News Topic - Discover
Articles 1 - 10 of most recent articles
Downloading music: what does the government's announcement mean for you?
Paul Brindley, managing director of Music Ally, answers questions on the wider implications of the government's plans to monitor filesharers. What does today's announcement about downloading actually mean? Basically, they are the first tentative steps towards the music and film rights owners working together with internet service providers (ISPs) to try and find ways to deal with filesharing. It's important because it shows a greater willingness on behalf of the ISPs in particular to develop legal services for downloading music and films and to acknowledge some responsibility for the actions of their users. You saw such progress earlier in the week with the announcement from Sky and Universal that they are set to launch their own digital music service. How will I be monitored? A lot of the stories in today's press are somewhat accurate, but the idea that ISPs have signed up to monitor users isn't quite true. What the ISPs have agreed to do is to send letters out to those users whom the BPI believes are sharing music illegally, warning them that their activity is illegal. If the government believes that such actions have had little effect, it will ask Ofcom to start looking at other possible responses including technical solutions such as traffic management (ie squeezing/throttling the bandwidth of filesharers) and filtering. How do ISPs know if what I'm downloading is illegal? Rights owners, like the BPI, can identify suspected filesharers by searching for copyrighted music files, but they can only discover their Internet Protocol (IP) addresses. They will then notify the ISPs who know who the account holders are and they will then send warning letters out to them. The people most likely to be monitored in this way are those making available a large amount of copyrighted material for sharing with others.Related StoriesTouch takes hold, but it's no mouse-killerThe man with the musical broomstickSurprise in the post for illegal music downloadersIllegal downloaders to get warning letter in clampdown by government, ISPs and music industryABCe: Guardian.co.uk breaks 20m user barrier
The Guardian – 2 hours, 13 minutes ago ¦ comment?
found in Technology
Paul Brindley, managing director of Music Ally, answers questions on the wider implications of the government's plans to monitor filesharers. What does today's announcement about downloading actually mean? Basically, they are the first tentative steps towards the music and film rights owners working together with internet service providers (ISPs) to try and find ways to deal with filesharing. It's important because it shows a greater willingness on behalf of the ISPs in particular to develop legal services for downloading music and films and to acknowledge some responsibility for the actions of their users. You saw such progress earlier in the week with the announcement from Sky and Universal that they are set to launch their own digital music service. How will I be monitored? A lot of the stories in today's press are somewhat accurate, but the idea that ISPs have signed up to monitor users isn't quite true. What the ISPs have agreed to do is to send letters out to those users whom the BPI believes are sharing music illegally, warning them that their activity is illegal. If the government believes that such actions have had little effect, it will ask Ofcom to start looking at other possible responses including technical solutions such as traffic management (ie squeezing/throttling the bandwidth of filesharers) and filtering. How do ISPs know if what I'm downloading is illegal? Rights owners, like the BPI, can identify suspected filesharers by searching for copyrighted music files, but they can only discover their Internet Protocol (IP) addresses. They will then notify the ISPs who know who the account holders are and they will then send warning letters out to them. The people most likely to be monitored in this way are those making available a large amount of copyrighted material for sharing with others.Related StoriesTouch takes hold, but it's no mouse-killerThe man with the musical broomstickSurprise in the post for illegal music downloadersIllegal downloaders to get warning letter in clampdown by government, ISPs and music industryABCe: Guardian.co.uk breaks 20m user barrier
The Guardian – 2 hours, 13 minutes ago ¦ comment?
found in Technology
Elderly Woman Killed By Homeless Man
Relatives discover the body of an elderly woman, beaten to death at her own home.
Today's TMJ4 – 2 hours, 55 minutes ago ¦ comment?
found in Local: Wisconsin: Milwaukee
Relatives discover the body of an elderly woman, beaten to death at her own home.
Today's TMJ4 – 2 hours, 55 minutes ago ¦ comment?
found in Local: Wisconsin: Milwaukee
Serbian authorities investigating Karadzic's fake identity
BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) -- The spokesman for Serbia's war crimes prosecutor says authorities are trying to discover who helped Radovan Karadzic assume a false identity.
GoErie.com – 2 hours, 56 minutes ago ¦ comment?
found in Local: Pennsylvania: Erie
BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) -- The spokesman for Serbia's war crimes prosecutor says authorities are trying to discover who helped Radovan Karadzic assume a false identity.
