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The Ultimate "Doll House" For WoW Players Screenshot-sm 44

Posted by samzenpus from the never-leave-the-house-again dept.
BoyIHateMicrosoft! writes "A friend of mine sent me this link today about a group of MIT students who have created something called a WoWPod. It's like a playhouse for WoW players. It has everything from Refreshing Spring Water, to food (Like Crunchy Spider Surprise of course!) to a toilet and of course the appropriate gaming gear."
The Military

DARPA's Map-Based Wiki Keeps Platoons Alive 86

Posted by samzenpus from the a-wiki-of-one dept.
blackbearnh writes "One of the biggest problem that a platoon on the ground in Iraq or Afghanistan faces is that when a new unit cycles in, all the street-sense and experience of the old unit is lost. Knowing where insurgents like to plant IEDs, or even which families have a lot of domestic disputes, can spell the difference between living and dying. In response to this, DARPA created TIGR, the Tactical Ground Reporting System. Developed as much on the ground in active warzones as in a lab, TIGR lets platoons access the latest satellite and drone imagery in an easy-to-use map based interface, as well as recording their experiences in the field and accessing the reports of other troops. In this O'Reilly Radar interview, two of the people responsible for the development of TIGR talk about the intel issues that troops face in hostile territory, the challenges of deploying new technology meant for combat areas, the specific tricks that they had to employ to make TIGR work over less-than-robust military networking, and how TIGR is impacting platoons in their day to day operations"
Security

Botnet Expert Wants 'Special Ops' Security Teams 115

Posted by timothy from the if-wishes-were-horses dept.
CWmike writes "Criminal cybergangs must be harried, hounded and hunted until they're driven out of business, a noted botnet researcher said as he prepared to pitch a new anti-malware strategy at the RSA Conference in SF. 'We need a new approach to fighting cybercrime,' said Joe Stewart, director of SecureWorks' counterthreat unit. 'What we're doing now is not making a significant dent.' He said teams of paid security researchers should set up like a police department's major crimes unit or a military special operations team, perhaps infiltrating the botnet group and employing a spectrum of disruptive tactics. Stewart cited last November's takedown of McColo as one success story. Another is the Conficker Working Group. 'Criminals are operating with the same risk-effort-reward model of legitimate businesses,' said Stewart. 'If we really want to dissuade them, we have to attack all three of those. Only then can we disrupt their business.'"
Networking

Should Network Cables Be Replaced? 524

Posted by timothy from the depends-where-you-work dept.
Jyms writes "As technology changes, so hubs routers and switches are upgraded, but does the cabling need replacing, and if so, how often? Coax gave way to CAT 5 and CAT 5e replaced that. If you are running a 100Mbit/s network on old CAT 5, can that affect performance? Do CAT 5(e) cables get old?"
Data Storage

Online Storage For Lawyers? 287

Posted by timothy from the due-diligence-best-practices dept.
alharaka writes "I have a relative that has been a lawyer for over two decades. In passing conversation, he revealed to me that he has a great deal of his data stored on floppies. Naturally, as an IT guy, I lost it on him, telling him that a one-dimensional storage strategy of floppies was unacceptable. If he lost those files, his clients would be enraged. Since I do not know much about online data storage for lawyers, I read a few articles I found on Google. A lot of people appear to recommend CoreVault, since a few bar associations, including Oklahoma, officially endorsed them. That is not enough for me. Do any Slashdotters have info on this topic? Do you have any companies you would recommend for online data storage specifically for lawyers? My relative is a lawyer with recognition in NJ, NY, CA, and DC; are there any rules and regulations you know of regarding such online storage he must comply with? I know IT and not law. I am aware this is not a forum for legal advice, but do any IT professionals who work for law firms know about such rules and regulations?"
Entertainment

Penny Arcade On NPR 128

Posted by CmdrTaco from the stuff-to-hear dept.
This morning on the NPR shuffle podcast, they included a segment about Penny Arcade. Seems only fair since NPR did Achewood a few months ago. If they just get XKCD on there, then the universe can rest.
Security

CastleCops Anti-Malware Site Closes Down 68

Posted by Soulskill from the free-ain't-cheap dept.
Fortran IV writes "Volunteer-powered anti-malware site CastleCops appears to have closed shop. As of Tuesday, December 23, the CastleCops home page notes: 'You have arrived at the CastleCops website, which is currently offline. . . . Unfortunately, all things come to an end.' It was reported back in June that Paul Laudanski, founder of CastleCops and its parent Computer Cops LLC, was taking a full-time job with Microsoft and was 'looking for new management' for CastleCops. The site has also long had problems with funding and with hostile action from spammers. The actual shutdown seems to have taken the security community by surprise; as late as Tuesday evening Brian Krebs was still recommending CastleCops on his Security Fix blog."
The Internet

Who Protects the Internet? 177

Posted by samzenpus from the guarding-the-tubes dept.
strikeleader writes "TechCrunch has an article from an interview with General Kevin Chilton, US STRATCOM commander and the head of all military cyber warfare. Who protects us? 'Basically no one. At most, a number of loose confederations of computer scientists and engineers who seek to devise better protocols and practices — unincorporated groups like the Internet Engineering Task Force and the North American Network Operators Group. But the fact remains that no one really owns security online, which leads to gated communities with firewalls — a highly unreliable and wasteful way to try to assure security.'"
Cellphones

