Man sues IBM over firing, says he's an Internet addict
WHITE PLAINS, New York (AP) -- A man who was fired by IBM for visiting an adult chat room at work is suing the company for $5 million, claiming he is an Internet addict who deserves treatment and sympathy rather than dismissal.
James Pacenza, 58, of Montgomery, says he visits chat rooms to treat traumatic stress incurred in 1969 when he saw his best friend killed during an Army patrol in Vietnam.
In papers filed in federal court in White Plains, Pacenza said the stress caused him to become "a sex addict, and with the development of the Internet, an Internet addict." He claimed protection under the American with Disabilities Act.
His lawyer, Michael Diederich, says Pacenza never visited pornographic sites at work, violated no written IBM rule and did not surf the Internet any more or any differently than other employees. He also says age discrimination contributed to IBM's actions. Pacenza, 55 at the time, had been with the company for 19 years and says he could have retired in a year.
International Business Machines Corp. has asked Judge Stephen Robinson for a summary judgment, saying its policy against surfing sexual Web sites is clear. It also claims Pacenza was told he could lose his job after an incident four months earlier, which Pacenza denies.
"Plaintiff was discharged by IBM because he visited an Internet chat room for a sexual experience during work after he had been previously warned," the company said.
IBM also said sexual behavior disorders are specifically excluded from the ADA and denied any age discrimination.
Source
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
Surgeons Who Play Video Games More Skilled: Study
CHICAGO (Reuters Life!)—Playing video games appears to help surgeons with skills that truly count: how well they operate using a precise technique, a study said on Monday.
There was a strong correlation between video game skills and a surgeon's capabilities performing laparoscopic surgery in the study published in the February issue of Archives of Surgery.
Laparoscopy and related surgeries involve manipulating instruments through a small incision or body opening where the surgeon's movements are guided by watching a television screen.
Video game skills translated into higher scores on a day-and-half-long surgical skills test, and the correlation was much higher than the surgeon's length of training or prior experience in laparoscopic surgery, the study said.
Out of 33 surgeons from Beth Israel Medical Center in New York that participated in the study, the nine doctors who had at some point played video games at least three hours per week made 37 percent fewer errors, performed 27 percent faster, and scored 42 percent better in the test of surgical skills than the 15 surgeons who had never played video games before.
"It was surprising that past commercial video game play was such a strong predictor of advanced surgical skills," said Iowa State University psychology professor Douglas Gentile, one of the study's authors.
It supports previous research that video games can improve "fine motor skills, eye-hand coordination, visual attention, depth perception and computer competency," the study said.
"Video games may be a practical teaching tool to help train surgeons," senior author Dr. James Rosser of Beth Israel said.
While surgeons may benefit from playing video games, the study did not give parents a pass if their children play the games for hours on end.
A 2004 survey by Gentile found 94 percent of U.S. adolescents play video games for an average of nine hours a week. Game-playing has been linked to aggressiveness, poor school grades and can become a substitute for exercise.
"Parents should not see this study as beneficial if their child is playing video games for over an hour a day," Gentile said. "Spending that much time playing video games is not going to help their child's chances of getting into medical school."
There was a strong correlation between video game skills and a surgeon's capabilities performing laparoscopic surgery in the study published in the February issue of Archives of Surgery.
Laparoscopy and related surgeries involve manipulating instruments through a small incision or body opening where the surgeon's movements are guided by watching a television screen.
Video game skills translated into higher scores on a day-and-half-long surgical skills test, and the correlation was much higher than the surgeon's length of training or prior experience in laparoscopic surgery, the study said.
Out of 33 surgeons from Beth Israel Medical Center in New York that participated in the study, the nine doctors who had at some point played video games at least three hours per week made 37 percent fewer errors, performed 27 percent faster, and scored 42 percent better in the test of surgical skills than the 15 surgeons who had never played video games before.
