Topic: SECURITY - on April 2, 2008 at 1:33:00 PM CEST
Bush administration passport to stupidity
Homeland security is a priority for the Bush administration. I know that because they keep telling us. We have to take off our shoes and take out our identification getting on and off planes. Not just any identification, either. Official stuff. And crossing borders -- any borders, even the border from Canada -- now requires a passport. A passport! Perhaps one of the most highly prized and secure of all official forms of identification, too, now embedded with electronic chips. Even blank passports are expensive, and we are charged for them -- $100, up from $60 ten years ago. Which makes perfect sense. But it's one of the few things about passport production that does make sense. Because it turns out that it is cheaper to make them in foreign countries like Thailand than in the US, so the State Department has been outsourcing printing of blank passports and pocketing the estimated $100 million yearly that is the difference between what they charge and what they cost. But that's not the main issue.
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Topic: GOOGLE - on April 2, 2008 at 1:30:00 PM CEST
Google has lots to do with intelligence
When the nation's intelligence agencies wanted a computer network to better share information about everything from al Qaeda to North Korea, they turned to a big name in the technology industry to supply some of the equipment: Google Inc.
The Mountain View company sold the agencies servers for searching documents, marking a small victory for the company and its little-known effort to do business with the government.
"We are a very small group, and even a lot of people in the federal government don't know that we exist," said Mike Bradshaw, who leads Google's federal government sales team and its 18 employees.
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Topic: FUN - on April 2, 2008 at 1:25:00 PM CEST
St Leonards’ divers set underwater ironing record
A GROUP of 72 SCUBA divers ironed their way to a Guinness World Record at St Leonards yesterday.
The divers set the record for the most people ironing underwater at the same time, narrowly pipping the previous mark of 70.
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Topic: NEWS - on April 2, 2008 at 1:22:00 PM CEST
UAE stages camel beauty contes
Ten thousand camels will be fluttering their long eyelashes in a unique international beauty pageant being held in the United Arab Emirates.
The contest in Abu Dhabi is one of the richest and biggest events of its kind, with more than $9m (£4.5m; 5.8m euros) and 100 cars in prizes up for grabs.
The contest will feature camels or "ships of the desert" from Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and Saudi Arabia.
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Topic: ART - on April 2, 2008 at 12:23:00 PM CEST
Red Bull Art Gives You Wings
Since 1997, Red Bull has held a competition in various cities to see what people come up with for art using Red Bull cans. The final works of art for some of these are pretty cool.
The goal of the competition is to build the most interesting sculpture from Red Bull cans.
From their site , "Judges review each piece based on the three Cs – Creativity (overall idea behind the piece), Conceptual execution (how well the piece translates the idea) and Construction (the quality of production/final presentation)."
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Topic: STRANGE - on April 2, 2008 at 12:19:00 PM CEST
Meatwater
Why settle for Vitaminwater? Go for the flavor you really crave with Meatwater! It comes in many flavors: Beef Jerky, Beef Stroganof, Cheese Burger, Chicken Teriyaki, Dirty Hot Dog, Fish’n Chips, Hungarian Gulash, Italian Sausage, Peking Duck, Tandoori Chicken, Texas BBQ, Wiener Schnitzel, and introducing the new Escargot flavor!
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Topic: HOLLYWALD - on April 2, 2008 at 12:07:00 PM CEST
The Outrageous Fortune of Terry Gilliam
A look at the on-set trials and tribulations of maverick director Terry Gilliam, and how he’s managed to roll with the punches that the studio system–and God–has thrown his way.
Film directing is a profession often fraught with impossible challenges. Woody Allen once said being a director meant “the truck of fresh compromises pulls up each day, and by the end of the film you look at the finished print and think unutterable thoughts.” No director in history knows more about compromise than Terry Gilliam. Part and parcel of being a visionary is being constantly told you can’t get the shot. Forces of Darkness conspire to defeat you, often in the form of studio executives, sometimes in the form of Nature herself. Let’s look at some of the roadblocks thrown in Gilliam’s path.
