Computer attacks typically don’t inflict physical pain on their victims.
But in a rare example of an attack apparently motivated by malice rather than money, hackers recently bombarded the Epilepsy Foundation’s Web site with hundreds of pictures and links to pages with rapidly flashing images.
The breach triggered severe migraines and near-seizure reactions in some site visitors who viewed the images. People with photosensitive epilepsy can get seizures when they’re exposed to flickering images, a response also caused by some video games and cartoons.
“They were out to create seizures,” said Ken Lowenberg, senior director of Web and print publishing for the foundation, which is based in Landover, Md.
He said legitimate users are no longer able to post animated images to the support forum or create direct links to other sites, and it is now moderated around the clock. He said the FBI is investigating the breach.
HP reaches out to universities: Trying to boost the output of its research labs, Hewlett-Packard Co. wants to get more help from scientists in universities.
HP and other technology companies already collaborate with academics all the time. But HP’s new research director, Prith Banerjee, believes his company’s school partnerships would produce better results if they were more organized.
So under a program beginning Wednesday, Banerjee is creating a more formal structure, with HP acting somewhat like a government agency making a grant. HP will solicit applications from university researchers, then fund dozens of projects for up to three years. Each grant would cover the cost of a graduate student researcher.
Patents from the work done at universities could stay in the schools, but HP would have first crack at licensing the technologies. Or the resulting intellectual property could be made freely available to anyone, as IBM agreed to do in 2006 when it established its own plan for many of its university collaborations.
Sony’s new LED TV might wear out fast: A Sony TV with novel display technology that has drawn rave reviews for image quality may actually last little more than half as long as the company claims, according to a test by a private research firm.
Sony’s XEL-1 is the first TV on the U.S. market that uses organic light-emitting diodes, which give a bright, colorful image while keeping power consumption low. The screen diagonal is just 11 inches, making it more of a conversation piece than the center of the living room, especially considering the price — $2,499.99.
DisplaySearch ran two XEL-1 units for 1,000 hours, and measured the drop in brightness. Extrapolating from that, they found it would take 17,000 hours for a display to lose half its brightness, a standard measure of display life.
Sony says the display lasts 30,000 hours, or 10 years of typical use. Spokesman Greg Belloni said that figure is based on years of tests and the company stands by it.
Next-gen military gear: Emotion-detecting robot cars will face off against eavesdropping flying saucers in the English countryside when scientists, academics and schoolchildren compete later this year to design the next generation of military equipment.
The British Ministry of Defense’s first ever “Grand Challenge” intends to encourage participants to turn their ideas into prototypes for machines the army can use in urban environments.
The six finalists, who each received $600,000 to build such contraptions as a disc-shaped remote-controlled flying robots fitted with heat and motion sensors, were in London last week to display their models.
From Swarm Systems Ltd. comes a set of tiny helicopters that fly in formation into a village and record images and audio tracks to beam back to headquarters. And British aeronautical company BAE Systems teamed up with the University of Manchester to build a self-propelled, remote-controlled camera.
The Silicon Valley Group PLC, a small research company in southeast Britain, teamed with the Bruton School for Girls in Somerset to build an unmanned buggy that can analyze gunmen’s movements to determine whether they are angry or nervous.
“This project has really allowed us to broaden out our vision and look at what other work is being done out there in our field,” said Norman Gregory, the company’s business manager. “We are a small company and would not have been able to put together a consortium to develop such a sophisticated system without this competition.”
The Associated Press
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