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Microsoft

Submission + - IAMCP threatens legal action over OOXML (wordpress.com)

Submitted by dread
dread writes: The swedish section of the IAMCP (International Association of Microsoft Certified Partners) have announced internally that they intend to take legal action against SIS (Swedish Standards Institute) over the OOXML standardisation debacle earlier this fall. And if they didn't look like assholes before they sure do now. First they avoided the democratic process, then they tried to buy the vote and when that was stopped they threaten legal action against SIS. Nice scare tactics.
Security

Submission + - Government-sponsored cyberattacks on the rise (networkworld.com) 1

Submitted by
jbrodkin
jbrodkin writes: "A new McAfee report finds that 120 countries, notably the United States and China, are launching Web espionage operations. Government-sponsored cyber attacks against enemy countries are becoming more common, targeting critical systems including electricity, air traffic control, financial markets and government computer networks. This year, Russia allegedly attacked Estonian government news and bank servers, while China was accused of hacking into the Pentagon. A McAfee researcher says this trend will accelerate, noting "it's easier to attack government X's database than it is to nuke their troops.""
The Media

Game Journalist May Have Been Fired Over Negative Review 397

Posted by Zonk from the that-was-not-a-move-you-should-have-made dept.
It started as a rumour post on Kotaku and a Penny Arcade comic strip: reviewer Jeff Gerstmann was fired from the gaming news site Gamespot for giving the co-op action title Kane and Lynch a low score, and snarking on the game in the review. The catch? The firing was dictated by games publisher Eidos, who didn't appreciate the veteran reviewer's tone in the piece. Their ad campaign (spread across the entirety of the Gamespot site) may have been used as a bargaining tool of some kind. Joystiq has a lengthy, detailed summary of this event and its implications, which is no longer technically a rumour. Gerstmann confirmed to the blog that he has been let go from the C|Net-affiliated site, but as of right now can't talk about the details. "The ramifications of the story, if true, are huge. Readers should fairly expect there to be an inviolable firewall between advertising and editorial in journalism, and game journalism (yes, that includes "just reviews") is no different. While our industry has had its fair share of accusations of impropriety, nothing so far has been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt. Giving a publisher the power to fire a senior editor is a line no outlet should be willing to cross." Update: 11/30 17:40 GMT by Z : The Joystiq story continues to be updated, and Tycho has put up what the PA guys heard about the tale in text. Joystiq also has an additional post about the story, with a brief (noncommittal) response from Gamespot.
Education

Submission + - MIT digitizes all its courses, asks: "What no (networkworld.com)

Submitted by
BobB
BobB writes: "MIT this week announced an important digital achievement: the completion of its pioneering OpenCourseWare project. The achievement is digitizing all the classroom materials for all of MIT's 1,800 academic courses, putting them online, and inviting anyone and everyone to do whatever they want with that information. It's called the OCW project, and it's spawning a global movement to make what had been jealously guarded education resources accessible to educators and learners everywhere."
Space

Submission + - First Evidence of Another Universe? 2

Submitted by blamanj
blamanj writes: Three months ago, astronomers announced the discovery of a large hole at the edge of our universe. Now, Dr. Laura Mersini-Houghton thinks she knows what that means. (Subscription req'd at New Scientist site, there's also an overview here.) According to string theory, there are many universes besides our own. Her team says that smaller universes are positioned at the edge of our universe, and because of gravitational interactions, they can be observed, and they're willing to make a prediction. The recently discovered void is in the northern hemisphere. They contend another one will be found in the southern hemisphere.
Windows

Submission + - More evidence that XP is Vista's main competitor (computerworld.com) 3

Submitted by
Ian Lamont
Ian Lamont writes: "Computerworld is reporting that Windows XP Service Pack 3 runs MS Office 10% faster than XP SP2 — and is "considerably faster" than Vista SP1. XP SP3 isn't scheduled to be released until next year, but testers at Devil Mountain Software — the same company which found Vista SP 1 to be hardly any faster than the debut version of Vista — were able to run some benchmarking tests on a release candidate of XP SP3, says the report. While this may be great news for XP owners, it is a problem for Microsoft, which is having trouble convincing business users to migrate to Vista: 'Vista's biggest competition isn't Apple or Novell or Red Hat; it's Microsoft itself, it's XP, [Forrester Research analyst Benjamin Gray] said. So enamored of XP are businesses that Microsoft may feel obligated to extend the operating system's mainstream support past its current April 2009 expiration date. ... He attributed the lowered expectations to a lack of detailed information about Vista in 2006; too-high prices for PCs with 2GB of memory, which is essentially the minimum needed for Vista, according to company managers; and a larger-than-expected number of incompatible applications.'"
Security

Submission + - Major QuickTime Vulnerability in Latest Version (beskerming.com)

Submitted by
SkiifGeek
SkiifGeek writes: "Less than a month after news of active OS X fake codec malware, a major vulnerability in the latest version of QuickTime (7.3, only released two weeks ago) has been discovered and has already gone from proof-of-concept exploit code to two readily available exploit samples.

