The Little Hacker's Room

risinganger writes "BBC News is reporting that a customer had his password changed without his knowledge. After some less than satisfactory service the customer in question changed his password to 'Llyods is pants'. At some point after that a member of staff changed the password to 'no it's not'. Requests to change it back to 'Llyods is pants', 'Barclays is better' or censorship were met with refusal. Personally I found the original change funny, like the customer did. After all, god forbid a sense of humour rears it's ugly head in business. What isn't acceptable is the refusal to change it per the customers requests after that."

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Do you remember Darl McBride testifying at trial in SCO v. Novell in April that if you wanted to get Unix source code, the only way to get it was to license UnixWare and that UnixWare was just the latest version of Unix? The court believed that story, so for the sake of history and truth, then, here is a Novell SEC 10K filing from 1994, when Novell was the place you went to in order to license UnixWare and Unix System V. They sold both UnixWare and Unix source code as two separate products.

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "NASA has received interesting results from the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, originally known as GLAST, which has allowed them to create new map of the gamma-ray sky. The secret to its ability to resolve gamma-rays is that they use layers of tungsten interleaved with silicon detectors. When a gamma-ray strikes tungsten, it produces an electron/positron pair due to the photoelectric effect, which cascades as it goes through further layers of tungsten. Meanwhile, they record which silicon detectors had electrons or positrons pass through them to determine the direction of the source and they also record the total energy of the electron/positron pairs to calculate the wavelength of the gamma-ray using Planck's Law. The data gathered in just its first few hours of operation is reportedly comparable to the data from the Energetic Gamma-Ray Experiment Telescope, which gathered data for nine years back in the 1990's and there are hopes that it could detect dark matter in the form of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs)."

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Time lapse video of unusual looking molds and mushrooms erupting. Be sure to check out the related mushroom videos, too. (Via Grow-A-Brain)

National treasures Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez have relaunched Love and Rockets with a new format and a new approach. I can hardly wait.

Love and Rockets: New Stories #1 reboots the beloved ongoing "Love and Rockets" comic into a fat, all-new annual graphic novel length package.

Jaime launches the new format with a story that's unusual even for him... A full-on, pulse-pounding super-hero yarn! Maggie's longtime friend Penny Century has finally realized her longtime dream of acquiring super-powers, but at a terrible personal cost. Now she rampages through the galaxy, half mad with grief, and a motley group of super-heroes assembles to try to stop her -- led by Maggie's girlfriend Angel and her mysterious neighbor Alarma, and involving a number of characters longtime Love and Rockets fans will delight in recognizing.

The epic-length 50-page story (only the first half of the saga!) combines Jaime's razor sharp characterization and superlative art with wildly inventive, Kirby-style slam-bang super-hero action.

Then Gilbert Hernandez explodes with a similarly generous helping of his fantastically creative one-shot short stories: "Tamanny" (rookie cop vs. demonic drug users); "Papa" (a turn-of-the-century story involving a traveling businessman); "The New Adventures of Duke and Sammy" (super-powered Martin and Lewis impostors in outer space); "The Tender Room" (Into the Wild as re-imagined by Beto); "Chiro el Indio" (written by third brother Mario Hernandez); and "Never Say Never" (a kangaroo gets lucky in Las Vegas).

One hundred pages of Jaime, Gilbert and Mario Hernandez at the peak of their powers: this is a major graphic-novel event!

Love and Rockets: New Stories #1

Datajunkie has a small galley of choice comic book ads from the days of yore. If you like these, you should get a copy of Hey Skinny! Great Advertisements from the Golden Age of Comic Books. Old comic book ads

An anonymous reader writes "The Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS) has apparently discovered a new world-record prime number. A GIMPS client computer reported the number on August 23rd, and verification is currently under way. The verification could take up to two weeks to complete. The last Mersenne prime discovered was over 9.8 million digits long, strongly suggesting that the new value may break the 10 million digit barrier — qualifying for the EFF's $100000 prize!"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Eren Göksel wrote a tutorial that anyone can follow to create a drawing of a pencil in Photoshop.

The Pencil is one of the visual metaphors most used to express creativity. In this tutorial, I'll show you how to draw a pencil icon. We'll have a look at gradients, selection tools, and basic transform operations. Let's have some fun with this. I'd love to see Boing Boing readers' variations on this. If you create one, please link to it in the comments section.

How to create a super shiny pencil icon in Photoshop

DesScorp writes "The Times reports on the problems of adding wind farms to the power grid. Because of the grid's old design, it can't handle the various spikes that wind farms sometimes have, and there's no efficient way to currently move massive amounts of that power from one section of the country to the other. Further complicating things is the fact that under current laws, power grid regulation is a state matter, and the Federal government has comparatively little authority over it right now. Critics are calling for federal authority over the grid, and massive new construction of "superhighways" to share the wind power wealth nationally. Quoting the article, 'The dirty secret of clean energy is that while generating it is getting easier, moving it to market is not.'"

