eggboard writes "Wireless security expert Robert Moskowitz, who sits on IEEE and IETF committees on that subject, sent me a short paper on a glaring weakness in the Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) protocol that's replacing the weak and broken WEP system well discussed here at Slashdot. His paper, which I've posted here, proves definitively that while WPA itself remains robust and secure, the interface for choosing consumer passwords makes it simple to snarf a tiny bit of network traffic and perform an offline dictionary attack. For Slashdot readers, this probably seems trivial, but because Linksys, Apple, and others are letting users enter My Dog Has Fleas as their passphrase, WPA might be less secure for home users than WEP."

zachlipton writes "Computerworld is running an interesting interview with Dave Russell, director of product marketing for portables and wireless at Apple. Russell comments on the white spot issues that have plagued the new 15" PowerBooks (Apple has been very responsive about fixing mine at least) and he has this to say about a G5 PowerBook: 'We certainly want to do that, but it's going to be a while.' Russell also comments on a lot of other ideas related to the PowerBook and iBook lines."

David H. Rothman writes "E-books and other digital publications in the U.K. are about to go into a national archive, and in fact the Brits and others have even shown an interest in the e-book technology of yore. Goodness knows, as some have pointed out, we already have enough virtual e-book museums--unwittingly created by the march of technology. But how about an International Electronic Book Museum in the Real World, ideally the Library of Congress? Before Luddites and crypto-Luddites keel over at the thought, they should keep in mind that the technology is already several decades old and that it would be helpful to collect the artifacts in a systematic way before it's too late. More at TeleRead."

An anonymous reader writes "Manfred Spraul has released a GPLed driver for the ethernet device found in motherboards based on the Nvidia Nforce/Nforce2/Nforce3 chipsets. Drivers provided by Nvidia on the other hand, are closed. Andrew Morton has integrated this driver in the 2.6.9-mm2 release of his mm tree. And if you are using a 2.4x kernel, you may want to check out this post."

An anonymous reader writes "LinuxDevices reports that MontaVista Software has open-sourced several key software components for Linux-based consumer electronics devices. The company says it hopes the contributions will become part of standard Linux and will foster the evolution of Linux as a platform for digital consumer electronics devices. The open source contributions -- and their SourceForge locations -- include: Dynamic Power Management (DPM) to extend battery life and reduce power consumption; High Resolution POSIX Timers to enhance real-time performance; Variable Scheduling Timeouts (VST) to extend the stand-by time of battery powered devices, such as mobile phones; and Protected RAM File System (PRAMFS) to protect data from errant writes. Additionally, MontaVista says it plans to contribute Prioritized Work Queues (PWQ) technology, to enable prioritization and configurability of driver code for enhanced responsiveness."

danny writes "The Visual Display of Quantitative Information is a recognised classic on statistical graphics; to the 1983 original, this 2001 edition adds some additional graphics, extra colour, and corrections. It is a broad-ranging work, covering history, theory and practice and, despite the formal title and scholarly references, not at all narrowly academic. It assumes only a very basic understanding of statistics." Read on for the rest of Danny's review.

securitas writes "Intel is contemplating using metal instead of silicon in future chips for the 'transistor gate, which controls whether a transistor is on or off' and the 'dielectric, an insulating layer below the gate,' which are respectively made of silicon atoms and silicon dioxide. 'Millions of minuscule switches that make up silicon chips leak electricity when they're supposed to be shut off. To compensate, engineers have increased the current, driving up power consumption, decreasing battery life for portable devices and generating more heat.' AMD has also experimented with metal instead of silicon. By moving to metal AMD and Intel expect to reduce electricity leakage. More from AP via SeattlePI and the Miami Herald." Update: 11/05 15:25 GMT by T : Read on below for some information from Intel on why this is a good thing.

Daniel B. Cid writes "I wrote the article '8 steps to Protect your Cisco router' (PDF). This small text gives to the reader eight steps (very easy to understand) showing how minimize your Cisco router exposure, by turning off some unused services, applying some access control lists and applying some security options available on that."

BWJones writes "Global security is running a fairly detailed and interesting story on E-bombs (not email bombs, rather electronic microwave weapons) taken from the IEEE Spectrum Online. We have long known (since the 1940's) about the effects that high energy weapons can have on electronic components from nuclear blasts, but this class of weapons is designed to exclusively attack electronic infrastructure. "

cRueLio writes "The latest release of Linuxant's DriverLoader can now load Centrino drivers. This is very useful, because Intel has been resisting the release of Linux Centrino drivers. For those of you who don't know, DriverLoader is practically a wrapper for Windows wireless drivers."

