Wed Tech News and Announcement

Starting next week, there will be more content (including reviews, news, and article) from this and all sister sites. To help with this, we need more people to post news and some articles. If you are opinionated and want to write columns about tech or whatever, shoot me an email. aron@aselabs.com. If you want to help post news, send me an email. Any help would be appreciated greatly.

CA fixes security flaw in its products.

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Simon Perry, a vice president in security strategy at CA, said the company has been working closely with eEye Digital Security and iDefense on identifying the vulnerabilities and testing the patches for robustness. If exploited, the flaws could enable malicious third parties to run code on a compromised machine.

PC to copy Mac Mini?

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It's unlikely that Intel itself would build such a device. The chipmaker often uses its twice-yearly developer events to try to spur creativity among computer makers. Past efforts have seen PCs twisted into all sorts of shapes and even embedded in an Ottoman foot rest.

Face recognition for your cell phone.

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The user configures the software by taking a reference picture of themselves. Thereafter, in order to unlock and use the phone, they must snap another picture of their own face, which the software compares to the original. Authentication happens "within a second" of snapping the picture, Omron says (on some processors).

Linux 2.6.11 released.

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Ok,
there it is. Only small stuff lately - as promised. Shortlog from -rc5 appended, nothing exciting there, mostly some fixes from various code checkers (like fixed init sections, and some coverity tool finds). So it's now _officially_ all bug-free.

Safety ools for the new Shuttle launch.

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Discovery’s two spacewalkers, Soichi Noguchi of the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut corps and NASA’s Stephen Robinson, plan to test at least two techniques to repair the array of tiles and reinforced carbon carbon (RCC) panels that protect space shuttles from the heat of reentry.

iPod Linux.

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They adapted the component that generates clicks - or "squeaks" - as a user scrolls through the on-screen menu in order to extract vital information from the latest generation of the device. This allowed them to install an alternative operating system and make their iPods run games and other new programs.

Where's all the RFID standards?

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Based on UHF signals, the second-generation standard ensures that RFID (radio frequency identification) tags and readers work globally. The standard was released in December and has been submitted for certification to the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).