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Google Enables Movie
If you've ever searched for your name in Google to see what comes up and who hasn't? -- you've probably wondered about all those other people with the same name as you. What kind of lives do they lead? Would you get along if you met? An actor named Jim Killeen from Los Angeles decided to take it one step further. He not only Googled his name, he made contact with six other Jim Killeens.
Best of all, he made a movie about his search and his discoveries. His search led to three different US cities and three other countries, tracking down Jim Killeens that range from an Irish priest to a swinger from Denver. The film explores identity, modern technology, and what's in a name.
In addition to the interviews, Jim Killeen invited the six men he interviewed to join him in Killeen, Texas, for the celebration of its 125th anniversary. All of them accepted, and the town treated them like royalty. They entered their own recipe for chili in the chili cook-off, and interacted with each other which led to some interesting discussions. Killeen will release a low-resolution version of the movie for free on YouTube this week. He also plans to sell a DVD version of the film from his web site.
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Fight Zombies With Zombies
If you've been reading about IT security lately, then you've heard about botnets swarms of computers infected with viruses that allow a malicious hacker, or bot herder, to control them while their innocent owners are none the wiser. Botnets are often used to send spam or launch distributed denial-of-service attacks, and some botnets have grown so huge that seemingly nothing can stand against them.
Until now, that is. A team of researchers at the University of Washington think they've come up with a way to fight the bad guys by stealing a page out of their playbook. It calls for putting together a swarm of good computers to field a defense. Dubbed Phalanx, the researchers claim the approach could handle an attacking botnet of any size.
The key to Phalanx is that the server is never accessed directly by outsiders; instead, all information goes through the swarm of good computers. What's more, the good swarm only relays information when the server requests it, which ensures that the server is never overwhelmed. A large attacking swarm can be defeated by a much smaller defending swarm, according to the simulations run by the researchers. Companies can simply use the computers already in their network to set up a defensive swarm and if they need more, it's quite possible to fold home machines into the system as well, explained team member Colin Dixon. He suggested that the distributed file-sharing system BitTorrent might be able to help with this process.
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On the Horizon: $1 a Gallon Gas and it's Green
Ethanol has its drawbacks: car engines need to be modified to run completely on this plant-derived fuel, it contains less energy than gasoline, and its production drives up food prices. What if you could produce a liquid fuel that works a lot more like gasoline and out of any form of cellulose? Researchers at Umass Amherst think they have an inexpensive solution.
And it isn't just for gasoline, either. Their new method of refining hydrocarbons from cellulose could lead to making gasoline, diesel fuel, and even plastics out of wood scraps. Basically, anything that is normally refined from petroleum could be created from their end product. The tricky part is removing enough oxygen from the plant material to make it more closely resemble raw crude.
George Huber and his team used a catalyst found in the petroleum industry and heated small amounts of cellulose very quickly and precisely for several seconds before cooling it back down. The result: a high-octane lookalike to gasoline. Currently, the researchers can transfer half the energy from the cellulose into the hydrocarbons in the final product. If we can get 100 percent yield, we estimate the cost to be about a dollar per gallon, Huber says. Even at less than 100 percent yield, commercialization of the technique may create a renewable resource that is truly competitive with petroleum. With any luck, we'll know in five to 10 years.
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