Roland Piquepaille writes "A German team from Fraunhofer AIS has coupled a fast autonomous robot with a 3D laser scanner to digitize the environment. The team reports about their work in this article, one of fifteen on the subject of machine perception published by ERCIM News. "Kurt3D is an autonomous mobile robot equipped with a reliable and precise 3D laser scanner that digitalizes environments. High quality geometric 3D maps with semantic information are automatically generated after the exploration by the robot." This overview tells you more about the four-step method used to generate 3D models with this robot and contains several pictures of Kurt3D and its 3D laser."

An anonymous reader writes "According to Biz Ink, 'Microsoft has licensed leading-edge semiconductor processor technology from IBM for use in future Xbox products and services to be announced at a later date..' IBM are already working on the PlayStation 3 CPU alongside Toshiba, and have a relationship with Nintendo after making the GameCube CPU, though there's been no official announcement on GameCube 2's hardware. Is the next-gen hardware war heating up?"

adpowers writes "After a month long hiatus, SeattleWireless TV is back. This break allowed them time to include footage from August's Wireless Field Day. The episode also includes a how-to for making a BiQuad antenna and an interview with SeattleWireless founder Matt Westervelt about how SW is different from other community wireless networks. You can download an MPEG version with BitTorrent. Windows Media and Real Media versions are available on the website."

r.future writes " InfoSync World and netstumbler.com have posted an interesting story that speculates about the financial growth of WiFi networks In Europe anD North America from 2003-2008. The story states: 'Insight Research's analysis of the WiFi industry, WiFi in North America and Europe: Telecommunications' Future 2003-2008, suggests that wireless LAN technology - increasingly popping up in public spaces such as airports and cafes, in private residences, and in businesses - will grow faster in Europe than North America. Worldwide WiFi revenues are expected to grow from $7 billion USD in 2003 to over $44 billion USD by 2008, at a compounded annual rate of 44 percent.'"

zoobab writes "Some belgian linux hackers met this week-end to hack some wireless access points based on the samsung4510 chip. They have succeeded in compiling and booting a uClinux kernel on a Dlink 614ap+, which is equipped with the infamous acx100 wireless chipset. There's still some work to do, but if you want to help, open your 22mbps AP and try to built your own JTAG adaptator to get access to the flash..."

chris writes "Citizen has unveiled a miniature PDA concept considerably smaller than existing PDAs. The 60 x 90 x 9.3mm 16-colour grayscale PDA is just a bit bigger then a credit card." A bit too large to stow in one's wallet, but it's still a slick form factor, easily hid in a pocket. It runs ITRON4 for an OS, and the battery life is rated at 30 hours.

JMke writes "Here's a step by step guide on how to get the most out of your AMD setup. Overclocking tips and BIOS tweak settings discussed, as well as an overview of the more popular overclocking tools. Start your overclocking here!" Lots of good info here for getting the last bit of performance out of your system while also watching out for dangers that could fry your processor.

securitas writes "Motorola launched its A760 Linux and Java smartphone in China today. The dual-mode GSM/GPRS phone uses a version of MontaVista Linux, Motorola's i250 chip for communications, Intel's 200 MHz PXA262 chip (based on the XScale PXA250) for computing with 256 MB RAM, and software that includes a personal information management application, digital camera, a video player, MP3 music player, and an instant-messaging tool. The A760 is the first of Motorola's Linux-based phones. Eventually Motorola plans to use Linux in most of its phones."

CrypticSpawn writes "Read some good news on Diracian; there will be a Linux tablet coming out running Lycoris's Linux distribution, Lycoris Desktop/LX Tablet Edition. What's great is the tablet is the Protege by Toshiba, so you get a laptop and a tablet wrapped up into one. I guess I am a gadget fanatic, I love my Zaurus, now I want this. They even have pictures of it here. Also found another reference of this tablet on PC World, without the pics."

the_webmaestro writes: "Apple has announced that Panther (Mac OS X 10.3) may cause corruption with external FireWire 800 drives (anything with an Oxford 922 chip). Fortunately for me (unlike the poor souls who've already had problems), I guess I'm glad I ordered a lowly a 250GB Firewire 400/USB2.0 Combo Drive..." maccw reports that Firewire 400 customers are also reporting problems, as detailed from this Wired story.