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Security

CastleCops Anti-Malware Site Closes Down 68

Posted by Soulskill from the free-ain't-cheap dept.
Fortran IV writes "Volunteer-powered anti-malware site CastleCops appears to have closed shop. As of Tuesday, December 23, the CastleCops home page notes: 'You have arrived at the CastleCops website, which is currently offline. . . . Unfortunately, all things come to an end.' It was reported back in June that Paul Laudanski, founder of CastleCops and its parent Computer Cops LLC, was taking a full-time job with Microsoft and was 'looking for new management' for CastleCops. The site has also long had problems with funding and with hostile action from spammers. The actual shutdown seems to have taken the security community by surprise; as late as Tuesday evening Brian Krebs was still recommending CastleCops on his Security Fix blog."
Windows

Windows Vista Service Pack 2 Expected Tomorrow 149

Posted by timothy from the tomorrow's-tomorrow's-yesterday dept.
arcticstoat writes "After dishing out a few copies of the beta of Windows Vista Service Pack 2 to select customers in October, Microsoft has now decided to let the general public get their hands on the beta of the service pack, starting from tomorrow. The beta of the service pack will be made available via Microsoft's Customer Preview Program on 4 December, and it includes all the updates since Service Pack 1, as well as a few other bits and pieces. Most notably, Microsoft says that Service Pack 2 'improves performance for Wi-Fi connection after resuming from sleep mode,' and adds the Bluetooth 2.1 Feature Pack, ID strings for VIA's Nano CPU and support for the exFAT file system for large flash devices."
Music

Submission + - Gracenote database hijack (lyricsfly.com)

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: Remember CDDB and Gracenote? For all those users who submitted lyrics in hopes of fair trade and use by open source and even commercial programs, lyricsfly took back what was once stolen and sold by CDDB. Because of Gracenote limited licensing on lyrics, lyricsfly could never provide the API developer license. So instead of agreeing to shameful disgrace(note) as others such as AOL lyrics and the recent Metrolyrics deal, lyricsfly decided to highjack the database and give it freedom as it once had. Their statement is not clear how this was accomplished but the content found on various Gracenote partners is there exact and in full context along with album name.
Security

Submission + - Remote Control To Prevent Aircraft Hijacking

Submitted by
Snad
Snad writes: "The UK's Evening Standard is reporting that Boeing plans to roll out aircraft remote controls systems in a bid to eliminate the threat of terrorist hijackings, and prevent any repetition of the events of September 11 2001.

"Scientists at aircraft giant Boeing are testing the tamper-proof autopilot system which uses state-of-the-art computer and satellite technology. It will be activated by the pilot flicking a simple switch or by pressure sensors fitted to the cockpit door that will respond to any excessive force as terrorists try to break into the flight deck.
Once triggered, no one on board will be able to deactivate the system. Currently, all autopilots are manually switched on and off at the discretion of pilots. A threatened airliner could be flown to a secure military base or a commercial airport, where it would touch down using existing landing aids known as 'autoland function'.""
Movies

Submission + - Alex Guinness's Star Wars Cloak sold for &poun

Submitted by dws90
dws90 writes: The cloak worn by Sir Alex Guinness when he played Obi-Wan Kenobi in the Star Wars original trilogy has been sold at a TV and Cinema auction. The cloak sold for £54,000, which is about $103,923 according to Google calculator. According to the article, the cloak was missing for nearly 30 years, during which it was rented out to a number of other films, including the Mummy. It was found two years ago, and has been part of a film memorabilia exhibition in London since then. The cloak sold for more than any of the other movie costumes the article listed, beating out Sean Connery's dinner jacket from Thunderball and a helmet worn by Terry Jones in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
The Courts

Submission + - Election candidate faces EUCD charges in Finland

Submitted by
hingo
hingo writes: "The Open Life blog reports that activists in Finland have partly succeeded in challenging the EUCD's constitutionality, that is, they have succeeded in getting themselves tried in court:

Mikko Rauhala and Einar Karttunen have on February 13th, 2007 been charged with breaking [...] the EUropean Copyright Directive, our equivalent of the DMCA. The charges are that they participated in an online service organised by Mr Rauhala to provide advice on how to circumvent DRM and in addition Mr Karttunen has published online a computer program written in the Haskell programming language. The charge is especially serious because Rauhala paid Karttunen 0,05 for this program. Rauhala, Karttunen and 37 others did these supposedly criminal actions in January 2006, the first week that the new law was in force. [...]
Mikko Rauhala and the organiser of the 2005 demonstration Mikko Särelä are both running for parliament in the elections to be held on March 18th, 2007. [...] some of the momentum really might still be there [...] this week [...] they put out a website to collect pledges and within 24 hours had collected 8000 to buy a full page ad in Finlands main newspaper.
The blog also informs us that

Under current Finnish laws, the maximum penalty for filesharing is higher than for simply stealing an actual music CD from a shop
"
Microsoft

Submission + - Thousands sign e-petition on rip-off Vista

Submitted by CoolWolf
CoolWolf writes: CustomPC News, Monday 26th February 2007
Thousands sign e-petition on rip-off Vista http://www.pcpro.co.uk/custompc/news/106025/thousa nds-sign-epetition-on-ripoff-vista.html

Petition info and link:
We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to bring pressure on Microsoft to stop them overcharging the UK for its Vista Operating System.
Submitted by Paul Milne — Deadline to sign up by: 20 April 2007 — Signatures: 8,051
http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/VistaOvercharge/
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft kills off J# language

Submitted by
twofish
twofish writes: "Microsoft have announced that J#, its Java clone for .NET, and the Java Language Conversion Assistant will be discontinued and will not appear in the next version of Visual Studio. At the same time they have announced pans for a 64-bit version of the J# Redistributable this year."
The Internet

Submission + - Wikipedia's Wales reverts himself on problem admin

Submitted by
ToiletDuck
ToiletDuck writes: "Wikipedia co-founder Jimbo Wales appears to have changed his mind concerning Essjay, the administrator who was caught lying about his academic credentials. Wales issued a statement today on his User Talk page requesting that EssJay voluntarily step down from his Wikipedia roles normally reserved for trusted users. Wales defended his earlier comment about EssJay, claiming 'I only learned this morning that EssJay used his false credentials in content disputes...I want to make it perfectly clear that my past support of EssJay in this matter was fully based on a lack of knowledge about what has been going on.' Wales did not comment on whether EssJay would continue to serve in his paid position at Wikia, the for-profit cousin of Wikipedia."
Security

Wordpress 2.1.1 Release Compromised by Cracker 48

Posted by Zonk from the not-my-emo-comments-and-angsty-statements dept.
GrumpySimon writes "The recent 2.1.1 release of the popular blog software Wordpress was compromised by a cracker who made it easier for to execute code remotely. This is interesting because the official release was quietly and subtly compromised, and has been in the wild for a few days now. There's no word on if any affected sites have been compromised, but anyone running Wordpress is urged to upgrade to 2.1.2 immediately, and admins can check their logs for access to 'theme.php' or 'feed.php', and query strings with 'ix=' or 'iz=' in them."

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