"It was surprising that past commercial video game play was such a strong predictor of advanced surgical skills," said Iowa State University psychology professor Douglas Gentile, one of the study's authors.
It supports previous research that video games can improve "fine motor skills, eye-hand coordination, visual attention, depth perception and computer competency," the study said.
"Video games may be a practical teaching tool to help train surgeons," senior author Dr. James Rosser of Beth Israel said.
While surgeons may benefit from playing video games, the study did not give parents a pass if their children play the games for hours on end.
A 2004 survey by Gentile found 94 percent of U.S. adolescents play video games for an average of nine hours a week. Game-playing has been linked to aggressiveness, poor school grades and can become a substitute for exercise.
"Parents should not see this study as beneficial if their child is playing video games for over an hour a day," Gentile said. "Spending that much time playing video games is not going to help their child's chances of getting into medical school."
Researchers Build Memory Chip The Size Of A Blood Cell
Researchers Build Memory Chip The Size Of A Blood Cell
The memory circuit has enough capacity to store the Declaration of Independence and still have space left over.
Chip development has taken on a new scope -- microscopic, actually.
Researchers at the California Institute of Technology have created a memory circuit the size of a white blood cell that they claim has enough capacity to store the Declaration of Independence and still have space left over. The circuit, built by a joint Caltech-UCLA team, has a 160-Kbit capacity -- reportedly the densest memory circuit ever fabricated.
James Heath, a Caltech chemistry professor who led the research team, called the creation of the memory circuit a milestone in manufacturing, even though it's nowhere near ready for wide-scale production and sale.
"It's the sort of device that Intel would contemplate making in the year 2020," says Heath. "But at the moment, it furthers our goal of learning how to manufacture functional electronic circuitry at molecular dimensions."
Caltech researchers say the 160,000 memory bits in the circuit are arranged like a large tic-tac-toe board -- 400 silicon wires crossed by 400 titanium wires -- with a layer of molecular switches sandwiched in between. Each wire crossing represents a bit, and a single bit is 15 nanometers wide. That's one ten-thousandth of the diameter of a human hair. In comparison, they add, the densest memory devices currently on the market are about 140 nanometers wide.
"Whether it's actually possible to get this new memory circuit into a laptop, I don't know," says Heath. "But we have time."
The researchers' work appears in today's issue of the journal Nature.
Source
The memory circuit has enough capacity to store the Declaration of Independence and still have space left over.
Chip development has taken on a new scope -- microscopic, actually.
Researchers at the California Institute of Technology have created a memory circuit the size of a white blood cell that they claim has enough capacity to store the Declaration of Independence and still have space left over. The circuit, built by a joint Caltech-UCLA team, has a 160-Kbit capacity -- reportedly the densest memory circuit ever fabricated.
James Heath, a Caltech chemistry professor who led the research team, called the creation of the memory circuit a milestone in manufacturing, even though it's nowhere near ready for wide-scale production and sale.
"It's the sort of device that Intel would contemplate making in the year 2020," says Heath. "But at the moment, it furthers our goal of learning how to manufacture functional electronic circuitry at molecular dimensions."
Caltech researchers say the 160,000 memory bits in the circuit are arranged like a large tic-tac-toe board -- 400 silicon wires crossed by 400 titanium wires -- with a layer of molecular switches sandwiched in between. Each wire crossing represents a bit, and a single bit is 15 nanometers wide. That's one ten-thousandth of the diameter of a human hair. In comparison, they add, the densest memory devices currently on the market are about 140 nanometers wide.
"Whether it's actually possible to get this new memory circuit into a laptop, I don't know," says Heath. "But we have time."
The researchers' work appears in today's issue of the journal Nature.
Source
Surgeons' Lame Excuse
Surgeons trying to correct the limp of a five-year-old boy in China has apologised after lengthening the wrong leg.
They say the mistake was down to the boy being anaesthetised on his back but then operated on while lying on his stomach.
Xiangya Second Hospital in Changsha city operated on Miao Mingming whose right leg is shorter than his left.
