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The Almighty Buck

Submission + - Wikipedia nofollow benefits it's founder

Submitted by
joeszilagyi
joeszilagyi writes: "TechCrunch has an interesting story here, which exposes possible financial and ethical conflicts of interest for Wikipedia. Wikipedia put 'nofollow' tags on all outbound links previously. It turns out, however, that certain approved domains on a map page are excluded from nofollow. Coincidentally, all pages at Wikia.com, the private for-profit company that Jimmy Wales founded, are exempt from nofollow restrictions. Wikia is also a financial benefactor of Wikipeda. Wikipedia's power to benefit SEO page ranking is what led people to link spam them. By allowing some financial backers to benefit, is Wikipedia putting committing ethical breaches?"
It's funny. Laugh.

Submission + - UPS' Unlabeled Liability Forms: 'Just sign it!'

Submitted by
Rich
Rich writes: "A popular blogger on LiveJournal recently posted a hilarious but scary story about UPS' very real practices of sending uninformed drivers to people's doors with unmarked damage liability forms after packages are damaged or lost in transit. You sign this form, and you've just accepted responsibility for the loss. I work at a Geek Squad, and they've tried to do this to me at least twice. Another friend of mine was almost put out of business after he absentmindedly signed one of these and ended up having to pay for two of the same $10K item. This is ridiculous, considering that UPS' insurance deductible is tiny, and they're worth more than $45B. Anyway, here it is: UPS' Form of Mystery"
Biotech

Submission + - Vitamin D deficiency behind many Western cancers?

Submitted by twilight30
twilight30 writes: Today's Globe and Mail is reporting that 'research into vitamin D is suggesting a heretical notion: that cancers and other disorders in rich countries aren't caused mainly by pollutants but by a vitamin deficiency known to be less acute or even non-existent in poor nations.

In June, U.S. researchers will announce the first direct link between cancer prevention and the sunshine vitamin. Their results are nothing short of astounding. A four-year clinical trial involving 1,200 women found those taking the vitamin had about a 60-per-cent reduction in cancer incidence, compared with those who didn't take it, a drop so large — twice the impact on cancer attributed to smoking — it almost looks like a typographical error. And in an era of pricey medical advances, the reduction seems even more remarkable because it was achieved with an over-the-counter supplement costing pennies a day.

One of the researchers who made the discovery, professor of medicine Robert Heaney of Creighton University in Nebraska, says vitamin D deficiency is showing up in so many illnesses besides cancer that nearly all disease figures in Canada and the U.S. will need to be re-evaluated. "We don't really know what the status of chronic disease is in the North American population," he said, "until we normalize vitamin D status." '
The Internet

Submission + - Novablade.com stolen, sold to highest bidder

Submitted by hidingintheclosetwithaplatypus
hidingintheclosetwithaplatypus writes: Damien & Trisha Buchwald (previously) from Novablade.com have loosed the dogs of war after their registrar, Network Solutions, refused to allow them to renew or transfer their domain name and who have now sold it to another company to be auctioned off. Apparently the name's worth around US$16,000, and the Buchwalds are looking for help from anywhere they can get it.

We are infuriated, upset, and feel like we have had our very souls stolen from us and sold. This is a very disgusting, underhanded act that deserves justification.
Programming

Submission + - Open Source alternative to Java/Flash/Silverlight

Submitted by dgym
dgym writes: Having applications that can be deployed on the net and run either in a browser or from a standalone player is an old idea, but still not one that has been done really well.
Java is one solution, but for various reasons hasn't attained ubiquity. Now that it is being open sourced it might find itself on more platforms, but it still may be too big for some devices, and too slow to start up to not be annoying.
Flash is geared towards video and animation, but can also lend itself to RIAs and it is certainly a very popular plugin. However, like any closed standard, it is only available on the platforms Adobe decide to support.
Silverlight might be a better platform for RIAs from a technical perspective, but is otherwise in the same position as Flash (only with even fewer platforms).

So why are there so many poor choices for such a simple problem? After all the requirements for developing applications are rather low:
  • A sand boxed virtual machine for running client side code.
  • A means to display information, i.e. graphics drawing primitives.
  • Event handling for user input.
  • Networking back to the originating server.
Can we not have an open standard for these, and open source plugins implementing it? The "virtual machine" could either be defined in terms of a language (e.g. ECMAScript), or be a true byte code engine such as Parrot or Mono. The graphics are straight forward, and using a cross platform library such as Cairo would help make these plugins extremely portable. Networking is almost trivial, although being able to make HTTP requests using the browser's proxy settings would be an important consideration.

The need is there, where is the open standard?
Software

Submission + - OSS for medical records?

