Atomic Lab Cops Do Job, Get Fired
Senior investigators hired to root out fraud and corruption at Los Alamos National Laboratory have been fired -- just days after revealing what they knew to officials with the Department of Energy's inspector general. Armed guards escorted Glenn Walp and Steven Doran out of their offices on Monday, a half-hour after Stan Busboom, director of security, informed the pair that they were not "suitable fit(s) for the requirements of (their) position(s)" at the lab's Office of Security Inquiries. Over the past several months, Walp and Doran had led a series of high-profile investigations that generated a tide of bad publicity for the birthplace of the atom bomb.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,56596,00.html
Fraud Case: Greed Bred Sloppiness
Unbridled greed proved the ultimate undoing of an identity theft crime ring that ripped off thousands of Americans, according to law enforcement officials. The criminals' repeated data downloads coupled with escalating consumer complaints eventually aroused curiosity at credit reporting agencies, leading to the arrest of three men who officials said were the primary perpetrators of the scam. But at least 20 other people may have been involved in the two-year swindle. "The investigation is still in its early stages, but we have found the guys who opened the fire hydrant of fraud," James Comey, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said on Monday. "How high will the damages go? We don't know yet.
http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,56593,00.html
The Shake of Things to Come
A series of temblors that has rattled Northern California since Sunday should serve as a reminder that a major earthquake is on the state's horizon, earthquake experts said. The United States Geological Survey recorded more than 60 small earthquakes in the San Ramon Valley –- 26 miles east of San Francisco -- between Sunday and Tuesday morning. The largest, a 3.9 magnitude shaker, kicked off the swarm at 7 a.m. on Sunday, and the region hasn't stopped moving since. The fault which produced the seismic swarm was unknown before Sunday and intersects the active part of the much larger Calaveras fault, said USGS geologist David Schwartz.
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,56607,00.html
Eyes in the Back of Your Mouth
Don’t fly by the seat of your pants. That mantra is drilled into every pilot’s head in flight school. It means pay no attention to the g-forces pushing against your ass; and keep your eyes on your instruments. If you don’t, and your plane is in a spin or a loop, you could get caught thinking down is up. But as aviation technology evolves, the cockpit is filling up with new instruments, overwhelming the pilot’s ability to take it all in at a glance. Luckily, the eyes aren’t the only way to see. Pilots can now sense other aircraft from a tiny zap on their shoulders. And they’ll soon be able to land a helicopter in a dust storm with infrared images lightly buzzing their tongues. The fact is, visual information doesn’t have to go through the eyes to get to the brain. Our sense organs are mere input devices – wet USB ports.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/1...tart.html?pg=9
A Juicier Bird in Half the Time
Thanksgiving is a day to gorge on turkey with all the fixings. But, for the cooks, it also means sweating over a hot stove. A new oven that can produce a holiday feast five times faster than today's ovens may offer respite to kitchen slaves as soon as Thanksgiving 2003. The oven, a product of engineers at General Electric, combines three traditional cooking modes -- thermal, convection and metal-safe microwave -- to cook food faster without drying it out. Luckily the newfangled cooker doesn't boggle chefs' minds with lots of programming, said Michael McDermott, GE marketing manager.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,56503,00.html
FBI 'Nets' Cop-Killer Suspect
A fugitive suspected of killing a California police officer in a crusade against police brutality has been captured after confessing to the murder in postings to an alternative news media website. Andrew McCrae, 23, walked out of a hotel room Tuesday after several hours of negotiations. He is charged with killing officer David Mobilio in Red Bluff, California, on Nov. 19. Shortly before he gave up, authorities granted McCrae's request to talk to a Concord Monitor reporter who was in the lobby. Reporter Sarah Vos said the first thing McCrae told her in a phone conversation was, "I killed a police officer in Red Bluff, California, in an effort to draw attention to police brutality." Police believe it was McCrae who confessed to the murder on a San Francisco website.
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,56616,00.html
Report: More Women With HIV
For the first time in the 20-year history of the AIDS epidemic, as many women as men are infected with HIV, a United Nations report says. The report, presented Tuesday in London, paints a dismal picture of a disease invading regions of the globe where it had for many years tricked experts into believing some populations might be less susceptible, or even immune, to infection. The virus is spreading most rapidly in Eastern Europe, where nearly every country is experiencing a major outbreak. It has also marched swiftly across Central Asia and into China, where it was almost nonexistent a few years ago. But there are signs of hope. The AIDS Epidemic Update, an annual report by the World Health Organization and UNAIDS, says prevention programs appear to be working in the few areas where they have been set up.
