Computer news

[SysTaMatIcS]

Originally Posted by Google

Germany To Roll Out ID Cards With Embedded RFID

"The production of RFID chips, an integral element of the new generation of German identity cards, has started after the government gave a 10-year contract to the chipmaker NXP in the Netherlands. Citizens will receive the mandatory new ID cards starting from the first of November. The new card allows German authorities to identify people with speed and accuracy, the government said. These authorities include the police, customs and tax authorities and of course the local registration and passport granting authorities. There are some concerns that the use of RFID chips will pose a security or privacy risk, however. Early versions of the electronic passports, using RFID chips with a protocol called 'basic access control' (BAC), were successfully hacked by university researchers and security experts."

such a move is too early , anyone can hack such stuff and make ids . security measures should be taken first , anw in 2012 they will be back to normal ids when that sun wave hits earth and all technology is shut down

[Google]

OpenSolaris Governing Board Dissolves Itself

"Last month, it was mentioned that the OpenSolaris governing board issued an ultimatum to Oracle. It turns out that Oracle continued to ignore requests to appoint a liaison after the governing board's demands. This morning, the board unanimously passed a resolution to dissolve itself. Source code changes are no longer available, and it would appear that OpenSolaris and community involvement in the development of Solaris have been killed as rumored. We recently discussed a 'Spork' of OpenSolaris called Illumos. Perhaps now, this will have a chance at becoming a true fork."

[Google]

Skills Needed For a Future In IT

"An increase in the pace of change in IT has created new dynamics for jobs involving the Web, mobile computing and virtualization. For those looking to enter the marketplace in years to come, 30-somethings hoping to upgrade their skills, or those who'll be winding their careers down by 2020, skill sets are drastically changing. For example, graphics chips are doubling in capacity every six months. That translates into a thousandfold increase in capacity over a five-year period — the average shelf life of most game platforms. 'We've never seen anything like it in any industry.' Colleges are in continual catch-up mode and have only recently added project management and soft skills training to computer science programs. According to one expert, 'They're about five years behind where they need to be.'"

[Google]

Nmap Developers Release a Picture of the Web

"The Nmap Project recently posted an awesome visualization of the top million site icons (favicons) on the Web, sized by relative popularity of sites. This project used the Nmap Scripting Engine, which is capable of performing discovery, vulnerability detection, and anything else you can imagine with lightning speed. We saw last month how an Nmap developer downloaded 170 million Facebook names, and this month it's a million favicons; I wonder what they'll do next?"

[Google]

Microsoft Claims 'We Love Open Source

"Everyone in the Linux world remembers Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's famous comment in 2001 that Linux is a 'cancer' that threatened Microsoft's intellectual property. While Microsoft hasn't formally rescinded its declaration that Linux violates its patents, at least one Microsoft executive admits that the company's earlier battle stance was a mistake. Microsoft wants the world to understand, whatever its issues with Linux, it no longer has any gripe toward open source."

[Google]

Halo Reach Leaked To Filesharing Sites

"What appears to be the full version of Bungie's Halo Reach game has turned up on a number of file sharing sites. The hotly-anticipated multi-player shooter had been hosted on a private area of the Microsoft Live site in order for journalists to preview the release, but Microsoft has admitted that a security breach has meant that pirates have been able to bypass personal download codes given to writers. Disk images of the game are now appearing on a number of public torrent and P2P sites as well as on popular NZB aggregators and Usenet binaries newsgroups." The game isn't due to be released until September 14th. Microsoft is said to be "aggressively pursuing" whoever grabbed the files without their permission.

[Google]

Windows DLL Vulnerability Exploit In the Wild

"Exploit code for the DLL loading issue that reportedly affects hundreds of Windows applications made its appearance on Monday. HD Moore, the creator of the Metasploit open-source hacking toolkit, released the exploit code along with an auditing tool that records which applications are vulnerable. 'Once it makes it into Metasploit, it doesn't take much more to execute an attack,' said Andrew Storms, director of security operations for nCircle Security. 'The hard part has already been done for [hackers].'"

[Google]

Google Starts Charging a Signup Fee For Chrome Extension Developers

"On Thursday, Google introduced two significant changes in the Google Chrome Extensions Gallery: a developer signup fee and a domain verification system. The signup fee is a one-time payment of $5. The announcement says its purpose is to 'create better safeguards against fraudulent extensions in the gallery and limit the activity of malicious developer accounts.' Developers who already registered with the gallery can continue to update their extensions and publish new items without paying the fee." Google also made available a developer preview for the Chrome Web Store.

[Google]

AMD Details Upcoming Bulldozer Architecture

"AMD is taking the lid off quite a bit of information on its upcoming CPU architecture known as Bulldozer that is the first complete redesign over current processors. AMD's lineup has been relatively stagnant while Intel continued to innovate with Nehalem and Sandy Bridge (due late this year) and the Bulldozer refresh is badly needed to keep in step. The integrated north bridge, on-die memory controller and large shared L3 cache remain key components from the Athlon/Phenom generation to Bulldozer but AMD is adding features like dual-thread support per core (but with a unique implementation utilizing separate execution units for each thread), support for 256-bit SIMD operations (for upcoming AVX support) all running on GlobalFoundries 32nm SOI process technology."

[Google]

EA Says Game Development Budgets Have Peaked

Electronic Arts VP David Demartini indicates that the company thinks AAA game development budgets are not going to continue their skyward trend. "If [a developer] happens to make a lot of money based on that budget, great for them. If they come up short and have to cover some of it — y'know, they'll be smarter the next time they do it. That's kind of the approach that we take to it." Certainly this has something to do with a few major economic flops in the games industry lately, such as the cancellation of This Is Vegas after an estimated $50 million had been dumped into the project. Another example is the anemic response to APB, an MMO with a budget rumored to be as high as $100 million. Poor sales and reviews caused developer Realtime Worlds to enter insolvency and lay off a large portion of the development team.