Virus rocks Iran's Nuke reactors

A new worm targeted Iran’s nuclear program, closing down the “automation network” at the Natanz and Fordo facilities, the Internet security site reported, citing an e-mail it said was sent by a scientist inside Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization.

The virus also prompted several of the computers on site to play the song “Thunderstruck” by AC/DC at full volume in the middle of the night, according to the e-mail, part of which is published in English on the website.
F-Secure Security Labs, which is linked to F-Secure Oyj (FSC1V), the Finnish maker of security and cloud software, said that while it was unable to verify the details of the attack described, it had confirmed that the scientist who reported them was sending and receiving the e-mails from within Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization.
Iran’s nuclear program and oil facilities have been subject to a succession of cyber attacks that the Foreign Ministry said in May were launched by hostile governments as part of a broader “soft war.” Iran accuses the U.S. and Israel of trying to sabotage its technological progress. Both countries say Iran’s nuclear activities may have military intent, an allegation that Iran denies.

E-Mail Exchange

Mikko Hypponen, chief security officer at F-Secure Security Labs and the person involved in the correspondence, said he received three e-mails on July 22 from an individual with an aeoi.org.ir e-mail address, receiving replies after he responded. After researching the person’s name on the internet, Hypponen said he found “plenty of nuclear science papers and articles published by someone with this name.”
“I can’t confirm that the person was who he said he was. And I can’t confirm any of the things he said actually happened,” Hypponen wrote in reply to e-mailed questions. “But I can confirm I was emailing with someone who had access to an aeoi.org.ir address.”
Iran has called on the United Nations to condemn organized cyber attacks against nations, the head of Iran’s Information Technology Organization, Ali Hakim Javadi, said today, according to a report by the state-run news channel Press TV. Significant investment is needed for the creation of malware viruses such as Stuxnet or Flame, which previously targeted Iran, indicating that they were not produced by individuals, the Iranian official said.

High Voltage

AC/DC have played “high voltage rock ’n’ roll” since they were formed in 1973 in Australia, according to the band’s website. Their songs were among the loud music played to detainees at the Guantanamo Bay prison facility in preparation for interrogations, the Associated Press reported in October 2009, citing the National Security Archive in Washington.
An attack where the infected PCs start playing AC/DC isn’t that likely “unless the attacker really wants the victim to know they are hit,” Hypponen said.
F-Secure Security Labs is involved in analyzing viruses, spyware and spam attacks, according to its website.
Source : Here

To contact the reporter on this story: Ladane Nasseri in Dubai at lnasseri@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Andrew J. Barden at barden@bloomberg.net.

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What, Exactly, Is a Supercomputer?

It’s official: The United States is home to the world’s fastest supercomputer. But what exactly are supercomputers and why should we care about them?

I decided to go straight to the source — Mike McCoy, program director for advanced simulation and computing at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. He’s the man in charge of Sequoia, the record-breaking supercomputer that’s been grabbing headlines and making techies drool over the last few days. Prepare to look at your MacBook Pro in shame.

What is a supercomputer?

Exactly what it sounds like: an extremely powerful computer. Sequoia, a third-generation Blue Gene machine from IBM, runs on 1.6 million processor cores. It can reach speeds of up to 20 petaflops — a petaflop, by the way, equals 1015 operations per second, which means that Sequoia can perform 20 x 1015 operations every second.

The whole shebang requires 3,000 gallons of water per minute to cool it down. As you might imagine, it takes a lot of energy to keep this machine going, using 6 or 7 megawatts on average with peak usage approaching 9 1/2 megawatts. (One megawatt equals 1 million watts).

“That might seem like a lot, because that’s $6 or $7 million a year in power,” says McCoy, “but if we hadn’t worked closely with IBM that could have easily been north of 10 megawatts.” Those 1.6 million cores are located on 96 different racks, each of which weighs nearly 5,000 pounds and gives off an average of 100 kilowatts of energy, the amount needed to power about 50 single-family homes.

Who uses them?

Researchers. Every six months, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory gets around 20 to 25 proposals from different national laboratories and accepts around 10 of them. At any given time there are usually one to four projects using the supercomputer. Priority is given to whatever project is deemed most important, and less intensive computer tasks are performed by smaller, less expensive computers.

