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Security

Submission + - A Gateway for Hackers

Submitted by odyaws
odyaws writes: The Washington Post is carrying a story about an unintended consequence of Congress allowing telecommunications surveillance without even a FISA warrant if one party is outside the United States: the infrastructure required could provide a juicy target for foreign intelligence agencies and rogue hackers. By making it possible for the NSA to listen in (particularly since they need to be able to listen in only on conversations including a party outside the US), it could also be possible for others to access our phone calls. The author points out that this threat is not just theoretical, citing specific attacks in Greece and the US. While it's natural to be suspicious of any government wiretapping program, have we been missing the larger threat of the security hole it opens?
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft struggling to gain endorsement for OOXML (computerworld.com.au)

Submitted by Tri
Tri writes: The Open Source Industry of Australia (OSIA) has formally contacted Standards Australia, requesting that Microsoft's Office Open XML (OOXML) format not be endorsed by the body as an ISO standard.

  "Quite apart from the technical problems with OOXML, the main problem from OSIA's point of view is a substantive one — the 'standard' is designed so that it can only be implemented by a single vendor", said Brendan Scott, Director of Open Source Industry Australia. "So, while in theory a third party could create an independent implementation, in practice it is very unlikely", he said.
It's funny. Laugh.

Submission + - Two-Word Malware License Agreement (theregister.co.uk)

Submitted by
Tech.Luver
Tech.Luver writes: "theRegister writes via Stopbadware.org about 'two-word' license agreement of a malware, " it's refreshing to find an agreement that gets straight to the point without wasting users' time scrolling down through something they aren't going to read anyway. A license agreement for a malware-bundled codec from hotelcodec(dot)com simply says: "FUCK YOU".""
Enlightenment

Submission + - Actual Zombies in North-Eastern Cambodia. (myspace.com) 3

Submitted by
Talon705
Talon705 writes: "A new strain of Malaria carried by mosquitoes in North-Eastern Cambodia has a 100% mortality rate. It kills within 2 days and then restarts the heart for about two hours, during which the infected act rather violently from a combination of brain damage and chemicals released in the brain during reanimation.

My thoughts: Holy freakin' piss! At least no one has said anything about the disease being transmitted through the infected ... just from those freakin' mosquitoes....

http://65.127.124.62/south_asia/4483241.stm.htm"
Microsoft

Submission + - Free as in free milk (freesoftwaremagazine.com)

Submitted by
mrcgran
mrcgran writes: "FSFDaily is running a story about Microsoft's business practices in developing countries: 'A first draft of this article has been sitting for months in my hard disk. I decided to finish it after reading that Microsoft will offer its operating system and office suite for $3 per machine to developing countries. That made me think of the way the giant software company "helps" these countries by giving licenses of its proprietary software almost for free, and that in turn made me think of free milk. Let me tell you about it.'"
Supercomputing

Submission + - Students build supercomputers from bits, pieces

Submitted by
spudnic
spudnic writes: "The LSU Center for Computation and Technology and Chief Scientist Thomas Sterling developed the free summer boot camp as a pilot program to expand statewide as early as next year. "They literally assembled these themselves and loaded the software," said Sterling, pointing to the computer monitors and the stacks of computing nodes on top each other. "They built these from bits and pieces, so it's really hands-on experience." "I can't live in an ivory tower and assume we'll be delivered a steady stream of students," said Sterling, who is best known for creating the Beowulf supercomputing cluster — a group of usually identical computers working together — while at NASA."
The Media

Submission + - Bad Thai cops to endure Kitty shame (yahoo.com)

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: BANGKOK, Thailand — Thai police officers who break rules will be forced to wear hot pink armbands featuring "Hello Kitty," the Japanese icon of cute, as a mark of shame, a senior officer said Monday.
Sci-Fi

Submission + - William Gibson gives up on the future

Submitted by Tinkle
Tinkle writes: Sci-fi novellist William Gibson has given up trying to predict the future — because he says it's become far too difficult. In an interview with silicon.com, Gibson explains why his latest book is set in the recent past.

