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The Internet

Submission + - Dotster Hijacks Their Customers' Subdomains

Submitted by mo
mo writes: Recently, Dotster's DNS service has made a massive, potentially illegal change that has gone largely unnoticed. They now redirect DNS queries for any of their customer's unused subdomains to a spam page that serves up ads. For example, www.asterisk.org is a popular open source PBX project who gets it's DNS from Dotster, but bogus.asterisk.org redirects to Dotster's page of ads. This policy has been imposed on all of their customers without informing them. Any domain who has ns1.nameresolve.com as their primary nameserver is being subjected to it.
Security

The IT Department as Corporate Snoop? 116

Posted by Zonk from the like-penny-in-inspector-gadget dept.
coondoggie writes with a link to a NetworkWorld article about the dangers of IT department snoops. A study released today is likely to exacerbate the trend of failing trust in employees; it shows that one in three IT employees poke through systems and prod at confidential information while on the job. The survey was done by a firm specializing in password security, so some salt might be required for this particular article. "The survey found that more than one-third of IT professionals admit they could still access their company's network once they'd left their current job, with no one to stop them. More than 200 IT professionals participated in the survey with many revealing that although it wasn't corporate policy to allow IT workers to access systems after termination, still almost 25% of respondents knew of another IT staff member who still had access to sensitive networks even though they'd left the company long ago."
AMD

Submission + - AMD Releases Detailed Phenom Die Photo (hothardware.com)

Submitted by MojoKid
MojoKid writes: A few weeks ago, AMD released information on new branding for their desktop derivatives of the Barcelona core, now dubbed the Phenom FX, X4 and X2. If you're unfamiliar with Phenom, the processors will be based on AMD's K10 architecture and will feature a faster on-die memory controller, support 64-bit and 128-bit SSE operations, and they'll be outfitted with 2MB of on-chip L2 cache (512KB dedicated per core) in addition to 2MB of shared L3 cache. Today,instead of revealing some more of the juicy details regarding those enhancements, AMD just sent over a tasty photo of a Phenom die. Click the image for a high-res version.

Feed Nokia N75 and N76 now available -- from Nokia USA (engadget.com)

From feed by engfeed

Filed under: Cellphones

For a company that tends to concentrate on candybars and the occasional slider for its smartphone stable, a double shot of S60 flips in the American market is pretty much a bumper crop -- and that's exactly what Nokia's delivering, officially announcing its own availability of the N75 and the N76 today. Notice we say "its own" availability; the N75 has been livin' it up in AT&T's lineup for a few weeks now but it's been nigh impossible to get one contract-free from the carrier, so Nokia's direct sale is a welcome one for folks that just want to buy one outright. Side by side, the N76 solidly whips its stablemate in the looks department, but bear in mind one critical fact: 3G data lurks underneath the N75's hood. Pick up the N75 for $429.99 and the N76 for $499.99 starting today from Nokia (including the flagship stores in New York and Chicago) and its distributors.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

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

Submission + - Microwulf: A Personal, Portable Beowulf Cluster (calvin.edu)

Submitted by
Joel Adams
Joel Adams writes: "Tim Brom and I recently completed Microwulf — a personal, portable Beowulf cluster measuring just 11" (W) x 12" (D) x 17" (H), making it small enough to sit on one's desk and be easily transported. The total cost of the system (using January 2007 prices) was $2470. The design consists of a "double-decker sandwich" of four MicroATX motherboards and AMD64 X2 CPUs, providing a total of 8 processing cores that communicate via Gigabit Ethernet. Software includes Ubuntu Linux, OpenMPI, MPICH, and assorted free high performance apps that run on top of MPI. The system is air-cooled and draws just 450 watts of power under load, so it can be plugged into a wall outlet.

