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Sunday, May 22, 2011

Rube Goldberg Machine Goes From Big Bang to Apocalypse [VIDEOS] (Mashable) : Technet

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Rube Goldberg Machine Goes From Big Bang to Apocalypse [VIDEOS] (Mashable) : Technet

Rube Goldberg Machine Goes From Big Bang to Apocalypse [VIDEOS] (Mashable)

Posted: 21 May 2011 08:47 AM PDT

Charlie White Charlie White – Sat May 21, 11:47 am ET



A group of creative scientist/students at Purdue University have created a Rube Goldberg machine that runs through the history of the universe starting with the Big Bang and ending with post-rapture optimism. They're calling it the "world's least efficient machine," even though it's bristling with mechanical ingenuity. Why's it so inefficient? Mainly because it takes 244 steps to water a plant.

[More from Mashable: Twitter Discusses The Rapture]

Those of you who are Rube Goldberg fans will realize those Purdue whiz kids are hedging a bit -- if you want to prove that a Rube Goldberg machine can actually work flawlessly, its operation must be shown in one unedited shot.

Alas, this "time machine" ran into "some problems" when it competed in the National Rube Goldberg Machine Championships, where it was disqualified, according to NewScientist. But after the competition the team made another attempt and it worked. That was too late to win the championship but it's still eligible for a place in the Guinness Book of World Records.

[More from Mashable: Panic at the Disco Asks Fans To Submit Clips for New Music Video]

We'll forgive the machine's inventors for its occasional foibles, enjoying this video with an optimistic ending that's perhaps appropriate for today, which some believe might be the planet's last. So is this like seeing our lives flash before our eyes?

Here's another view of the machine operating flawlessly before an audience, with narration:

This story originally published on Mashable here.

Internet bosses woo world leaders at 'e-G8' (AFP)

Posted: 22 May 2011 03:08 PM PDT

by Roland Lloyd Parry Roland Lloyd Parry – Sun May 22, 6:08 pm ET

PARIS (AFP) – The world's most powerful Internet and media barons gather in Paris on Tuesday in a show of strength to leaders at the G8 summit, amid international rows over online access, copyright and regulation.

Top executives from online giants like Google, Facebook and Microsoft will tout the economic potential of the Internet, which their host, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, has put on the agenda of the G8 summit two days later.

After Tuesday and Wednesday's "e-G8" bash, some of the biggest names will then meet with G8 leaders at the summit in Deauville, northwestern France, on May 26 and 27, a French presidential official said.

"For the first time, voices of companies, thinkers and major players who build the Internet will be heard at the highest levels of world politics," said a statement by PR firm Publicis, commissioned by Sarkozy to organise the e-G8.

With blogs and Tweets oiling the wheels of revolutions in some countries and scans and downloads sparking trade disputes in others, the stakes are high for leaders seeking to promote and profit from the web but also to regulate it.

The e-G8 "aims to enlighten and to nourish the discussions of the heads of G8 nations with the vision of the web actors regarding the Internet's importance and impact on society and the economy," the organisers said.

But some bloggers and activists saw the e-G8 not as a gesture of openness but a bid to tighten governments' grip on the Internet for power and money.

"Under the guise of a pseudo-consultative process, it is the governments' desire to control the Internet a bit more that is becoming apparent," French Internet freedom campaign group Le Quadrature du Net wrote on its website.

"Behind the smokescreen of this 'forum', citizens must hold world leaders more responsible for their actions and denounce the many continual breaches of their liberties."

Authorities in several countries have clashed with Google, the world's biggest Internet search engine, notably in China, where the company accused the government of hacking dissidents' email accounts.

France is expected to propose a statement in Deauville on "respecting freedoms" on the web, a French official said -- a jab at censorship in rising world powers such as China.

But, while acknowledging the Internet's power as a force for freedom elsewhere, western countries' differ on how to harness or curb it on their own doorsteps.

Media freedom campaigners including Reporters Without Borders have criticised moves by some European countries, such as a recent French law making web users liable to prosecution if they illegally download films and music.

German and Italian regulators have placed restrictions on Google's Street View, over privacy concerns for people photographed in its online street maps.

In France, several publishers accuse Google of scanning their copyrighted books for its online library, although one major publisher, Hachette Livre, has struck a deal with the Californian company.

Sarkozy has called for "a civilised Internet" and has proposed another gathering, on online copyright protection, ahead of the November meeting of leaders of the Group of 20, a bigger club of rich and emerging powers.