"The doctor suggested surgery to extend the withered tendon, and we agreed. But when Mingming came out of the operating room, I found his left leg was in the cast," complained his father.
The hospital has admitted its mistake and promised to take full responsibility, reports Xinhua News.
Chief doctor Zhao said: "I am very sorry about what happened. Before the surgery, the patient was lying on his back and received full anaesthesia, and then the surgery was done with the patient lying on his stomach."
Now Mingming has to undergo two more operations, one to extend the right leg, the other to shorten the extended left leg.
They say the mistake was down to the boy being anaesthetised on his back but then operated on while lying on his stomach.
Xiangya Second Hospital in Changsha city operated on Miao Mingming whose right leg is shorter than his left.
"The doctor suggested surgery to extend the withered tendon, and we agreed. But when Mingming came out of the operating room, I found his left leg was in the cast," complained his father.
The hospital has admitted its mistake and promised to take full responsibility, reports Xinhua News.
Chief doctor Zhao said: "I am very sorry about what happened. Before the surgery, the patient was lying on his back and received full anaesthesia, and then the surgery was done with the patient lying on his stomach."
Now Mingming has to undergo two more operations, one to extend the right leg, the other to shorten the extended left leg.
Virtual PC 2007 made available
Virtual PC 2007 made available
Microsoft also makes available final versions of other tools aimed at smoothing the path to Vista for businesses.
By Ina Fried
Microsoft said Tuesday that it is ready with the latest version of its virtualization software, Virtual PC 2007. The software, slated to be available for download from Microsoft's Web site, is optimized for Vista, allowing users to run older operating systems from within Microsoft's latest Windows. Volume license customers running Windows Vista Enterprise Edition are allowed to run up to four additional virtual instances of Windows on their PC, while consumers can freely download Virtual PC, but need to license any other copies of Windows.
Microsoft also said it is ready with final versions of several other tools aimed at easing Vista migration, including a hardware assessment adviser that helps businesses evaluate which of its existing PCs are suitable for upgrading to Vista. Other tools include an application compatibility toolkit as well as tools for helping businesses handle the activation and manage product keys for large numbers of Vista PCs.
Source
Microsoft also makes available final versions of other tools aimed at smoothing the path to Vista for businesses.
By Ina Fried
Microsoft said Tuesday that it is ready with the latest version of its virtualization software, Virtual PC 2007. The software, slated to be available for download from Microsoft's Web site, is optimized for Vista, allowing users to run older operating systems from within Microsoft's latest Windows. Volume license customers running Windows Vista Enterprise Edition are allowed to run up to four additional virtual instances of Windows on their PC, while consumers can freely download Virtual PC, but need to license any other copies of Windows.
Microsoft also said it is ready with final versions of several other tools aimed at easing Vista migration, including a hardware assessment adviser that helps businesses evaluate which of its existing PCs are suitable for upgrading to Vista. Other tools include an application compatibility toolkit as well as tools for helping businesses handle the activation and manage product keys for large numbers of Vista PCs.
Source
Dog buys his own sausages
Dog buys his own sausages
A dog owner in China says his pet is smart enough to buy himself sausages when he's hungry.
Wu Qianhe, of Chengdu city, says his pooch, Lele, barks to let him know he's feeling hungry.
"I'll drop him one yuan, and he takes the money in his mouth and runs to the neighbouring shops, which all know him well," says Qianhe.
Lele will not release the money until he's been given the sausage, reports Chengdu Evening Papers.
"He is smart enough to tell the difference between a piece of white paper and money. You can never cheat him," added Qianhe.
Source
Luxury MP3 Player Just £2,000
Gresso is a Russian firm that makes very expensive gadgets, like last year’s gold and 200-year old African Blackwood phone. This time out, the company is pushing an MP3 player that comes in at a shade over £2,000.
Blackwood is in evidence again for the Symphonia range of MP3 players, which come embellished with pink or white gold. While not exactly ugly or cheap looking, I’m not sure they rate that kind of cash.