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AlHunt writes "I've been tasked with finding a way to bury digitally stored photographs in a small underground time capsule to be opened in 25 years. It looks like we'll be using a steel vessel, welded closed. I've thought of CDs, DVDs, a hard drive, or a thumb drive — but they all have drawbacks, not the least of which is outdated technology 25 years from now. Maybe I'll put a CD and a CD-ROM drive in the capsule and hope that the IDE interface is still around in 25 years? Ideas and feedback will be appreciated."

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WhiteHat Security's latest report on Web site security shows cross-site scripting remains the most common Web site vulnerability. But cross-site forgery requests also made WhiteHat's list of top 10 Web site security flaws. On a positive note, the majority of the vulnerabilities discovered by WhiteHat were remediated.
- WhiteHat Security's latest report on Web site vulnerabilities has found the Internet in slightly better shape emphasis on slightly. In the fifth installment of the quot;WhiteHat Website Security Statistics Report, quot; the company has found that 82 percent of the 687 Web sites assessed by the ...

Aptana, maker of Web development and cloud computing tools, has acquired the Pydev IDE for Python development. The Eclipse-based Pydev tools suite supports Google App Engine development.
- Aptana is bringing its brand of AJAX-style development to the Python community by acquiring the Pydev suite of Python development tools. Aptana's acquisition of the Eclipse-based IDE (integrated development environment) for Python also is a boon for developers integrating Web development with cl...

blackbearnh writes "It may make you feel very, very old, but the Macintosh will be turning 25 in January. As we approach this momentous anniversary, O'Reilly News had a talk with Andy Hertzfeld, one of the original Macintosh designers, about the long and storied history of the Mac. Hertzfeld, who tells the story of the Mac in his book A Revolution in the Valley, shares his thoughts about how the Mac has aged over time, how life might have been different if Steve Jobs had stayed on at Apple, and the differences between working for Apple, and for Google (his current employer.)" Read on below for a bit of what Hertzfeld had to say.

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The Federal Aviation Administration's flight plan IT network, which went down for about 2.5 hours Aug. 26 and fouled up the takeoff plans of thousands of travelers in more than 40 airports across the country, is back up and running. But for how much longer? The antiquated system consists of two 20-year-old redundant mainframe configurations one in Georgia, one in Utah that apparently are hanging on for dear life.
- The Federal Aviation Administration's flight plan IT network, which went down for about 2.5 hours Aug. 26 and fouled up the takeoff plans of thousands of travelers in more than 40 airports across the country, was back up and running Aug. 27. IT staff were still troubleshooting it today in Ham...

I've been getting email asking if I'll be covering the newly filed Apple v. Psystar litigation. Here's Apple's complaint [PDF]. I must tell you frankly that I was in the "a pox on both their houses" category, so I thought I probably wouldn't do so in depth.

But then I noticed media reports that Psystar has announced that it will be filing antitrust (!) counterclaims. Antitrust? I couldn't help but reflect -- and I confess it was my first reaction -- that it's so odd that all Microsoft's competitors end up dealing with unexpected allegations, sometimes from small companies, against them in court or before regulatory bodies that just happen to threaten their viability in the marketplace.

Remember Google was accused, and cleared, of an antitrust allegation in the US and before the EU Commission? And IBM was accused of copyright infringement in connection with Linux by SCO, as laboriously chronicled right here on Groklaw. And now Apple has to deal with litigation counterclaims that, so far, seem to me to be dubious at best from a company that just suddenly showed up last year doing things that a first-year law student, or even a mere paralegal like myself, would assume were going to get them royally sued into nonexistence. Now there are announced counterclaims that just happen to go to the heart of Apple's business.

Photographer Meera Sethi has written a nice essay about taking photos in science museums. Sethi is part of Utata, a collective of photographers who met via Flickr. Indeed, be sure to check out Sethi's "Muse" science museum photo set on Flickr. (Seen here, "Together Forever," taken at the Harvard Museum of Natural History.) From "Photographing the Science Museum": Is there anyone who doesn't feel a certain frisson of excitement when they see something organic preserved in a glass jar? I don't know exactly what it is, but I suspect it might have something to do with certain cultural associations we all carry around in our heads, some strange common currency that comes from years of watching mad scientist movies late at night.That might be me in there, I find myself thinking. If some other intellectually curious species with opposable thumbs and access to the secrets of chemistry had come to dominate the planet instead of my own, that might be my shriveled body all scrunched up in there—my brain at whose familiar whorls some creature with a purple exoskeleton would now be leering through the glass, wondering how on earth it could be so very...grey.