GoErie.com – 2 hours, 56 minutes ago ¦ comment?
found in Local: Pennsylvania: Erie
July 24, 1911: Hiram Bingham 'Discovers' Machu Picchu
1911: Exploring in Peru, Yale archaeologist Hiram Bingham locates Machu Picchu, the lost city of the Incas. The event will set off a century of controversy.Bingham was born in Honolulu, the son and grandson of Protestant missionaries in the Pacific. He graduated from Yale University and did graduate work in history and politics at the University of California and Harvard.Bingham had already made two expeditions to South America -- and published a book on each -- when he returned to Peru in 1911. He located the last Inca capital, Vitcos, and made the first ascent of the 21,763-foot Mt. Coropuma. Then came the find that would make him famous: Machu Picchu.Bingham eventually left academe for Republican politics, serving as lieutenant governor of Connecticut. He was also governor for one day, before moving on to the U.S. Senate for eight years. The Senate censured Bingham in 1929 for hiring a lobbyist. He died in 1956.The controversies have not ended:Did Bingham "discover" Machu Picchu?Hardly. He was led there by local people who lived nearby and were using Machu Picchu's agricultural terraces. He did, however, conduct the first archaeological excavations there and uncovered the famous structures hidden by four centuries of disuse. He also documented, mapped and photographed the site over several years.Was Bingham the first European to visit Machu Picchu?Maybe not. Some claim that the German adventurer and businessman Augusto Berns had visited the site some four decades earlier, with the blessing of the Peruvian government. Others say that two missionaries had trekked there in 1906, five years before Bingham.Bingham, however, was clearly the first to scientifically explore the place, and he also publicized it. The entire April 1913 issue of National Geographic was devoted to it. Bingham also wrote about it, notably Inca Land: Explorations in the Highlands of Peru (1922) and Lost City of the Incas, a 1948 best-seller.What was Bingham looking for?After locating the capital, Vitcos, he was hoping to find the last Inca stronghold, Vilcabamba, which fell to the Spanish in 1573. Machu Picchu was in the wrong direction from Vitcos to be a likely Vilcabamba, but Bingham was so impressed by Machu Picchu's mountainous impregnability that for the first years of his exploration he thought he must have found Vilcabamba.What kind of place was Machu Picchu?For many years, it was uncertain if Machu Picchu was a city, a mountain fortress, a religious shrine, a royal palace or various combinations of these. Continuing archaeological exploration has produced a consensus that it was a highland retreat of the Inca royalty. "Machu Picchu was simply a royal estate," says archaeologist Richard Burger. "You can think of it as the Inca equivalent of Camp David."Who owns the artifacts Bingham removed from Machu Picchu?Yale University's Peabody Museum has housed hundreds of museum-quality artifacts (and thousands of fragments) for nearly a century. The government of Peru maintains that these were only loaned to Bingham, and that they belong to Peru and its people.After years of negotiations, Yale and Peru signed a Memorandum of Understanding in March 2008. Yale acknowledged Peruvian ownership of the collection and pledged to work with Peru to promote an international traveling exhibit of the collection and create a permanent, new museum for it near Machu Picchu. Some prominent Peruvians think the agreement still gives Yale too much control.The dispute is not alone. A similar controversy rages over Britain's continued control of the Elgin Marbles, decorative pieces removed from the Parthenon in Athens two centuries ago. Does tourism threaten Machu Picchu?Some people fear that. Machu Picchu was already a World Heritage Site when it was named one of the Modern Wonders of the World in 2007. That led archaeologist Luis Lumbreras to warn that the influx of tourists was already damaging both the historic site and the fragile ecosystem surrounding it.This controversy, too, is not alone. Striking a balance between protecting a site and providing access to let people experience it has caused restrictions at England's Stonehenge, France's Lascaux cave paintings and elsewhere.Balancing preservation and access is also a conundrum in planning for Yosemite and other national parks. Some natural sites, like the exact location of the world's oldest living tree (Methuselah, a bristlecone pine in the eastern Sierra Nevada) or the world's tallest tree (a coast redwood in Northern California) are just plain kept secret.Source: Various
Wired News – 9 hours, 51 minutes ago ¦ comment?