It’s small at 39 x 39 x 10.5mm, has an FM radio and 1GB of space. Hang on, a measly 1GB? Surely 4GB or more would have fitted? It’s not as if you’re not paying for it. -Martin Lynch
When co-workers attack
This video is filmed with a camera at some sort of company and it shows a guy going nuts. Just watch it
"Great Find All" compensates for your forgetfulnes
If you're one of those "forgetful" people that always loses your wallet, keys, phone, glasses, or anything else of value that can fit in your pocket, you know the frustration that comes with misplacing something for the umpteenth time. You want to be mad at someone, but it was your own stupid fault for losing it again. It's time to take control.
The Great Find-All is designed to keep track of up to four of your personal effects, making sure you never fly into a self-hating rage again. Simply clip the receivers onto your items and then, if you misplace them, hit the corresponding button on the base station. It'll make your misplaced item emit a loud sound so you'll be able to track it down easily. How your wallet got into the refrigerator, well, that's up to you to figure out.
U.N. urged to take action on asteroid threat
SAN FRANCISCO, California (Reuters) -- An asteroid may come uncomfortably close to Earth in 2036 and the United Nations should assume responsibility for a space mission to deflect it, a group of astronauts, engineers and scientists said on Saturday.
Astronomers are monitoring an asteroid named Apophis, which has a 1 in 45,000 chance of striking Earth on April 13, 2036.
Although the odds of an impact by this particular asteroid are low, a recent congressional mandate for NASA to upgrade its tracking of near-Earth asteroids is expected to uncover hundreds, if not thousands of threatening space rocks in the near future, former astronaut Rusty Schweickart said.
"It's not just Apophis we're looking at. Every country is at risk. We need a set of general principles to deal with this issue," Schweickart, a member of the Apollo 9 crew that orbited the earth in March 1969, told an American Association for the Advancement of Science conference in San Francisco.
Schweickart plans to present an update next week to the U.N. Committee on Peaceful Uses of Outer Space on plans to develop a blueprint for a global response to an asteroid threat.
The Association of Space Explorers, a group of former astronauts and cosmonauts, intends to host a series of high-level workshops this year to flesh out the plan and will make a formal proposal to the U.N. in 2009, he said.
Schweickart wants to see the United Nations adopt procedures for assessing asteroid threats and deciding if and when to take action.
The favored approach to dealing with a potentially deadly space rock is to dispatch a spacecraft that would use gravity to alter the asteroid's course so it no longer threatens Earth, said astronaut Ed Lu, a veteran of the international space station.
The so-called Gravity Tractor could maintain a position near the threatening asteroid, exerting a gentle tug that, over time, would deflect the asteroid.
An asteroid the size of Apophis, which is about 460 feet long, would take about 12 days of gravity-tugging, Lu added.
Mission costs are estimated at $300 million.
Launching an asteroid deflection mission early would reduce the amount of energy needed to alter its course and increase the chances of a successful outcome, Schweickart said.
NASA says the precise effect of a 460-foot object hitting the Earth would depend on what the asteroid was made of and the angle of impact.
Paul Slovic, president of Oregon-based Decision Research, which studies judgment, decision-making and risk analysis, said the asteroid could take out an entire city or region.
Source
Tiny duckling has rare mutation: 4 legs
A rare mutation has left the eight-day-old duckling with two nearly full-sized legs behind the two he runs on. Nicky Janaway, a duck farmer in New Forest, Hampshire, 95 miles southwest of London, showed the duckling to reporters Saturday.
"It was absolutely bizarre. I was thinking 'he's got too many legs' and I kept counting 'one, two, three, four,'" Janaway said.
Stumpy would probably not survive in the wild, but Janaway, who runs the Warrawee Duck Farm in New Forest, says he is doing well.
"He's eating and surviving so far, and he is running about with those extra legs acting like stabilizers," Janaway said.
