SSD - Solid State Hard Drive

Samsung Electronics had developed a new data storage medium for mobile computers that enables users to process data much faster with minimal consumption of power.

The 32-Gigabyte (GB) NAND flash-based solid state disk (SSD) can upload and download data quickly and quietly as it uses instantly-accessible, static NAND flash memory instead of the rotating discs found in hard drives.

SSD weighs only half as much as a hard drive, reads data three times faster and writes data 1.5 times quicker, it said and It consumes a mere five percent of the electricity needed to power a hard disk drive and operates silently as it requires no motor or any other noise-making parts.

Samsung expects NAND flash applications to expand from current applications in digital still cameras (DSCs), MP3 players, and 3G mobile handsets to mobile and digital consumer appliances, as NAND Flash becomes more widely recognized as a reliable, high-density, data storage medium for the widest range of consumer demands.

"Flash memory will fast replace hard disks in all mobile computing applications," Hwang was quoted by the Korea Herald as saying at the forum.

Hwang said that by 2008, laptops equipped with SSD will account for 30 percent of the global laptop market as the price of a 32-gigabyte SSD will fall from the current $500 to $200 in that space of time.

The global SSD market will surge from $540-million in 2006 to $4.5-billion by 2010, Samsung said.

RI-MAN a seeing, hearing and smelling robot

A Japanese-led research team Riken had made a seeing, hearing and smelling robot that can carry human beings, this five-foot RI-MAN humanoid can carry a doll weighing 12 kilograms and within five years it will be able to carry 70 kilograms.

"We're hoping that through future study it will eventually be able to care for elderly people or work in rehabilitation," said Toshiharu Mukai, one of the research team leaders.

RI-MAN is equipped with sensors that show it a body's weight and position, this 220-pound robot can also distinguish eight different kinds of smells, can tell which direction a voice is coming from and uses powers of sight to follow a human face.

"In the future, we would like to develop a capacity to detect a human's health condition through his breath," Mukai said.

Japan is bracing for a major increase in needs for elderly care due to a declining birth rate and a population that is among the world's longest living.

CAB It - PE_ICABDI.A

PE_ICABDI.A is non-destructive proof-of-concept malware that attempts to infect Microsoft Infopath .XSN files. Infopath is an application used to develop XML-based user forms. This file infector is currently spreading in-the-wild and infecting computers running Windows 2000, XP, and Server 2003.

The malware creates a temporary folder named iCab, and then copies a target XSN file that attempts to infect in the temporary folder. The contents of the file are then extracted.

To infect the XSN file, it inserts a malicious script inside the script.js of the target XSN file. To clean up traces of its malicious routine, it then attempts to recreate the original (already infected) file, and delete iCab and all its contents. However, due to errors in its code, it is unable to perform its file infection and cleanup routines.

I Smell Trouble - JS_FFSNIFF.A

JS_FFSNIFF.A is non-destructive JavaScript malware embedded in a Java application.
The Java application is used as a Firefox extension to monitor use of HTML forms in Web pages. Firefox is a browser that can be customized through themes and extensions.

This extension steals information entered in an HTML form that is loaded using Firefox. Information entered in an HTML form are stored in a variable in the Java code. The stored information is sent to an email address using a certain Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) server.

This JavaScript malware is currently spreading in-the-wild and runs on Windows 98, ME, NT, 2000, XP, and Server 2003 with Firefox installed on the affected computer.