New content for Pirates of the Caribbean Online - starting in February 2008

As Disney has revealed, in February players of Pirates of the Caribbean Online will be given an opportunity to customize their current avatars and make them stand-out amongst others.

Game fans will soon be able to create and modify their pirate avatars – new character customization options will include, among other things, new clothing, new hairstyles, scars, jewelry and tattoos. The new version of the game will have over a million combinations including, apart from the options mentioned above, setting a character's name, gender, body type and facial features. Additional content will consist of expanding ship customization, extending quest story lines, and adding more enemies and challenges.

The game is available for download from www.piratesonline.com. Arrr!

Spoofing vulnerability in Mozilla Firefox v2.0.0.11

A vulnerability in the method used by Mozilla Firefox to display authentication dialogs can allow phishers to obtain username and password information – warns Israeli security specialist Aviv Raff. As he writes on his website, Mozilla Firefox allows spoofing the information presented in the basic authentication dialog box. This can allow an attacker to conduct phishing attacks, by tricking the user to believe that the authentication dialog box is from a trusted website. For an attack to be successful, the victim must click on a specially crafted link on a malicious website.

According to Raff, the vulnerability affects not only Mozilla Firefox v2.0.0.11, but probably prior versions and other Mozilla products as well.

Full description of the problem (including the fake authentication dialog) and how to avoid it can be found here.

Top 10 of Cosmos Magazine favorite robots

Cosmos Magazine published a list of their favorite robots. Robotics is certainly the next frontier in technology, and it surely fallows some fashion trends. Just take a look at three robots from the Cosmos Top 10: BEAR, ASIMO and QRIO. Would you agree that they have something in common?

Yes, they’re all white with funnily-shaped heads. And they’re not all of the robots from the list that have the color of snow. Looks like white is back in fashion.

Here is the magazine’s description of the White Three:

BEAR (battlefield extraction-assist robot): was announced by the U.S. Army in 2007 and is under development by Vecna Technologies. Towering 1.8 metres tall, BEAR is designed to retrieve injured soldiers from the battlefield. It's capable of carrying more than 135 kg with a single hydraulic arm, whilst manoeuvring deftly over complex terrain on wheels or tracks. Its curious teddy bear-shaped head is intended to calm and comfort casualties. We think it's a bit creepy.

ASIMO: An A-lister in the robot world, Honda's ASIMO ('advanced step in innovative mobility') looks like child-sized astronaut wearing a backpack. ASIMO can run, climb stairs, communicate, and recognize human faces and voices. ASIMO's joints are able to mirror the agility of human movement. He (it?) uses ultrasonic and infrared sensors to react to stimuli in its environment in real time.

QRIO: "Makes life fun, makes you happy" is the slogan of Sony's QRIO entertainment robot. More compact than ASIMO, this 60-centimetre-tall humanoid can perform complex dance routines, and has even starred in a rock video. It has face and voice recognition software, and can remember peoples' likes and dislikes. Meant to be the successor to AIBO, QRIO was never put into commercial production and was cancelled at the same time as AIBO in 2006.