With the ease by which this exploit can be integrated with media streams, it marks a greater threat for end users than a fake codec. At this stage, about the best mitigation recommended is to disable support for RTSP via the File Type / Advanced -> MIME Settings option in QuickTime's Control Panel / PreferencePane. Even though the exploit is only for Windows systems (including Vista — QuickTime apparently doesn't utilise ASLR), OS X users could be at threat from related problems, given historical RTSP vulnerabilities."
Censorship

Submission + - creationists violate copyright (blogspot.com)

Submitted by The_Rook
The_Rook writes: the discovery institute copied Harvard University's BioVisions video, "The Inner Life of the Cell", stripped out Harvard's copyright notice, credits, and narration, and inserted their own creationist friendly narration and renamed the video "The Cell as an automated city". pretty insidious, as suggesting that a cell is like a city is to suggest that it was designed rather than evolved. it should also be of interest because the discovery institute, really more of a lawyer mill than a scientific institution, engaged in a particularly egregious example of copyright infringement.
Security

Submission + - Critical .mdb flaw Found - Microsoft may Never fix (beskerming.com) 4

Submitted by
SkiifGeek
SkiifGeek writes: "When independent security researcher cocoruder found a critical bug with the JET engine, via the .mdb (Access) file format, he reported it to Microsoft, but Microsoft's response came as a surprise to him — it appears that Microsoft are not inclined to fix a critical arbitrary code execution vulnerability with a data technology that is at the heart of a large number of essential business and hobby applications.

Where should vendors be required to draw the line when supporting deprecated file formats and technology? In this case, leaving a serious vulnerability active in a deprecated technology could have serious effects if an exploit were to target it, but it is a matter of finding the right balance of security and usability such that Microsoft's users are not exposed to too great a danger for continuing to use Microsoft products."
Windows

Submission + - Vista SP1 a Performance Dud (blogspot.com)

Submitted by
Craig Barth
Craig Barth writes: "With the initial performance characteristics of Windows Vista leaving much to be desired (see our previous post on the subject), many IT organizations have put off deploying the new OS until the first service pack (SP1) is released by Microsoft early next year. The thinking goes that SP1 will address all of these early performance issues and somehow bring Windows Vista on par with — or at least closer to — Windows XP in terms of runtime performance. Unfortunately, this is simply not the case. Extensive testing by the exo.performance.network (www.xpnet.com) research staff shows that SP1 provides no measurable relief to users saddled with sub-par performance under Vista."
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft's treatment towards Google defectors (valleywag.com)

Submitted by
Miguel de Icaza
Miguel de Icaza writes: "Here is a story revealing just how threatened microsoft are by google. While senior partners can expect the full chair experience, some lowly staffers who are putting in their notice are being escorted off campus immediately. Why? Because they've put in their notice to join Google. In Microsoft's eyes, Google is Enemy No. 1. Anyone leaving Redmond for the search leader is a threat. Not because they'll scurry around collecting company secrets — as if Google's interested in Microsoft's '90s-era technologies. Departing employees, however, might tell other 'Softies how much better Google is. If an employee is leaving for Amazon.com or another second-tier employer which doesn't make Microsoft so paranoid, they'll probably serve out the traditional two weeks of unproductive wrapping up. So if you're planning on leaving Microsoft for Google, pack up your belongings and say goodbye to friends ahead of time. There'll be no cake and two weeks of paid slacking for you."
Programming

Submission + - The effects of Open Source on Software Development (blogspot.com)

Submitted by
phomer
phomer writes: "We live an an era where software was become open and freely available. The Open Source revolution has brought huge changes to programming, but underneath all of the noise and hype, what are the real effects of having access to a glut of software? Is this helping to enhance Computer Science, or are the effects actually hurting it? This series of two essays looks at the impact of Open Source on Computer Science (shrink-wrapped software) and on Consulting."
The Internet

Submission + - MySpace Hacked Using Simple HTML Exploit (centernetworks.com) 1

Submitted by babooo404
babooo404 writes: It appears a new hack and exploit has appeared on MySpace — Alicia Keys profile is affected along with a variety of others to-date. The hack and exploit is pretty simple but very "deadly". Basically a user puts a link to the infected ste with just a simple href tag (no script tag) using some css to position the element anywhere that an element doesn't already live. So if you mis-click, you get sent to the infected site and it prompts you to install a codec to listen to Alicia's music. Of course it's not a codec, it's some sort of virus. Roger Thompson from Exploit Prevention Labs found the exploit.
The Media

Submission + - Canadian RCMP's abandon the Music piracy fight ! (ledevoir.com) 1

Submitted by
Laindraug
Laindraug writes: "The 'Le Devoir' French canadian Montreal Newspaper had a front page title today ( november 8) that said (once traduced) : 'Pirates can sleep well' : RCMP'S is abandoning the fight against music piracy because 'its just too big to fight against' ` The newspaper also shows the difference between Canada and USA, stating that in october, Jammie Thomas in USA was condemned to a 220 000$ dollar fine for having downloaded 24 mp3's..and in Canada, there will just be no more police to look at this kind of piracy. 'Today, its so simple to copy, everybody is clueless on how to fight this' , as stated by Canadian RCMP's. Canadian Pirates, rejoice."
Communications

Submission + - Should 'unlimited' mean unlimited? 2

Submitted by Tom Colimbone
Tom Colimbone writes: Recently, Verizon Wireless agreed to settle a probe into the marketing of its Internet usage plans and reimburse $1 million to customers for wrongful account termination. The issue was centered around the use of the word 'unlimited' in its marketing campaigns for mobile Internet access. Interestingly, O2 in the UK just changed its iPhone tariff, as many potential buyers noticed that the 'unlimited' data package that came with the iPhone was actually capped at 200MB, which wasn't unlimited at all. Outside of wireless providers this might seem like a bizarre question to ask but should the word 'unlimited' truly mean unlimited and if so, should anyone misusing the word have to face similar repercussions to Verizon.

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