Researchers aren’t booking time with Sequoia to play Minesweeper. This is some complicated stuff, ranging from research on how to implode tiny capsules of hydrogen with a laser to simulate what happens inside of the sun to modeling physical systems such as aircraft engines, Earth’s climate and the human vascular system.

Since serious policy decisions can be based on results from these calculations, they have to be extremely accurate — not an easy task when you’re talking about 1.6 million processor cores that need to communicate, synchronize and, most importantly, not break down.

“Imagine if you had to work on a million PCs every day and every one of them had to work,” says McCoy. “Chances are that one of them would fail. If your results depended on every one of them working, you wouldn’t be able to get any work done.”

How much does a supercomputer cost?

So, you’re in the market for a top-of-the-line supercomputer. Aside from the $6 to $7 million in annual energy costs, you can expect to pay anywhere from $100 million to $250 million for design and assembly, not to mention the maintenance costs.

How much faster can supercomputers get?

Why does Sequoia require 1.6 million processor cores? Because processors aren’t getting any faster.

“The laws of physics are hunting us down,” says McCoy. “One of the things that make processors work faster is increasing the frequency of the processors. We found that we can’t increase the frequency like we used to simply because the amount of heat generated would melt the computer.”

If we can’t make processors faster, we just have to add more processors, which would explain why supercomputers keep getting bigger and bigger. But is a supercomputer with 100 million cores using using 100 megawatts of energy even practical?

Probably not, which is why researchers are hoping investment in new technologies can help us eventually reach exascale levels of computing, which would mean speeds of up to 1018operations per second.

How long do these supercomputers last?

Not very long. In fact, the average supercomputer has a shorter lifespan than your average Xbox 360. “The computer will be world-class for maybe 2 or 2 ½ years,” says McCoy. “It’s a useful resource for about 5 years. Then, historically speaking, it makes no sense to keep them because the cost of maintenance and power is so much it makes more sense to go out and get a new system.”

By : Keith Wagstaff

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Microsoft unveils new Surface tablet designed to work with Windows 8

Software giant Microsoft unveiled its first tablet computer, Surface, in a major hardware launch clearly designed to take on long-term rival Apple's market-ruling iPad.

Chief executive Steve Ballmer described the iPad challenger -- complete with a built-in stand and ultra thin covers-cum-keyboards in a range of colors -- as a tablet that "works and plays."

"The Surface is a PC, the Surface is a tablet, and the Surface is something new that we think people will absolutely love," he said at an hour-long presentation in a Hollywood design studio.

No prices or release dates were given, but the Surface is expected to go on sale in the fall, with retail prices "competitive with a comparable ARM tablet or Intel Ultrabook-class" computers, Microsoft said.

There were spontaneous bursts of applause and whoops from tech journalists and bloggers as key features of the new tablet, which has a slightly bigger screen than the iPad, but in wide-screen movie-style 16:9 format.

There was also one nerve-jangling moment for Windows Live Division chief Steven Sinofsky, when the first Surface model he was demonstrating failed to respond to a touch command. To his relief, a replacement worked immediately.

"It feels natural in your hands," he told the invite-only event, shrouded in secrecy reminiscent of Apple icon Steve Jobs, and held in a venue underlining cutting-edge design values, traditionally not Microsoft's strong point.

A version of the Surface tablet running on Windows RT software tailored for ARM mobile device chips will measure 9.3 millimeters thick and weigh 676 grams.

It boasts a 10.6-inch (26.9 centimeter) high-definition screen and will be available with 32 or 64 gigabytes of memory. A model powered by Windows 8 Pro weighs 903 grams and will be available with 64 or 128 gigabytes of memory.

"It's a whole new community of computing devices from Microsoft," Ballmer said. "It embodies the notion of hardware and software really pushing each other."

The Surface features a flip-out rear "kickstand" to prop it up like a picture frame and can be combined with a 3mm-thick Touch Cover that, when opened, acts as a keypad so tablets could be switched into "desktop" mode.

There is also a 5 mm-thick Type Cover with moving keys for a more traditional typing feel.

The keypad-cover attaches with a magnetic clasp familiar to iPad users, combining to feel like a book in weight and form, as confirmed when journalists were briefly given a brief chance to hold the device after the presentation.

"We designed this like a book. This spine feels like a book," Michael Angiulo, vice president for Windows Planning, Hardware & PC Ecosystem told the audience.