found in Technology
1911: Exploring in Peru, Yale archaeologist Hiram Bingham locates Machu Picchu, the lost city of the Incas. The event will set off a century of controversy.Bingham was born in Honolulu, the son and grandson of Protestant missionaries in the Pacific. He graduated from Yale University and did graduate work in history and politics at the University of California and Harvard.Bingham had already made two expeditions to South America -- and published a book on each -- when he returned to Peru in 1911. He located the last Inca capital, Vitcos, and made the first ascent of the 21,763-foot Mt. Coropuma. Then came the find that would make him famous: Machu Picchu.Bingham eventually left academe for Republican politics, serving as lieutenant governor of Connecticut. He was also governor for one day, before moving on to the U.S. Senate for eight years. The Senate censured Bingham in 1929 for hiring a lobbyist. He died in 1956.The controversies have not ended:Did Bingham "discover" Machu Picchu?Hardly. He was led there by local people who lived nearby and were using Machu Picchu's agricultural terraces. He did, however, conduct the first archaeological excavations there and uncovered the famous structures hidden by four centuries of disuse. He also documented, mapped and photographed the site over several years.Was Bingham the first European to visit Machu Picchu?Maybe not. Some claim that the German adventurer and businessman Augusto Berns had visited the site some four decades earlier, with the blessing of the Peruvian government. Others say that two missionaries had trekked there in 1906, five years before Bingham.Bingham, however, was clearly the first to scientifically explore the place, and he also publicized it. The entire April 1913 issue of National Geographic was devoted to it. Bingham also wrote about it, notably Inca Land: Explorations in the Highlands of Peru (1922) and Lost City of the Incas, a 1948 best-seller.What was Bingham looking for?After locating the capital, Vitcos, he was hoping to find the last Inca stronghold, Vilcabamba, which fell to the Spanish in 1573. Machu Picchu was in the wrong direction from Vitcos to be a likely Vilcabamba, but Bingham was so impressed by Machu Picchu's mountainous impregnability that for the first years of his exploration he thought he must have found Vilcabamba.What kind of place was Machu Picchu?For many years, it was uncertain if Machu Picchu was a city, a mountain fortress, a religious shrine, a royal palace or various combinations of these. Continuing archaeological exploration has produced a consensus that it was a highland retreat of the Inca royalty. "Machu Picchu was simply a royal estate," says archaeologist Richard Burger. "You can think of it as the Inca equivalent of Camp David."Who owns the artifacts Bingham removed from Machu Picchu?Yale University's Peabody Museum has housed hundreds of museum-quality artifacts (and thousands of fragments) for nearly a century. The government of Peru maintains that these were only loaned to Bingham, and that they belong to Peru and its people.After years of negotiations, Yale and Peru signed a Memorandum of Understanding in March 2008. Yale acknowledged Peruvian ownership of the collection and pledged to work with Peru to promote an international traveling exhibit of the collection and create a permanent, new museum for it near Machu Picchu. Some prominent Peruvians think the agreement still gives Yale too much control.The dispute is not alone. A similar controversy rages over Britain's continued control of the Elgin Marbles, decorative pieces removed from the Parthenon in Athens two centuries ago. Does tourism threaten Machu Picchu?Some people fear that. Machu Picchu was already a World Heritage Site when it was named one of the Modern Wonders of the World in 2007. That led archaeologist Luis Lumbreras to warn that the influx of tourists was already damaging both the historic site and the fragile ecosystem surrounding it.This controversy, too, is not alone. Striking a balance between protecting a site and providing access to let people experience it has caused restrictions at England's Stonehenge, France's Lascaux cave paintings and elsewhere.Balancing preservation and access is also a conundrum in planning for Yosemite and other national parks. Some natural sites, like the exact location of the world's oldest living tree (Methuselah, a bristlecone pine in the eastern Sierra Nevada) or the world's tallest tree (a coast redwood in Northern California) are just plain kept secret.Source: Various
Wired News – 9 hours, 51 minutes ago ¦ comment?
found in Technology
Explosives Discovered Inside HomeAuthorities discover a large amount of explosives in a Plymouth home late Wednesday night.
TheBostonChannel.com – 10 hours, 41 minutes ago ¦ comment?