Submitted by
JonathanBrickman0000
JonathanBrickman0000 writes: "I help keep a network for a small poorly-funded medical clinic for persons without health insurance, which currently runs 27 workstations and three servers, for two different locations linked with bargain-basement DSL. It's all Windows, 2K on the servers and XP on the clients. The current medical records platform is a very proprietary FoxPro-based product, whose developers promise lots of options and usually do not deliver. If I touch that FoxPro myself, even to build a basic custom query/report, I void the contract. We want better. We need accounts receivable, doctor/patient/clinic scheduling, automatic drug pricing, and automatic drug-manufacturer-submission forms creation. Recommendations?"
Handhelds

Submission + - The Future of Handheld Innovation

Submitted by YokimaSun
YokimaSun writes: Gamepark have finally released the Gp2x Commercial Interface Board Cradle. The Cradle is a revolution to the handheld gaming community. The Cradle can be connected to USB Devices like a Mouse, Keyboard and Joysticks turning the linux based handheld into a computer. The Cradle also has a TV Out/Monitor Out so connecting up to Televisions and Monitors to play Emulators and Games and many applications is a breeze. "The commercial interface board plugs into the EXT port of the GP2X and turns it into a full computer with 4xUSB ports, RS232, Audio and Video out & Jtag." Slashdot It!

Feed Safari browser exploit produced within 9 hours in hacking competition (engadget.com)

From feed by engfeed

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

Shane Macaulay and Dino Dai Zovi, a software engineer and security researcher taking part in the brilliantly named "PWN to Own" Hack-a-Mac contest at the CanSecWest conference in Vancouver, managed to hack into and take control of a MacBook by finding a security exploit that takes advantage of an open Safari browser window. Shane and his teammate Dino won the prize of a brand new MacBook -- presumably loaded with Firefox or some other browser variant -- for managing to find the hole on the second and final day of the contest. The hack wasn't exactly a breeze, since the pair admitted to a total of 9 hours in order to find and exploit the weakness. Apple has patched OS X four times over the last year to fix dozens of security updates, and only regurgitated the corporate line when asked for comment on this particular vulnerability. ("Apple takes security very seriously", well duh!) Even with the recent arousal of interest in Mac OS security, the world has yet to see any kind of exploit released into the wild world web; when / if one does, we'd probably expect the most damaging exploit to use good ol' social engineering rather than a complicated hack like this. Still, Mac users should take some form of satisfaction from knowing that the issue of Mac security is being investigated, rather than being taken for granted.

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!
Software

Submission + - Watch MS in Action vs CA's open standards bill

Submitted by
Cyrus Mack
Cyrus Mack writes: "Watch MS lobbyists and their friends in all their disengenuous glory as they explain to this California assembly committee why open standards are bad. Their arguments? * Sun is doing this to give themselves a competitive advantage * proponents of ODF have stifled Microsoft's efforts with standards bodies * The market is addressing the issue anyway, so legislation is unnecessary Never mind the fact that OOXML, should it be approved by the ISO, would most likely qualify under AB 1668, the bill under discussion. Why does Microsoft fight for standards acceptance on one hand, and then against it with the other?"
Patents

Submission + - Prior art on Verizon patents

Submitted by greenbird
greenbird writes: Techdirt has information from Daniel Berninger documenting prior art in the Verizon patents being used to destroy Vonage. So a successful company and possible an entire market may be undermined or destroyed by blatantly invalid patents. From the article:

"In particular, the claims in both patents were anticipated by open standards assembled by the VoIP Forum (H.323) in 1996 and published in January 1997 with the participation of members from Cisco Systems, Microsoft, IBM, Nortel, Intel, Motorola, Lucent, and Vocaltec Communications, among others."

and

"The Eric Voit patent applications reflect, in particular, contributions made by VocalTec Communication to the VoIP Forum during 1996 and formally published at the same time as a separate document."
Privacy

Submission + - Student Database Misused?

Submitted by pin_gween
pin_gween writes: The Washington Post reports on the probable abuse of a government (go figure) database: the National Student Loan Data System. The database was created in 1993 to help determine which students are eligible for for financial aid. Students' Social Security numbers, e-mail addresses, phone numbers, birth dates and sensitive financial information such as loan balances are in the database, which contains 60 million student records and is covered by federal privacy laws.

Advocates worry that businesses are trolling for marketing data they can use to bombard students with mass mailings or other solicitations. "We are just in shock that student data could be compromised like this," said Nancy Hoover, director of financial aid at Denison University in Ohio.

The department has spent over $650,000 in the past four years protecting the data. However, some senior education officials are advocating a temporary shutdown of access to the database until tighter security measures can be put in place.
Google

Submission + - Google Acquires Doubleclick

Submitted by
Brian Ribbon
Brian Ribbon writes: "The Register is reporting that Google has finally acquired Doubleclick, the "leading computer-tracking cookie provider" for $3.1bn. This follows failed attempts from companies such as Microsoft, who attempted to buy the company for $2bn

This latest purchase — involving one of the most offensive advertising companies on the World Wide Web — does little to enhance Google's "Do No Evil" motto."
The Courts

Submission + - RIAA Files lawsuits against NCSU students

Submitted by Odin The Ravager
Odin The Ravager writes: The RIAA filed 23 "John Doe" lawsuits on North Carolina State students, following the 400 settlement letters sent last month. Interestingly, the college is fighting these lawsuits. FTA:

But Pam Gerace, the director of Student Legal Services at the University, is fighting the lawsuits for her student clients.
The next step is for the judge to approve the beginning of the name-discovery process.
The Internet

Submission + - Canadian DMCA Coming This Spring

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Canadian government is reportedly ready to introduce copyright reform legislation this spring, provided that no election is called. The new bill would move Canada far closer to the U.S. on copyright, with DMCA-style anti-circumvention legislation that prohibits circumvention of DRM systems and bans software and mod chips that can be used to circumvent such systems.

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