Posts by Darren Lingham 1

Man charged in $111k domain name theft

What do you mean this case is a throwback to earlier times?

6 figure fees for domain names are not uncommon at all... horseracing.co.uk sold for £100k ($160k US) just a few months ago.

Airport rethinks strip-scanner for kids

X-rays? wfT?

I don't know why people keep going on about x-rays and radiation. The technology this uses is in the millimetre band of the spectrum (hence the usual name, millimetre wave technology). They are short wave microwaves and *completely* non-ionising and entirely safe to use.

DNA-carbon nanotube microprocessors — small hope for a big shift?

Carbon Nanotubes

Synthesising semiconducting carbon nanotubes is rather expensive at the moment (non semiconducting ones are cheaper... but somewhat more boring). However, it's already been demonstrated from a top-down perspective that you can arrange carbon nanotubes to form logic gates (you only need to make a NAND or NOR to be able to make everything else...) which is only a few steps away from a rudimentary processor. Once a processor can be developed from the top-down perspective using nanotubes, using DNA scaffolds to self-assemble will follow.

Windfarm Britain means (very) expensive electricity

Wind

Wind is inherently more unreliable than other renewable sources... which is why we can't rely on it as a primary source. What wind energy can do though, is make up a sizeable proportion of our overall energy strategy going forward. Tidal energy is a much better solution as renewables go since tidal forces are as reliable as clockwork.

Twitter docs hack exploits stupidity vuln

Missed the point?

The author of this article seems to have missed the main point, or the crux of what caused this. The issue isn't with web services, cloud computing or web 2.0. Online service providers need to look in to better ways of providing a password retrieval function.

People forget their passwords, some on a regular basis - so it's important that the functionality is there to reset it in someway, but anyone providing a service that utilises an online log-in (that's about 90% of websites, not just the web 2.0 ones...) must investigate a better way to implement this than just a "secret" question and answer.