execute the malicious object instead. The phony Web object could take the guise of a "punch the monkey" game, an interactive image, or even an innocent-looking scroll bar. However, if you interact with this phony object, you might unwittingly install a trojan (or worse) into your Windows startup folder.

Unfortunately, Evron,who says he's acting per Murphy's instruction, released this warning before Microsoft had time to patch the flaw. According to Murphy's alert, Microsoft has no plans to release a security update to fix this flaw. Instead, they will ship a fix for this issue in Windows XP's upcoming Service Pack (SP) 3 and Windows 2003's upcoming SP2.

Until Microsoft releases a fix, you should apply one or more of the three workarounds Murphy describes in the "Workaround" section of his alert. I'll update you if Microsoft decides to release a fix for this flaw independent of XP SP3 and 2003 SP2. Meanwhile, resist the urge to punch any extraneous monkeys. -- Corey Nachreiner
http://www.watchguard.com/RSS/showarticle.aspx?pack=RSS.IE.dragdrop