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Submission + - Why Spam Fighting Needs Immediate Change

Submitted by netconcern
netconcern writes: CircleID has featured an article by iCAUCE director, Neil Schwartzman "Trench Warfare in the Age of The Laser-Guided Missile", shedding an outstanding light on the seriousness of zombie botnets threatening the infrastructure of the internet. From the article: "The historical development of spam fighting is allowing computer-aware criminals to take the upper hand in the fight against what has now evolved into a completely technologically and organizationally merged threat to public safety. If we do not change our strategic approach immediately, the battle, indeed even the war may be all but lost." A must read!
Classic Games (Games)

Submission + - Sinclair Spectrum book - Game reviews - 1982-199x

Submitted by
Paul Johns
Paul Johns writes: "If you were brought up with computers in the 1980's you may remember the classic Sinclair Spectrum. The Spectrum sold many units in the Europe and mostly the UK and created many playground arguments about who had the best computer !

Andrew Rollings has created 'The Spectrum Book — 1982 to 199x' which is a great compilation of some of his favourite games from that era.

The Spectrum has quite a following on the internet thanks to many great sites which legally offer many games for use in emulators. The Spectrum is nearly 25 years old and is very fondly remembered by many many people.

The book consists of nearly 250 pages with over 200 reviews of many famous Spectrum games from that great era. If names such as 'Hungry Horace', 'Skooldaze', 'Knight Lore' and 'Jet Set Willy' mean anything to you you will love this book.

The book has taken Andrew quite a while to produce but its been worth the wait, the print run consists of only 1000 books and already there have been many sold and the feedback from people regarding the book has been exceptional.

The feedback has been so good Andrew is already starting another book this time with some of the best games for the Commodore 64. Hopefully there'll be other similar books available in the future for various retro systems.

Even if back in the day you had an Amstrad or a Commodore 64 you will recognise many of these great game titles and stories behind some of the games.

The book really is a great read, there are screenshots of each game and also small shots of the cover art. It also features the marks from each magazine for the games, many people will of course remember the great magazines 'Crash', 'Sinclair User' and 'Your Sinclair'.

If you are interested in retro games or indeed had an 8 bit computer from that classic period in the 80's then this book is well worth getting. The book is available from http://www.zxgoldenyears.com/ and example reviews/covers can be seen here.

An excellent book and I hope there will be a sequel at some point, a great trip down retro memory lane."
Portables (Apple)

Submission + - How Jobs blew the iPhone keynote

Submitted by
PetManimal
PetManimal writes: "Mike Elgan, writing for Computerworld, slams Steve Jobs' keynote at MacWorld announcing the iPhone, claiming that Jobs is raising his customers' and Wall Street expectations too high, and is giving his competitors too much advance notice. And he questions the functionality of the product, noting that unlike most smart phones, the iPhone doesn't have a replacable battery, support for removable storage, or support for Microsoft apps like Word and Outlook, and can't handle voice-dialing, 3G Internet access, one-handed operation, or video recording. His conclusion:
A June unveiling that coincided with the actual product launch would have kept customers and Wall Street expectations in line; concealed product details from competitors; given Apple TV the full spotlight when it ships; kept iPod sales robust and would have helped Apple gracefully negotiate the rights to use the name "iPhone." In short, it would have been the traditional Apple home run. Steve Jobs blew it.
"
Upgrades

Submission + - 1TB HDD going on sale soon: good price

Submitted by
illumina
illumina writes: "I found this story in my morning news gallimaufry: SHENZHEN, Jan 18, 2007 (SinoCast via COMTEX) — The world's first terabyte (TB) hard drive will be sold in China's retail market in the first quarter of 2007 at a suggested retail price of USD 399 (about CNY 3,120), announced Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (Hitachi GST) in Shenzhen. The company's 1 TB hard drive, with superior performance, reliability, and capacity, can store 1 million e-books, 250,000 songs, and 500 films. Hitachi GST, founded in 2003 as a result of the strategic combination of IBM and Hitachi's hard disk drive business, has three subsidiaries in Shenzhen, including Shenzhen Hailiang Storage Products Co., Ltd., Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (Shenzhen) Co., Ltd., and Hitachi Global Storage Products (Shenzhen) Co., Ltd."
Music

Submission + - Mixing Music (and selling it) is Racketeering?

Submitted by
yfarren
yfarren writes: "DJ Drama and DJ Don Cannon were arrested (and have now been released on $100,000 bail) on racketeering charges. For what? Apparently, mixing other musicians music.

I thought that you could make derivative works. That part of the rights of the public was to make derivative, aka, new, creative works. Apparently, that will get you slammed, for racketeering.

Of specific concern is a quote in the article (I couldn't verify it) that the RIAA plans to "step up law enforcement training and commit additional investigative resources in all of the cities." Wow. since when does a private organization get to step up law enforcement?"
PlayStation (Games)

Submission + - The Dark Side of HDCP, or, Why Is My PS3 Blinking?