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Topic: Online-Fahndung - on April 2, 2008 at 11:56:00 AM CEST
Skandal: Schäubles Finger falsch
Wirbel um den Fingerbadruck von Wolfgang Schäuble. Sichere Quellen behaupten: Bei dem vom Chaos Computer Club (CCC) veröffentlichten Daktylogramm des Bundesinnenministers handelt es sich um eine Fälschung.
“Wir haben den veröffentlichten Fingerabdruck von Herrn Schäuble mit demjenigen verglichen, den wir in unserer Kundendatenbank gespeichert haben. Die Übereinstimmung liegt bei null Prozent”, teilte ein Firmensprecher des Lebensmitteldiscounters LIDL am späten Sonntag Abend mit
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Topic: * - on April 2, 2008 at 11:53:00 AM CEST
Schwächen des RFID-Systems Mifare Classic bestätigt
Der Betreiber des landesweiten Bezahlsystems für den Niederländischen Nahverkehr, Trans Link Systems (TLS), hat Auszüge einer zuvor geheim gehaltenen Sicherheitsanalyse des drahtlosen Bezahlsystems Mifare Classic veröffentlicht. Darin kommen die Analysten der niederländischen TNO zu dem Ergebnis, dass sowohl die Ende vergangenen Jahres bekannt gewordenen Schwachstellen als auch die beschriebenen Angriffe nachvollziehbar seien. Mifare Classic ist das derzeit wohl am weitesten verbreitete RFID-Bezahlsystem. Insbesondere in Mensen und als berührungslose Fahr- und Zugangskarten sind die Chips nach Schätzungen weltweit bereits milliardenfach im Einsatz.
24C3 - Mifare security
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Topic: COMPUTER - on April 2, 2008 at 11:41:00 AM CEST
NXP RFID encryption cracked
The Chaos Computer Club (Hamburg, Germany) has cracked the encryption scheme of NXPs popular Mifare Classic RFID chip. The device is used in many contactless smartcard applications including fare collection, loyalty cards or access control cards. NXP downplays the significance of the hack.
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Topic: COMPUTER - on April 2, 2008 at 11:39:00 AM CEST
Installation of Windows XP on an ASUS Eee PC
The Asus Eee PC (in the US anyway) comes with a very simplified Xandora Linux interface that provides some very basic functionality, like web browsing, email, messaging, and word processing. For some people that's all the Eee PC will ever need to do, but for others, a full blown install of a "heavier" OS will be required (or maybe just wanted). Because of the Eee's limited hardware specs, Windows XP comes to mind, but even a default install of Windows XP with all of the patches can be 2GB or above. On some Eee PC's (the 2GB models) this isn't an option, and even on the 4GB models, said XP install would require more than 50% of the available space (3.8GB formatted).
So what is a person to do? This guide will show you how to rip the non-essentials out of the Windows XP installation CD, create a new CD with just the minimums, and allows for a fully patched Windows XP SP2 install with a final installation size of under 540MB - and that includes all ASUS drivers for the Eee. Following this entire guide may take a while, but if you follow every step, it will be worth it in the end. I own a 4G Asus Eee PC with 2GB of RAM. I have installed Windows XP Pro SP2 on my Eee, all the while documenting the entire process here for you as a "how to" guide. My final install comes in at only 537MB, and takes around 17 seconds to start up from power button press to desktop.
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Topic: e-bay - on April 2, 2008 at 11:37:00 AM CEST
eBay pulls Vista laptop pwned in hacking contest
An eBay listing for the Windows Vista laptop that was successfully compromised at last week's Pwn2Own hacking contest was removed after the online auctioneer said it violated terms the forbid sales of items that might do harm.
Shane Macaulay, who felled the machine with code that attacked a weakness in Adobe Flash, posted the listing late Monday night, California time. Within two hours, he said in an interview, he received an automated email that said the auction had been suspended.
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