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Security

Submission + - Recover from a virus attack

Submitted by spge
spge writes: Wondered if it was possible to clean up an infected PC without using anti-virus software. Apparently it's possible. Why would you bother? Because some of the most popular anti-virus software around is not that great.

Surely anti-virus software is properly tested and has certificates to prevent rubbish being peddled to punters? Well, it also seems that AV certificates are pretty useless.

I've linked to three separate articles on the same site — I hope it survives a slashdotting >:)
Bug

Submission + - 45th bugday

Submitted by
Dimitry Bradt
Dimitry Bradt writes: "Gentoo Linux is having it's 45th bugday next saturnday!
You have probably asked yourself: "What is bugday?". Well, that's the super cool user-relations project where users and developers are working together with one same objective, namely: fixing various bugs in Gentoo. Bugday is an event which is held every first saturnday of the month in #gentoo-bugs on irc.freenode.org. We(read as: Gentoo) promote it to have it take place in lugs, because it is all about having fun, learning, meeting new people who love gentoo and off course, it is also about fixing bugs :-)

History
Once upon a time, or august 2nd, 2003 in the common year counting, Iggy created the bugday project, by making the GLEP6 proposal. He pretty much based gentoo bugdays on similar ideas from python and other projects that have had irregularly scheduled bugdays or bugsprints for many years. Iggy lead bugday the first year approximately and then resigned from gentoo because of real life issues etc. After the bugday creator resigned Bryan Østergaard took over as bugday lead which lasted about 2 years or so until he handed the project over to Alexander Færøy, the current bugday project lead. Back then, bugday lead to the expension of developers base, such as port001, puggy, pyrania and kloeri.

What is bugday now?
The bugday project is currently based on a small group of developers, who in most cases have no specific roles. We are currently looking for contributors, since most users who stay around in the bugday project become developers.

How does it work?
We list some bugs on http://bugday.gentoo.org/ with a direct link to our Bugzilla setup (http://bugs.gentoo.org). Then users can write fixes, or suggest how to fix problems. After that developers can commit the fixes from users to the gentoo-x86 cvs-repository. In the future users will have access to bugday.gentoo.org, trough their bugzilla login information.

Can I contribute?
Off course! It really doesn't take any special knowledge to fix bugs. While your working with bugs, we learn you about the Gentoo development process to speed up the repairing of bugs. The bugday is also a prefect place to get invited to the gentoo development project. We are actually constantly recruiting potential users, since Gentoo is growing very fast."
The Internet

Berners-Lee Speaks Out Against DRM, Advocates Net Neutrality 187

Posted by Zonk from the papa-don't-speak-i'm-in-trouble dept.
narramissic writes "Speaking before the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet, Tim Berners-Lee advocated for net neutrality, saying that the Web deserves 'special treatment' as a communications medium to protect its nondiscriminatory approach to content. Berners-Lee's more controversial statements came on the topic of DRM, in which he suggested that instead of DRM, copyright holders should provide information on how to legally use online material, allowing users the opportunity 'to do the right thing.' This led to an odd exchange with Representative Mary Bono who compared Berner-Lee's suggestion to 'having a speed limit but not enforcing the speed limit.'"
The Media

Why the Gaming-Violence Connection is So Comforting 125

Posted by Zonk from the feel-good-violence dept.
Warm Coffee writes "It's is well-established that the science supporting a connection between video game violence and real-world violence is tenuous. A new article at Ars Technica examines why society finds a gaming-violence connection so comforting. From the article: 'Sternheimer suggests that gaming is simply the latest in a long series of media influences to take the blame. "Over the past century, politicians have complained that cars, radio, movies, rock music, and even comic books caused youth immorality and crime, calling for control and sometimes censorship." She terms the targets of such efforts folk devils, items branded dangerous and immoral that serve to focus blame and fear.'"
Security