This drive may worry the United States, sensitive to talk of regulation.

The e-G8 guests include the executive chairman of Google, Eric Schmidt; the founder of social site Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg; and Jeff Bezos, founder of online retail giant Amazon. Microsoft will also be represented.

Also attending is Rupert Murdoch, the billionaire head of the global media empire News Corporation, which includes Fox News and the Wall Street Journal, and dubbed by Forbes magazine "the man who owns the news."

Murdoch's recent decision to start charging for content on news websites rattled the media world, where companies are struggling to work out how to make money from journalism in the Internet age.

France touted the meetings of the e-G8 and the G8 as an unprecedented meeting of the online and political worlds.

"The wish of the heads of state is to hear the world's top Internet figures talk about their vision for the future so that they can incorporate it in their own decisions," a French presidential official told reporters.

AFP chairman talks media future with US counterparts (AFP)

Posted: 22 May 2011 12:34 PM PDT

– Sun May 22, 3:34 pm ET

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Emmanuel Hoog, AFP's chairman and chief executive officer, wound up a US tour over the weekend involving talks with US counterparts on how news organizations are adapting to the rapidly evolving landscape of new mobile and Internet media platforms.

The weeklong trip to Washington and New York involved discussions with leading figures in both traditional and new media, including Jesse Angelo, editor-in-chief of The Daily, the iPad-only newspaper published by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, and Google News founder Krishna Bharat.

Hoog also met Wednesday with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to discuss the work of the AFP Foundation, which trains journalists in emerging nations, partly in collaboration with the UN Development Program.

In talks with Associated Press CEO Tom Curley and Thomson-Reuters chief executive Tom Glocer, Hoog explored how the three global news agencies are evolving to face the challenges posed by the Internet and online competitors.

At The New York Times, executive editor Bill Keller stressed his newspaper's reliance on AFP images, saying a survey showed the Times had published more than 500 AFP photos in its last 100 issues.

Growth eyed in Indian mobile banking sector (AFP)

Posted: 22 May 2011 01:47 PM PDT

by Salil Panchal Salil Panchal – Sun May 22, 4:47 pm ET

MUMBAI (AFP) – Hundreds of millions of poor Indians who have no access to financial services could benefit from mobile banking, experts say, as cell phone use grows at breakneck pace.

Banking by phone could transform the workings of the rural economy, but the industry first needs to allay fears about transaction security and overcome low literacy levels and banks' limited reach in remote areas.

Leading figures from the telecoms and banking sectors meeting in Mumbai last week said that mobile banking -- including money transfers, bill payments and remittances -- was largely untapped.

"The potential for mobile banking is enormous, but it will take its own pace to grow," Amit Ahire, analyst at Ambit Capital, told AFP.

One in 10 of the world's mobiles is sold in India, according to technology research specialists Gartner, and the country adds nearly 19 million new mobile subscribers every month, making it the fastest-growing market in the world.

An estimated 775 million people are mobile phone subscribers.

Yet, at the same time, nearly half of the adult population still does not have a bank account.

Combining the two sectors will have benefits not just for consumers but the economy as a whole, analysts say, echoing India's central bank, which wants swathes of rural India brought into the formal financial system.

The Reserve Bank of India has allowed 39 banks to launch mobile banking services and recently raised the limit for the amount which can be paid through mobile phones 10-fold, to 50,000 rupees ($1,100).

Currently, just five percent of mobile phone subscribers are registered for the service and of them, a tiny 0.5 percent use it regularly, according to the Business Standard financial daily, quoting industry estimates.

It is thought that 680,000 transactions worth 610 million rupees ($13.55 million) are conducted every month.

"Rail and air ticketing transactions are more frequently done online than through mobiles," Santosh Singh, analyst with London-based investment bank Espirito Santo Securities, told AFP.

"Growth is slower than expected but it is too early and lot of time and resources need to be spent to educate customers on usage and security," added Samaresh Parida, a director of mobile giant Vodafone Essar, which has a tie-up with ICICI Bank, India's largest private lender.

Indian banks and telecoms firms face a "significant learning curve", he said, predicting that mobile banking would evolve faster than its Internet equivalent as 3G phone services roll out across the country.

But while cut-throat competition has pushed call charges down to less than one cent a minute, web browsing charges remain high and the penetration of 3G smartphones still low.

"Mobile banking to most Indians is complex and too technical," said A.P. Hota, chief executive of National Payments Corporation of India, an apex body for mobile banking payments.