From the Q&A:
"We hit a point somewhere in the mid-18th century where we started doing what we think of technology today and it started changing things for us, changing society. Since World War II it's going literally exponential and what we are experiencing now is the real vertigo of that — we have no idea at all now where we are going."

"Will global warming catch up with us? Is that irreparable? Will technological civilisation collapse? There seems to be some possibility of that over the next 30 or 40 years or will we do some Verner Vinge singularity trick and suddenly become capable of everything and everything will be cool and the geek rapture will arrive? That's a possibility too."
The Media

Submission + - Bloggers Consider Forming Labor Union (newsvine.com)

Submitted by
truthsearch
truthsearch writes: "In a move that might make some people scratch their heads, a loosely formed coalition of left-leaning bloggers are trying to band together to form a labor union they hope will help them receive health insurance, conduct collective bargaining or even set professional standards. The effort is an extension of the blogosphere's growing power and presence, especially within the political realm, and for many, evokes memories of the early labor organization of freelance writers in the early 1980s. There's decidedly less support for a union movement among conservative bloggers."
Intel

Submission + - Apologies from Intel (intel.com) 1

Submitted by Timothy T Li
Timothy T Li writes: We made a bad mistake. I know why and how, but that simply doesn't make it better. The intent behind our ad campaign "Multiply Computing Performance and Maximize the Power of Your Employees" was to convey the performance capabilities of our processors through a number of visual metaphors. Unfortunately, while we have used a visual of sprinters in the past appropriately, this ad of using African-American sprinters did not deliver our intended message and in fact proved to be culturally insensitive and insulting. Upon recognizing this, I directed that the creative be destroyed and this be immediately pulled from hundreds of planned or potential publications worldwide. I am aware of four remaining instances which were in flight, but we believe they have been intercepted and destroyed; we were not able to intercept two instances that had already shipped or are in transit. In addition, we continue to search for any remaining placements that may still exist that we are unaware of. We are sincerely sorry and have identified specific steps covering heightened cultural sensitivity, our review and approval process, and just using more common sense to ensure that this does not happen again. — Don MacDonald, vice president of sales and marketing and director of global marketing
Privacy

Submission + - House approves warrantless wiretapping.

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: The House of Representatives voted 227-183 to update the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to allow warrantless wiretapping of telephone and electronic communications. The vote extends the FISA amendment for six months. The final vote results are available here.
GNU is Not Unix

Submission + - iD and Valve violating GPL

Submitted by frooge
frooge writes: With the recent release of iD's catalog on Steam, it appears DOSBox is being used to run the old DOS games for greater compatibility. According to a post on the Halflife2.net forums, however, this distribution does not contain a copy of the GPL license that DOSBox is distributed under, which violates the license. According to the DOSBox developers, they were not notified that it was being used for this release.
Security

Submission + - DDOS Hacker gets OWNED by Cannabis Culture Forums (digg.com)

Submitted by ArghMonkey
ArghMonkey writes: Looks like the hacker responsible for over 20 DDOS attacks on various sites, Eric Leech, finally has been exposed and through some internet investigation his name, picture, address, house picture, phone number etc. is available to the public. Suffered from a DDOS? Check out the link to see if you recognize the guy.
Music

Submission + - Would you buy this CD or download it? (youtube.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Paul Potts won the British TV show "Britain has Talent" with this opera song. His CD "One Chance" was released about two weeks ago. A real Cinderella story: a mobile phone salesman; not very good looking, blows the world away with sheer talent. YouTube has more than 5000 comments from stunned viewers. For the first time in 10 years I went to a music shop to buy a CD — because of the awesome talent and modest attitude of the artist. RIAA take note: I don't mind paying for quality. My question to Slashdotters: will you buy this CD or just download?

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