An anonymous reader writes "Pennsylvania's chief information security officer Robert Maley has been fired for publicly talking about a security incident involving the Commonwealth's online driving exam scheduling system. He apparently did not get the required approval for talking about the incident from appropriate authorities."

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Kanan excerpts from a BBC report out of Scotland: "A study of sexually scrambled chickens suggests that sex in birds is determined in a radically different way from that in mammals. Researchers studied three chickens that appeared to be literally half-male and half-female, and found that nearly every cell in their bodies — from wattle to toe — has an inherent sex identity. This cell-by-cell sex orientation contrasts sharply with the situation in mammals, in which organism-wide sex identity is established through hormones." Kanan also supplies this link to some pictures of the mixed-cell birds.

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adeelarshad82 writes "T-Mobile announced that the webConnect Rocket USB Laptop Stick, the first HSPA+ device for the US, will be available beginning on Sunday, March 14. The device was originally announced at MWC in February. HSPA+ is interesting because it could enable 4G LTE-like speeds using existing 3G infrastructure and according to a hands-on, it smokes Wi-Max. Right now, it's still just for Philadelphia, although we should see several major cities light up with HSPA+ on both coasts well before the end of 2010."

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One of our most prolific commenters, [mrgoogfan], shared with us his working BattleBots style robot. Built for under $500, it is capable of zipping around at 25 miles an hour under load. Chances are, this robot would be just as much fun as a Bar Stool Racer as it is with all the weapons attached. The bill of materials also includes a good number of links as well as prices to get the blossoming roboteers in the audience started. We cant wait for the microcontroller automated version, because the idea of a big angry killer Roomba is just the kind of thing that makes us happy. Oh, and we might have a couple suggestions for weapon packages…

Check out the video after the break to see [mrgoogfan] zipping around on the top of his robot and showing off the weapons systems.

Have any of you built your own BattleBot or similar platform? We would love to hear from anyone willing to show off a cheaper, faster, smarter, or stronger build, or any tips for people looking to get started in building their own.

Cyber security's short-lived victory

The takedown of 100 servers used to control Zeus-related botnets may be a short-lived victory, security researchers said after discovering that about one-third of the orphaned channels were able to regain connectivity in less than 48 hours.…

The power of collaboration within unified communications

smooth wombat writes "Before the advent of iTunes and MP3s, EMI and Pink Floyd entered into a contract which stated that EMI could not unbundle individual songs from their original album settings. This was insisted upon by the members of Pink Floyd, who wanted to retain artistic control of their works, which they considered 'seamless' pieces of music. However, with the advent of digital downloads, EMI has been selling individual songs through its online store. Pink Floyd sued, claiming EMI was violating the contract, whereas EMI said the contract only applied to physical albums, not Internet sales. Judge Andrew Morritt backed the band, saying the contract protected 'the artistic integrity of the albums.' Judge Morritt also ruled EMI is 'not entitled to exploit recordings by online distribution or by any other means other than the complete original album without Pink Floyd's consent.'"

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lord_rotorooter writes "Felix Ortiz, D-Brooklyn, introduced a bill that would ruin restaurant food and baked goods as we know them. The measure (if passed) would ban the use of all forms of salt in the preparation and cooking of food for all restaurants or bakeries. While the use of too much salt can contribute to health problems, the complete banning of salt would have negative impacts on food chemistry. Not only does salt enhance flavor, it controls bacteria, slows yeast activity and strengthens dough by tightening gluten. Salt also inhibits the growth of microbes that spoil cheese."

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Lanxon writes "It's true: 'Effects of cocaine on honeybee dance behavior,' 'Fellatio by fruit bats prolongs copulation time,' and 'Are full or empty beer bottles sturdier and does their fracture-threshold suffice to break the human skull?' are all genuine scientific research papers, and all were genuinely published in journals or similar publications. Wired's presentation of a collection of the most bizarrely-named research papers contains seven other gems, including one about naval fluff and another published in The Journal of Sex Research."

