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Microsoft

Microsoft Pursues Botnet Herders Via Newspaper Ads 28

itwbennett writes "Although it is extremely unlikely that anyone associated with Rustock will step forward, Microsoft has taken out ads in two Russian newspapers to notify unnamed defendants in the legal suit. The move is a legal formality required as part of Microsoft's ongoing lawsuit in the U.S. against operators of Rustock. The advertisements will run for 30 days in the Delovoy Petersburg newspaper, located in St. Petersburg, and in The Moscow News, a daily newspaper, wrote Richard Boscovich, a senior attorney with Microsoft's Digital Crimes Unit."
The Internet

Georgia Tech's ShaperProbe Detects ISP Traffic Manipulation 113

An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from Ars Technica: "Two researchers at Georgia Tech can tell you exactly how American ISPs shape Internet traffic, and which ones do so. Bottom line: of the five largest Internet providers in the country, the three cable companies (Comcast, Time Warner, Cox) employ shaping while the telephone companies (AT&T, Verizon) do not — though that fact is less significant for the user experience than it might first sound."

Comment Re:Less non-corporate info (Score 1) 385

decent radio as we know it just DIED across most of rural America

um no. The House voted to defund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), from which NPR gets some but not all of its money. The provision won't make it out of the Senate, and even if it does the President still has to sign it into law, and even if he does NPR still gets revenue from user donations and from local stations subscribing to its content.

It's a damn shame that House Republicans are playing games like this when they promised to make this legislative session all about job creation, and I donated my sixty bucks to NPR as soon as I heard of this happening, but let's not distort the facts here. That makes you just as untrustworthy as Fox News.

Comment Re:All this effort, just to avoid the real problem (Score 3, Interesting) 1306

Oh dear - you just imagined a government providing no safety net to citizens and no confidence to investors until some vaguely-defined point in the future! How silly of you!

State and federal governments are not spending too much money - if anything, they're not spending enough (and not only that but they're taxing the wrong people to get it). The job of the government is to provide for the security and well-being of its citizens. Cutting spending during a massive economic downturn is absolutely no way to do that job. Providing help through stimulus and job creation is.

I swear, it's like the only lesson all the small-government starve-the-beast meatheads learned from the Great Depression is to have a couple of wars when your country is going to shit.
Google

Bing Becomes No.2 Search Engine at 4.37% 366

suraj.sun writes "Bing overtook Yahoo for the first time worldwide in January, and increased its lead in February, according to web analytics company, StatCounter. Its research arm StatCounter Global Stats finds that globally Bing reached 4.37%, in February ahead of Yahoo! at 3.93%. Both trail far behind Google's 89.94% of the global search engine market." Just a little more plagiarizing to go!
Electronic Frontier Foundation

EFF Uncovers Widespread FBI Intelligence Violations 268

An anonymous reader writes "EFF has uncovered widespread violations stemming from FBI intelligence investigations from 2001 — 2008. In a report released today, EFF documents alarming trends in the Bureau's intelligence investigation practices, suggesting that FBI intelligence investigations have compromised the civil liberties of American citizens far more frequently, and to a greater extent, than was previously assumed. Using documents obtained through EFF's Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) litigation, the report finds: Evidence of delays of 2.5 years, on average, between the occurrence of a violation and its eventual reporting to the Intelligence Oversight Board; reports of serious misconduct by FBI agents including lying in declarations to courts, using improper evidence to obtain grand jury subpoenas, and accessing password-protected files without a warrant; and indications that the FBI may have committed upwards of 40,000 possible intelligence violations in the 9 years since 9/11."
Medicine

Engineer Designs His Own Heart Valve Implant 151

nametaken writes "In 2000, Tal Golesworthy, a British engineer, was told that he suffers from Marfan syndrome, a disorder of the connective tissue that often causes rupturing of the aorta. The only solution then available was the pairing of a mechanical valve and a highly risky blood thinner. To an engineer like Golesworthy, that just wasn't good enough. So he constructed his own implant that does the job better than the existing solution--and became the first patient to try it."
Advertising

Your Face Will Soon Be In Facebook Ads 344

jfruhlinger writes "If you're planning on checking into Starbucks using Facebook Places, your friends may soon see your profile picture in a Facebook ad for Starbucks — and, it goes without saying, you won't be paid a dime. You can't opt out, unless, as Dan Tynan puts it, "studiously avoid clicking "Like" or checking into any place that has a six- or seven-figure ad budget." The ad will also include whatever text you use in your checkin, so Tynan suggests some judicious pranksterism ("Just checked into the Starbucks around the corner and this doppio mocha latte tastes like goat urine")."

Comment Total FUD (Score 4, Interesting) 429

For decades the Mac has had a viable shareware scene where you download apps and, if desired, pay a modest fee to upgrade to a full or non-crippled version. I don't see how anyone could possibly argue that a Mac App Store will be the end of the world unless they're a clueless analyst who thinks the only programs people run on Macs are Photoshop and Office.
The Military

Sarah Palin 'Target WikiLeaks Like Taliban' 1425

DMandPenfold writes "Sarah Palin, who is widely tipped as a possible Republican candidate for president in 2012, has said WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange should be hunted down in the way armed forces are targeting the Taliban and Al-Qaeda." So that means we should spend billions of dollars and not catch him? Good plan.

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