BigConna.com

By Chris Kanaracus

(IDG News Service) A U.S. District Court judge in Boston today dissolved a gag order against a trio of MIT students, a decision that frees them to publicly discuss security flaws they found in the ticketing system used by the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA).

Following a roughly 90-minute hearing today, U.S. District Judge George O'Toole sided with attorneys from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) who have been representing the three MIT students — Zack Anderson, Russell "RJ" Ryan and Alessandro Chiesa.

The students originally had planned to detail their findings at the Defcon hackers convention last week. But another judge imposed a 10-day restraining order against them on Aug. 9, the day before their scheduled presentation, after the MBTA claimed in a lawsuit that disclosing information about the vulnerabilities would cause "significant damage" to its transit operations.

Original article:
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&...

Ever try to remember who you bumped into at the store a few days back? Or exactly what the company president said at the morning meeting? Well, you're not alone. And IBM researchers are working on software that just may help you better recollect all the forgotten pieces of your life.

This week, the company unveiled software that uses images, sounds and text recorded on everyday mobile devices to help people recall names, faces, conversations and events. Dubbed Pensieve, the software organizes bits of collected information, stores them and then helps the user extract them later on.

"Today, we're flooded with information. It's an information overload and we're not capable of handling it," said Eran Belinsky, an IBM project leader. "This would relieve us from the anxiousness or need to try to remember everything. And there's the issue of trouble with recollection. [It's like] your index is broken. You know you know something, but you can't get there. This could help people having trouble with their memory reconstruct their memories."

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&...

Low-power 'millicomputing' is a focus at Usenix
By Sharon Machlis

(Computerworld) BOSTON — Your laptop is likely to soon go the way of 5.25-in. floppy disks, made obsolete by smaller, more useful technology: the smart phone.

Based on current trends for low-power chips used in devices like cell phones and iPods, we're likely to see eight times the CPU power in handheld devices by 2010 that we have today, computer architecture enthusiast Adrian Cockcroft said at the Usenix '08 technical conference this afternoon.

(Computerworld) In the 1984 cyberpunk novel Neuromancer, author William Gibson describes a future in which people can acquire knowledge by buying special chips called "microsofts" that plug into a surgically installed jack behind the ear. Once you plug in the chip, your brain can access its database and — voila! — knowledge!

It's an interesting and creepy idea, but one that we're going to have to face eventually. No, not painful implants; we're going to have to face the problem of education in a world in which nearly all knowledge is available to everyone, instantly, all the time.

A mere 20 years ago, almost no one had heard of the Internet, had ever used a cell phone or even knew what "GPS" stood for.

Today, most people I know over the age of 12 use the Internet every day, access data all day on their cell phones and use GPS gadgets to get from one place to another. Mobile broadband is rapidly getting faster. Mobile devices are getting radically better screens and user interfaces. And the whole world of data access on mobile devices is quickly bringing us to the point where we can find out just about anything from anywhere.

Where will we be 20 years from now in terms of our ability to access any information from anywhere? The mind boggles. Let's look at a few trends..."

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&...

(Click image to enlarge)

above all other activities, i enjoy smoking cigarettes. i am physically addicted, and that pervades (or invades) every other aspect of my consciousness; my emotional, psychological self. in short, I fucking love it. and since the outset of this addiction, no popular discourse could persuade me to abandon the activity. some would argue that cigarettes are simply bad for you, and there is no lack of evidence to support this claim: cigarettes damage your body, deteriorate your health, induce escapist tendancies etc. but i think most of these reasons only scratch the surface of why one could take the moral stance that humans and nicotine (or similarly affecting chemicals) should not mix.

the truth is, i've never had any trouble justifying the use of external substances. drugs are fucking fantastic. one of the great lies that non-addicts purport are that the benefits of altering your physical composition do not actually exist, but are merely perceived in some kind of self-deception. but this is not the case. the benefits are real, actual. and it's difficult to destroy the motivation for something that creates these tangible benefits; this utility. if it makes good, it's good. and that's something i've been able to get behind without much trouble.

The other day I was at my friend Lee's house watching "Snatch" with his fiancée, who suddenly asked "Why don't you have a girlfriend?" I faltered, initially finding it intrusive and countering my efforts to watch the film at hand. My hesitation earned a follow-up "... or boyfriend?" which I appreciated, considering fairness and courtesy, regardless of its base in suspicion. I then speculated that the people I meet in Knoxville generally do not impress me, and that the ones that do impress me usually have their heads too far up their own ass; or, they intimidate me and, thus, I do not impress myself. She assured me she did not include herself in the general Knoxville rabble and we left it at that.

But I ran over it again in my head: wait, why didn't I have a girlfriend? Why have I ignored this pervasive suggestion of my society? Was I too busy with school? Somehow, I always found time to get spun. Was I too fat? No, fat people have girlfriends. Wait, maybe I'm totally hideous? I considered this seriously, and concluded that she wouldn't have asked why I didn't have a girlfriend if the answer was literally written all over my face. So were my suspicions correct? Did I just not like the people around me? Perhaps I refuse to care.

Girlfriend, fiancée, wife; adored, adorned, and adulterated. The concepts seem tired, conjuring images of the traditional court, organized marriages, and large families; yet, I am reminded of my youth, and my own fleeing memories of love: first impressions, the chase, unity. And then the unmet expectations, unnavigable distance, and caustic despair. The stuff that twists your insides up real good. It's all so damn overwhelming. Not the least of which is picking apart your motivations, figuring out who the hell you are and why you're doing anything at all.