johkir writes "As early as 1965, when Al Gore was a freshman in college, a panel of distinguished environmental scientists warned President Lyndon B. Johnson that CO2 emissions from fossil fuels might cause 'marked changes in climate' that 'could be deleterious.' Yet the scientists did not so much as mention the possibility of reducing emissions. Instead they considered one idea: 'spreading very small reflective particles' over about five million square miles of ocean, so as to bounce about 1 percent more sunlight back to space — 'a wacky geoengineering solution.' In the decades since, geoengineering ideas never died, but they did get pushed to the fringe — they were widely perceived by scientists and environmentalists alike as silly and even immoral attempts to avoid addressing the root of the problem of global warming. Three recent developments have brought them back into the mainstream." We've discussed some pretty strange ideas in the geoengineering line over the last few years.

AnonCow sends in a peculiar story from TorrentFreak, which describes the plight of a free-download music site that has been summarily evicted from the Internet for violating its own copyright. The problem seems to revolve around the host's insistence that proof of copyright be snail-mailed to them. Kind of difficult when your copyright takes the form of a Creative Commons license that cannot be verified unless its site is up. "The website of an Internet-based record label which offers completely free music downloads has been taken down by its host for copyright infringement, even though it only offers its own music. Quote Unquote Records calls itself 'The First Ever Donation Based Record Label,' but is currently homeless after its host pulled the plug."

penguin_dance writes "The Register reports that 'OpenOffice.org is throwing a launch party in Paris on 13 October' to celebrate eight years, and hopefully announce the release of version 3.0. Some notes: [OpenOffice.org 3.0] will support the OpenDocument Format 1.2 standard, and be able to open files created by MS Office 2007 and Office 2008 for Mac OS X." As maj_id10t notes, though the OO.o site does not yet carry an announcement, "Lifehacker has posted an entry stating the final release of OpenOffice 3.0 is available for download via their distribution mirrors."

snydeq writes "Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister takes Microsoft's recently released Touchless SDK for a test spin, controlling his Asus Eee PC 901 with a Roma tomato. The Touchless SDK is a set of .Net components that can be used to simulate the gestural interfaces of devices like the iPhone in thin air — using an ordinary USB Webcam. Although McAllister was able to draw, scroll, and play a rudimentary game with his tomato, the SDK still has some kinks to work out. 'For starters, its marker-location algorithm is very much keyed to color,' he writes. 'That's probably an efficient way to identify contrasting shapes, but color response varies by camera and is heavily influenced by ambient light conditions.' Moreover, the detection routine soaked up 64 percent of McAllister's 1.6GHz Atom CPU, with the video from the Webcam soon developing a few seconds' lag that made controlling onscreen cursors challenging. Project developer Mike Wasserman offers a video demo of the technology."

riverman writes "I have been 'provisioned' at the school where I work to teach a new Computer Science/Programming course. I'm supposed to be teaching everything from the very-very basics (i.e. where that myspace thing is in your computer monitor, and how it knows who your friends are) to the easy-advanced (i.e. PHP classes and Python/Google App Engine). I'm an experienced programmer, but I'm not sure where to start — I could easily assume that my students know something basic they don't. Are there any resources on the internet that could help me find a solid curriculum? What are your suggestions?" I'm sure many of us have gone through intro-level programming courses of some sort; what are some things your teacher or professor did that worked well, and what didn't work at all?

With the entry to sub-orbital flight, and even orbital flight, becoming ever so slightly easier, the obvious thought of space porn kicks in. Who wouldn't want to see two or more people going at it like rabbits in a weightless environment (or at least trying to go at it like rabbits in a weightless environment)? Sadly, Virgin Galactic has turned down a $1 million offer to do just that. The offer was made by an unidentified party who was willing to put the money up front to do a space porn movie. Considering that a flight aboard VG costs $200,000 for a two-hour flight, $1 million doesn't seem too bad. Though how much you could actually do and perform in two hours is debatable. And what if one or more of the actors gets sick?

