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Books

Submission + - Author of Illuminatus! has died.

Submitted by
OmnipotentEntity
OmnipotentEntity writes: "Robert Anton Wilson, or RAW as he was known, a coauthor of the Illuminatus! trilogy (which was the basis of quite a bit of hacker humor) has passed beyond this mortal plane. Some last words posted onto his blog are "Please pardon my levity, I don't see how to take death seriously. It seems absurd." Have fun on your fnord, and dream of Eris good buddy. You'll be missed."
Space

Submission + - McNaught "brightest comet in recorded history&

Submitted by
WFFS
WFFS writes: "There's a new comet in town, and it could be a beauty. Discovered by Robert H. McNaught, the comet has been seen in Canada, Alaska, and the Scandinavian countries, and as far south as the midwest of the US. It is so spectacular, that NASA astronomer Tony Philips said that "It could emerge as the brightest comet in recorded history." After January 15, Comet McNaught can be seen in the southern hemisphere, where it will rival Venus in luminosity. In the local venacular... Strewth! Bloody ripper!"
Microsoft

Submission + - Sign up for Beta Windows Server, Code Named &#

Submitted by
r4rok
r4rok writes: "The next generation of the Windows Server operating system helps organizations maximize control over their server infrastructure with new management and configuration tools, task automation, and enhanced diagnostics.Read more"
Education

Submission + - Australian State trialling OLPC devices in Schools

Submitted by
Synonymous Bosch
Synonymous Bosch writes: "According to news.com.au, The Northern Territory Department of Education, Employment and Training will be trialling OLPC devices early this year. The Department has previously rolled out a Redhat Enterprise Linux based network with 200 servers, using OpenLDAP, SAMBA, Squid and PostFix to provide directory, file, internet and mail services to all students and teachers in the State.

The Northern Territory covers an area the size of Texas, with a population of 200,000 people, 40,000 of them students. Many of the 192 schools in the state are only accessible by air, making support of hardware at remote schools an expensive and complicated endeavour.

Many of the states schools cater to small, underprivileged indigenous communities where Television and Electricity are valuable commodities, let alone Computers. Historically, these communities have been all but ignored — perhaps now students can be exposed to opportunities taken for granted in larger population centres. It makes a good, but unusual, case for the use of OLPC devices in developed nations."
Operating Systems

Mac OS X Versus Windows Vista 697

Posted by CowboyNeal from the no-holds-barred dept.
An anonymous reader writes "With Macworld set to start Jan. 8, InformationWeek has a detailed comparison that pits Mac OS X against Vista. According to reviewer John Welch, OS X wins hands down. The important point: he doesn't say Vista is bad, just that technically speaking, OS X remains way ahead. Do you agree?"
Security

Submission + - Opera patched in secret

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Opera 9.10 released in December seemed to be a rather cosmetic update. But as heise Security reports, behind the scenes Opera patched two remote code execution holes — neither of them mentioned in the changelog. In addition Opera rates an exploitable heap overflow as "moderate" because it is "not trivial to exploit it reliably". I wonder if this is really done to protect thier users or rather to minimize public exposure...
Security

Submission + - AJAX considered harmful

Submitted by
87C751
87C751 writes: "Security lists are abuzz about this presentation from the 23C3 conference, which details a fundamental design flaw in Javascript. The technique, called Prototype Hijacking, allows an attacker to redefine any feature of Javascript. The paper (warning: PDF link) is called "Subverting AJAX", and outlines a possible Web Worm that lives in the very fabric of Web 2.0 and could kill the Web as we know it."
Windows

Submission + - Vista Exploit Surfaces on Russian Hacker Site

Submitted by
nithinraju
nithinraju writes: "Proof-of-concept exploit code for a privilege escalation vulnerability affecting all versions of Windowsincluding Vistahas been posted on a Russian hacker forum, forcing Microsoft to activate its emergency response process. Mike Reavey, operations manager of the Microsoft Security Response Center, confirmed that the company is closely monitoring the public posting, which first appeared on a Russian language forum on Dec. 15. It affects csrss.exe, which is the main executable for the Microsoft Client/Server Runtime Server. According to an alert cross-posted to security mailing lists, the vulnerability is caused by a memory corruption when certain strings are sent through the MessageBox API. The PoC reportedly allows for local elevation of privilege on Windows 2000 SP4, Windows Server 2003 SP1, Windows XP SP1, Windows XP SP2 and Windows Vista operating systems, Reavey said in an entry posted late Dec. 21 on the MSRC blog. Initial indications are that in order for the attack to be successful, the attacker must already have authenticated access to the target system. Of course these are preliminary findings and we have activated our emergency response process involving a multitude of folks who are investigating the issue in depth to determine the full scope and potential impact to Microsofts customers, Reavey added. While I know this is a vulnerability that impacts Windows Vista I still have every confidence that Windows Vista is our most secure platform to date, he added. The MSRC is expected to issue a formal security advisory with pre-patch workarounds. In the interim, the company is urging customers to enable a firewall, apply all security updates and install anti-virus and anti-spyware protection. To date, there are no reports of actual attacks against Windows users. The Microsoft confirmation comes hard on the heels of a claim by anti-virus vendor Trend Micro that underground hackers are selling zero-day exploits for Windows Vista at $50,000 a pop. MY BLOG IS http://alieneliminator.wordpress.com/"
Toys

Submission + - Electric Guitar Goes USB!

Submitted by
PoconoPCDoctor
PoconoPCDoctor writes: "Behringer has just released an electric guitar with a USB port, allowing direct digital recording. It comes with software for a Mac or PC, and looks pretty nifty!



From the site -



You have a great song in mind and want to record it straight to your PC. You want all your amps and effects in your workstation so you can jam like you're in the studio or on stage. With the BEHRINGER iAXE393 USB-Guitar you're just a cable away.



The high-quality electric guitar comes with a fantastic maple neck and its screaming tone sings through 3 single-coil pickups with 5-way switching. A built-in connector allows you to connect your headphones straight to your guitar so you can jam with your favorite band. Cool, isn't it?



For only $149.00, I want one!
 "
Operating Systems

Journal Journal: Will vista improve driver support for OSS/Linux ?

Journal by Jarth

After reading this article it came to mind that now Vista is more closely modeled after a less lossely coupled data+code instead of closely coupled data+code it might become easier for companies to write drivers for all platforms.

Would this be holding up in practice ?

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