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A great game console in the sky

The conceptual render cloud that Advanced Micro Devices was showing off a little more than a year ago at the 2009 Consumer Electronics Show is going commercial this year.…

Web threats: Why conventional protection doesn't work

There’s something viscerally pleasing about simple solutions. [Kip] came up with one in the form of a scratch controller. The spindle from an optical drive is used to hold a CD in place, which acts as the LP for scratching. The sensor from an optical mouse is mounted upside down below the CD and detects the rotation of the disc. From there it’s just a matter of setting up your software to get the reading from that mouse. He’s had some trouble finding disc surfaces that the mouse sensor will read reliably.  We’d recommend trying some of those stick-on inkjet CD labels.

This is similar to a scratch controller we saw in 2008. That one was actually repurposing the IR encoding from inside of a mouse. We’re not sure which method would work better, but either controller will make a nice addition to a Flexi Knob setup.

The latest word on the iPhone is that the 4.0 OS will finally have honest-to-goodness multitasking. This could hopefully lead to things like a real chat client, and dangerous battery consumption. I still hope it's true.

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Jobsian prophets predict multitasking for iPhone 4.0

Apple will add multitasking to the Jesus Phone this summer with the release of the divine handset's version 4.0 software update, according to a report citing anonymous people who have accurately predicted Jobsian behavior in the past .…

Web threats: Why conventional protection doesn't work

Kolargol00 writes "Heise online reports the availability of an exploit (Google translation) for the yet-unpatched MSA-981374 affecting Internet Explorer 6 and 7. It has already been spotted in the wild by McAfee and integrated into the Metasploit Framework."

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All of the juicy details needed to control a camera from your Nintendo DS are now available at the Open Camera Control project. This is the descendant of [Steve Chapman's] setup from a few years ago. The system has been polished up and has seen many feature additions. It’s been used in movie production and works with a wide range of cameras.

Start by building your own interface cable using an AVR microcontroller running the Arduino bootloader. Finish up by loading some open source software onto the DS to add a cornucopia of shot options.

[Thanks Pops Macgruder]

Barence writes "Speaking exclusively to PC Pro, Eugene Kaspersky has claimed Apple has repeatedly refused to deliver the software development kit necessary to design security software for the phone. 'We have been in contact for two years with Apple to develop our anti-theft software, [but] still we do not have permission,' said Kaspersky. Although he admits the risk of viruses infecting the iPhone is 'almost zero,' he claims that securing the data on the handset is critical, especially as iPhones are increasingly being used for business purposes. 'I don't want to say Apple's is the wrong way of behaving, or the right way,' Kaspersky added. 'It's just a corporate culture — it wants to control everything.'"

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That's competitive as in really expensive

UK infrastructure owner BT has today announced its new consumer bundle offerings following relaxation of Ofcom competition rules. The headlining £7.99-a-month anytime calls plus broadband is reasonable - but lasts for only 3 months, followed by a 15-month lock-in at an unimpressive £15.99.…

The power of collaboration within unified communications

abartels writes "It seems like there's been nothing but bad news and resignations coming from Oracle since it finally managed to close the deal on Sun. Finally, there's good news in that Drizzle seems to have a bright future ahead. It just isn't with Oracle, but with the Rackspace Cloud."

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It's not a joke, it's real!

Ex-Sun open source veteran Simon Phipps has been elected to the board of directors at the Open Source Initiative (OSI) group.…

Web threats: Why conventional protection doesn't work

This device can jailbreak an iPhone. It doesn’t require a computer and it can either reboot a phone that was one-time-boot jailbroken using the blackra1n exploit, or jailbreak a factory fresh unit. We wouldn’t say this solves the tethering problem caused by blackra1n (needing to return to a computer to reboot the phone), but it certainly does ease the pain. We saw some info about the board layout but no parts list or firmware. See the demo after the break and leave a comment if you have more information on the parts or code.

[Thanks Juan]

Twitter scourge changes pants

Command and Control servers associated with the infamous Koobface worms have gone through a complete refresh over the last fortnight. Russian net security firm Kaspersky Lab reckons the change up might be aimed at making takedown efforts by cybercrime fighters more difficult.…

Offloading malware protection to the cloud