We keep Highfield, you can have Danker

The cross-pollination of Microsoft and the BBC's iPlayer continued yesterday, with Auntie confirming it had hired Redmond's IPTV platform Mediaroom and Zune wonk.…

A recent NYT piece explores the never-ending quest for password-based security, to which reader climenole responds with a snippet from ReadWriteWeb that argues it's time to think more seriously about life beyond passwords, at least beyond keeping a long list of individual login/password pairs: "These protective measures don't go very far, according to the New York Times, because hackers can get ahold of passwords with software that remotely tracks keystrokes, or by tricking users into typing them in. The story touches on a range of issues around the problem, but neglects to mention the obvious: the march toward a centralized login for multiple sites."

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Barence writes "The United Arab Emirates has its own, Chinese-style, firewall to weed out pornography and other 'unsavoury' content. But as PC Pro's correspondent has found out, the firewall has more than a few holes in it. ISP helplines routinely suggest proxy server software that circumvents the filters. Access to Flickr is blocked, in case citizens' eyes should fall upon a naked buttock, but The Pirate Bay, which 'offers a range of bottoms to suit every need, including midget and donkey bottoms for anybody having a really slow afternoon – remains blissfully undisturbed.' 'Ultimately, I'm quite glad the UAE's authorities block websites, and thrilled that they're so inept at it,' concludes PC Pro's writer. 'Just like everybody in Dubai, all they've done is made me a master of internet chicanery.'" Guess that depends how closely they're watching the evaders.

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pgptag writes "This talk by Dr. Suzanne Gilbert (video) explains why quantum computers are useful, and also dispels some of the myths about what they can and cannot do. It addresses some of the practical ways in which we can build quantum computers and gives realistic timescales for how far away commercially useful systems might be."

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An anonymous reader writes "Ireland's Computer Emergency Response Team differs from what you can find in most other countries, since it's not government-backed and relies mainly on the good will of several security professionals. In this interview, the founder and head of the CERT, Brian Honan, talks about how the CERT was formed, what equipment they use and what challenges they face in their daily work without having a government to back them up."

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Stoobalou contributes a link to this story at Thinq.co.uk, from which he excerpts: "Torrent-tracking site The Pirate Bay is currently unavailable as reports come in of co-ordinated police raids against file sharers across Europe. Police in up to 14 countries carried out raids against suspected file-sharing servers this morning. According to file-sharing news site TorrentFreak, the bulk of police action seems to have taken place in Sweden. Swedish Internet service provider ISP, which hosts both The Pirate Bay and whistle-blowing site WikiLeaks, earlier denied rumours of a police raid, saying that officers had visited them to ask questions over two suspect IP addresses, and that no computers or other goods had been seized."

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theodp writes "Late on Monday, Oracle announced that ousted HP CEO Mark Hurd has joined the company as a co-president and a director. Hurd resigned from HP a month ago, after an investigation by the board into a personal relationship with a contractor turned up questionable expenses. Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, a personal friend of Hurd, criticized HP's board at the time, saying it was 'the worst personnel decision since the idiots on the Apple board fired Steve Jobs.' 'Mark did a brilliant job at HP and I expect he'll do even better at Oracle,' Ellison said in a statement Monday. 'There is no executive in the IT world with more relevant experience than Mark.' Stepping down to make room for Hurd was Charles E. Phillips Jr., who had some personal relationship issues of his own."

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What a balls-up

Google's latest animated logo on its search homepage has caused a kerfuffle among many surfers whose CPU has been besieged by the ballsy doodle.…

telomerewhythere writes "Michael Strano and his team at MIT have made a self-assembling and indefinitely repairable photovoltaic cell based on the principle found in chloroplasts inside plant cells. 'The system Strano's team produced is made up of seven different compounds, including the carbon nanotubes, the phospholipids, and the proteins that make up the reaction centers, which under the right conditions spontaneously assemble themselves into a light-harvesting structure that produces an electric current. Strano says he believes this sets a record for the complexity of a self-assembling system. When a surfactant is added to the mix, the seven components all come apart and form a soupy solution. Then, when the researchers removed the surfactant, the compounds spontaneously assembled once again into a perfectly formed, rejuvenated photocell.'"

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An anonymous reader writes "I bought a bunch of old Wing Commander games for Windows, but they use DirectDraw, which Microsoft has deprecated. They don't work too well under Windows 7, so I ended up reimplementing ddraw.dll using OpenGL to output the games' graphics. I wrote an article describing the process and all the fun workarounds I had to come up with, and released all related source code for others to hack on."

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Kilrah_il writes "In recent years the number of people killed on roads in New South Wales, Australia has dropped, but strangely enough, the number of pedestrians killed has risen. Some think it's because of the use of iPods and other music players making people not attentive to road dangers (the so-called 'iPod Zombie Trance'). Based on this (unproven) assumption, the Pedestrian Council has started a campaign in an effort to educate the people, but apparently it isn't enough. Now, some are pushing for the government to enact laws to help eradicate the problem. 'The government is quite happy to legislate that people can lose two demerit points for having music up too loud in their cars, but is apparently unconcerned that listening devices now appear to have become lethal pieces of entertainment,' [Harold Scruby of the Pedestrian Council of Australia] said. 'They should legislate appropriate penalties for people acting so carelessly towards their own welfare and that of others. ... Manufacturers should be made to [warn] consumers of the risks they run.'"

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