Mostly, though, what I love about standing in front of these heavy jars is how much easier they make it to observe the world I love so much, in close detail. Time pauses, temporarily. The barriers between me and the mysteries of this earth fall, temporarily. Nothing else matters except looking, and everything about the place where I am is designed to make it easier to look—and to see. I see that this barnacle has claws like a dragon's. I see that these spiders have legs like sharp needles. I see that this frog has approximately six times as many organs inside its torso as I would have thought it had room for. I try to look as much as I can, and when I have looked until I have seen, I take out my camera. Photographing the Science Museum (Utata, via Eastern Blot)

mr_sifter writes "After three years of research and around £100,000 of R&D costs, UK-based Armari has unveiled its XCP prototype. It's a full immersion liquid cooled PC which supports standard ATX components. Unlike conventional liquid cooled PCs, the components are all easy to swap in and out as they're swimming in liquid, rather than under waterblocks. It also looks amazing, pumping around 70KG of electrically inert cooling fluid (salvaged from an old Cray) around its military grade perspex shell."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft released on Aug. 27 a second test version of Internet Explorer 8, delivering a feature-complete upgrade to the world's most widely used Web browser. The world's largest software maker said the latest version -- beta 2 -- of Internet Explorer, which has a market share of about 75 percent, comes with new features to enhance privacy, ease-of-use, and security. Microsoft first released a test -- or beta 1 -- version of IE 8 in March, but that was aimed at letting Web developers take a first look at the new browser. This latest version is aimed at a broader consumer audience.
- SEATTLE (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp released on Wednesday a second test version of Internet Explorer 8, delivering a feature-complete upgrade to the world's most widely used Web browser. The world's largest software maker said the latest version -- beta 2 -- of Internet Explorer, which has a ma...

Japanese humor is slowly but surely infiltrating mainstream media in the US. Fake Japanese game shows on ABC, human Tetris on Fox, the YouTube video of the guy that shoots out of a toilet stall into a ski slope... as someone who grew up in Tokyo watching Japanese variety shows every night, though, I have to say that the US adaptations don't really get it.

Previously, I explained why I thought I Survived a Japanese Game Show doesn't work on my blog. I also wrote this little blurb explaining why: The host of a real Japanese game show is a politically incorrect, sarcastic man who revels in mild forms of torture and isn't afraid to smack a woman on the head. (The feminist in me battles the light-hearted Japanese humoree every time I watch one.) The contestants are stoic, and driven by the determination not to make a fool of themselves and the desire to win money and/or fame. The show's creators are constantly upping the ante, forcing contestants into grueling, sometimes life-threatening situations. A panel of yappy celebrity commentators and on-screen subtitles emphasize LOL moments and onomatopoeia. And, perhaps most importantly, the show can't be overproduced—it's the barebones "variety"-style set-up that has allowed the Japanese game show to survive and thrive for decades.

(In one famously controversial show, an aspiring comedian named Nasubi was locked naked in an empty apartment and forced to live on winnings from magazine sweepstakes until he earned $10,000. When he finally reached his goal 14 months later, the show's producers gave him some clothes, blindfolded him, and took him on a surprise vacation to South Korea, where he was locked in yet another apartment until he won enough money to buy a plane ticket home. While some vehemently opposed the show, most watched it religiously with delightful horror and amusement. Nasubi wrote a best-selling book about his experience and later became a successful stage actor.)

It's the type of comedy that only works in a culture where lawsuits don't take precedent over a nationwide commitment to make fun and have fun. 

In a nutshell, a real funny Japanese TV show will have you thinking, over and over:

This is embarrassing to watch.
This is so wrong.
I'm so glad that's not me.
This is f-ing hilarious.

The above clip is from one of iconic 80s comedian Ken Shimura's many variety shows. Every Japanese person over the age of 25 probably knows it.

( Lisa Katayama is a guest blogger.)

Googles being good to the Earth through its Google.org philanthropic arm. The organization pledged $10.25 million in recently to support Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS), a breakthrough technology doesnt look for geothermal energy, but makes it. The traditional geothermal approach relies on finding naturally occurring pockets of steam and hot water. The EGS process replicates these conditions by fracturing hot rock, circulating water through the system, and using the resulting steam to produce electricity in a conventional turbine; Palm released the Palm Treo Pro last week, a new handset which Palm hopes can save the brand as it faces challenges from RIMs Blackberry line and the Apple iPhone, not to mention the Google Android phones due in November and Linux based LiMo phones. Early reviews claim the device competes on functionality, but not price. It will be sold in the U.S. in September for $549 and in Europe free or up to $589, based on the carrier. The Palm Treo Pro boasts a tactile QWERTY keyboard, a hardware Wi-Fi switch, turn-by-turn navigation and Bluetooth support for stereo music headsets; and Ericsson and STMicroelectronics have agreed to join their wireless chip and software businesses to create a joint venture that will supply four of the world's top five mobile phone and smart phone makers. The new company, announced last week, will bring together the Mobile Platforms unit of Ericsson and STMicros ST-NXP wireless division. Ericsson is the world's biggest mobile telecoms equipment maker and ST-NXP is the third-largest maker of wireless chips globally. The new company should present a new challenge for wireless market leaders Qualcomm and Texas Instruments.
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