He said that to develop, the facility needs to become more visual and multi-lingual.

Contract Killer tops this week’s best Android games (Appolicious)

Posted: 22 May 2011 02:30 PM PDT

LinkedIn site has security vulnerabilities: expert (Reuters)

Posted: 22 May 2011 04:18 PM PDT

By Jim Finkle Jim Finkle – Sun May 22, 7:18 pm ET

BOSTON (Reuters) – LinkedIn's professional networking website has security flaws that makes users' accounts vulnerable to attack by hackers who could break in without ever needing passwords, according to a security researcher who identified the problem.

News of the vulnerability surfaced over the weekend, only days after LinkedIn Corp went public last week with a trading debut that saw the value of its shares more than double, evoking memories of the dot.com investment boom of the late 1990s.

Rishi Narang -- an independent Internet security researcher based near New Delhi, India, who discovered the security flaw -- told Reuters on Sunday that the problem is related to the way LinkedIn manages a commonly used type of data file known as a cookie.

After a user enters the proper username and password to access an account, LinkedIn's system creates a cookie "LEO_AUTH_TOKEN" on the user's computer that serves as a key to gain access to the account.

Lots of websites use such cookies, but what makes the LinkedIn cookie unusual is that it does not expire for a full year from the date it is created, Narang said.

He detailed the vulnerability in a posting on his blog at http://www.wtfuzz.com on Saturday.

Most commercial websites would typically design their access token cookies to expire in 24 hours, or even earlier if a user were to first log off the account, Narang said.

There are some exceptions: Banking sites often log users off after 5 or 10 minutes of inactivity. Google gives its users the option of using cookies that keep them logged on for several weeks, but it lets the user decide first.

The long life of the LinkedIn cookie means that anybody who gets hold of that file can load it on to a PC and easily gain access to the original user's account for as much as a year.

The company issued a statement saying that it already takes steps to secure the accounts of its customers.

"LinkedIn takes the privacy and security of our members seriously," the statement said.

"Whether you are on LinkedIn or any other site, it's always a good idea to choose trusted and encrypted WiFi networks or VPNs (virtual private networks) whenever possible."

The company said that it currently supports SSL, or secure sockets layer, technology for encrypting certain "sensitive" data, including account logins.

But those access token cookies are not yet scrambled with SSL. That makes it possible for hackers to steal the cookies using widely available tools for sniffing Internet traffic, Narang said.

LinkedIn said in its statement that it is preparing to offer "opt-in" SSL support for other parts of the site, an option that would cover encryption of those cookies. The company said it expected that to be available "in the coming months."

But LinkedIn officials declined to respond to Narang's critique of the company's use of a cookie with a one-year expiration.

Narang said that problem is particularly acute because LinkedIn's users are not aware of the problem and have no idea that they should be protecting those cookies.

He said he found four cookies with valid LinkedIn access tokens had been uploaded to a LinkedIn developer forum by users who were posting questions about their use.

He said he downloaded those cookies and was able to access the accounts of the four LinkedIn subscribers.

(Reporting by Jim Finkle; Editing by Tim Dobbyn)

Why Android Fans Annoy IPhone Users (ContributorNetwork)

Posted: 22 May 2011 09:38 AM PDT

Jared Spurbeck Jared Spurbeck – Sun May 22, 12:38 pm ET
Contribute content like this. Start here.

Full disclosure: I'm an Android fan. I bought an HTC Aria on AT&T's network, before Verizon got the iPhone. I like how Android phones work, I like that I can customize them, and I like that the Android operating system is open-source -- I even run Ubuntu on my laptop.

Having said that, I've noticed we Android fans tend to do, say, and believe stuff that's hard for most people to swallow. Especially iPhone fans, who often have a totally different idea of what makes a good smartphone. So here's some friendly advice, for me and my fellow Android fans!

Good taste is, in fact, a feature.

And as Marco Arment explains in Feature Checklist Dysfunction, "It would be ignorant and arrogant for me to presume that your priorities are anything like mine."

Part of the reason I bought my HTC Aria was because of how classy its hardware was, and because of how nice HTC Sense looked. I'm betting a lot of people buy iPhones and iPads for the same reason -- and a lot of us make fun of them for caring about "style over substance," or choosing a phone to "impress girls/guys" or something.

