nazrhyn - Slashdot User

Submission + - Apple hides account info in DRM-free music

Submitted by

Mike

on Wednesday May 30, 2007 @04:35PM

Mike writes: "Songs sold by the Apple iTunes store without DRM still have a user's full name and account e-mail embedded in them, reports Arstechnica. After examining the files Arstechnica noticed their names and e-mail addresses in the files, and they've found corroboration of the find at TUAW, The Unofficial Apple Weblog. Since the entertainment industry is obsessed with the idea of "casual piracy," or the occasional sharing of content between friends it see,s likely that this information will be used to keep tabs on who buys what, and more importantly, where it ends up. Although spoofing the data is trivial, shouldn't the idea that your account name and email address are contained in the files make you uneasy, to say the least?"

Submission + - CDW to be acquired by Madison Dearborn Partners LL

Submitted by Justin Michael on Wednesday May 30, 2007 @04:12PM

Justin Michael writes: Madison Dearborn Partners LLC, a private equity firm, has agreed to acquire CDW. The price offered is a significant rise on the May 25 price and CDW stock is reacting to the news. CDW sells via the Internet and retail stores, which distinguishes it from many of its Internet only or big-box only competitors. CDW has done its own acquisitions, including Berbee Information Networks and MicroWarehouse.

Submission + - Putting Captcha's to good use.

Submitted by

Drewsk

on Wednesday May 30, 2007 @03:13PM

Drewsk writes: "A story in CNN suggests that worldwide, we are wasting a total of 150,000 hours per day typing in the useless CAPTCHA's that webservers want in order to ensure we're humans and not robots. A new project underway, dubbed "reCAPTCHA" is an effort to put all that time to good use in much the same way that SETI likes to use our computer's spare time. In essence, all of the worlds books that are being scanned in to the Internet cannot all be read by OCR. Some have to be typed manually and others need passages clarified as words are unclear. The project wants to send those passages (words) out as Captcha's so we can all contribute to the world's online libraries... Read more."

Submission + - A Green Brick and the Mind Behind it

Submitted by on Wednesday May 30, 2007 @02:55PM

An anonymous reader writes: Popular Science is running a feature on Henry Liu, inventor of the fly ash brick. Though initially an accident, Liu's brick (made from the byproducts of coal-power plants) costs less and is more-environmentally friendly than its counterparts. Great timing, too, as the NSF just released a safety report noting that the brick not only pollutes less, but even manages to pull small amounts of toxic metals from the surrounding air. It's the type of seemingly small innovation that could very well revolutionize entire cities.

Submission + - Insecure Firefox Add-Ons Invite Browser Hijacking

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 30, 2007 @02:47PM

An anonymous reader writes: Many makers of extensions or add-ons for Firefox are introducing ways for bad guys to hijack the Web browser, new research suggests. A great many add-ons are updated over insecure (non https:/// connections, providing an avenue for attackers to replace the extension with an evil update. From the story: "As a result, if an attacker were to hijack a public Wi-Fi hot spot at a coffeehouse or bookstore — a fairly trivial attack given the myriad free, point-and-click hacking tools available today — he could also intercept this update process and replace a Firefox add-on with a malicious one."

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