The BBC have an article about Australian researchers successfully teleporting photons a distance of 600m, advancing upon their first efforts in the field, over two years ago.
Tag: news
Executable Stenography… With A Difference
Somebody’s come up with a program that hides secret messages in executable programs. Well… that’s not so impressive – we’ve all hidden secret messages in JPEG files before by using programs to ‘flip’ certain pixels (example). This works by changing the image in subtle ways that the human eye won’t detect, but that the descrambling application will. But here’s the clever bit…
Typically, when encoding a ‘hidden message’ in an executable, one ‘pads’ the file, making it bigger. The technique used when encoding messages in graphics files can’t be used with executables, because ‘flipping’ bits of the file would stop the program from working (or at least, working as it should), which may arouse suspicion. But this new tool works by exploiting redundancy in the i386 instruction set, swapping instructions or blocks of instructions for other ones which are functionally identical. As a result, the original filesize remains the same, and the program maintains full functionality. It would take an eavesdropper to fully compare the executable with a known original executable in order to determine that there was even a message hidden within it, and (thanks to Blowfish cryptography) yet more effort to decode that message.
Marvellous.
Ferreting Out Piracy
CNet News has a story
on the BSA‘s attempts to educate children
that copyright evasion and piracy is wrong, with the help of their new cartoon mascot – a ferret (shown).
And yes, I’ve used the picture of their new mascot without their permission. <wink>
Is a ferret really the best mascot they could think of…?
Bushism Of The Day
“They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people – and neither do we.”
Full story from BBC News.
Magical Trevor
Everyone love Magical Trevor;
‘Cos the tricks that he does are ever so clever.
Something Cheery
I see that Slate, a magazine run by MSN (and owned entirely by Microsoft), recently published an article promoting the idea of not using Internet Explorer. Whoopsie, say Microsoft. Better yet, the article suggests using Mozilla Firefox, their main competitor in the browser market, instead.
Promised you something cheery. There it is.
Software Projects In The Context Of Swings
Eons old, but I rediscovered it today while tidying up my hard drive, so I thought I’d share it with you all:
Parallel Parking For Dummies
Have a go at the parallel parking game – let’s so how good you lot are. I’ve managed to beat the rest
of the folks at work with a stunning score of 87.72, parking in 5.7 seconds flat… not bad for the only non-driver!
God Violates Intel Trademark
It’s all news, today! Lots of fascinating little stories and nothing about me. I mean, who’s blog is it anyway?
According to The Register, the authoritive source on such matters, God may have infringed upon Intel’s intellectual property. Only moderately funny, but nice and geeky.
In other news, I hear that AMD are planning to release a new dual-processor board designed to accomodate two older Athlon chips, optomised for playing 80s music on MP3. They’re calling it the Duron Duron.
Singing Flowers
Remember those silly plastic flowers that danced? Well, here’s the next inevitable step: a Japanese inventor has developed a device that can be buried in a plant pot and uses vibration to cause the leaves of plant therein to oscillate as speakers.
Grow your own speakers. Yay.
Personally, I’d have far too much fun burying such a device under a friend’s vegetable patch, on a long (buried or otherwise concealed) cable, and have his plants ‘talk back’ to him when he talks to them. Where can I get one?
MEP From Yorkshire States “[Never] employ a lady of child-bearing age.”
The BBC have an article: “UKIP MEP in row over working women”. It’s worth reading, if only to laugh.
Expect to see this particular MEP assassinated by a militarist feminist group within the week.
Developers Play Air Guitar To Megadeth
The Register have a report on a survey of the musical tastes of IT specialists, by profession. If you’re a geek, date a geek, live with geeks, or whatever, it’s worth a look.
A Selection Of News Items From Around The World
[this post has been partially damaged during a server failure on Sunday 11th July 2004, and it has been possible to recover only a part of it]
[more of this post was recovered on Friday 24 November 2017]
Here’s some stuff I found interesting this weekend:
Swedish health workers, in an effort to stem the growing cases of chlamydia among young people, have launched a ‘condom ambulance [BBC News]. If you find yourself ‘caught short’ in Sweden, just give them a bell and they’ll rush around to your house with a pack-of-three, for the equivelent cost of about £4.
Chinese researchers have used a carbon nanotube [Wikipedia] as a filament in a new, experimental light bulb [The Register]. This bulb emits more light and works at a lower threshold than tungsten at the same voltage, and was still functioning fine after being switched on and off 5000 times. The future of lighting?
And finally, researchers from Hebrew University in Israel may have found a solution to the problems associated with passwords. As it stands, ‘secure’ passwords are hard to remember, and often find themselves written down, whereas insecure ones can be cracker. Plus, for real security, passwords should be …
The Register Takes Off In Aberystwyth
The Register have this story and photo, taken in Aberystwyth: can anybody identify the woman in the picture?
The Importance Of A Sensible Patent System In Europe
If Haydn had patented “a symphony, characterised by that sound is produced [ in extended sonata form ]”, Mozart would have been in trouble.
Click Here — Sign The Petition
Just thought I’d share that link with you. This is something which could eventually affect the way we all use computers. To those of you who don’t recognise these images or have no idea what I’m on about, I urge you to read about the issue of software patenting in Europe.
Thanks for listening.