Microwulf produces 26.25 Gflops of measured, double-precision performance on the standard supercomputing benchmark HP Linpack (using Goto BLAS). That gives Microwulf a price/performance ratio of $94.10/Gflop, or less than $0.10/Mflop. These ratios reflect measured performance for double-precision floating point operations, not (sales hype) peak performance or (rarely used in high performance computing) single-precision floating point operations. Microwulf's power/performance ratio is a fairly efficient 17.14 watts/Gflop under load.

At this size and price, a person can afford to have a personal Beowulf cluster on his or her desk. For those who want to build one, the design details and pictures are available at the project website. The design is easily tweaked to incorporate quad-core and many-core CPUs, as they become available and affordable. It will be fun in the coming years to see how low people can drive the price/performance and power/performance ratios by building similar systems using these new CPUs. Microwulf costs under $0.10/Mflop; who will be the first to build a general purpose cluster for under $0.01/Mflop?"
Role Playing (Games)

Submission + - Mindark to Create Largest (Entropia) Universe ever

Submitted by WhitePaper
WhitePaper writes: Get past the hype here http://www.marketwire.com/mw/release_html_b1?relea se_id=259436 and it seems that Mindark has broken through the Government Controlled Firewall at the Chinese border and signed one massive deal!

The When and How may be sketchy, but the why is clear...
— to create a cash-based virtual economy for China.
— to permit up to 7 million concurrent users logged into the virtual universe with an overall aim to attract some 150 million users from all over the world.
— Entropia Universe to generate over $1 billion annually from this partnership
— The project will enable other companies within media, film, music and gaming industries, or other content providers, to acquire their own planet within Entropia Universe

David Liu (CEO of Cyber Recreation Development Corp} says, "It is estimated that the project will generate some 10,000 qualified job opportunities in China"

Jan Welter Timkrans (CEO of MindArk PE AB) boasts, "...the structure running the Entropia Universe will be one of the fastest on Earth"

With 580,000 registered accounts Entropia Universe has been on a record breaking streak via the sale of Virtual Assets.
— Virtual Treasure Island ~ US $26,500
— Asteroid-based space resort ~ US $100,000
— Five virtual banking licenses ~ US $400,000
— Content Controlled Planet ~ Watch this space!
XBox (Games)

Hackers Dodge Xbox Live Shutout 71

Posted by Zonk from the over-the-wall dept.
An Ars Technica post at their games column Opposable Thumbs points out that, despite Microsoft's best efforts, hacked Xbox 360s are once again playing on Xbox Live. "Steadfast in their pursuits, the hackers of the Xbox 360 scene have managed to best Microsoft's Xbox Live Banning protocol: a system of checks in place to identify hacked Xbox 360s and deny them access to the Xbox Live Network. The current method of hacking the 360 involves exploiting the firmware of the DVD drive (the preferable method), and this latest patch does just that. In fact, the creators are so confident in their breakthrough that the info file remarks that the new firmware 'defeats all current and some future Xbox Live detection attempts.'"
Privacy

Submission + - Innocent man sets up internet GPS to track himself

Submitted by gurps_npc
gurps_npc writes: Hasan Elahi is an American of Bangladesh birth. He is not arabic and not a terrorist. But someone accused him (or someone with a similar name) of being one. After he escaped from the clutches of Homeland Security, he decided to make sure he had evidence to free himself if it happened again. Beyond the normal precautions (calling up the FBI and telling them he is planning on traveling before he books his ticket), he did something a bit more extreme. He hacked his cell phone and set up a web site that tracked his GPS position. It is broadcast live to his website, here: tracking website. Then he routinely takes lots of pictures with that same cellphone, sending them to the website as well. Before you start thinking he is paranoid, you might check his web logs. Computers at government agencies have looked visited his site.

More can be read at this wordpress article.

Cure spooky music. How long before they start "asking" "people of interest" to do this?
Wireless Networking

Submission + - More Details on Michigan Wireless Bust (foxnews.com)

Submitted by
Paul Wagenseil
Paul Wagenseil writes: "FOXNews.com's Sara Bonisteel talks to Sam Peterson II, the Michigan man recently busted by local police for sitting in his car using a coffee shop's password-free wireless network.

