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Networking

Submission + - Tracking stolen laptops via MAC address

Submitted by
ArhcAngel
ArhcAngel writes: "My stepson's laptop was stolen recently and the person who stole it knew exactly where to look. I'm pretty sure he is acquainted with the person who stole it and they go to college together. My question for /. is since I have the MAC address of the laptop and I know where the kid goes to school is there a way to have the college IT dept. flag that MAC address when it hits the schools network? Has anyone ever done something similar and what kind of help or hindrance was the IT dept. in assisting in this kind of request?"
The Internet

Submission + - Sabotage at Calif. Power Grid's Data Center

Submitted by
miller60
miller60 writes: "A disgruntled system administrator intentionally pressed the Emergency Power Off (EPO) button in the data center that manages the electric grid for most of California, crashing the facility for hours, according to law enforcement accounts. The grid was unaffected, primarily because the event took place late on a Sunday night, rather than on a high-load weekday, according to power industry officials. The sysadmin worked for a third-party contractor which had warned its client, the California Independent System Operator (Cal-ISO), that the employee should be denied access to the facility. Inquiries are focused on why he was still able to get into the data center, which had several levels of access security."
Software

Submission + - Is open source software turning into hardware?

Submitted by Stony Stevenson
Stony Stevenson writes: CIO is running an article that says open source is moving beyond just software and is being molded into new business practices and even hardware. As hardware becomes more malleable, do programmers need to be more than just mere programmers?

From the article: "Open-source, object-oriented development, personalization, even hacking, are presaging and inspiring new manufacturing methods that will overhaul today's plodding techniques born during the Industrial Revolution, according to panelists speaking Monday at the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference in San Diego.

We're seeing hardware become more like software, and rapid development become a competitive advantage.
XBox (Games)

Submission + - BestBuy manager caught red handed!

Submitted by
Steve Qualls
Steve Qualls writes: "Dear Slashdot, I was at the local Bestbuy here in Springfield, MO and was third in the line to exchange a product. I looked ahead and saw a gentleman with an Xbox360 with a faulty DVD drive trying to get an exchange. The clerk told the customer that Microsoft handles all warranties on the Xbox360 and that Microsoft would not allow BestBuy to exchange the device. The customer asked again to exchange the product because he only had it for less than three months. The clerk then called the department manager over and he promptly removed the front bezel to view the anti-tamper sticker, and declared that they could do nothing for him because the Xbox360 anti-tamper sticker had been tampered with. The customer denied ever opening the case of his Xbox360. I got quite interested and stepped to the side of the lady in front of me and looked at it from about 3 foot away (arms reach). The sticker was in place and had not been removed! The manager then picked at the sticker to my horror and I then quickly approached the counter and told customer, quite loudly, to not let the manager pick at the sticker. I was prepared to throw a fit on the behalf of the timid customer right then and there and declare to all those that were around that the manager had voided the warranty himself, but the manager realized he was busted and quickly allowed the exchange. Has BestBuy corporate let it be known that the stores need to limit the amount of Xbox360s being exchanged and to do whatever it takes, including lying to customers and voiding warranties? http://consumerist.com/consumer/best-buy/no-exchan ge-best-buy-manager-tries-to-void-xbox-warranty-24 7411.php"
Software

Submission + - The best indie games of the year - so far.

Submitted by Independent Gamer
Independent Gamer writes: Game Almighty.com has posted a cool story about the latest and greatest independent games. It's a pretty sweet look at some of the games that won awards at the IGF this year. Nowhere near a comprehensive list, but seems like they're going to be posting more stuff like this in the future. Thank god there's finally a big site that pays attention to the under-the-radar indie games. Game Almighty's Indie Games Roundup: Issue One
Businesses

Submission + - ITT fined $100 million for illegal exports

Submitted by
Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward writes: "According to a CNN news story, ITT, a leading manufacturer of night vision gear for the Defense Department, has admitted sending classified materials to China, Singapore and Britain and will pay a $100 million penalty. The conviction is the first involving a major defense contractor violating the Arms Export Control Act, prosecutors said. Saying that American soldiers are "the principal victims of ITT's crimes," U.S. Attorney John Brownlee said he has structured the $100 million penalty so that half of the money is spent by ITT to develop a next-generation night vision system and "ensure that our soldiers have the best night vision equipment in the world.""
Software

Submission + - New Toshiba Laptops Do Not Have XP Drivers

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: I thought I got a great deal on a toshiba Dual Core 1.6ghz Model A135-S2276 Laptop. It came with Vista Home Basic. I went to toshiba's web site the only drivers they have are vista drivers. I went to 4 other simular module with close to the same hardware configuration the same thing only vista drivers. I called tech support there like don't you want to run Vista. I said if the laptop only runs vista why doesnt it say it on the box. They said they will probably put up XP drivers but it soundly like they are in no big hurry. I told them toshiba should not decide what OS I should run on my laptop. They gave me a case # and told me to have a nice day. And this was not tech support from India. Jeez I should have bought an HP. I expected to see Windows XP drivers is Microsoft behind this or is this just toshiba being stupid?
Quickies

