OLPC to World: Children are fast learners. Let’s give them the right tools

Last week, the OLPC foundation released an Internet-only ad that starts by showing kids who are learning to use guns. The commercial then goes on with its message: “Children are fast learners. Let’s give them the right tools. Give a laptop. Get a laptop.”

What are your thoughts on this ad? Let us know in the comments.



Microsoft to Release Emergency Patch for Critical IE Flaw

According to Brian Krebs’ Security Fix blog, Microsoft is releasing an out of band patch to fix the critical flaw in all versions of Internet Explorer that we discussed on [GAS] last week.  This is great news.  While the number of home computers compromised by this attack is only about 1 in 500, security companies have noted sharp increases in the numbers of webservers that are being compromised to serve the malware to spread the infections.

Krebs writes:

Microsoft is signaling that it plans to ship an emergency software update on Wednesday to fix a dangerous security hole in its Internet Explorer Web browser that thousands of compromised Web sites have been using to install malicious software.

Microsoft says the critical flaw is present in all versions of IE, from IE5 all the way up through IE8 Beta 2.  Microsoft estimated that about 0.2 percent of Windows users worldwide may have been exposed to Web sites containing exploits that try to attack this vulnerability.

While one in every 500 IE users may not sound like a large number, Microsoft said the frequency of attacks is increasing dramatically.

Signs that hackers were exploiting an unpatched flaw in all versions of IE showed up the day after this month’s Patch Tuesday. Attackers have begun using this day for exploitation as it gives them the longest lead time until Microsoft gets around to fixing it.

Microsoft has done an excellent job turning out this patch in an emergency.  But the hackers will be back at it next week looking for new methods of exploit.  And the patch dance goes onward.



Are You an Angry Drunk? It’s In Your Genes!

By Casey Lynn
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

barfightAccording to a new study, one particular overactive gene could explain that dude you know who goes from Jekyll to Hyde when he gets a few drinks in him. The MAOA gene produces an enzyme that breaks down mood-related chemicals, and high levels of this enzyme mixed with alcohol creates a “dangerous cocktail,” triggering violent behavior.

It was already known that this gene is linked to violent behavior. In a profound and somewhat disturbing demonstration of the link, scientists found a family in the Netherlands with a particular mutation in the gene; every male family member with that mutation was an arsonist or rapist.

In the recent study, scientists found that in 174 Finnish male alcoholics with histories of violence, drinking increased the risk of impulsive violence among those with a highly active MAOA gene. The effects decrease with age, which could be part of the reason we don’t usually see the senior crowd getting into bar fights. According to one of the researchers:

Alcoholism, alcohol consumption and violence are clearly related. People react quite differently to acute alcohol exposure. Most individuals become relaxed and talkative, while some – particularly people who are introverted while sober – become expansively extroverted and aggressive. Perhaps we could increase the efficacy of addition rehabilitation by focusing resources particularly on younger heavy-drinking, high-activity MAOA individuals.

The hope is that that people could be screened for the gene. They could then be offered treatment or behavioural therapy… or better yet, decide to abstain from alcohol.

This research will appear in the March issue of the journal Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research.

[Image Source: Flickr]

X-Men Origins: Wolverine Trailer

By Casey Lynn
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

The new trailer for X-Men Origins: Wolverine premiered this weekend before showings of The Day the Earth Stood Still.  We get a good look at Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool, Liev Shreiber as Sabretooth, and sporting some impressive makeup, Kevin Durand as The Blob.  Of course, I was mostly just thinking, “Oooooh! Gambit!”  (played by Friday Night Lights’ Taylor Kitsch). Get ready for some card-tossing, staff-spinning action!

You can also watch it in high def on the film’s MySpace page.

Synergy shares keyboard and mouse across multiple systems

This morning I read in the Code Project newsletter about Synergy, an open source software package that allows you to share a single keyboard and mouse between multiple workstations (each with their own monitor(s)).  Since I regularly work on three different systems in any given day, and I often find myself using the wrong keyboard while staring at the screen and wondering why no text is showing up, this looked like just the thing for me.

