Agreed - there does seem to be a lot of interest in dirac. Also, the 1000 pound gorilla in the room is that Ogg *Vorbis* is nothing new - the format is over a decade old, and despite its benefits, it has never gained widespread use or support in portable devices. They speculated the same success for Vorbis back in 2000 as they are predicting for Theora.

Only at lunchtime, stakovahflow.

Here is is: http://blip.tv/file/3283837

Streisand Effect? Now, off to find a copy of that video...

In today's healthcare system, one who pays for insurance can generally opt to go or not to go to the doctor if he or she is ill. However, if somebody is deemed extremely infectious or a harm to his/herself or others, there is precedent for authorities to force a person to accept treatment and quarantine. I think that people are less likely to address computer security concerns (particularly computers which are being used as bots to attack or spam others) than illness in their actual person. So what would be the end outcome? The potential that one's computer could be confiscated for cleaning? Certainly admirable from a security standpoint, but a gross violation of privacy and personal property as we know it today. This would take a tremendous rethinking of how critical our network infrastructure is to society and the liability of individuals for computer security. I personally would not want my computer removed from my home if I were to get an infection which I myself could clean within an hour or two. This opens the door to some interesting interpretations of the law and public defense.

Agreed. This should be kept completely under wraps until there is solid evidence against a particular party and its time to press charges or involve diplomatic agencies.

Well done ^_^ But you know that's just because they're all playing World of Warcraft and Left for Dead.

Actually, there was an infected version of the affected ATAPI.sys uploaded to SANS ISC, and its checksum is different than the legit ATAPI.sys. Here's the Virustotal of the atapi.sys file from a machine that blue-screened: http://www.virustotal.com/analisis/85aa49f587f69f30560f02151af2900f3dc71d39d1357727ab41b11ef828a7ff-1265925529 Here's the Virustotal of a clean and unpatched atapi.sys file: http://www.virustotal.com/analisis/0e6b23a80f171550575bebc56f7500cd87a5cf03b2b9fdc49bc3de96282cd69d-1265930822 However, there may be more than one rootkit involved in the debacle.

For one thing, they might not be old enough. One of the biggest problems with parents refusing to vaccinate their children is that there will always be newborns and children too young to receive the vaccine. Some of the children who get sick could very well be pre-schoolers or kindergartners at the same school. There are also children with immune system deficiencies. Wired's "Fear" issue had a great article expressing the concerns over herd immunity (the elimination or decreased spread of a particular virus) because nobody can get it) and increased infant mortality because older children aren't vaccinated and become carriers.

And morality in the face of danger is what makes us something other than a common animal. If we don't have that, then what do we have?

"Restate my assumptions: One, Mathematics is the language of nature. Two, Everything around us can be represented and understood through numbers. Three: If you graph the numbers of any system, patterns emerge. Therefore, there are patterns everywhere in nature. Evidence: The cycling of disease epidemics;the wax and wane of caribou populations; sun spot cycles; the rise and fall of the Nile. So, what about the stock market? The universe of numbers that represents the global economy. Millions of hands at work, billions of minds. A vast network, screaming with life. An organism. A natural organism. My hypothesis: Within the stock market, there is a pattern as well... Right in front of me... hiding behind the numbers. Always has been."

You know, if you haven't been to the Psystar website (its down right now), they really did take the time to make good looking machines. Although one of the selling points of Apple's hardware has always been its aesthetics, Psystar wasn't simply putting their hackintoshes in beige midtowers. They had a nice line of an very different looking, (and I would argue), sleek and more professional looking machines running OSX than Apple - I actually would prefer their glossy black towers for business environments over Apple's chromes, whites, and bright colors. I think its good that the company has a plan B, and I don't think its any great loss to the consumer to have to buy a copy of OSX to load on the machines, if their hardware and loader is already totally compliant. Anybody creating a hackintosh of any sort has to pick up a copy...

Yeah, at least every geek on the planet simultaneously thought the same thing. This dude really needs to change his name.

That woman needs a Wikipedia for posterity's sake. All peoples' talk about globalization, and philosophy, and humanism seems pretty laughable - Sahra Ibrahim got a -R.P.G.- as divorce alimony. And then bet it on a pirate expedition. Is anybody else still working on this mental image? Pretty hard to comprehend from where we're sitting.

Nah, Dragon Age: Origins, hands down. I mean, it has like, dragons. And stuff. Anybody want Taco Bell?