It’s an idea that was popularized by Princess Leia’s plea for help in Star Wars: sending a 3-D hologram. Now, two Japanese scientists have developed technology they hope will one day turn the humble telephone booth into a high-tech chamber for beaming holographic images.

At a Tokyo University laboratory, a woman stands inside a booth where a 360-degree digital camera surrounding her face sends data to a cylindrical tube. Soon, she appears to be staring out from the tube. Viewed from the side, only the side of her head is visible. Go round to the back, and only her hair can be seen.

“We can see the 3-D image as if it’s inside the cylinder,” said Susumu Tachi, a Tokyo University professor of computer science and physics, in a demonstration Wednesday for The Associated Press. With the device, “we can have a family gathering or conference at a remote place.”

Tachi and Tomohiro Endo developed the cylinder — dubbed SeeLinder — by combining fiber optics, electronics and white light-emitting diodes, or LEDs.

The hologram cylinder resembles a zoetrope, a primitive motion-picture wheel.

Inside the cylinder, an outer wheel with vertical slits revolves clockwise at a fast clip, while an inner wheel moving counterclockwise at a slower speed lined vertically with LEDs projects thin slices of a person’s face. The rapid succession of image slices seen through the slits produces the illusion that the viewer can see the person’s entire face at once, in 3-D.

The image appears to be about eight inches in diameter and 10 inches high.

There are limitations. Looking at the cylinder from above or below doesn’t change the image, and the hologram is still fuzzier than modern TV screens.

It’s also pricey. One cylinder costs $97,100, though Tachi and Endo expect that to fall if the gadget is ever mass-produced.

Endo said they’re refining the technology, and given demand, can commercialize their product soon.

“We think this can be on the market in the near future,” he said.

Source: AP

Net users are getting the chance to fight back against spam websites

Internet portal Lycos has made a screensaver that endlessly requests data from sites that sell the goods and services mentioned in spam e-mail.

Lycos hopes it will make the monthly bandwidth bills of spammers soar by keeping their servers running flat out.

The net firm estimates that if enough people sign up and download the tool, spammers could end up paying to send out terabytes of data.

By getting thousands of people to download and use the screensaver, Lycos hopes to get spamming websites constantly running at almost full capacity.

Mr Pollmann said there was no intention to stop the spam websites working by subjecting them with too much data to cope with.

He said the screensaver had been carefully written to ensure that the amount of traffic it generated from each user did not overload the web.

“Every single user will contribute three to four megabytes per day,” he said, “about one MP3 file.”

But, he said, if enough people sign up spamming websites could be force to pay for gigabytes of traffic every single day.

The sites being targeted are those mentioned in spam e-mail messages and which sell the goods and services on offer.

The list of sites that the screensaver will target is taken from real-time blacklists generated by organisations such as Spamcop. To limit the chance of mistakes being made, Lycos is using people to ensure that the sites are selling spam goods.

The screensaver is due to be launched across Europe on 1 December and before now has only been trialled in Sweden.

Despite the soft launch, Mr Pollmann said that the screensaver had been downloaded more than 20,000 times in the last four days.

Source: BBC

Google, Microsoft and Yahoo are quietly developing new search tools for digital video, foreshadowing a high-stakes technology arms race in the battle for control of consumers’ living rooms.

Google’s effort, until now secret, is arguably the most ambitious of the three. According to sources familiar with the plan, the search giant is courting broadcasters and cable networks with a new technology that would do for television what it has already done for the Internet: sort through and reveal needles of video clips from within the haystack archives of major network TV shows.

The effort comes on top of Google’s plans to create a multimedia search engine for Internet-only video that it will likely introduce next year, according to sources familiar with the company’s plans. In recent weeks, Mountain View, Calif.-based Google has demonstrated new technology to a handful of major TV broadcasters in an attempt to forge alliances and develop business models for a TV-searchable database on the Web, those sources say.

“Google’s trying to bring TV to the Web the same way they’re bringing books to the Web,” according to a media executive who asked to remain anonymous.

Google declined to comment for this report.

Source: News.com

A vulnerability in Microsoft Internet Explorer has been discovered, which can be exploited by malicious people to trick users into downloading malicious files.

The vulnerability is caused due to Internet Explorer using the file extension from the URL’s filename when saving images with the “Save Picture As” command and also strips the last file extension if multiple file extensions exist. This can be exploited by a malicious web site to cause a valid image with malicious, embedded script code to be saved with an arbitrary file extension.

Successful exploitation may allow a malicious web site to trick users into downloading e.g. a malicious HTML Application (.hta) masqueraded as a valid image. However, exploitation requires that the option “Hide extension for known file types” is enabled (default setting).

The vulnerability has been confirmed on a fully patched system with Internet Explorer 6.0 and Microsoft Windows XP SP2.

Solution:
Disable the “Hide extension for known file types” option.

Toshiba Corp. said on Monday it had won support for the HD DVD optical disc standard from Warner Bros. Studios, Paramount Pictures, Universal Pictures and New Line Cinema, advancing its cause in the battle for the next-generation DVD.

Toshiba, with NEC Corp. and Sanyo Electric Co. Ltd., is promoting a next-generation DVD technology called HD DVD, while Sony Corp. and several other giants of the electronics, computer and movie industries are backing a competing standard dubbed Blu-ray.

Support from U.S. film studios is seen as vital in this format battle, just as it was when the VHS standard prevailed over Sony’s Betamax two decades ago.

“After extensive research and careful consideration … we have determined that HD DVD has the highest quality of performance and offers key advantages in the areas of durability and reliability,” Warner Bros. said in a statement.