Synergy lets you configure one of the systems as a server (the one to which the keyboard and mouse that you want to share are connected), and any number of other systems as clients.  On the server, you describe where each screen is in relation to all of its neighbors.  Then, as you move the mouse  to the edge of one monitor that borders another, focus shifts to that monitor (and the system attached to it).

Here’s the main configuration panel on Windows:

You install Synergy on every computer involved, and then use this panel to designate the server (as shown above) or client.  On the server, you then click the “Configure…” button:

This dialog is somewhat counter-intuitive.  The first thing you must do is add “Screens” by pressing the “+” button under that listbox.  You must add the server’s name and all of the clients here.

Then, in the bottom section, you start by entering the data in the “0 to 100%” line of edit boxes.  They don’t explain what some of this means:  the percentages refer to how much of that border is adjacent to the other monitor (which allows you to have, for instance, one large monitor with two smaller ones stacked vertically beside it — each might use 50% of the larger screen’s border).  The first dropdown indicates which side (left, right, top, or bottom) of the system selected in the next dropdown is adjacent to the system selected in the last dropdown.  Once you’re done figuring that out, don’t forget to press the “+” sign below it, or it won’t be saved!  Design note:  save everything I type when I press OK — unless I delete it, please.

Notice how you have to define both relationships for every pair of adjacent monitors:  “ninkasi is to the right of enlil”, and “enlil is to the left of ninkasi.”  This lets you specify varying percentages — but if you forget to define both directions, your focus will get trapped in one of the sessions.  Fortunately, all you need to do is terminate that session to restore focus to the server.

Once you have all of the relationships set up, press “Test”.  Then go to each client, run Synergy, enter the server (first time only) and press “Test”.  If you encounter no errors, you’ll be able to move the mouse all the away across all of your monitors.  Try typing into applications on each one — you can even copy/paste between them!  Text or graphics!  Synergy uses TCP/IP to transfer the clipboard, as well as mouse and keyboard events.

I was impressed that this seems to work well on Vista x64, even though it’s a 32-bit executable.  It seamlessly ties my 64-bit systems together with an old 32-bit XP system as well.  It’s supposed to work with OS/X and Unix systems, too — but I haven’t tried those out yet.

Synergy nicely handled the dual monitor configuration on my server system, detecting the right edge as being the right side of my laptop monitor, even though my second monitor is on the left and is configured as primary.

I tried setting up hot keys so I could switch monitors without using the mouse, but this seemed to work very sporadically.  After playing around with it for a while, I managed to render my right parenthesis unusable.  Shift+0 was just a dead key.  Rebooting sorted that, though.  Oh well, reaching for the mouse is still easier than reaching for a different keyboard.

To run for real, press “Start”, which removes the UI and shows a taskbar icon instead.  You can also configure AutoStart from the button on the main panel.  Starting on login worked well for me, but starting on system startup didn’t seem to take (on Vista x64).  That means, of course, that I still have to keep my other keyboards handy in order to login.

I also had trouble connecting a client that had the Cisco VPN client running, even though I could map shared drives on that system.  In fact, if the workstation with the active VPN had any drive on another workstation mapped, I couldn’t connect that workstation, either.  However, if I got all systems connected before starting the VPN client, all worked well.  So, my daily routine will be to login to the server system first, then login to each of my clients, then start the VPN, then play Evil Genius all day.

MUWAHAHAHA!

[Via MUO]

The 2000-Year-Old Computer

In the following video, Curator Michael Wright presents his reconstruction of the Antikythera mechanism, an ancient Greek clockwork machine that was used more than 2000 years ago to compute time as well as the movement of celestial bodies. The device was discovered in a shipwreck back in 1901 near the island of Antikythera and took more than a century to decipher. Check it out:

[Via Neatorama]