Submission + - LiveScience.com's Creative Reason for P-G Clouds

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Pictures and videos of Prandtl-Glauert Condensation Clouds (P-G Clouds) always excite awe and amazement. And naturally one wonders what causes the cloud to form. On 23 March 2007, in their Life's Little Mysteries series, LiveScience.com tackled the question "What is a Sonic Boom? Can I See One?," complete with a very nice selection of photos. But their explanation — and it's creative — will likely cause P-G cloud aficionados, aerodynamicists, and fluid mechanics and dynamics experts to scratch their heads in puzzlement.
Censorship

Submission + - Angle Moroni(TM)

Submitted by fermion
fermion writes: Taking a leaf from the book of Scientology, the Church of Later Day Saints is using it's trademark of the angle Moroni, who spoke to the Joseph Smith, to halt the sales of a Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints . Never let it be said that religion has become infected with modern day values such as tolerance for others or that pesky freedom of speech.
Google

Submission + - Stopbadware.org: Good Guys or "Prohibitionists

Submitted by jo7hs2
jo7hs2 writes: My site was recently (and correctly) flagged by Stopbadware.org for having been hacked. For a variety of reasons, I did not discover the single hacked page until my entire site was flagged as dangerous by Google, who uses Stopbadware.org's database to protect web-searchers. While I find the practice a step in the right direction, Stopbadware.org's tactics, which include no notice to webmasters, and a slow review process, seem a tad heavy handed.

In particular, this line really concerns me:
"Please note that we will be retesting your website at periodic intervals in order to monitor that it remains free from badware. If we find that you are hosting or distributing badware in the future, the reviews process may take considerably longer than the original review."

It sounds like Stopbadware.org, teamed with Google, are setting themselves up to be the internet's policemen.
Republicans

Submission + - Illegal White House Email Causing Security Risk?

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Has White House email policy broken the law and endangered national security? Hold on, this gets complicated. While investigating what happened during the recent firing of eight federal prosecutors, it was revealed that much of the email from the White House were not using official government servers, but using servers provided by the Republican National Committee. (One of these serves was named 'GWB43.com'.) It was also reported that Karl Rove does 95% of his email on these non-governmental accounts.

This raises two critical issues: first, does this violate the Presidential Records Act, passed after Nixon and Watergate? Second, does this create a potential security breach? How much security does the RNC maintain, compared to the White House? There is also the issue of people on the White House payroll doing work for the RNC on government time, another potential law-breaker.

Henry Waxman, D-CA, wants to know what is going on. He has sent a letters to the RNC and the Bush-Cheney campaign to preserve there emails for congressional investigation. http://thinkprogress.org/2007/03/26/rnc-emails-wax man/

For comments on security see http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/005879.html and http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/002875.php.

All these websites are extremely partisan. Let the Flame Wars begin!
Encryption

TrueCrypt 4.3 Released 285

Posted by kdawson from the windows-only-alas dept.
RedBear writes "A new update to the best open source transparent encryption software has been released. TrueCrypt is (the only?) open source encryption software capable of creating and mounting encrypted virtual disk images that can then be worked with transparently like any other storage drive, with data encrypted and decrypted in real-time. These virtual disks can be created as files, or entire partitions or physical drives can be encrypted and mounted transparently. Sadly there is still no Linux GUI or Mac OS X port in sight. If you are one of the thronging hordes who have been patiently awaiting ubiquitous multi-platform encryption, please consider donating time or money to the cause, and add your voice to the forum." From the site:"Among the new features [are] full compatibility with 32-bit and 64-bit Windows Vista, support for devices and file systems that use a sector size other than 512 bytes (such as new hard drives, USB flash drives, DVD-RAM, MP3 players, etc.), auto-dismount when a host device (e.g., a USB flash drive) is inadvertently removed, and many more." Read on for more features of TrueCrypt and cached versions of all the links above.
Security

Submission + - Tracking System to Nab Tor Pedophiles

Submitted by Huskies3565
Huskies3565 writes: Amidst concerns that pedophiles are using public Tor (the Onion Router) servers to trade in child pornography, Metasploit founder HD Moore is building a tracking system capable of pinpointing specific workstations that searched for and downloaded sexual images and videos of kids. Moore has come up with a series of countermeasures that include using patched Tor servers and a decloaking engine to detect the exact location of a pedophile within an organization or residence.
Networking

Submission + - Network PDF Printer via Samba in UBUNTU, Fedora Co

Submitted by warcriminal
warcriminal writes: Here is an article that describes how to create a network printer via SAMBA that will create PDF files out of the submitted print jobs. You can connect a Windows workstation, *NIX workstation of a MAC workstation to the network queue to create PDF files without installed a PDF Writer on every workstation! It has been tested to work on UBUNTU, Fedora Core 4 and SLES 10.1. You might have to fine tune it for your environment. http://www.goitexpert.com/entry.cfm?entry=Network- PDF-Printer-via-Samba-in-UBUNTU-Fedora-Core-and-SL ES

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