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The Internet

Submission + - Golfer sues over vandalized Wikipedia site

Submitted by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes: "Pro golfer Fuzzy Zoeller is suing to track down the author of what Zoeller says is a defamatory paragraph about him on the Wikipedia site. In an Associated Press story Zoeller's attorney, Scott Sheftall, said he filed a lawsuit against a Miami firm last week because the law won't allow him to sue Wikipedia. http://www.networkworld.com/community/?q=node/1176 9"
Space

Submission + - 'Dead' Rocket Explodes In Orbit

Submitted by
Jacob
Jacob writes: "A rocket which malfunctioned during launch a year ago recently exploded in orbit over Australia, and a number of amateur astronomers, including Rob McNaught (discoverer of Comet McNaught) were able to photograph the explosion and the resulting debris. NASA are now tracking over 1000 fragments, meaning that this has produced more space junk than China's recent ASAT test, it's possible that the fire and explosion were triggered by an encounter with space junk in orbit, and it's also possible the new junk cloud could impact other satellites in the future."
Data Storage

Submission + - Everything You Know About Disks Is Wrong

Submitted by
modapi
modapi writes: "Google's wasn't the best storage paper at FAST '07. Another, more provocative paper looking at real world results from 100,000 disk drives got the "Best Paper" award. Bianca Schroeder of CMU's Parallel Data Lab paper Disk failures in the real world: What does an MTTF of 1,000,000 hours mean to you? (pdf) crushes a number of (what we now know to be) myths about disks such as:
  • vendor MTBF validity
  • "consumer" vs "enterprise" drive reliability (spoiler: no difference)
  • RAID 5 assumptions
A good summary of the paper's key point is at StorageMojo."
Movies

Submission + - Blu-ray set to win format war in Australia

Submitted by
curmi
curmi writes: "According to The Age, Blu-ray looks set to win the format wars in Australia. One major retailer has decided to stock Blu-ray titles exclusively, and with HD-DVD stand-alone players almost non-existent in the country, HD-DVD looks set to lose out. With the PS3 set to launch next month down under, it is expected that blu-ray movies sales will improve still further."
The Courts

Submission + - Julie Amero wrongly convicted? The spyware defense

Submitted by Anonymous Howard
Anonymous Howard writes: Substitute teacher Julie Amero faces up to 40 years in prison for exposing kids to porn using a classroom computer, but the facts strongly suggest that she was wrongfully convicted. Many issues remain, from the need for an independent computer forensics investigation and the presence of spyware and adware on the Windows 98 machine, to bad or incomplete legal work on both sides of this criminal case. It appears that spyware caused Julie Amero's conviction. She will be sentenced on March 2, 2007. This is a new development from the previously story on Slashdot.
Nintendo

Submission + - First Wii mod chip that plays imports

Submitted by
Zeno McDohl
Zeno McDohl writes: "Previous mod chips for the Wii would not boot games from other regions, but the WiiKey is claiming to do just that. Various sites have started shipping the mod chip today, and it seems that this mod chip is also upgradeable via a disc. It remains to be seen if Nintendo will release new firmware in attempt to hinder this, though."
The Almighty Buck

Submission + - NZ copyright bill submissions close on Friday!

Submitted by
Clarke
Clarke writes: "Thanks to the lobbying efforts of the RIANZ (our local RIAA clone) New Zealand is about to get a DMCA-style copyright law. This will emasculate Fair Use and turns DRM removal into a criminal act — so removing the infamous Sony rootkit from your PC will get you a criminal record, 5 years in jail and a $150,000 fine.

For the first time, the parliamentary committee considering the bill is allowing online submissions from anyone in the world: http://www.clerk.parliament.govt.nz.clients.interg en.net.nz/OnlineSubmission/Submission.aspx?id={A23 4B182-C669-4F08-BFD6-4C4BF4F495E1}

Can you please please please let people know it's not too late to kill or amend this stupid piece of legislation by making a submission. The full text of the bill can be found here: http://www.knowledge-basket.co.nz/gpprint/docs/bil ls/20061021.txt"
Sun Microsystems

Submission + - Trivial Remote Exploit on Sun Solaris 10

Submitted by
Jeremy Kister
Jeremy Kister writes: "Errata Security reports about a bug found in the telnet daemon of Solaris 10. From the article:

Basically if you pass a "-fusername" as an argument to the -l option you get full access to the OS as the user specified. In my example I do it as bin but it worked for regular users, just not for root. This combined with a reliable local privilege escalation exploit would be devastating. Expect mass scanning and possibly the widespread exploitation of this vulnerability.
"
Television

Submission + - Mooninite "Bombs" Setoff Copyright Battle

Submitted by
buckminster
buckminster writes: "If you had any doubt about America's national priorities, consider this: Yesterday's bomb scare has become today's copyright violation. Those Aqua Teen Hunger Force signs that brought Boston to a halt earlier this week are now setting off copyright alarms on eBay. It's strange because the signs being auctioned are apparently authentic. Which means they aren't copies, and as a result are not in violation of copyright. Could it be that someone just wants these signs to go away so they won't suffer any more embarrassment? Medialoper has the details in How To Copyright An Atomic Bomb."
The Internet

Submission + - Google, Microsoft Escalate Data Center Battle

Submitted by
miller60
miller60 writes: "The race by Microsoft and Google to build next-generation data centers is intensifying. On Thursday Microsoft announced a $550 million San Antonio project, only to have Google confirm plans for a $600 million site in North Carolina. It appears Google may just be getting started, as it is apparently planning two more enormous data centers in South Carolina, which may cost another $950 million. These "Death Star" data centers are emerging as a key assets in the competitive struggle between Microsoft and Google, which have both scaled up their spending (as previously discussed on Slashdot). Some pundits, like PBS' Robert X. Cringley, say the scope and cost of these projects reflect the immense scale of Google's ambitions."
Google

Submission + - Where does Google's Hardware go to die ?

Submitted by
Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward writes: "I was talking with a co-worker today about how Google is so big, and how they make such great use of commodity hardware to do their business, and one of the topics that came up is where does Google's old hardware go ? Google has been around for many years now, and they have more machines than any sane person would own, and they are continually expanding. At some stage they must have to push out old equipment, either when it starts entering into its MTBF limits or it's been depreciated down. Searching (using Google of course) wasn't particularly fruitful. Has anyone seen where Google's hardware goes when it dies ?"
Software

Submission + - Open-Source VoIP hits another milestone.

Submitted by
Rob from RPI
Rob from RPI writes: "The guys over at Trixbox have just released version 2.0. Trixbox is a Linux ISO (Based on CentOS, a FOSS repackage of RHEL) that includes the Open-Source Asterisk, a VoIP PBX that runs on Linux, FreePBX, the web-based, open source GUI configuration tool for it, and a pile of other stuff that may be useful for a PBX. Trixbox is along similar lines to the other Live-ish CD's, where they just install a complete working system to your hard drive. Unfortunately, they just managed to miss out on the release of freePBX 2.2, which I released about 48 hours too late, but they're using 2.2.0rc3 which has very few changes to 2.2.0-release. Trixbox (and it's previous incarnation, Asterisk@Home) has had more than 200,000 downloads since it's inception, and is by far the most popular FOSS PBX around."

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