The mutation is rare, but cases have been recorded across the world. One duckling named Jake was born in Queensland, Australia, in 2002 with four legs but died soon after.
Source
Voice activated safe sacrifices security for convenience
If you have a lot of valuables you need locked away safe and sound but just can't stand the horrible process of inputting a combination or password, here is a safe for you. The trustworthy-sounding Lock 'N Safe is opened via voice commands, requiring you to say your password out loud to access your family's secret recipes, your porn collection, or whatever else is so damned valuable.
Here's my question: isn't a voice activated safe a really stupid idea? I mean, what if you want to get something out when there's someone else in the room? Anyone around you will hear you say "babywipes" or whatever your genius password is. If you're really worried about security, I'd think that a more discreet method of entry would be preferred.
Smoke detector calls you to remove roast out of the oven
This fancy Japanese smoke detector is designed to call your cell phone whenever it detects a whiff of smoke. That way you'll be able to tell that your freeloading brother who's been staying with you has either burned a bag of popcorn or is accidentally (or intentionally?) burning your house down. How convenient!
On the one hand, it seems like it makes more sense to have it call the local fire department rather than you, on the other hand, how many times has your smoke detector gone off? And how many times did that require the assistance of the fire department? You wouldn't want to get on the do-not-rescue list just because your overeager smoke detector called them every time you left something in the oven too long. Save your $140.
Sex in fast lane halts traffic on Israeli road
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli police investigating why a car was blocking traffic in the fast lane of a major highway on Sunday found a couple inside having sex.
A police spokesman said the female driver and her male passenger gave in to their passions without pulling over to the side of the road, causing congestion and leaving other motorists having to swerve to dodge their stationary vehicle.
A patrolman gave the woman a ticket for holding up traffic.
Source
Sony's future plans for PSP
So much for Sony unveiling the PS3 at the Consumer Electronics Show, then - there's been not a whisper of a price or a release date, leaving us somewhat disappointed.
But at least CEO Sir Howard Stringer had a thing or two to say about the PSP. In fact, he even demonstrated how the recently announced Location Free TV service will work in his speech at the show.
Basically, the Location Free base station will connect with your PC, TV and PSP, letting you access streamed audio and visual content and watch local broadcasts over the Internet. Using the PSP's Location Free Player, you'll be able to do all this from any Wi-Fi hotspot.
In addition, Sony will soon release a new version of the PSP Media Manager which promises to make the transference and conversion of multiple media formats very simple. And that opens up a whole load of new possibilities with regard to the type of content available for PSP.
The other good news for PSP owners is that Sony plans to relaunch its iTunes-style Connect music download service in March - and now you'll be able to download game content, too.
Sony's keeping quiet on exactly what form this will take, but you can probably expect to see lots of casual games available along with re-inventions of classic franchises. It'll be much like the Xbox Live Marketplace, in other words, which has proved a hit so far - more than four million pieces of content have been downloaded since the service launched in November, according to M'zoft.
Math anxiety saps working memory needed to do math
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Worrying about how you'll perform on a math test may actually contribute to a lower test score, U.S. researchers said on Saturday.
Math anxiety -- feelings of dread and fear and avoiding math -- can sap the brain's limited amount of working capacity, a resource needed to compute difficult math problems, said Mark Ashcroft, a psychologist at the University of Nevada Los Vegas who studies the problem.
"It turns out that math anxiety occupies a person's working memory," said Ashcroft, who spoke on a panel at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in San Francisco.
Ashcroft said while easy math tasks such as addition require only a small fraction of a person's working memory, harder computations require much more.
Worrying about math takes up a large chunk of a person's working memory stores as well, spelling disaster for the anxious student who is taking a high-stakes test.
Stress about how one does on tests like college entrance exams can make even good math students choke. "All of a sudden they start looking for the short cuts," said University of Chicago researcher Sian Beilock.
Although test preparation classes can help students overcome this anxiety, they are limited to students whose families can afford them.
