sethfogie wrote to mention Informit.com's coverage of the Mid-Atlantic Regional Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition. Students put their skills to the test, trying to lock down systems against intrusion from an invading hacker team. All in the name of learning. From the article: "When the three hour grace period was over, the Red Team slowly worked their way into attack mode. One member started to sort through the information they gleaned from their scans and investigated each possible exploit. Another member fired up a MySQL database client and started to poke around the students databases looking for sensitive data. The two others were adding/changing accounts to routers, firewalls, and systems. However, for the most part, the students were not being pelted with attacks. And this continued for the next several hours."

"Companies are coping with spam, but phishing is another matter altogether, according to researchers at the annual MIT Spam Conference this week. From the article: "The response rate for phishing e-mails is much higher than for spam, says Paul Judge, CTO of messaging security maker CipherTrust. So while spammers have to send more and more unsolicited e-mail these days, as anti-spam filters get better at identifying and blocking spam, phishing attacks are well enough disguised that a higher percentage get through such filters, and more recipients click on them, he says."

Apple's 30th Anniversary is prompting retrospective looks at the company's last three decades. C|Net grounds their look back in the here and now, commenting on lawsuits and competition. ZDNet complains that Apple still isn't in the workplace. The BBC looks at the company's world-changing aspects in a more upbeat story. Nick Irelan wrote in to mention a Forbes piece entitled Apple's Biggest Duds, so you can image what what side that article comes down on. CNN puts the whole thing in perspective, with a balanced look at the company's good and bad points. Finally, if you want some rumourmongering, 192939495969798999 writes "Industry sources have leaked that tomorrow, on the 30th Anniversary of Apple Computer, Steve Jobs will announce that the new intel-based Mac laptops will support dual-booting Windows XP and OS X 10.4."

"Using the latest in microwave energy transmission technology, the Wireless Extension Cords (WECs) 'beam' power right where you need it. Broadcasting in the 7.2GHz range, the WECs will not interfere with wireless networks, phones, or Bluetooth components. Be sure to heed all the warnings in the instruction manual; the microwaves used are relatively safe, but you don't want to cook your computer (or coworkers) by mistake." ThinkGeek is also owned by OSTG.

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Has anyone ever calculated the temperature you would need to be able to slice through steel like it was thin air? How hot would a light saber really need to be? Also, I am assuming that at least some of the metal would be vaporized and the expanding gas would fling bits of molten metal at the saber wielder. Wouldn't your average Jedi be horribly scarred from all this."

ThisNukes4u writes "The Economist reports that scientists in California are coming closer to creating real-life mythical animals. Basically, they re-create the natural selection process through a computer simulation and then clone the resulting set of DNA in a donor animal." From the article: "Each computer starts with a search image (dragon, unicorn, gryphon, etc), and the genome of the real animal most closely resembling it (a lizard for the dragon, a horse for the unicorn and, most taxingly, the spliced genomes of a lion and an eagle for the gryphon). The virtual genomes of these real animals are then tweaked by random electronic mutations. When they have matured, the virtual adults most closely resembling the targets are picked and cross-bred, while the others are culled."

Lawrence Person writes "Locus Online has the announcement from Lucasfilms stating that they have authorized an 'adult' line of Star Wars novels. From the article: 'While the movies were still an ongoing project, it was important to portray all aspects of the Star Wars universe as wholesome family entertainment. However, now that the cycle of films is done, we can finally broaden the Star Wars franchise into marketing niches we'd heretofore avoided, and adult entertainment is at the top of our list.'" Relatedly, H_Fisher writes "In a first-of-its-kind move, George Lucas has announced that Lucasfilm and 20th Century Fox will offer free 'replacement DVDs' to anyone who mails in pre-Special Edition VHS and Laserdisc copies of Star Wars episodes IV, V, and VI by April 30th. From the press release: 'This unique opportunity will help fans experience the complete and correct vision of my epic story.'"