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Cellphones

US May Disable All Car Phones, Says Trans. Secretary 1065

Posted by timothy from the oh-gee-big-brother-that'd-be-swell dept.
gambit3 writes "The US government may require cars to include scrambling tech that would disable mobile-phone use by drivers, and perhaps passengers. 'I think it will be done,' US Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood said on Wednesday morning. 'I think the technology is there and I think you're going to see the technology become adaptable in automobiles to disable these cell phones.' LaHood is on a self-described 'rampage' against distracted driving, and if making it impossible to use a mobile phone while in a car can save lives, he's all for it."
Government

Most Americans Support an Internet Kill Switch 398

Posted by samzenpus from the please-take-my-freedoms-I-don't-deserve-them dept.
Orome1 writes "Sixty-one percent of Americans said the President should have the ability to shut down portions of the Internet in the event of a coordinated malicious cyber attack, according to research by Unisys. The survey found that while Americans are taking proactive steps to protect themselves against cybercrime and identity theft, only slightly more than a third of Internet users in the US regularly use and update passwords on their mobile devices – creating a potentially huge security hole for organizations as more consumer devices invade the workplace. The findings illustrate that recent events such as the Stuxnet computer worm attack and the attempted Times Square car bombing may have heightened the American public's awareness of and concern over global and domestic cybersecurity threats."
Botnet

Bredolab Botnet Taken Down 187

Posted by CmdrTaco from the nothing-else-happening-today dept.
Leon Buijs writes "Monday a 27-year-old Armenian was arrested at request of the Dutch authorities. The Dutch police think he is the brain behind the infamous, 30 million infected computers large Bredolab network, that was taken down by their Team (in Dutch) High Crime. Bredolab was used to spread virii and spam via the Netherlands. While taking the botnet down at a Dutch ISP, the suspect did several attempts to regain control. When this didn't work out, he did a DDoS attack on the ISP's servers using a 220,000 computers botnet. However, this was also broken off by taking 3 servers offline that the Armanian used for this, in Paris."
Earth

UN May Ban Blotting Out the Sun 377

Posted by samzenpus from the since-the-beginning-of-time-man-has-yearned-to-destroy-the-sun dept.
Supervillains and Mr. Burns are among those to be most affected by the United Nations' Convention on Biological Diversity decision on space sunshades. Even though organizations like NASA have been looking into them as a possible way to slow climate change, the UN is expected to limit research into the technology or ban it outright. From the article: "The Convention may consider banning or limiting research into space sunshades. Some question their wisdom. A space sunshade would have a rapid effect on global warming and provide time to develop more permanent measures, they say. The technique has already received serious attention from NASA and other organizations. But others, such as the ETC group, an environmental and social advocacy group, fear simply blocking the sun is a bandage, meant to cover up the problem, and allow humans to continue using fossils fuels. Another fear is that geo-engineering, as techniques like this are called, could have unforeseen consequences on the weather, ecosystem and agriculture."

Comment Re:In Game Voiceovers (Score 2, Insightful) 235

by Kindgott (#33890880) Attached to: Why <em>Warhammer Online</em> Failed &mdash; an Insider Story

Voiceovers for quest text is just something I'll be skipping because I've already skimmed through the obligatory, "Sand people attacked my land cruiser while I was en route with a shipment of unobtanium for the port in Mos Eisley, and the crates with my valuable cargo are littering the deserts. Without the money, I can't afford the medicine for my sick daughter, and I'm incapable of traveling and/or fighting; would you please find 50 crates and return them to me?" I'll be already heading in the vague direction the quest NPC has sent me on, trying to get my next level/item/skill and some in-game currency.

Heck, I have friends who refuse to play Borderlands with me because I won't read the quest text before charging off in the direction of my next waypoint.

To each their own, I suppose.

Comment Re:A lot of people would buy anything Mythic made (Score 3, Informative) 235

by Kindgott (#33890634) Attached to: Why <em>Warhammer Online</em> Failed &mdash; an Insider Story

It is free to play, and I still couldn't stick to playing it for more than a week. The fact that free play is restricted to Empire vs Chaos Tier 1 may have been a factor, but probably not the deciding one.

It seems mostly bland and uninspired to me, where it doesn't seem thrown together or buggy.

Comment Re:Badaboom? (Score 1) 304

by Kindgott (#33872248) Attached to: Microsoft Patents GPU-Accelerated Video Encoding

If the patent process is working as intended, which limits my comment to an imaginary world, the only thing I could think of is that Microsoft applied for this patent before the prior art (badaboom, MediaCoder, et al) were developed.

In the real world, however, the patent office probably just dropped the ball on prior art.

Comment This is a great comparison! (Score 4, Funny) 83

by Kindgott (#33036702) Attached to: Electronic Arts, THQ Look To Microtransactions

For years now, we've been able to get around the old injustice of having to buy a whole album just for one or two of the songs which weren't crap....

Now, they'll let us buy just the levels in a game we want to play? Great! Level 1 is always such crap, no matter the game, I shouldn't have to pay for it!

Those of us with busy schedules can just purchase the final level, all the pleasure of beating the game without the time investment of all that buildup nonsense.
Piracy

Study Finds 0.3% of BitTorrent Files Definitely Legal 321

Posted by timothy from the can-we-call-that-vanishingly dept.
Andorin writes "It's common knowledge that the majority of files distributed over BitTorrent violate copyright, though the exact percentage is unclear. The Internet Commerce Security Laboratory of the University of Ballarat in Australia has conducted a study and found that 89% of files examined were in fact infringing, while most of the remaining 11% were ambiguous but likely to be infringing. Ars Technica summarizes the study: 'The total sample consisted of 1,000 torrent files—a random selection from the most active seeded files on the trackers they used. Each file was manually checked to see whether it was being legally distributed. Only three cases—0.3 percent of the files—were determined to be definitely not infringing, while 890 files were confirmed to be illegal. ' The study brings with it some other interesting statistics; out of the 1,000 files, 91 were pornographic, and approximately 4% of torrents were responsible for 80% of seeders. Music, movies and TV shows constituted the three largest categories of shared materials, and among those, zero legal files were found."
Google

Google Audits Street View Data Systems 229

Posted by CmdrTaco from the we-meant-to-do-that dept.
schliz writes "Google's plans to upgrade to high-definition Street View in Australia are on hold until it completes a rigorous internal audit of the processes, it announced today. The company is currently being investigated by international regulators about possible privacy breaches when it became known that its Street View vehicles were capturing not only publicly available SSIDs and MAC addresses, but also samples of payload data transmitted over these networks."

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