Right now the line up (e.x. Daughtry, R. Kelly and Imogen Heap) does not excite me in the least, but here’s hoping for a better roster roll out soon.

In the model that researchers studied, transmissions from the defibrillator to the bedside monitor are not encrypted, which means someone intercepting the transmissions could retrieve such data as the patient’s birth date, medical ID number and, in some cases, Social Security number.

As the technology spreads to more medical devices, including pacemakers, spinal-cord stimulators and hearing implants – and as the range of the devices’ radio signals increase – the researchers predict patients’ data will face increasing risks.

While the chance of such an occurrence taking place may seem remote – it would require a quite nefarious individual’s desire to wreak individual havoc – why should this risk be deemed acceptable? After all, is that expensive to encrypt? Me thinks not.

Directed at users who are trying to balance personal and professional networks, Moli offers multiple profiles–with different privacy settings–within one account.

Users of Moli can set up as many profiles as they want, and they can choose to make them public, private, or hidden. Anyone, whether he has signed up for Moli or not, can search for and view a public profile. A private profile will show up on searches, but to access it, a user must be a member of Moli and must have approval from the profile’s owner. A hidden profile is invisible in searches and can only be viewed by people invited by the owner. Balint says that users are free to set up multiple profiles of various types, with the requirement that they must designate at least one public profile.

The differences between the groups aren’t great, but the results do go some way in explaining the Yahoo conundrum. Although a distance second in search, Yahoo has remained the number one traffic destination online ahead of Google, so you’d think with more traffic Yahoo would convert that traffic into similar returns to Google. But alas we know that not to be the case, and that would appear in part to be related to people using Yahoo not spending as much online and being in poorer demographic categories than Google users, providing a lower return per user.

via Smart Mobs

In this case, hackers use malicious banner ads as a host for an infected PDF. The PDF then installs the Zonebac Trojan, which sets to work deactivating antivirus products, modifying search results, and changing banner ads.

Adobe’s 8.12 update supposedly plugs the loopholes that the Zonebac delivery system exploited, but the company has declined to give any information on what, exactly, the update changed. The lack of information is disappointing (though not surprising), but Adobe’s failure to address the issue in a timely manner raises questions about the firm’s commitment to security. An 18-day gap between the appearance of a verified exploit and the release of a patch isn’t exactly impressive, and this particular issue had been on Adobe’s radar for months. iDefense Labs first reported the existence of this particular buffer overflow vulnerability in early October 2007.

The attack has raised some questions regarding the security of the PDF standard

via arstechnica

In Sweden, the Jernhusen company, which owns Stockholm’s central station, is planning to channel passenger warmth to heat a 13-storey office block being built next to the station.

Heat exchangers in the station’s ventilation system will convert the body heat into hot water, which will be pumped into the heating system of the building.

It is not yet certain how effective the technique will be.

But Jernhusen engineers hope it will meet up to 15% of the heating needs of the building, which will provide about 40,000 square metres of space for offices, hotels, restaurants and shops.

Some existing buildings already recycle body heat from people in the building to contribute to heating requirements.

But this is the first time excess heat is to be transferred from one building to another.

Thanks to Dana

Hundreds of thousands of Colombians are expected to march throughout the country and in major cities around the world Monday to protest against this nation’s oldest and most powerful rebel group.

What began as a group of young people venting their rage at the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) on Facebook, an Internet social-networking site, has ballooned into an international event called “One Million Voices Against FARC.”

“We expected the idea to resound with a lot of people but not so much and not so quickly,” says Oscar Morales, who started the Facebook group against the FARC, which now has 230,000 members. Organizers are expecting marches in 185 cities around the world.

The event is another example of how technology – such as text messaging on cellphones – can be used to rally large numbers of people to a cause. Some observers say it’s less a response to the FARC’s ideology than it is global public outrage over kidnapping as a weapon.

via Smart Mobs

In fact, if you leave your computer on 24 hours a day, it could be responsible for releasing up to 1,500 pounds of CO2 into the atmosphere every year. The flying-toaster screen saver is cool…but is it that cool?

But if you have to leave your computer on, here’s a way you can make up for it: By joining a distributed computing network that models the effects of climate change.

Distributed computing networks harness the unused power of thousands of personal computers to perform complicated tasks.

For instance, climateprediction.net is a distributed network run by Oxford University and other partners that helps climate scientists run climate models on networked computers when those computers are on, but are not running at full capacity.

Wow – leaving a computer on to such a degree really does leave a heavy carbon foot-print for something that would just be sitting there otherwise. I say turn it off, but, yeah, if you do leave it on why have your CPU work away on something useful.

At the time, Estonia accused the Russian government of orchestrating the attacks. Moscow denied any involvement.

Read more from the BBC.