118857
submission
blindd0t writes:
Security Focus has an article summarizing a flaw with how Windows deals with animated cursors, which allows for an attack through a maliciously crafted web page or email. Admittedly, this is not supposed to affect users running Vista with IE7 in protected mode; however, this does affect those running IE6 or IE7 with Windows XP Service Pack 2, which is presently the vast majority of users. Microsoft has a security advisory as well.
108031
submission
warm sushi writes:
An academic at the British Computing Society asks Is computer science dead? Citing falling student enrolments, and improved technology, British academic Neil McBride claims that off-the-shelf solutions are removing much of the demand for high level development skills: "As commercial software products have matured, it no longer makes sense for organisations to develop software from scratch. Accounting packages, enterprise resource packages, customer relationship management systems are the order of the day: stable, well-proven and easily available." Is that quote laughable? Or has the software development industry stabilised to an off-the-self commodity?
21511
story
Carl Bialik from WSJ writes
"Some record labels hire outside companies to plant fake files on peer-to-peer sites. Now, labels are turning these decoy files into vehicles for marketing to music pirates by inserting promotional material into the files, such as an eight-minute clip from a Jay-Z concert, the Wall Street Journal reports." From the article:
"'The concept here is making the peer-to-peer networks work for us,' says Jay-Z's attorney, Michael Guido. 'While peer-to-peer users are stealing the intellectual property, they are also the active music audience,' and 'this technology allows us to market back to them.'"