I feel like the odd one out for saying this, but style is a part of substance. People are buying most of these phones on two-year contracts; the way that they look and feel is an important consideration. I like my Aria's look and feel better than I like the iPhone's, and that's one of the reasons I bought it.

Yes, I know Android lets you change the home screens all around, and make it look and feel how you want it to (at least software-wise). But the thing is,

Most people don't want to customize their phone's user interface.

OK, to be honest, the impression I get is that most people do like to personalize their smartphones. It's just that for them, to "personalize" means to change the wallpaper and ringtone, not root their phone and install CyanogenMod.

When AT&T messed up my Aria in its software update, I was glad that Android allowed me to change my home screen to one that wasn't ruined. To get it just right, though, I had to swim through ADW Launcher's pages and pages of options. And I wasn't discovering cool features, so much as trying to figure out how to turn off the things that annoyed me.

I think it's great that we get to change stuff around on our phones like this, but I didn't like being forced to.

Finally, "Android" isn't a phone.

I write articles that compare "Android vs. Apple," but I always take pains to explain what Android is: An operating system, mostly written by Google. A component, that companies like HTC use to make tablets and smartphones.

Maybe most Android gadgets seem interchangeable right now, thanks to a lack of creativity on the part of the manufacturers. But devices like the Nook Color show what it's possible to stretch Android to do, with a bit of knowhow and polish. And not everyone knows what Android itself is yet, or why they should look for a phone that uses the friendly green robot mascot.

Hopefully we can give them some good reasons, that appeal to their priorities and not just ours.

Jared Spurbeck is an open-source software enthusiast, who uses an Android phone and an Ubuntu laptop PC. He has been writing about technology and electronics since 2008.

Mobile marketing grows with smartphone sales (Appolicious)

Posted: 22 May 2011 06:51 PM PDT

Marvell to invest $200 million in Israeli R&D (Reuters)

Posted: 22 May 2011 09:04 AM PDT

By Tova Cohen Tova Cohen – Sun May 22, 12:04 pm ET

TEL AVIV (Reuters) – Silicon Valley chip designer Marvell Technology said it was to invest $200 million in Israel to accelerate research and development of critical communications, mobile and system-on-chip technologies.

Marvell, which supplies chips for Research in Motion's Blackberrys, has two R&D centres in Israel that employ more than 1,200 people.

"Recently, Israel has faced new, expanded international competition," said Yossi Meyouhas, general manager of Marvell Israel. "While these new challenges are essential in stimulating global progress in technology, it is critical that organisations invest to ensure Israel remains a recognised leader in R&D and technology innovation."

The company, which entered Israel 10 years ago with its acquisition of Galileo, has made investments and acquisitions in Israel totaling $3.5 billion.

Co-founder Weili Dai said Marvell developed many of its advanced technologies in Israel, ranging from enterprise networking and cloud service to mobile cellular capabilities.

NYC Opera union seeks unfair labor practice charge (AP)

Posted: 21 May 2011 10:30 PM PDT

– Sun May 22, 1:30 am ET

NEW YORK – A union representing workers at the financially troubled New York City Opera says it will file unfair labor practice charges after the board voted to move out of the Lincoln Center and cut staff.

National Executive Director Alan Gordon said Saturday that the American Guild of Musical Artists will also consider seeking an injunction preventing the production company from continuing to use the name New York City Opera.

On Friday, the board voted to leave the Lincoln Center, cut staff across the board and scale back its performance schedule. The opera's general manager, George Steel, says the changes are necessary to keep the opera afloat and build "a foundation for sustainable growth."

The 68-year-old organization is revered as a pillar of American culture. But in recent years, it has been struggling with a dwindling endowment and a multimillion-dollar deficit.

Account-required Pinterest app complements website, but doesn't stand on its own (Appolicious)

Posted: 22 May 2011 04:00 PM PDT

Windows Debugging Made Easy (PC World)

Posted: 20 May 2011 01:00 PM PDT

Joab Jackson Joab Jackson – Fri May 20, 4:00 pm ET

When it comes to debugging hard-to-diagnose software and operating-system problems, there is no set recipe. Rather debugging is all about "having the right tools and knowing how to use them," advised Microsoft technical fellow Mark Russinovich at the close of the Microsoft TechEd conference, held this week in Atlanta.

Among the highlights of each year's TechEd conference are the technology demonstrations. Smart Microsoft and partner engineers walk attendees through how to use some new technology in a step-by-step process, making it seem easy -- or even fun -- to deploy.