found in Local: Massachusetts: Boston
Security Matters: Lesson From the DNS Bug: Patching Isn't Enough
Despite the best efforts of the security community, the details of a critical internet vulnerability discovered by Dan Kaminsky about six months ago have leaked. Hackers are racing to produce exploit code, and network operators who haven't already patched the hole are scrambling to catch up. The whole mess is a good illustration of the problems with researching and disclosing flaws like this.The details of the vulnerability aren't important, but basically it's a form of DNS cache poisoning. The DNS system is what translates domain names people understand, like www.schneier.com, to IP addresses computers understand: 204.11.246.1. There is a whole family of vulnerabilities where the DNS system on your computer is fooled into thinking that the IP address for www.badsite.com is really the IP address for www.goodsite.com -- there's no way for you to tell the difference -- and that allows the criminals at www.badsite.com to trick you into doing all sorts of things, like giving up your bank account details. Kaminsky discovered a particularly nasty variant of this cache-poisoning attack.Here's the way the timeline was supposed to work: Kaminsky discovered the vulnerability about six months ago, and quietly worked with vendors to patch it. (There's a fairly straightforward fix, although the implementation nuances are complicated.) Of course, this meant describing the vulnerability to them; why would companies like Microsoft and Cisco believe him otherwise? On July 8, he held a press conference to announce the vulnerability -- but not the details -- and reveal that a patch was available from a long list of vendors. We would all have a month to patch, and Kaminsky would release details of the vulnerability at the BlackHat conference early next month.Of course, the details leaked. How isn't important; it could have leaked a zillion different ways. Too many people knew about it for it to remain secret. Others who knew the general idea were too smart not to speculate on the details. I'm kind of amazed the details remained secret for this long; undoubtedly it had leaked into the underground community before the public leak two days ago. So now everyone who back-burnered the problem is rushing to patch, while the hacker community is racing to produce working exploits. What's the moral here? It's easy to condemn Kaminsky: If he had shut up about the problem, we wouldn't be in this mess. But that's just wrong. Kaminsky found the vulnerability by accident. There's no reason to believe he was the first one to find it, and it's ridiculous to believe he would be the last. Don't shoot the messenger. The problem is with the DNS protocol; it's insecure.The real lesson is that the patch treadmill doesn't work, and it hasn't for years. This cycle of finding security holes and rushing to patch them before the bad guys exploit those vulnerabilities is expensive, inefficient and incomplete. We need to design security into our systems right from the beginning. We need assurance. We need security engineers involved in system design. This process won't prevent every vulnerability, but it's much more secure -- and cheaper -- than the patch treadmill we're all on now.What a security engineer brings to the problem is a particular mindset. He thinks about systems from a security perspective. It's not that he discovers all possible attacks before the bad guys do; it's more that he anticipates potential types of attacks, and defends against them even if he doesn't know their details. I see this all the time in good cryptographic designs. It's over-engineering based on intuition, but if the security engineer has good intuition, it generally works.Kaminsky's vulnerability is a perfect example of this. Years ago, cryptographer Daniel J. Bernstein looked at DNS security and decided that Source Port Randomization was a smart design choice. That's exactly the work-around being rolled out now following Kaminsky's discovery. Bernstein didn't discover Kaminsky's attack; instead, he saw a general class of attacks and realized that this enhancement could protect against them. Consequently, the DNS program he wrote in 2000, djbdns, doesn't need to be patched; it's already immune to Kaminsky's attack.That's what a good design looks like. It's not just secure against known attacks; it's also secure against unknown attacks. We need more of this, not just on the internet but in voting machines, ID cards, transportation payment cards ... everywhere. Stop assuming that systems are secure unless demonstrated insecure; start assuming that systems are insecure unless designed securely.---Bruce Schneier is chief security technology officer of BT, and author of Beyond Fear: Thinking Sensibly About Security in an Uncertain World.
Wired News – 18 hours, 51 minutes ago ¦ comment?
found in Technology
Despite the best efforts of the security community, the details of a critical internet vulnerability discovered by Dan Kaminsky about six months ago have leaked. Hackers are racing to produce exploit code, and network operators who haven't already patched the hole are scrambling to catch up. The whole mess is a good illustration of the problems with researching and disclosing flaws like this.The details of the vulnerability aren't important, but basically it's a form of DNS cache poisoning. The DNS system is what translates domain names people understand, like www.schneier.com, to IP addresses computers understand: 204.11.246.1. There is a whole family of vulnerabilities where the DNS system on your computer is fooled into thinking that the IP address for www.badsite.com is really the IP address for www.goodsite.com -- there's no way for you to tell the difference -- and that allows the criminals at www.badsite.com to trick you into doing all sorts of things, like giving up your bank account details. Kaminsky discovered a particularly nasty variant of this cache-poisoning attack.Here's the way the timeline was supposed to work: Kaminsky discovered the vulnerability about six months ago, and quietly worked with vendors to patch it. (There's a fairly straightforward fix, although the implementation nuances are complicated.) Of course, this meant describing the vulnerability to them; why would companies like Microsoft and Cisco believe him otherwise? On July 8, he held a press conference to announce the vulnerability -- but not the details -- and reveal that a patch was available from a long list of vendors. We would all have a month to patch, and Kaminsky would release details of the vulnerability at the BlackHat conference early next month.Of course, the details leaked. How isn't important; it could have leaked a zillion different ways. Too many people knew about it for it to remain secret. Others who knew the general idea were too smart not to speculate on the details. I'm kind of amazed the details remained secret for this long; undoubtedly it had leaked into the underground community before the public leak two days ago. So now everyone who back-burnered the problem is rushing to patch, while the hacker community is racing to produce working exploits. What's the moral here? It's easy to condemn Kaminsky: If he had shut up about the problem, we wouldn't be in this mess. But that's just wrong. Kaminsky found the vulnerability by accident. There's no reason to believe he was the first one to find it, and it's ridiculous to believe he would be the last. Don't shoot the messenger. The problem is with the DNS protocol; it's insecure.The real lesson is that the patch treadmill doesn't work, and it hasn't for years. This cycle of finding security holes and rushing to patch them before the bad guys exploit those vulnerabilities is expensive, inefficient and incomplete. We need to design security into our systems right from the beginning. We need assurance. We need security engineers involved in system design. This process won't prevent every vulnerability, but it's much more secure -- and cheaper -- than the patch treadmill we're all on now.What a security engineer brings to the problem is a particular mindset. He thinks about systems from a security perspective. It's not that he discovers all possible attacks before the bad guys do; it's more that he anticipates potential types of attacks, and defends against them even if he doesn't know their details. I see this all the time in good cryptographic designs. It's over-engineering based on intuition, but if the security engineer has good intuition, it generally works.Kaminsky's vulnerability is a perfect example of this. Years ago, cryptographer Daniel J. Bernstein looked at DNS security and decided that Source Port Randomization was a smart design choice. That's exactly the work-around being rolled out now following Kaminsky's discovery. Bernstein didn't discover Kaminsky's attack; instead, he saw a general class of attacks and realized that this enhancement could protect against them. Consequently, the DNS program he wrote in 2000, djbdns, doesn't need to be patched; it's already immune to Kaminsky's attack.That's what a good design looks like. It's not just secure against known attacks; it's also secure against unknown attacks. We need more of this, not just on the internet but in voting machines, ID cards, transportation payment cards ... everywhere. Stop assuming that systems are secure unless demonstrated insecure; start assuming that systems are insecure unless designed securely.---Bruce Schneier is chief security technology officer of BT, and author of Beyond Fear: Thinking Sensibly About Security in an Uncertain World.
Wired News – 18 hours, 51 minutes ago ¦ comment?
found in Technology
Tenchu 4 scan from Famitsu
French website Gamekyo writes: "Japanese magazine Famitsu reveals us some new images of the next episode of the Tenchu series, which will be exclusively on Wii. The opportunity to discover a way to make a diversion with a cat, an idea like Solid Snake's one with sexy magazines. Release date scheduled for October 23 in Japan."
N4G.com – 18 hours, 55 minutes ago ¦ comment?
found in Technology: Video Games
French website Gamekyo writes: "Japanese magazine Famitsu reveals us some new images of the next episode of the Tenchu series, which will be exclusively on Wii. The opportunity to discover a way to make a diversion with a cat, an idea like Solid Snake's one with sexy magazines. Release date scheduled for October 23 in Japan."
N4G.com – 18 hours, 55 minutes ago ¦ comment?
found in Technology: Video Games
Why Use an Online Office Facility? Project Management Online from Discover Office Solutions Suite
Discover Office Solutions Suite has just been launched by Discover and Invest. The suite is a full online office facility and project management tool, offering clients the ability to share documents online, view all employees calendars and keep track of vital and urgent tasks. [PR.com - July 23, 2008]
PR.com – 19 hours, 43 minutes ago ¦ comment?
found in Top Stories: Press Releases
Discover Office Solutions Suite has just been launched by Discover and Invest. The suite is a full online office facility and project management tool, offering clients the ability to share documents online, view all employees calendars and keep track of vital and urgent tasks. [PR.com - July 23, 2008]
PR.com – 19 hours, 43 minutes ago ¦ comment?
found in Top Stories: Press Releases
Don't Throw Away Sawdust, Make Biofuel
Scientists discover chemical reaction that turns sawdust into clean energy.
ABC News – Jul 23, 2008 12:14 PM [GMT] ¦ comment?
found in Technology
Scientists discover chemical reaction that turns sawdust into clean energy.
ABC News – Jul 23, 2008 12:14 PM [GMT] ¦ comment?
found in Technology
Perry Township man killed in apartment
Police discover victim's car about three miles from crime scene.
IndyStar.com – Jul 23, 2008 11:54 AM [GMT] ¦ comment?
found in Local: Indiana: Indianapolis
Police discover victim's car about three miles from crime scene.
IndyStar.com – Jul 23, 2008 11:54 AM [GMT] ¦ comment?
found in Local: Indiana: Indianapolis