Microsoft did not specify when the tablet would be available but it is likely to be timed with the release of Windows 8 software later this year.

"This product marks a crucial pivot in Microsoft's product strategy," said Forrester analyst Sarah Rotman Epps.

"It puts the focus on the consumer rather than the enterprise," she continued in a blog post. "And it lets Microsoft compete with vertically-integrated Apple on more even ground."

Microsoft, which built its fortune by specializing in software and leaving the job of making computers or other devices to partners, has had mixed results from its hardware ventures.

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Tools To Make Web Development More Efficient -Part 2 -

Other available tools to help make web development projects quicker and more productive:

1. JSUnit

JSUnit is a unit testing framework for JavaScript. Testing JavaScript manually is time-consuming and prone to errors, but JSUnit provides the developer a simpler, automated way of doing unit tests to ensure thorough testing at a fraction of the time it would take to test manually. JSUnit allows for the execution of automated tests for multiple browsers and operating systems.

2. Test plugin for JavaScriptMVC

The Test plugin for JavaScriptMVC is another excellent JavaScript testing framework to help make development speedier. It was created with the concept of "JavaScript testing sucks… so we want to make it easier" in mind. The Test plugin is a comprehensive set of utilities allowing you to do unit tests as well as simulate user interaction that can occur in a web page.

3. Venkman: JavaScript Debugger

Venkman is a JavaScript debugging environment for Firefox 2, Netscape, and Seamonkey. It gives you a GUI for stepping through JavaScript code and setting break points. It also comes with a command-line interface built in. Venkman is an extension that you can easily install and download through the Firefox Add-ons section of Mozilla.org.

4. Firebug

Firebug is a Mozilla Firefox extension that gives you plenty of web development tools and features. Firebug has a built-in JavaScript debugger that lets you step through your script as well as allowing you to perform benchmarks to see why your script is slow/sluggish.
You can quickly hunt down CSS, HTML, JavaScript, and XML errors through Firebug, and it even allows you to filter and search for specific errors. Another handy feature is the DOM inspector pane which outlines a web page’s structure; very handy if you’re working on a big website or an open-source application that you’ve recently gotten involved with. It’s an awesome tool though I find that disabling Firebug when I’m not using it is helpful in speeding up normal browsing (such accessing Gmail, for example).

5. Web Developer extension for Firefox

Web Developer extension is a very handy and time-saving extension for Firefox. I’ve written and recommended it plenty of times and is an extension that I use daily. You can rapidly validate your XHTML, find JavaScript/CSS errors, visualize a web page’s structure, quickly fill out web forms for testing purposes, clear your cache with a shortcut key, change XHTML on-the-fly (great for working remotely on a web design), inspect HTTP headers information, and much more.

6. Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar

Even if you prefer Firefox (or Safari) to develop and test your web pages, you have to test your stuff in the Internet Explorer browser for cross-compatibility. Whenever I test in IE, there are plenty of times when I wish certain features in Firebug and the Web Developer extension are accessible through IE, such as the DOM inspector option or the CSS Information option. IE Developer Toolbar is the IE add-on that provides me the features I like in my Firefox extensions.

7. Yahoo! Design Pattern Library

The Yahoo! Design Pattern Library is a large collection of proven optimal web design patterns to save you time in creating highly-sophisticated design solutions. Some things that you can find in the Design Pattern Library are: breadcrumb navigation, auto-complete for web forms, and drag-and-drop solutions. It speeds up development by offering solutions to common design needs so that you don’t have to re-invent the wheel.

8. Test Everything

Test Everything is a web-based application for multi-purpose testing, reducing the time it takes you to use online services and validators. Test Everything is an aggregate of over 100 tools reduced to just one web page. You can validate your XHTML for web standards and accessibility, test your design in several browsers (using the Browsershots service), check page rank, and more – all in one location.

9. Pingdom Tools

Pingdom Tools is web-based application that you can use for easily testing the performance of your web pages. It can give you information on the total loading time of a web page and the total number of objects required to render the page to give you insights on things you can leave out or combine. It gives you a visualization of how page objects are loaded and you can sort the results by load order, load time (helpful in seeing what’s taking so long to load), file size, file type, and URL.