Back in May, we told you about Swiss pilot Yves Rossy and his personal jet powered wing. It seems Mr. Rossy will now try to cross the English Channel with his invention. The flight was planned for Sept. 25 but had to be canceled due to poor weather. Yves will leap from a plane more than 2,500 meters off the ground, fire up his jets and try to make the 35-kilometer flight from Calais in France to Dover in England. If all goes well, the flight will take about 12 minutes. I'd like to officially ask Mr. Rossy for a review model for Slashdot.

alphadogg writes "With costs related to a rogue network administrator's hijacking of the city's network now estimated at $1 million, city officials say they are searching for a mysterious networking device hidden somewhere on the network. The device, referred to as a 'terminal server' in court documents, appears to be a router that was installed to provide remote access to the city's Fiber WAN network, which connects municipal computer and telecommunication systems throughout the city. City officials haven't been able to log in to the device, however, because they do not have the username and password. In fact, the city's Department of Telecommunications and Information Services isn't even certain where the device is located, court filings state."

Penguinisto writes "According to a somewhat jaw-dropping story in The Register, it appears that Microsoft has performed a trifecta of geek-scaring feats: They have joined the Apache Software Foundation as a Platinum member(at $100K USD a year), submitted LGPL-licensed patches for ADOdb, and have pledged to expand their Open Specifications Promise by adding to the list more than 100 protocols for interoperability between its Windows Server and the Windows client. While I sincerely doubt they'll release Vista under a GPL license anytime soon, this is certainly an unexpected series of moves on their part, and could possibly lead to more OSS (as opposed to 'Shared Source') interactivity between what is arguably Linux' greatest adversary and the Open Source community." (We mentioned the announced support for the Apache Foundation earlier today, as well.)

An anonymous reader writes "For years, domain squatters have exploited an ICANN loophole: whenever a domain name is registered, ICANN collects a 20-cent fee from the registrar. To allow for non-paying customers, the registrar can return it five days later for a full refund. The loophole has let unscrupulous registrars constantly create and refund domain-squatting websites, selling 'what you need when you need it' advertising. The problem has grown so bad that every month the world's top three domain squatters, all located in Miami with the same address and represented by the same lawyer, recycle 11 million domain names. After years of complaints, ICANN has finally begun moving on the problem. On April 17 ICANN's Generic Names Supporting Organization voted to make the ICANN 20-cent fee non-refundable. If the ICANN board ratifies this position in June, those top three squatters will be getting a monthly bill for $2.2M. News of the ICANN changes has been applauded by legitimate Internet businesses, tired of having to choose nonsense names because all the good ones have been squatted. ICANN has published an analysis of the economics of ending domain squatting."

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "The day many have been waiting for has finally arrived, the day SCO gets torn apart in court by Novell. Each side gets 10 hours, and Novell managed to get them to agree to a stipulation (PDF) that should make things go a lot faster. With any luck, we will soon have an official ruling that SCO does not own much of anything and then we just have to wait for SCO to exhaust its appeals. This would've been over a long time ago, but SCO filed for bankruptcy on the eve of trial, stopping the clock. One can only wonder what trick they will try to pull this time."

Trailrunner7 writes "Database security super-genius David Litchfield has found a way to manipulate common Oracle data types, which were not thought to be exploitable, and inject arbitrary SQL commands. The new method shows that you can no longer assume any data types are safe from attacker input, regardless of their location or function. 'In conclusion, even those functions and procedures that don't take user input can be exploited if SYSDATE is used. The lesson here is always, always validate and prevent this type of vulnerability getting into your code. The second lesson is that no longer should DATE or NUMBER data types be considered as safe and not useful as injection vectors: as this paper (PDF) has proved, they are,' Litchfield writes."

bfwebster writes "Microsoft has lost its appeal to remove class-action status for the 'Vista Capable' lawsuit that has already resulted in some embarrassing internal e-mails being released publicly. As Computerworld reports, in its appeal to the US Ninth Circuit Court, Microsoft argued (among other things) that 'continuing the lawsuit might mean new disclosures of insider e-mails, which could "jeopardize Microsoft's goodwill" and "disrupt Microsoft's relationships with its business partners."' Given what's been released so far (158-page PDF), not to mention Microsoft's history of rather frank internal e-mails, that's probably putting it mildly. There could be some interesting reading ahead."