Submitted by FloatsomNJetsom
FloatsomNJetsom writes: High Definition Content Protection is supposed to make sure you're not playing pirated content, but sometimes your devices screw up the HDCP "handshake" (over an HDMI cable) and nothing works. This happens with some regularity with the PS3, and Popular Mechanics investigated and found a quick and dirty workaround. From the article:
We then checked with Leslie Chard, president of HDMI Licensing, which owns the rights to the standard, who told us that HDCP is one component of HDMI that has been plagued with interoperability issues. HDCP (high-bandwidth digital content protection) is designed to prevent the interception of data — specifically copyrighted Hollywood movies — between an output component and a display. As Steve Balough, the president of Digital Content Protection, the licensing company for HDCP explains, the two pieces of hardware must exchange a "key," a sort of certificate of authenticity unique to each individual device, to verify a secure connection.
The problem isn't limited to the PS3 — many HDTV cable boxes and have the same problem. The fix there? Unplugging the power cable.
United States

Submission + - Bush Administration ends warrantless survelliance

Submitted by
Raul654
Raul654 writes: "Reuters is reporting that today, the Bush administration decided not to reauthorize its highly controversial NSA warrantless surveillance. US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said: "Any electronic surveillance that was occurring as part of the Terrorist Surveillance Program will now be conducted subject to the approval of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court""
Privacy

Submission + - MySpace to offer spyware for parents

Submitted by mrspin
mrspin writes: Following continuing pressure from politicians (and parts of the media), MySpace is planning to offer parents the chance to download software which will monitor aspects of their children's activities on the social networking site. From a business point of view, the move appears to be a highly risky one. The young users of social networking sites are notorious for their lack of loyalty — and history suggests that a change like this could tempt many to abandon MySpace for the 'next cool thing'.
Music

Submission + - RIAA and SWAT jointly raid DJ's studio

Submitted by NetDanzr
NetDanzr writes: Last night, SWAT, Atlanta police and the RIAA jointly raided the studio of DJ Drama, a radio personality and mixtape artist. Tyree Simons, also known as DJ Drama, was selling his mixtapes over the Internet, which caught the attention of the RIAA and the Atlanta police. Even though an RIAA representative claimed massive copyright infringement, footage from the raid shows that only DJ Drama's mixtape CDs were found and confiscated. Altogether, over 50,000 CDs, studio equipment and a car were impounded, and two people were arrested.
The Internet

Submission + - Political strife erupts in Second Life

Submitted by
covert.c
covert.c writes: "A real-life drama in the political world spilled over into the virtual, as the Second Life headquarters of France's controversial Front National political party fell to violent protestors. The anti-FN activists, who had armed themselves with slogans, placards and weapons, levelled the digital buildings occupied by Front National.

Second Life is often home to established political and social movements. It seems logical that opposing forces would also choose to make SL their stage. What's next, rampant terrorism?"
Operating Systems

Submission + - When Mac OSX is worse that Windows XP?

Submitted by
Meitham Jamaa
Meitham Jamaa writes: "I love Unix (and Linux) and planning to move away of Windows to Mac, not because I love Mac, but only because Mac OSX is a stable Unix based OS. Lots of people have wrote about how good is mac compared to pc but they all view it from a user point of view. I am a developer (mainly Python and Java) and I am a newbie in the Linux world (having a virtual Ubuntu working on VMware). People only tends to highlight the points where OSX is better than windows in. I want to know what will I lose when I switch to Mac before I make any step forward. Can anyone please tell me when Windows is better than OSX.

Thanks
~Meitham"
Sci-Fi

Submission + - Mistah Wilson, He Dead

Submitted by
nonorganon
nonorganon writes: "According to his blog Robert Anton Wilson has shuffled off this mortal coil early this morning. An influential and prolific author of conspiracy ridden science fiction, examinations of fringe beliefs and mental hacks, his presence will be felt for a long time coming. His most popular work is described thus by Wikipedia:

"...The Illuminatus! Trilogy (1975), co-authored with Robert Shea and advertised as "a fairy tale for paranoids," humorously examined American paranoia about conspiracies. Much of the odder material derived from letters sent to Playboy magazine while Shea and Wilson worked as editors of the Playboy Forum.[1] The books mixed true information with imaginative fiction to engage the reader in what Wilson called "Operation Mindfuck"; the trilogy also outlined a set of libertarian and anarchist axioms known as Celine's Laws, concepts Wilson has revisited several times in other writings. Although Shea and Wilson never partnered on such a scale again, Wilson continued to expand upon the themes of the Illuminatus! books throughout his writing career."

Journey on, brave psychonaut."
Music

Submission + - Is Apple DRM's best friend?

Submitted by Flatworm
Flatworm writes: Are we looking at a seismic shift in DRM during 2007? Ars Technica doesn't think so and they believe we have Apple to thank for it. 'Apple has, in an important sense, become a digital gatekeeper for media companies; iTunes is the best way to reach consumers with music, movies, podcasts, and television. Content companies have paid close attention to the success of iTunes; they've seen how it saved The Office, pushed billions of dollars in revenue to Disney, and established itself as such a de facto standard on college campuses that students would rather use iTunes than free alternatives.' The only universal alternative to Apple's DRM is no DRM at all, and the content creators are even more fearful of that alternative.

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