10. Aptana Studio Community Edition

Aptana Studio is an integrated development environment (IDE) designed for Ajax-based applications. It has JavaScript debugging, an Ajax and JavaScript library that includes some popular frameworks (such as the Dojo Toolkit) syntax colorizing, HTML/CSS/JavaScript code assistance (auto-complete and tool tips) and much more. It makes Ajax development simpler and gives the developer time-saving ways of organizing and managing multiple projects.

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Tools To Make Web Development More Efficient -Part1 ( 10 Useful Tools)-

There are many available tools to help make web development projects quicker and more productive. Aside from a handy text editor or WYSIWYG editor like Dreamweaver, you can find plenty of tools and utilities that can greatly increase development speed, reduce debugging and testing time, and improve quality of the output. The tools described below are a variety of utilities, optimizers, testing, and debugging tools aimed towards helping developers create websites more efficiently.

1. CSS Grid Builder

CSS Grid Builder is an online GUI for customizing the YUI Grids CSS – a lightweight CSS framework developed by Yahoo! that comes with over 1000 page layout combinations. The CSS Grid Builder allows you to rapidly generate a CSS-based, web-standards compliant page layout in a matter of minutes (or even seconds). Once you’ve got the page layout the way you want it, all you have to do is press "Show Code" and it generates the HTML for you.
You don’t even have to host the CSS file on your web server (saving you some bandwidth and maintenance hassles), the generated code links to the appropriate stylesheet found on Yahoo!’s Developer Network API.

2. CSS Sprite Generator

Using CSS sprites is an excellent way to improve web page performance by reducing the number of HTTP requests needed for rendering images, but it can take a lot of planning, measuring, and coding if done manually.
CSS Sprite Generator allows you to upload all of your images (you have to place them in a .zip file first) and it will combine the uploaded images into a single sprite and also generate the CSS for you.

3. Blueprint: A CSS Framework

Blueprint reduces the amount of CSS code you have to write by including common styles that developers typically use such CSS reset and page layouts. A demonstration of a web page that uses Blueprint can be found here.

4. CSSTidy

CSSTidy is an open source application that parses, fixes, and optimizes CSS code to reduce file size and also to standardize CSS code formatting automatically. It also finds and removes redundant styles and properties. You can adjust CSSTidy’s settings to your preferred compression level but even the default setting can often give you 30% compression according to the creators of CSSTidy. Check out the "before and after" examples to get a feel for how CSSTidy works.

5. logicss: CSS Framework

logicss is a collection of CSS files and PHP utilities aimed at reducing web development time. It allows developers to create customizable fixed, elastic, or fluid (liquid) layout grids. Check out the preview of their CSS code generation tool.

6. ___layouts

___layouts is a very simple CSS framework that can be used to create web-standards compliant page layouts. ___layouts was inspired by Yahoo!’s Grids CSS and offers 5 preset widths that supports fluid-width or fixed-width layouts. Much like Yahoo!’s Grid.css, ___layouts also has a web-based Layout Builder that was developed for the Firefox browser. Caution: the Layout Builder is still in its early stages of development, so things may be buggy at times.

7. Clean AJAX

Clean AJAX speeds up Ajax development by cutting down the amount of code you have to write (and rewrite), giving you access to common and proven design patterns used in Ajax applications. Clean AJAX can be used with any server-side technology such as PHP, RoR, and .NET because it’s JavaScript-based. Check out the demo page so you can see Clean AJAX in action.

8. Sajax

Sajax (which stands for "Simple Ajax Toolkit") is an open source framework developed to speed up the creation of Ajax applications. It supports major sever-side technologies such as ASP, Cold Fusion, PHP, Perl, Python, and Ruby. Sajax has a fairly large community of over 39,000 registered users on their forums – so if you run into any troubles while developing a Sajax-based application or if you want to showcase your work, you’ll be sure to have an audience.

9. DOMTool

DOMTool was created to cut down the time it takes to code DOM structures. Creating DOM statements is as simple as copying your HTML code into the DOMTool and then clicking a button. It’s not meant to be used as a simple copy-and-paste solution and you should verify and optimize the output, but it gives you a great starting point.

10. JavaScript Code Improver

JavaScript Code Improver is a simple, no-frills application that allows you to quickly tidy up and format your JavaScript. It’s a great way for a team of developers to standardize JavaScript code format for easier readability and collaboration.

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