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Security

Submission + - WGA anti-piracy mode for Vista softened thanks to (itwire.com)

Submitted by
WirePosted
WirePosted writes: "Microsoft's new WGA anti-piracy mode in the upcoming Vista SP1 lets users continue using their newly detected non-genuine copies of Vista, albeit with Aero disabled and hourly reminders, in a major backflip. Will pirates give in and pay for a legal copy of Vista Home Premium at less than half price, or consider moving to Linux or Mac OS X instead?"
Science

Dinosaur Fossil Found With Preserved Soft Tissue 248

Posted by CmdrTaco from the begun-the-clone-wars-have dept.
damn_registrars writes "A fossilized hadrosaur has been uncovered in South Dakota that has preserved soft tissue. This is described as a "mummified" dinosaur, and allows for a look at the skin and musculature of some parts of this animal. The find was reported by a 24 year old Yale graduate student of paleontology."
Mozilla

Submission + - Scientists Get Rare Look at Dinosaur Soft Tissue (washingtonpost.com)

Submitted by mlimber
mlimber writes: "A high school student hunting fossils in the badlands of his native North Dakota discovered an extremely rare mummified dinosaur that includes not just bones but also seldom seen fossilized soft tissue such as skin and muscles.... The 25-foot-long hadrosaur found by Tyler Lyson in an ancient river flood plain in the dinosaur-rich Hell Creek Formation is apparently the most complete and best preserved of the half-dozen mummified dinosaurs unearthed since early in the last century...."
Government

Submission + - Australia ratifies Kyoto Protocol

Submitted by GroeFaZ
GroeFaZ writes: As the BBC reports, the first political act of the new PM of Australia, Rudd, was to start ratifying the Kyoto Protocol. He was quoted as saying "[Signing the Kyoto Protocol is] a significant step forward in our country's efforts to fight climate change domestically — and with the international community,". That is, the international community without the USA — Australia's ratification made the USA the only industrialized nation to not have signed the Kyoto Protocol.
OS X

Submission + - Java 6 available on OSX thanks to port of OpenJDK (bikemonkey.org)

Submitted by LarsWestergren
LarsWestergren writes: Many Mac users have been upset that Apple has not made Java 6 available on the platform. Landon Fuller posts that there is a developer preview release available of Java JDK6 on Mac OSX, Tiger and Leopard. It is based on the BSD port of Sun's Java 6 and is made available under the Java Research License. Charles Nutter posts about impressive JRuby performance gains using Java 6 on his Mac.
Editorial

Submission + - eBuyer Scam - overcharged a penny every order

Submitted by
Nigel Barker
Nigel Barker writes: "With Christmas coming, I'm sure many of us will be shopping for presents online, but how many will actually check the automated invoice created? The VAT always seems a lot, but sometimes maybe it is more than it should be!

Have a look at eBuyer. When I placed an order recently, it worked out the VAT, and quite happily rounded £22.8777 up to £22.89!

Thinking this must be a quirk, I went off and started another order for a different amount — exactly the same rounding error occurred.

Now, what's a penny, I hear you cry, but how many orders do eBuyer process every day...

I wonder if this is a corporate scam, or if there's a programmer somewhere who built in a nice little nestegg for his retirement.

A couple of examples :-

Samsung printer code 103045 order subtotal £47.32, vat charged £8.30, should be £8.281
Toshiba laptop code 132669 order subtotal £264.27, vat charged £46.26, should be £46.24725

Wonder how many other online retailers are also fleecing us?

Nige

(available for hire for website integrity testing)"
Security

Submission + - By receiving this email you accept our T&Cs 2

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: I recently started getting junk email and snail mail from headphoneworld.com, from whom I'd bought some headphones earlier in the year. I'm scrupulous about my privacy so this surprised me. I checked the confirmation email on the order and it contained the following phrase: "By receiving this email from HeadphoneWorld.com you are accepting our terms and conditions". Of course, the t&cs state they can do more or less anythign they like with my details. This can't be legal, can it?
The Almighty Buck

Submission + - BSA, software giants most often target little guys

Submitted by
netbuzz
netbuzz writes: "Actually, 90% of the Business Software Alliance's revenue is squeezed from small businesses accused of using unlicensed software. A lawyer who represents some of them says his clients often suspect that it was the IT guy who just left — and was responsible for the maintaining the licenses — who ratted them out for a big BSA reward.