Because he never bought a cup of coffee, the D.A.'s office threatened to prosecute Peterson for fraudulent access to a computer network, which is a felony charge carrying up to 5 years in prison. After talking to lawyers, he opted to pay a $400 fine and perform 40 hours of community service.

The cop: "We came back and we looked up the laws and we figured if we found one and thought, 'Well, let's run it by the prosecutor's office and see what they want to do.'"

The D.A.'s office: "When you buy a Wi-Fi equipped device, it's your responsibility to find out what you can and can't legally do with that device."

The bustee: "They don't happen to tell you that [wireless piggybacking] is illegal. And I guess obviously you're just supposed to know that."

The coffee-shop owner: "He could have just come in the cafe — even if he didn't have any money, I would let him get on it.""
Space

Submission + - Arizona gov admits to seeing Phoenix lights

Submitted by stratjakt
stratjakt writes: The governor of Arizona now admits to having seen the Phoenix lights.

Symington says he saw a large triangular "craft of unknown origin" with lights, moving slowly. "It was dramatic. And it couldn't have been flares because it was too symmetrical", he says. "It had a geometric outline, a constant shape."
I for one welcome our crazy republican overlords.
Education

Submission + - Ocean Floor Crust Wound to Be Explored

Submitted by
eldavojohn
eldavojohn writes: "A group of scientists are disembarking right now to study an open gash in the ocean floor where earth's mantle lays exposed without any crust covering it. The scientists describe these as similar to stretch marks that a person might experience on their skin from a growth spurt. Either that or the mantle was never covered by the crust and just has always been like this. From the article, "Regardless of how they formed, the exposed mantle provides scientists with a rare opportunity to study the Earth's rocky innards. Many attempts to drill deep into the planet barely get past the crust.""
Windows

Submission + - It's official: Vista copy protection 100% cracked

Submitted by
Slinky Sausage
Slinky Sausage writes: "There's been a steady stream of 'sort of' cracks for Vista coming out of the piracy groups, but a crack has been released this morning by "Pantheon" which is doesn't avoid Vista's activation — it exploits it! Apparently despite the requirements for everyone including volume licence customers to activate, Microsoft built in the capability for OEM system builders to pre-install copies of Vista without activating it over the internet. The crack works on any Acer, HP, Lenovo, Hewlett Packard or custom machine (as long as you have the BIOS of that machine available)."
Announcements

Submission + - Kiwi scientist proposes solution to global warming

Submitted by
bunbuntheminilop
bunbuntheminilop writes: "
A New Zealand scientist has claimed to have developed a way to extract carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and will submit into Richard Branson's global warming competition. From the article:

Graeme Brown has invented a substance which can absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. The substance, dubbed Planetite, is derived from the naturally occurring mineral crystal Zeolite. Brown says Planetite can absorb carbon dioxide and separate the molecule into carbon and oxygen which can be re-used.
"
OS X

Submission + - PC World Picks OSX Over XP, Vista (and, uh, Linux)

Submitted by
DenmaFat
DenmaFat writes: "The article is buried in PC World's web site, but the ordinarily Redmond-centric magazine comes right out and says that OS X is the best operating system for its readers, over Linux and Windows XP, with Windows Vista ranked dead last. The review is the subjective assessment of just one author, but he provides a lengthy qualitative comparison chart to back up his recommendations. On a related note, chilled beverages now available in Hades."
Hardware

Ionic Winds Chilling Your Computer 89

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the just-chillin dept.
Iddo Genuth writes to mention The Future of Things online magazine is reporting that Kronos Advanced Technologies in cooperation with Intel and the University of Washington claims to have developed a new type of ultra-thin, silent cooling technology for processors. The piece covers many of the cooling technologies currently available, how their new corona discharge cooler works, and a short interview with several of the key team members.

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