And one of the most popular demonstrations over the past few years has been Russinovich's "Cases of the Unexplained," in which he shows how he and others tracked down hard-to-pinpoint errors in Windows deployments.

This year, of course, was no exception. Before a packed auditorium, Russinovich debugged a number of tricky problems using only a handful of free tools, many created by Russinovich himself, including Process Explorer and Process Monitor. He borrowed many examples in his presentation from his blog, where he collects user stories of tough problems.

In the cases Russinovich demonstrated, the root causes of the misbehaving systems were not readily obvious. This was especially true of software that, he noted, when it crashes, offers little instruction about its downfall. "Programs do a bad job of telling what went wrong," he said. Yet he showed that it is possible to carefully track the symptom of the problem back to the cause.

One example Russinovich dubbed "the case of the slow website." This example was submitted to Russinovich by a system administrator from an unnamed company. The organization's users were complaining of slow performance of some internal Web pages. The admin tracked all the Web pages to a single server, then ran Process Explorer, which shows all the processes on a server, and how much memory and CPU resources each thread of a process is consuming.

The admin identified one thread that was hogging more than a quarter of the server's resources. Doing a Web search, he found that the related process belonged to a Windows management driver that, in turn, communicated with the server chassis' management controller provided by the server manufacturer. The two components were having difficulty in communicating, so the communication between them spiked.

The difficulty turned out to be that the blade server was not slotted into the rack appropriately. The user reseated the server chassis and the server quickly returned to delivering its Web pages speedily.

Another problem came not from misbehaving equipment or software, but rather from user behavior. "This case came into the Microsoft Exchange support team," Russinovich said.

Users complained that Microsoft Exchange would periodically delay responding for up to 30 seconds. Microsoft requested the customer to log the server performance using Performance Monitor, which showed periodic spikes in CPU utilization. Using ProcDump, a Microsoft engineer created a script that would capture all the process information whenever processor usage went above a certain threshold.

Looking through the results, the engineer found an Exchange search function was consuming many of the cycles. The sluggishness was caused by the fact that a number of users had humongous mailboxes, which when they searched through them, would spike the server load. The admin instructed the users to reduce the size of their mailboxes, or organize them better. As a result of such tidying up on the users' part, server performance improved.

In a third case, Russinovich's wife had complained that the Windows Photo Gallery would hang after showing a movie. The bug was particularly annoying to her, as she was showing friends some home movies. A friend of hers even quipped, "This never happens with a Mac."

Russinovich reran the Photo Gallery software while capturing all the processes in Process Monitor. "When in doubt run Process Monitor," he advised. He matched the time of the hang with all the processes running at that time. While most of the processes were routine, he found an unusual system call, ironically enough, to an Apple QuickTime object, which was the source of program hang. "Sure enough, it was from that company that doesn't know how to write Windows software," he joked.

Russinovich also showed the audience how to rid a machine of a bad case of malware. This example also came from a user submission, detailing how the infected computer had a particularly thorough piece of malware that blocked all attempts to run any sort of diagnostic, anti-virus or system administration tools.

One way around the block, Russinovich advised, consisted of running another program he had written called Desktops, which lets the user set up four virtual desktops for the computer. The user can then switch among the desktops, each of which ran independently of the others. While not a diagnostic tool per se, Desktops could be used to repair the malware-riddled computer. The malware monitored any activity on the main desktop, but it was unaware of the other desktops, one of which Russinovich used to run anti-virus tools.

Finally, no debugging session would be complete without diagnosing the infamous Windows Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) error. Despite the severity of the problem, "It is incredibly easy to do crash analysis" on a BSOD, he said. Russinovich explained that such a crash happens when something goes wrong within the operating system's kernel memory space, such as a device driver that tries to access memory allotted to another program. Because Windows' first priority is "to protect data," it will shut down as soon as a program acts outside allotted memory space, he said.

After a system crash, Microsoft will offer an analysis upon reboot of the machine, which can point to drivers that need to be updated or other fixes. Even if this help message proves unhelpful, the administrator can check for the crash dump file that Windows produces when it crashes, Russinovich said. This is either found in the Windows directory, or in a subdirectory called Minidump. A program called Windows Debugger can examine the file and provide more information about what possibly caused the crash.

The presentation "makes you want to go home and crash your computer," one attendee said afterward.

Joab Jackson covers enterprise software and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Follow Joab on Twitter at @Joab_Jackson. Joab's e-mail address is Joab_Jackson@idg.com
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