They represent about 45 percent of Hollywood’s prepackaged DVD sales in the United States, Toshiba said.

Those studios are expected to release movie titles on the HD DVD format in time for the planned launch of HD DVD players in the last quarter of 2005.

Source: Reuters

Computer Associates International Inc. has launched a list of the worst spyware threats as part of a new program to combat unwanted software “pests.” At the top of that list: the peer-to-peer application Kazaa.

The company initiated its Spyware Information Center earlier this month with the launch of eTrust PestPatrol Anti-Spyware r5, enterprise-oriented software designed to tackle unwanted spyware, adware and trojans, a category of threats it calls “pests” to distinguish them from viruses and security vulnerabilities. But out of the entire category, the top threat is the Kazaa peer-to-peer application, which CA characterized as prone to degrading network performance, consuming vast amounts of storage and creating security issues.

The other top threats are Ezula’s TopText reference tool, which installs ads on a user’s machine; Adopt.Hotbar.com, which tracks Web usage patterns; GameSpy Arcade, which installs adware; and Download Accelerator Plus, which carries out actions such as changing browser settings, displaying popunder ads and transmitting information to a Web site without the user’s permission. The most rapidly spreading pests were Gator/GAIN/Claria and Grokster.

Source: eWeek

After an absence of a decade, Philips Electronics is making personal computers again, the company said on Thursday. The Netherlands-based electronics conglomerate, which abandoned the PC business in the early 1990s after suffering big losses, quietly introduced six models together with British retailer Dixons earlier this week.

The Dutch company said it had not wanted to draw attention to a “soft” launch of products that would only be available in a limited number of shops in six European countries, including Britain, Ireland, Spain, Italy and Nordic countries. “It is a tactical decision to take an opportunity that came along,” a spokesman said.

Source: Reuters

Brett Moore has reported a vulnerability in Winamp, which can be exploited by malicious people to compromise a user’s system.

The vulnerability is caused due to a boundary error in the “IN_CDDA.dll” file. This can be exploited in various ways to cause a stack-based buffer overflow e.g. by tricking a user into visiting a malicious web site containing a specially crafted “.m3u” playlist.

Successful exploitation allows execution of arbitrary code.

The vulnerability has been reported in versions 5.05 and 5.06. Prior versions may also be affected.

Solution:
Disassociate “.cda” and “.m3u” extensions from Winamp.

A flaw in Sun Microsystems’ plug-in for running Java on a variety of browsers and operating systems could allow a virus to spread through Microsoft Windows and Linux PCs.

The vulnerability, found by Finnish security researcher Jouko Pynnonen in June, was patched last month by Sun, but its details were not made public until Tuesday. Security information provider Secunia posted information about the flaw in an advisory that rated it a “highly critical” threat.

The Java plug-in enables small Web programs, known as applets, to run safely on a user’s computer. But the security flaw allows a malicious Web site accessed through a victim’s browser to bypass those protections.

“It allows execution of attacker-supplied code without user interaction (apart from viewing a Web page) which usually means a ‘critical’ classification”

“The same exploit could also be used against various operating systems and browsers, which makes it more serious,” he added. The vulnerability can be used to attack systems running on Windows or Linux, for example, and using major browser software such as Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and Firefox–meaning a large number of systems are vulnerable to attack.

An attacker could use the flaw to do anything the victim normally could, including browse, modify or run files, upload more programs to the victim’s system, or send out data from the system, Pynnonen wrote in an advisory dated Tuesday.

While Sun would not speculate on how the flaw could be used by attackers, the company did say that it worked hard to distribute the patch for it to all users.

Source: News.com

New Kazaa Version Includes “Skype�?; Takes Peer-to-Peer Technology Beyond File Sharing to Free Online Calls.

Sharman Networks Limited, distributor of the popular file sharing software, today launched Kazaa v3.0. This latest version includes the integration of Skype, which allows users to make free online calls anywhere in the world, using peer-to-peer (P2P) technology. v3.0 also offers advanced search capabilities and a free weblog trial.

“Internet telephony is a new frontier in P2P communications and a rapidly growing market,�? said Nikki Hemming, for Sharman Networks. “The inclusion of Skype is a natural extension of the Kazaa product and of peer-to-peer. As pioneers in the P2P field, Sharman Networks believes the integration of Skype – considered the best product in the market for Internet phone calls – will deliver powerful consumer benefits.�?

The ubiquitous banner ad has become the latest delivery mechanism for exploit code targeting a known flaw in Microsoft Corp.’s Internet Explorer browser.

During a 12-hour window over the weekend, hackers broke into a load balancing server that handles ad deliveries for Germany’s Falk eSolutions and successfully loaded exploit code on banner advertising served on hundreds of Web sites.

“Users visiting Web sites that carry banner advertising delivered by our system were periodically delivered a file from the compromised site. This file tries to execute the IE-Exploit function on the users’ computer,” Falk eSolutions confirmed Monday.

The exploit (Bofra/IFrame) takes advantage of an IE vulnerability discovered and reported to Microsoft earlier this month. It is a variant of the MyDoom virus that launched zero-day attacks on vulnerable IE users two weeks ago.

The flaw, which does not affect IE users running Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2), has not yet been patched.

Source: eWeek

America Online is set to introduce a free, ad-supported video service, CNET News.com has learned, in a move to diversify its business and seize on a burgeoning sector of online advertising.

The Internet service provider, a unit of Time Warner, will open AOL Video to the public in the coming weeks, Tom Bosco, AOL’s director of broadband sales development, said in an interview Thursday. It also will debut Netscape Video, an on-demand video entertainment service, before the end of the year. The moves will follow last month’s launch of video programming on AOL Instant Messenger.

Source: News.com