Company Alleges CIA Knowingly Bought Flawed Software For Use In Drones

Two Massachusetts companies are at the center of a debate over whether or not the CIA willingly purchased flawed software to run in tandum with illegally re-engineered hardware for use in predator drones. The combination is said to impact the accuracy of missiles fired from the drones, by up to 39 feet. 

A lawsuit has been filed by Massachusetts-based Intelligent Integration Systems (IISI) and involves Netezza, a data warehousing company who's software is said to be incompatible with current versions of IISI's code. According to the allegations Netezza  "illegally and hastily reverse-engineered" IISI's code and the CIA knowingly purchased the offering.

"My reaction was one of stun, amazement that they want to kill people with my software that doesn't work," IISI Chief Technology Officer Richard Zimmerman is quoted as saying in a deposition.

In it's defense Netezza CEO Jim Baum is quoted as writing "We believe that the claims made against Netezza by IISI are without merit, and we intend to vigorously defend ourselves against those claims in court," a statement said. "We did not rely on IISI's trade secrets or confidential information in developing our own geospatial product."

The CIA obviously considers 39 feet an acceptable margin of error when it comes to lobbing explosives at important targets, that's about the distance between my house and my neighbours. Yikes!

Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-27080_3-20017809-245.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20#ixzz10ojhSPwj

For Your Eyes Only

If you work on sensitive projects or just have nosy cube mates, you may have wished you had a tool to keep prying eyes from seeing what you are working on. A company by the name of Oculis Labs Inc. has a solution for the super security conscious and another for the rest of us. Check out this demo by Oculis' founder and CEO, Bill Anderson.



Shoulder surfers beware!

Source:Baltimore Sun

Software Trained to Determine Meaning of Dogs Bark

Hungarian researcher Csaba Molnár from Eötvös Loránd University has developed software in an attempt to determine what a dog's bark means. According to Telegraph.co.uk "The software has learned the nuances of woofs, howls, yaps, snarls and growls in various situations and is now able to classify dog barks with reasonable accuracy, along with the identity of the animals themselves." Molnár says "If we could find the acoustic characteristics of barks which reflect to certain emotional states of dogs we could gain information about the dogs' "well-being" which would have several applications on the animal welfare field." but don't get too excited, the accuracy is only 43% in detecting six different states: 'stranger', 'fight', 'walk', 'alone', 'ball' and 'play' and the research has only been conducted on one breed. No word on when they'll try to figure out cats!

A nice gift for the wine geek.

If you have a wine lover who's also a tech geek I'm sure they will be appreciative of this little USB thumb drive from bewineconnected.com. Not only is it shaped like a wine bottle but it's packed with wine related info, ringtones for your cellphone, and an application for managing your wine cellar! At 35 Euro it's a little pricey for a thumb drive, but considering the information provided it may well be worth the purchase. The Open Cellar application is available here for free, but package it all up nicely in a cute little thumb drive and I'm sure your wine collector will love it. Thanks to Emmanuel Etcheparre for sending me this link.

ZoneAlarm anti-spyware free if you act quick

It seems that Check Point is celebrating Patch Tuesday with a little gift... you can download ZoneAlarm anti-spyware from this link today, until 5:00 PM PST, for free! I've never tried their anti-spyware but can honestly say that I ran ZoneAlarm firewall for many years and was quite happy!

Hacking passwords getting a lot easier!

Engadget is reporting that a Russian software company has filed for a US patent which leverages the power of modern graphics cards to crack passwords! According to the article "An NTLM-hashed Microsoft Vista password, for example, can now be cracked in 3 to 5 days (instead of two months) using a simple, off-the-shelf, $150 graphics card -- less complicated passwords can take just minutes." Sounds like it might be time to invest in finger print and retinal scanners!

PC Health and Safety

If you are concerned about your hard drives health or want to know whether or not your system is exposed to Internet evil doers, then you should become familiar with Steve Gibson's GRC.com. While the popular SpinRite software is a commercial product for hard drive maintenance, Gibson also offers a number of free tools including ShieldsUp! a fantastic online tool that will identify open ports on your system in order to inform you of your PC's potential vulnerabilities. Steve is also co-host of the popular Security Now podcast with Leo LaPorte, while this show can often get a bit technical the duo does a great job of dumbing it down for general consumption. Everyone who has a PC connected to the Internet should give this site a visit.

Free software for Windows PC checkup

Having trouble keeping up with your Windows updates? Want to know just how safe your PC is? Wondering which software you have installed? Belarc Advisor is a free download (for personal use) that enables you to view a profile of your current PC configuration, all in a single web report. This is a handy little tool that provides you with a quick view of your PC's current configuration, it may be helpful in diagnosing an issue or in avoiding future problems. For business users, Belarc offers similar and more advanced tools for purchase. Not all versions of Windows are supported so check the list before downloading to avoid frustration.

SpaceTime beta .9 - 3D web browser

SpaceTime is a new 3D web browser with some interesting visual appeal. The browser displays web pages in "3D visual stacks" that look like pages floating above one another in space, it's very pretty but my attempt to give the beta a try was less than impressive. Despite having slightly better than the recommended minimum hardware profile on the machine that I installed TimeSpace on, the program brought the PC to a crawl. I can see merits in features like the 3D e-bay search reported on the SpaceTime website but you'd better have plenty of horses under the hood to take advantage of this browser. I think I'll stick with Firefox for now.

Black hole

According to the Globe and Mail, 90 Dalhousie University students in Halifax, N.S. have been disciplined for cheating. The students gained access to answers to a series of on-line assignments hosted by a protected website which is part of the online courseware created through Blackboard Learning Systems software. The university was tipped off by two fellow students. The thing that amazes me is the magnitude of the cheating... while I'm sure first year Chemistry is a popular course choice for anyone in sciences, I'd still like to know how many students take the course in a semester?