Submission + - P2P Virus threatens to kill people

Submitted by
Burento
Burento writes: "The virus has two variants Troj/Pirlames-A and Troj/Pirlames-B, masquerades as a screensaver and attacks files with these popular extensions — EXE, BAT, CMD, INI, ASP, HTM, HTML, PHP, CLASS, JAVA, DBX, EML, MBX, TBB, WAB, HLP, TXT, MP3, XLS, LOG, BMP — overwriting them with images of comic book character Ayu Tsukimiya. http://www.weirdasianews.com/2007/03/01/p2p-virus- threatens-to-kill-people/"
Space

Submission + - Attempt No Landings There

Submitted by Intron
Intron writes: The New Horizons mission to former planet Pluto just had it's closest approach to gravity assistant Jupiter. Despite the cutely named instruments Lorri and Pepssi, it performed some serious scientific work sending back pictures of Tvashtar's Plume, a volcano on Io and a nice closeup shot of Europa.
Software

Submission + - FSF aims for partnership with hardware vendors

Submitted by
johnsu01
johnsu01 writes: "The Free Software Foundation has published a paper called, "The road to hardware free from restrictions". In the paper, they outline five major areas where hardware manufacturers can take action to create a mutually benificial relationship with the free software community: supporting free software drivers, ending the "Microsoft Tax" on new hardware, removing proprietary BIOS locks, supporting a free BIOS, and rejecting DRM. Their release puts the paper in context with Greg Kroah-Hartman's kernel driver announcement and Dell's recent request for customer feedback about improving their hardware."
Microsoft

Submission + - Bill Gates Talks about 640k (1989)

Submitted by Andareed
Andareed writes: It seems that there might finally be proof of Bill Gates statement about how "640k ought to be enough for anybody". NewsForge has an article about a talk given by Bill Gates in 1989. Bill Gates apparently let slip that in 1981 he figured 640k would be good enough for the next 10 years.
PHP

Submission + - Writing text with PHP, which method is the fastest

Submitted by
gjohansson
gjohansson writes: "The other day I saw a discussion on a forum about what php-code to use if you want your script to be as FAST as possible. The discussion was about whether "print" or "echo" should be used, and I thought that probably the tags would be faster to use than either of print and echo. Is there any difference?

http://agent55.blogspot.com/2007/03/textout-with-p hp-which-one-is-really.html"
Businesses

Submission + - EA sells music from video games via Apple's iTunes

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: Reuters is reporting that Electronic Arts began offering music from its games through Apple's iTunes. EA said songs will be priced like others on the system at 99 cents each.
IBM

Submission + - Lenova recalls 100,000 laptop batteries

Submitted by
Thundgelmir
Thundgelmir writes: "Chinese PC maker Lenova, who bought the namesake to IBM's thinkpad, has just had to recall 100,000 laptop batteries after recieving four reports of them overheating. From the article: It's the second battery recall for Lenovo in less than six months. In September, 526,000 rechargeable, lithium-ion Sony batteries purchased with ThinkPad computers were recalled after one of them caught fire at Los Angeles International Airport."
Software

Submission + - FLICKR downtime caused havoc in bloggerworld

Submitted by
petercasier
petercasier writes: "Recent FLICKR server problems caused havoc in the blogger world and beyond. Most users saw their pictures being replaced by others. This caused funny, obscene, frustrating, obscure, incredible,.. results. The FLICKR forum went nuts with people going nuts. A funny snapshot of the problems cause, you can read in: How a 30,000 Ton Ice Breaker was Replaced by a Flowerpot"
Portables (Apple)

Submission + - Mac Sales Up 100% in January

Submitted by
Phooey42
Phooey42 writes: "Apple Insider is reporting that Apple's Mac line of computers saw a year-over-year growth rate over 100 percent during the month of January. The article refers to "market research data which implies that year-over-year growth in Mac unit sales accelerated in January to 101 percent, up from 55 percent in December." As if that weren't good enough news for Apple, it article also notes that, "January was the third-largest revenue month for Mac notebooks ever.""

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