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Piracy

Submission + - Rockstar uses no-cd patch for Max Payne 2 on Steam (steampowered.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Liamaj posted on the steam forums a screenshot of the Max Payne 2 exe as viewed on Notepad ++.

As you can see there's an ASCII "Myth" logo, which is an old cracking team that were quite prevelent a while back. Seems Rockstar got a little lazy and used this crack instead of recompilling their executable without DRM.
Government

Submission + - China Considering Cuts on Rare-Earth Metal Exports

Submitted by SillySnake
SillySnake writes: A draft report by China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has called for a total ban on foreign shipments of terbium, dysprosium, yttrium, thulium, and lutetium. Other metals such as neodymium, europium, cerium, and lanthanum will be restricted to a combined export quota of 35,000 tonnes a year, far below global needs.

Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/6082464/World-faces-hi-tech-crunch-as-China-eyes-ban-on-rare-metal-exports.html
Input Devices

The Mice That Didn't Make It 202

Posted by timothy from the does-anything-beat-a-logitech-marble-mouse? dept.
Harry writes "For every blockbuster of the mouse world (such as Microsoft and Logitech's big sellers) there have been countless mice that flopped, or never made it to market. Mice shaped like pyramids; mice shaped like Mickey; mice that doubled as numeric keypads or phones. Even one that sat on your steering wheel. I've rounded up some evocative patent drawings on twenty notable examples."
Censorship

Submission + - AT&T blocks img.4chan.org from customers (reddit.com) 11

Submitted by
bmecoli
bmecoli writes: "AT&T seems to be blocking img.4chan.net which hosts the infamous /b/ (random) board, as well as /r9k/. Those who have contacted AT&T representatives were told that the site is in fact blocked, so this isn't a technical problem, and all the other 4chan subdomains work fine."
Software

Submission + - Why is Firehose so hostile? 15

Submitted by
NewYorkCountryLawyer
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: "Can anyone explain to me why Slashdot's Firehose is made to be so unfriendly? It's a great idea, but in practice it's infuriating. If you see a submitted article, and click on one of the links, you can't go back to the story. You have to start all over again. If you set the filters to what you're interested in, you have to re-set them all over again. Even if you just RTFA you are punished by losing your settings. Why shouldn't Slashdot encourage people to participate in the Firehose. For a busy person, it's almost impossible to be involved. And this bizarre lack of 'stickiness' makes everything take 10 times as much times as it needs to."
The Internet

Journal Journal: Improving Slashdot Moderation

Journal by ILikeRed

Here's an idea for improving moderation for the Slashdot Editors.

Ask the members what Slashdot Topics they are experts in. This data could then be used for two things that would be useful to Slashdot, improving moderation, and targeted advertising.
Google

Submission + - Google Unveils Hybrid Car that plugs into Grid (foxnews.com)

Submitted by
mytrip
mytrip writes: "Not content with seeking to control the information super-highway, Google wants to influence what kind of car you drive.

The online search company has unveiled a new, hyper-advanced model of hybrid car that can be charged directly from the grid, and, when its battery is not in use, the stored electricity can be sold back to the utility company.

By selling their excess electricity to the grid owners of plug-in hybrids will be able to earn up to $3,000 a year. Such savings are likely to be offset by the higher initial retail price of hybrid cars."
Books

Submission + - OJ Simpson's Book Leaked to BitTorrent (digg.com)

Submitted by
joshzweig
joshzweig writes: "In 2006 O.J Simpson announced he was releasing a book in which he would detail what would have happened, had he really committed the horrific murders of his ex-wife and her boyfriend in 1994. After public outrage, the book was shelved and 400,000 copies of the book were destroyed but now a digital version has been leaked to BitTorrent.

"If I Did It" is the title of an unreleased book by ex-NFL player and actor O.J Simpson where he gave a hypothetical account of what would've happened, had he committed the double knife-murder of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman in 1994. According to reports, Simpson was paid $3.5m for writing the book.

The PDF file is 118 pages, and 8 chapters long. The author's note is only eight words long, reading "If I did it, this is what happened." Unfortunately, the book is not very well written, and is exceptionally dull."
Democrats

Submission + - YouTube bungles CNN debate? (10zenmonkeys.com)

Submitted by
destinyland
destinyland writes: "YouTube promised CNN they'd supply questions for a July debate of the Presidential candidates — by letting users upload video questions. But five days in they've only received 50 submissions — and a lot of them were pretty stupid. The Washington Post rounded up the best videos they could find. But if this experiment with interactive democracy is doomed to fail, what's the ultimate lesson? Maybe it's that if you're going to unveil an interactive democracy online, you need to make sure you actually promote it!"
Biotech

Submission + - Vivoleum: Exxon's Answer to Fuel Crisis

Submitted by
robotim
robotim writes: "At one of North America's largest gas and oil conferences, Exxon unveiled a new product called "Vivoleum" as a possible future fuel when we run out of oil. The conference took place in Calgary, Canada (where Canada's largest oil reserves reside,) and the Exxon representatives were not paid officials from the company, but rather volunteers from the Yes Men. Wired has two articles, one with the press release from the event and another is a Q&A with Andy Bichlbaum from the Yes Men. Interestingly, not everyone seems to think burning people for fuel is a bad idea."
Spam

Submission + - Where does a sysadmin go for help?

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: I believe I have stumbled up a new FreeBSD based rootkit/hack/backdoor/whatever you want to call it. I'm pretty sure I know how it was installed on the server, I've got a pretty good idea of how most of it works, but there are parts that are over my head. I am not an idiot, but I am lacking the reverse engineer skills required to see exactly how it works. I am leery about posting my findings to a public forum because the last thing I want to do is give the script kiddies a new toy to play with without having full knowledge of how it works myself. I would prefer to disclose what I've found to a trustworthy third party who can elaborate on my findings and then have the findings posted publicly should this turn out to be something new. Please keep in mind I have googled, yahooed, searched forums, searched usenet for any mention of what I have found and have come up empty handed. It's entirely possible this is nothing new, and I am a n00b, but in either case my question is: where does a sysadmin go when he doesn't have and can't find an answer? PS: I am already aware that in Soviet Russia, answer finds you. Unfortunately I don't live in Soviet Russia. :(

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