Ultimately, she said, "It may not be wise to rely completely on scores to predict who will succeed."
While the causes of math anxiety are unknown, Ashcroft said people who manage to overcome math anxiety have completely normal math proficiency.
Source
Fla. teen stumbles upon mammoth tooth
Fla. teen stumbles upon mammoth tooth
Jaw and tooth weigh 65 pounds and are about a yard long
SEMINOLE, Fla. - A 16-year-old high school student stumbled upon what archaeologists say could be the biggest fossil find in Pinellas County in nearly a century. A shiny black rock caught Sierra Sarti-Sweeney's eye as she was taking pictures last month in Boca Ciega Millennium Park
"I looked down and saw a huge bone that could not be a rock. Most of it was exposed, but we dug and found that it was bigger and bigger. I thought, 'Oh my gosh, what are these? Are they people bones?'" she said.
The jaw and tooth weigh 65 pounds and are about a yard long. Sarti-Sweeney took the bones home and, after some online research with her older brother, determined the football-sized rock was actually the tooth of a long-extinct mammoth.
Paleontology and archaeology experts have confirmed the find, and recent digging at the site has turned up teeth and bones from a second mammoth, giant sloths, camels, turtles with shells up to 6-feet-long, saber-toothed cats and giant armadillos the size of Volkswagen Beetles.
Scientists believe the remains are between 10,000 and 100,000 years old.
"It's possible that it's an old river valley, (and) the animals got caught in the muck or the river washed all these animals down into one place at one time," he said. "We can get a better handle on it by analyzing the soil," said Richard Estabrook, director of USF's Florida Public Archaeology Network.
Source
Jaw and tooth weigh 65 pounds and are about a yard long
SEMINOLE, Fla. - A 16-year-old high school student stumbled upon what archaeologists say could be the biggest fossil find in Pinellas County in nearly a century. A shiny black rock caught Sierra Sarti-Sweeney's eye as she was taking pictures last month in Boca Ciega Millennium Park
"I looked down and saw a huge bone that could not be a rock. Most of it was exposed, but we dug and found that it was bigger and bigger. I thought, 'Oh my gosh, what are these? Are they people bones?'" she said.
The jaw and tooth weigh 65 pounds and are about a yard long. Sarti-Sweeney took the bones home and, after some online research with her older brother, determined the football-sized rock was actually the tooth of a long-extinct mammoth.
Paleontology and archaeology experts have confirmed the find, and recent digging at the site has turned up teeth and bones from a second mammoth, giant sloths, camels, turtles with shells up to 6-feet-long, saber-toothed cats and giant armadillos the size of Volkswagen Beetles.
Scientists believe the remains are between 10,000 and 100,000 years old.
"It's possible that it's an old river valley, (and) the animals got caught in the muck or the river washed all these animals down into one place at one time," he said. "We can get a better handle on it by analyzing the soil," said Richard Estabrook, director of USF's Florida Public Archaeology Network.
Source
Google shuts hole in desktop product
Google shuts hole in desktop product
BOSTON - A potentially devastating hole in Google Inc.'s prevalent desktop search product could have exposed personal files on users' computers to data thieves. Google fixed the defect within weeks of being informed about it and says it has no evidence the vulnerability was exploited.
The flaw was uncovered late last year by Watchfire Corp., a security-analysis provider. While the vulnerability exists in roughly 80 percent of Web applications, this problem appeared far more extreme "given the sensitive nature of what Google Desktop is doing," said Danny Allan, a researcher at Waltham, Mass.-based Watchfire.
Google's free desktop product, first released in 2004, has millions of users and remains popular. Internet tracker Hitwise says visits to -http://desktop.google.com tripled in January.
The system lets users set Google's indexing and searching capabilities loose on their own computers in addition to the Web. The service offers a fast, easy way to find documents, e-mails, instant-messaging transcripts, archived Web pages and other tidbits socked away on PCs. A Google executive once described it as "the photographic memory of your computer."
