Many websites use an automated test to tell computers and humans apart when signing up to an account or logging in.

Carnegie Mellon is using this test to help decipher words in books that machines cannot read by letting sites use them to authenticate log-ins.

The team is involved in digitising old books and manuscripts supplied by a non-profit organisation called the Internet Archive, and uses Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software to examine scanned images of texts and turn them into digital text files which can be stored and searched by computers.

The only reliable way to decode them is for a human to examine them individually - a mammoth task since CMU processes thousands of pages of text every month.

Thanks to the adoption of reCAPTCHAs by popular websites like Facebook, Twitter and StumbleUpon, the system is helping to decipher about one million words every day for CMU's book archiving project, according to von Ahn.

"There's no danger of us running out of words," says von Ahn. "There's still about 100 million books to be digitised, which at the current rate will take us about 400 years to complete."

Apple's vow to void the warranties of Iphones that their owners have unlocked could land it in hot water, writes Phone News.

The US Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act provides protection for consumers that prohibits Apple from voiding an Iphone warranty due to third party modifications or enhancements.

Further, the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act prohibits Apple from disabling or damaging an Iphone merely because it can detect that it has been unlocked.

There are technical points of law involved here, so don't take our word for it. However, it seems almost certain that someone with a good telecommunications lawyer will seek to establish whether or not Apple can legally void the warranties of unlocked Iphones.

Colorado State University's method for manufacturing low-cost, high-efficiency solar panels is nearing mass production. AVA Solar Inc. will start production by the end of next year on the technology developed by mechanical engineering Professor W.S. Sampath at Colorado State.

Produced at less than $1 per watt, the panels will dramatically reduce the cost of generating solar electricity and could power homes and businesses around the globe with clean energy for roughly the same cost as traditionally generated electricity.

The cost to the consumer could be as low as $2 per watt, about half the current cost of solar panels. In addition, this solar technology need not be tied to a grid, so it can be affordably installed and operated in nearly any location.

The new technology has been given an acronym, EPIC, for Electromagnetic Personnel Interdiction Control. The idea is that intense radio-frequency emissions - capable of passing through walls - would be used to temporarily disrupt the balance and coordination functions of targets' inner ears, knocking them down relatively harmlessly.

The Navy notes that "second order effects would be extreme motion sickness," suggesting that in fact the order given by future Captain Kirks may be "set phasers on 'puke'".

The intention of the programme is to avoid unnecessary harm to the target, but unconscious vomiting would seem to present something of a choking hazard. Still, EPIC-based regurge blasters would seem less brutal than the microwave-oven cannons already tested, which are designed to disperse crowds by lightly frying their outer skin layers.

A cheap self-assembly device capable of fabricating 3D objects has been developed by US researchers. They hope the machine could kick start a revolution in home fabrication - or "rapid prototyping" - just as early computer kits sparked an explosion in home computing.

The standard version of their Freeform fabricator – or "fabber" – is about the size of a microwave oven and can be assembled for around $2400 (£1200). It can generate 3D objects from plastic and various other materials. Full documentation on how to build and operate the machine, along with all the software required, are available on the Fab@Home website, and all designs, documents and software have been released for free.

The machine connects to a desktop computer running software that controls its operation. It then creates objects layer-by-layer by squeezing material from a mechanically-controlled syringe. A video shows a completed machine constructing a silicone bulb.

Malone and Lipson hope Fab@Home will grow into a community of enthusiasts who share designs for 3D objects and even modify the machines for themselves. This will prompt the emergence of widespread personal fabrication, Lipson hopes.

On Christmas eve 1906, a Canadian physicist named Reginald Fessenden presented the world's first wireless radio broadcast from his transmitter at Brant Rock, MA. The transmission included Christmas music and was heard by radio operators on board US Navy and United Fruit Company ships equipped with Fessenden's wireless receivers at various distances over the South and North Atlantic, and in the West Indies.

The state ran a daylong test, and found plenty of problems still to overcome -- including the same problems with the e-poll books that caused all sorts of delays during the election. It gets better, too. While Diebold is still working on fixes for the system, they're pushing a workaround for the problem with the e-poll books: attaching mice to the machines and demanding that poll workers ignore the touchscreen and use the mouse instead. Of course, should anyone dare to touch the touchscreen, the devices may malfunction again. Not to worry, says Diebold: "poll workers would be instructed repeatedly not to touch the screens." Of course, during the test itself, those "repeated" instructions didn't stop at least one person from touching the screens and fouling the system up.

The demand for electricity to operate its expanding intelligence systems has left the high-tech eavesdropping agency on the verge of exceeding its power supply, the lifeblood of its sprawling 350-acre Fort Meade headquarters, according to current and former intelligence officials.

At worst, it could force a virtual shutdown of the agency, paralyzing the intelligence operation, erasing crucial intelligence data and causing irreparable damage to computer systems -- all detrimental to the fight against terrorism.

"If there's a major power failure out there, any backup systems would be inadequate to power the whole facility," said Michael Jacobs, who headed the NSA's information assurance division until 2002.

The NSA is Baltimore Gas & Electric's largest customer, using as much electricity as the city of Annapolis, according to James Bamford, an intelligence expert and author of two comprehensive books on the agency.

The agency got a taste of the potential for trouble Jan. 24, 2000, when an information overload, rather than a power shortage, caused the NSA's first-ever network crash. It took the agency 3 1/2 days to resume operations, but with a power outage it could take considerably longer to get the NSA humming again.

A German computer security consultant has shown that he can clone the electronic passports that the United States and other countries are beginning to distribute this year.

The controversial e-passports contain radio frequency ID, or RFID, chips that the U.S. State Department and others say will help thwart document forgery. But Lukas Grunwald, a security consultant with DN-Systems in Germany and an RFID expert, says the data in the chips is easy to copy.

"The whole passport design is totally brain damaged," Grunwald says. "From my point of view all of these RFID passports are a huge waste of money. They're not increasing security at all."

In addition to the danger of counterfeiting, Grunwald says that the ability to tamper with e-passports opens up the possibility that someone could write corrupt data to the passport RFID tag that would crash an unprepared inspection system, or even introduce malicious code into the backend border-screening computers.

Kevin Mahaffey and John Hering of Flexilis released a video Wednesday demonstrating that a privacy feature slated for the new passports may not work as designed.

Using a mockup e-passport modeled on the U.S. design, they showed how an attacker could connect a hidden, improvised bomb to a reader such that it triggers an explosion when a passport-holder comes within range.

The winners of the European Eco-Shell Marathon 2006 weren't the fastest but they were the most fuel efficient. Teams had to battle changing temperatures and wind conditions and use the least amount of fuel after completing seven laps of the Nogaro Circuit in southwest France.

The first 27 teams broke the 1,000-kilometer-per-liter (2,825-mile-per-gallon) barrier, according to officials.

Engineering students from the Lycee La Joliverie school in France won the big prize with an ethanol-powered vehicle that, according to race officials, averaged an astounding energy consumption equivalent of 2,885 kilometers per liter or 6,786 miles per gallon. And this didn't even meet the car's trial run of 2,914 kilometers per liter or 6,854 miles per gallon. This car also won the Climate Friendly award for the least greenhouse gas emissions.