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,56597,00.html
China accused of jailing net users
The human rights group Amnesty International has demanded China release all those it has jailed for expressing views or sharing information online. It says at least 33 people have been detained for internet subversion and two prisoners had subsequently died after apparent torture or ill-treatment. In a report addressing "State control of the internet in China", the advocacy group said Beijing was creating a new category of "prisoner of conscience" by its actions. A government spokesman said he was not aware of the new report, but said Amnesty had published critical claims before "with no basis whatsoever".
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/2517647.stm
Hi-tech workplace no better than factories
Staff in technology jobs work in the white collar equivalent of a 19th century factory. suffering from isolation, job insecurity and long hours, research has found. Much needs to be done to ease the intense pressure, inequality and exclusion in technology jobs, said the study by Sean O'Riain, Professor of Sociology at the University of California. He looked at the characteristics of hi-tech workplaces, which are seen as a potential model for the future of work. He found that the individualistic, macho culture of tech jobs was putting women off applying for jobs, despite an often critical shortage of skills.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/2514771.stm
Some Simple Solutions to Identity Theft
So it has come to this. On Nov. 25, federal prosecutors charged three men with operating an identity-theft ring that had stolen credit reports of more than 30,000 people -- the largest case in history. The defendants include a computer help-desk employee at a Long Island software outfit who had access to sensitive passwords for banks and credit companies. The ring allegedly emptied bank accounts, took out loans with stolen identities, and ran up fraudulent charges on credit cards. The most appalling part of the whole mess? Most of the damage could easily have been prevented if the credit agencies adopted the common-sense practice of directly notifying individuals whenever a change on his or her report occurs, and whenever a third party accesses their credit report. Yes, it might cost the credit agencies more in overhead. But credit agencies spread such costs around to customers, banks, car dealerships, and others that pay to access consumer credit ratings.
http://www.businessweek.com/technolo...21127_4748.htm
Laser-activated glue attaches skin grafts
Surgeons could use laser-activated glue to attach skin grafts without the scarring and swelling that existing methods can cause. Skin grafts are commonplace in cosmetic surgery, and for burns victims a successful graft can be a matter of life or death. For the new skin to survive, it is essential to quickly establish a strong bond with tissue at the wound site. Surgeons use stitches, staples or tissue glues to secure the graft. But the surgical threads and staples sometimes cause extensive scarring, and chemical glues can trigger inflammation. Robert Redmond and his team of dermatologists at Harvard Medical School in Boston believe they have now found an unlikely alternative that uses a medical dye called rose bengal.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99993113
Listening to the internet reveals best connections
The reliability and strength of internet connections can be assessed by listening to the sounds they make, according to Chris Chafe, a cellist and director of the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics at Stanford University in California. This will be music to the ears of those developing the next generation of interactive internet technologies, like telesurgery, which need excellent connections. Telesurgery involves a surgeon using video screens to guide a remote robot arm to perform intricate operations. The robot and patient could be on the other side of the world, so the patient's life depends on constant and reliable connections. To check the quality of an internet connection, engineers "ping" a data packet to a remote computer, which bounces it back like an echo.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99993112
'Eightball' Smacking KaZaA Users
Download the latest skin from KaZaA and you won't get a slick-looking piece of software. Instead, you'll install a virus that wipes out your music files. See what happened to our files when we tried installing the skin, tonight on "Tech Live." Two viewers tipped us to the file, called the Magic Eightball skin. It comes as a Zip file named eightball2.zip. Once opened, the program executes on some systems, erasing music files and causing system crashes, the viewers said. We found the skin by searching the term "eightball skin" on KaZaA. The Zip file did not execute on a Windows 98 SE machine, saying it was missing a required DLL file. But on a Windows XP machine, the file executed and popped up a dialog box asking if we wanted to "see some magic." We clicked on Yes and five more dialog boxes popped up, each one counting down: five, four, three, two, and then one. When we finished, all of the MP3 files stored on our system were gone. The system began popping up error messages, and we had to reboot the machine. Steve Trilling from Symantec's Antivirus Research Center says he's seeing more cases of malicious code designed to exploit peer-to-peer networks.
http://www.techtv.com/news/security/...409350,00.html
Danish anti pirates continue to target copyright theft
The Danish Anti Pirat Gruppen (Anti Piracy Group) is to continue targeting Net users who swap copyright material illegally. Confirmation that the APG is to continue its hard line comes after it issued invoices totalling 1m Danish Crowns (£86,200) to around 150 users of KaZaA and eDonkey for allegedly illegally swapping copyright material. The biggest offenders face bills of around 100,000 Crowns (£8,600). According to Morten Lindegaard, a lawyer for APG, around 80 per cent of those who received the invoices have already agreed to pay up. Those that don't face being sued. "Most were surprised that we were able to discover them," Mr Lindegaard told The Register. And in a clear warning to Danish Net users, he insisted that APG would continue to pursue this approach to crackdown on copyright infringements.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/28325.html
More news later on
