Windows has had it’s share of vulnerabilities in the past, so now Microsoft is offering more than $250,000 in cash and prizes for contestants who can come up with new ways to mitigate exploits. Anonymous and LulzSec are out there after all, taking companies down.

Microsoft will pay $200,000 for the best “novel runtime mitigation technology designed to prevent the exploitation of memory safety vulnerabilities.” Two runners up will also receive $50,000 and a MSDN Universal subscription valued at $10,000. I’d say that is lots of incentive to come up with some new tricks, wouldn’t you?

We all know that Gorilla glass is unbreakable. It is used in products like the Zune HD and Galaxy Tab, as well as some HDTVs, because it is super strong. Well, now we have something even better thanks to a group of scientists who have created glass that is as tough as steel.

Developed by a team of scientists from the Berkeley Lab and the California Institute of Technology, this palladium-based glass “bends rather than crack – giving it a fracture toughness that goes beyond the limits of some of the strongest and toughest materials known.” That’s pretty darn tough.

Chargers for plug-in electric vehicles are nothing new, but the folks at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory have some smart plans for their new Smart Charger Controller. They hope that it might one day serve as a standard charger for all manner of electric vehicles.

Apparently each controller would be wirelessly linked to the local electric company, which would feed the controller power prices and other pertinent information so that it can charge during non-peak hours. That right there will save owners roughly $150 a year. It might even be able to sense “stress conditions” and shut down before the grid overloads.

Researchers at Tohoku University have reportedly figured out a way to “multiply the amount of data that can be stored on a DVD or CD by 9.” Apparently, it works by shaping the pits on a DVD’s surface like Vs, essentially allowing you to get more out of the disc. The problem is that existing DVD & CD players won’t recognize the media made in this way, and for some reason the process can’t be applied to Blu-ray Discs. Still pretty cool though.