http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/22242"
Math

Submission + - The faithiness of science (nytimes.com)

Submitted by mlimber
mlimber writes: The New York Times is running a provocative piece on the faith-based nature of science: "The problem with this neat separation into 'non-overlapping magisteria,' as Stephen Jay Gould described science and religion, is that science has its own faith-based belief system. All science proceeds on the assumption that nature is ordered in a rational and intelligible way.... [B]oth religion and science are founded on faith — namely, on belief in the existence of something outside the universe, like an unexplained God or an unexplained set of physical laws, maybe even a huge ensemble of unseen universes, too. For that reason, both monotheistic religion and orthodox science fail to provide a complete account of physical existence.... [U]ntil science comes up with a testable theory of the laws of the universe, its claim to be free of faith is manifestly bogus."
Privacy

Submission + - AnimalRights Activists Hit by DecryptionLaw in UK (techluver.com)

Submitted by
Tech.Luver
Tech.Luver writes: "Animal rights activists are thought to being the first Britons to be asked to hand over keys to data encrypted on their computers to the Police. Excerpts from the article: "The request for the keys is being made under the controversial Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA). Police analysing machines seized during raids on activist's homes carried out in May have asked for the keys. The activists could face jail if they do not comply and snub a further formal request to hand over the keys. Case law In early November about 30 animal rights activists are understood to have received letters from the Crown Prosecution Service in Hampshire inviting them to provide passwords that will decrypt material held on seized computers. The letter is the first stage of a process set out under RIPA which governs how the authorities handle requests to examine encrypted material. Once a request has been issued the authorities can then issue what is known as a Section 49 notice demanding that a person turn the data into an "intelligible" form or, under Section 51 hand over keys. ( http://techluver.com/2007/11/20/animal-rights-activists-hit-by-decryption-law-ripa-in-uk/ )"

Feed Techdirt: News Flash: Consumers Prefer DRM-Free Music (techdirt.com)

From feed by techdirtfeed
The evidence that consumers like DRM-free music just keeps pouring in. The latest is a story from 7 Digital, a small online music store in the UK, which is reporting that DRM-free formats are outselling DRM-encumbered formats by a 4-to-1 margin. This isn't too surprising, given that DRM-encumbered music sold by anyone other than Apple won't play on the iPod, the world's most popular portable music player. Obviously, when given a side-by-side choice, the vast majority of consumers are going to choose the format that works everywhere. I suspect that name recognition is also a factor in MP3's favor: almost everyone has heard of MP3s, so someone who doesn't know anything else about digital formats or DRM is going to go with MP3 as a trusted "brand." One other interesting point in the article is that 7 Digital now has 60 percent of its music available in DRM-free formats, and expects to get that figure close to 100 percent by next summer. They appear to carry a wide variety of music from both major and independent labels. Until this year, iTunes was the only legal way to get your major-label music on your iPod. That was great for Apple, but not so good for the major labels. Now that the labels have come to their senses and started allowing DRM-free music sales, we're going to see, for the first time, a genuinely competitive market for online music with a lot of different music stores, all carrying both major-label and independent fare, and all selling music that will work with any device. Apple's music store will finally have to compete on its merits, rather than being propped up by its DRM monopoly. It's an exciting time to be a music fan.

Tim Lee is an expert at the Techdirt Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Tim Lee and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.



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Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft blanks out Android (live.com)

Submitted by Shyam J
Shyam J writes: There is No mention of Android on Live Search. Even searching for "Android Technology" shows nothing. Compare this with the Google or the Yahoo search pages. This tells me that Yahoo is way more reliable than MS Live!
Power

Submission + - Beeb falls for dubious perpetual motion device

Submitted by
Sockatume
Sockatume writes: "Ben Goldacre reports on the Ecowatts Thermal Energy Cell and the Beeb's less-than-insightful coverage thereof:

Using the apparatus provided, it's true, this scientist could get incredible results: the meters would read zero, and yet water would boil in around five minutes. Because the meters provided weren't working.
Dan's Data covered the same gadget a couple of months ago, when it appeared in the (ever so credulous) Daily Mail. Prepetual motion seems to be going through something of a renaissence in these energy-conscious times. Or maybe everyone's just jumping on the Steorn bandwagon."

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