South Carolina Wants To Jam Cell Phone Signals 601

Posted by CmdrTaco from the oooo-oooo-me-too dept.
Corey Brook writes "The South Carolina state prison system wants the FCC to grant them and local officers permission to block cell phone signals. News has been out about the growing problem of them perps smuggling cell phones into prisons for a while now. Inmates use cell phones as commerce, to implement fraud, smuggle drugs and weapons, and to order hits. Of course, some may use it to just talk to a loved one any time they can." Hopefully movie theaters and restaurants do it next.
Privacy

Obama's Mobile Phone Records Compromised, Shared 278

Posted by kdawson from the quis-custodiet-ipsos-custodes dept.
Tiger4 writes "Verizon has confirmed that some of its employees have accessed and perhaps shared calling records of President Elect Barack Obama (coverage at CNN, Reuters, AP). Verizon says the people involved have all been put on leave with pay as the investigation proceeds. Some of the employees may have accessed the information for legitimate purposes, but others may have been curiosity seekers and may have even shared the information around. The account was 'only' a phone, not a BlackBerry or similar device, and Verizon believes it was just calling records, not voicemail or email that was compromised. The articles do not mention the similarity to the warrantless wiretapping or hospital records compromises of recent months. But that immediately sprang to mind for me."
Security

McColo Briefly Returns, Hands Off Botnet Control 242

Posted by kdawson from the should-have-used-a-stake-through-the-heart dept.
A week ago we discussed the takedown of McColo (and the morality of that action). McColo was reportedly the source of anywhere from 50% to 75% of the world's spam. On Saturday the malware network briefly returned to life in order to hand over command and control channels to a Russian network. "The rogue network provider regained connectivity for about 12 hours on Saturday by making use of a backup arrangement it had with Swedish internet service provider TeliaSonera. During that time, McColo was observed pushing as much as 15MB of data per second to servers located in Russia, according to ... Trend Micro. The brief resurrection allowed miscreants who rely on McColo to update a portion of the massive botnets they use to push spam and malware. Researchers from FireEye saw PCs infected by the Rustock botnet being updated so they'd report to a new server located at abilena.podolsk-mo.ru for instructions. That means the sharp drop in spam levels reported immediately after McColo's demise isn't likely to last."
Unix

AIX On the Desktop Is Getting the Boot 366

Posted by timothy from the caravan-moving-on dept.
flnca writes "Today, I was playing with the thought again to purchase an AIX workstation one day when I can afford them, and I was surprised to see that IBM is going to give its IntelliStation POWER Series workstations the boot in January '09. A black day for AIX on the desktop. I really wonder what's the problem there, warehouse costs? IBM has a history of burying its best stuff (like OS/2 for instance). Some years ago, I enjoyed hacking away on an RS/6000 workstation running AIX 4.2, and it was a pure joy. Not only the kernel, but also the admin tools, like smit and smitty. Their blade-centric solution uses Windows as a client for workstation application. This truly sounds like IBM wants AIX only for servers anymore. I'm not amused. Although, eXceed on Windows with an XDCMP server running on AIX might also be a viable solution ... whatever. But it can't beat a native POWER box sitting on your desk, that's for sure."
Security

McColo Takedown, Vigilantes Or Neighborhood Watch? 194

Posted by CmdrTaco from the where's-batman-when-you-need-him dept.
CWmike writes "Few tears were shed when alleged spam and malware purveyor McColo was suddenly taken offline last Tuesday by its upstream service providers. But behind the scenes of the McColo case and another recent takedown of Intercage, a ferocious struggle is taking place between the purveyors of Web-based malware and loosely aligned but highly committed groups of security researchers who are out to neutralize them. Backers claim that the effort to shut down miscreant ISPs is needed because of the inability of law enforcement agencies to deal with a problem that is global in nature. But some question whether there is a hint of vigilantism behind the takedowns — even as they acknowledge that there may not be any other viable options for dealing with the problem at this point."
Censorship

Politician Forces German Wikipedia Off the Net 569

Posted by kdawson from the inconvenient-truth dept.
Stephan Schulz writes "A German Member of parliament for a left-wing party, Lutz Heilmann, has obtained a preliminary injunction against the local chapter of the Wikimedia foundation, Wikimedia Deutschland e.V., forbidding the forwarding of the popular http://wikipedia.de to the proper http://de.wikipedia.org. Apparently Heilmann is not happy with the fact that his Wikipedia article (English version) contains information on his work for the former GDR Stasi, the much-hated internal secret service. Wikimedia Germany displays a page explaining the situation, and has announced that it will file an objection to get the injunction lifted. The German Wikipedia has more than 800,000 pages, and is hosted, like all Wikimedia projects, by the Florida-based Wikimedia Foundation, and hence beyond the effective reach of at least German politicians and judges."
Censorship

Argentine Judges Disappear Celebrities From Internet 81

Posted by timothy from the unsearchterms dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Since 2006, Internet users in Argentina have been blocked from searching for information about some of the country's most notable individuals. Over 100 people have successfully secured temporary restraining orders that direct Google and Yahoo! Argentina to scrub the results of search queries. The list of censorship-seeking celebrities includes judges, public officials, models and actors, as well as the world-cup soccer star and national team head coach Diego Maradona. Try it yourself — compare the results for a Yahoo! Argentina search for Diego Maradona (0 results) to a search at Yahoo! Mexico and Google Argentina (both with millions of results)."

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