The Watchfire researchers discovered, however, that the setup was open to something known as a cross-site scripting attack, which lets an attacker place malicious code on a Google Desktop user's computer. The PC could be infected a number of ways, including an infected e-mail attachment.
From that instant, a hacker would have had free reign to use Google Desktop to search the victim's machine — or multiple compromised machines at once — and possibly to take full control of the computer, according to Watchfire. Watchfire's founder and chief technical officer, Mike Weider, said the attack would have gone undetected by firewalls or antivirus software.
Watchfire said it reported the security hole to Google on Jan. 4 and was assured Feb. 1 that the flaw had been fixed. Google spokesman Barry Schnitt said the desktop search software gets automatically updated, so users do not need to take any steps to protect themselves.
While this particular avenue for data theft has been shut down, Watchfire contends that another one could emerge because Google maintains a link between desktop and Web data — a query on a computer with Google Desktop can show search results from both realms.
"There's a high potential for this to happen again," Weider said.
However, Schnitt responded in an e-mail that Google has "taken many steps to protect our users and mitigate such attacks."
"We've added an additional layer of security checks to prevent the types of attacks pointed out by Watchfire and future possible attacks through this vector as well," he wrote.
No matter whether such a threat re-emerges through Google, Allan expects to see similar vulnerabilities increase overall, "as desktop software and the Internet get more connected." As a result, he said, antivirus vendors should develop techniques for detecting and blocking such attacks.
Source
BOSTON - A potentially devastating hole in Google Inc.'s prevalent desktop search product could have exposed personal files on users' computers to data thieves. Google fixed the defect within weeks of being informed about it and says it has no evidence the vulnerability was exploited.
The flaw was uncovered late last year by Watchfire Corp., a security-analysis provider. While the vulnerability exists in roughly 80 percent of Web applications, this problem appeared far more extreme "given the sensitive nature of what Google Desktop is doing," said Danny Allan, a researcher at Waltham, Mass.-based Watchfire.
Google's free desktop product, first released in 2004, has millions of users and remains popular. Internet tracker Hitwise says visits to -http://desktop.google.com tripled in January.
The system lets users set Google's indexing and searching capabilities loose on their own computers in addition to the Web. The service offers a fast, easy way to find documents, e-mails, instant-messaging transcripts, archived Web pages and other tidbits socked away on PCs. A Google executive once described it as "the photographic memory of your computer."
The Watchfire researchers discovered, however, that the setup was open to something known as a cross-site scripting attack, which lets an attacker place malicious code on a Google Desktop user's computer. The PC could be infected a number of ways, including an infected e-mail attachment.
From that instant, a hacker would have had free reign to use Google Desktop to search the victim's machine — or multiple compromised machines at once — and possibly to take full control of the computer, according to Watchfire. Watchfire's founder and chief technical officer, Mike Weider, said the attack would have gone undetected by firewalls or antivirus software.
Watchfire said it reported the security hole to Google on Jan. 4 and was assured Feb. 1 that the flaw had been fixed. Google spokesman Barry Schnitt said the desktop search software gets automatically updated, so users do not need to take any steps to protect themselves.
While this particular avenue for data theft has been shut down, Watchfire contends that another one could emerge because Google maintains a link between desktop and Web data — a query on a computer with Google Desktop can show search results from both realms.
"There's a high potential for this to happen again," Weider said.
However, Schnitt responded in an e-mail that Google has "taken many steps to protect our users and mitigate such attacks."
"We've added an additional layer of security checks to prevent the types of attacks pointed out by Watchfire and future possible attacks through this vector as well," he wrote.
No matter whether such a threat re-emerges through Google, Allan expects to see similar vulnerabilities increase overall, "as desktop software and the Internet get more connected." As a result, he said, antivirus vendors should develop techniques for detecting and blocking such attacks.
By BRIAN BERGSTEIN, AP Technology Writer
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