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Windows

WGA Under Vista SP1 Is Kinder and Nags More 299

DaMan writes in with a ZDNet blog entry on Windows Genuine Advantage under Vista SP1. It seems that the draconian features present in Vista RTM have been replaced by nag screens and annoyances such as repeatedly changing the desktop background to black. But WGA no longer turns off Aero and ReadyBoost or logs you out after an hour."
The Internet

Submission + - 2 Girls 1 Credit Card? (2girls1cup.com)

milsoRgen writes: "It would appear the venerable 2girls1cup site is no longer up, now it has become a regular pay-for-access site. Apparently no one thought to make mirrors of the original content, as repeated web and torrent searches reveal nothing. Nor has the Way Back Machine at archive.org seen fit to archive such valuable data. No more grossing out your friends. Or grandmother..."
Classic Games (Games)

Submission + - Sid Meier On Civ Revolution (gamersglobal.com)

milsoRgen writes: "GamersGlobal has an interview with Sid Meier on the latest incarnation of the venerable Civilization franchise. The discussion includes Sid's views on a variety of topics. Including his work life, thoughts on current trends in gaming and of course the thoughts behind the creation of Civ Revolution."

Feed Engadget: Microsoft already trimming Windows 7 features, DirectX 11 on the outs? (engadget.com)

Filed under: Desktops, Gaming, Laptops


It might be a bit early for us to be talking Windows 7 feature cuts, but that said, isn't it a bit early for Microsoft to be talking Windows 7 feature cuts? If The Inquirer's "reliable sources" are to be believed, Microsoft is giving DirectX 11 the boot from its next version of Windows to keep hardware requirements down -- apparently the DirectX 10 requirements of Vista were enough of that sort of trouble for one decade. Obviously there's no official word on Microsoft at the moment, so we'll reserve judgment for the time being -- and hey, maybe no DirectX 11 wouldn't ruin our year -- but with the endless quantity of features cut from Vista still fresh in our memory, this is certainly not an encouraging sign if true.

[Thanks, Isaac]

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The Internet

Submission + - Amazon erases orders to cover up pricing mistake

The Knife writes: "Amazon secretly canceled orders for a large jazz CD set (at this link: http://www.amazon.com/Jazz-Paris-Various-Artists/dp/B00005RSB2/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1202591410&sr=8-1 )after it realized thta it had mispriced the item at US$31 instead of its MSRP of US$499. While inventory shortages had caused the online merchant to string customers along for over a month since they placed their orders, it was the realization that the box set was underpriced by US$470 that made Amazon simply erase all records of customers' order in their account history. No emails were sent to customers informing them of the price change or of the order cancellation. Probably because it violates Amazon's highly publicized price guarantee policy. A customer that called to complain and request the CD set at the US$31 price was given a US$20 discount off of his next Amazon order. An insult."
Microsoft

Submission + - Is Microsoft Office Adware? (oooninja.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Microsoft Office links to third-party commercial add-ons, includes up-spelling promos, requires cookies for certain functions, and collects technical information. While this is a normal day on the web, should the commercial office suite be judged to a different standard and possibly be considered adware?

Slashdot previously covered Microsoft trying Works as adware.

Media

Submission + - ISO specifies testing DVD lifetime (heise-online.co.uk) 1

juct writes: "The International Standards Organization (ISO), the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), and the Optical Storage Technology Association (OSTA) have specified a testing procedure to determine the durability of blank DVDs. This means, that media manufacturers will soon be able to specify the probable lifetime of their DVDs. Full story on heise online"
GUI

Submission + - Web Graphic Design for Geeks

An anonymous reader writes: I'm a competent geek running a one-man-show for a small business. I do everything IT in this company: servers, email, desktop support, manage Ethernet switches, cash registers, inventory database, and the company web site. My boss has asked me to "punch up" the web site to make it more appealing. Although I can hold my own with HTML, PHP and a couple SQL products, graphic design isn't one of my strengths. I'm looking for some advice on how to "pimp my site" a bit, without making it overstimulating for the webophobic. It's also important that it conform to ADA accessibility guidelines.

In particular, I'm looking for:

* books or tutorial web sites that teach the basics of good graphic design — how to make it more appealing without losing the ability to communicate effectively

* suggestions for tools to use to make this more efficient (Windows or Linux are OK)

I'm most interested in hearing from those of you who have graphic design education or experience.
Security

Submission + - Router Hacking Challenge (gnucitizen.org)

An anonymous reader writes: From the GNUCITIZEN Ethical Hacker Outfit:

We want you to hack your router! Yes, You. We want you to hack your router and make your findings public on this very same page, the sla.ckers forum or at hackerwebzine[at]gmail[dot]com. The best and most interesting hacks will receive credit, a lot of attention and good media coverage. The challenge is supposed to run from 2nd February until 29th February, though it is something that is yet to be clarified because we know that there is a lot to be found. The reason why we do this is because we want you to help the community to map the current state of embedded devices vulnerabilities. GNUCITIZEN members have been actively involved with finding vulnerabilities in routers in the past. We believe that embedded devices hacking is a huge topic that is yet to be explored in depth. Your submissions will be included in numerous presentations and research materials and will be credited appropriately. The rules are very flexible, every kind of exploit is allowed. From buffer overflows to CSRF issues that plague many routers
Any takers?

Nintendo

Submission + - Namco blames Wii for arcade closures (engadget.com) 2

milsoRgen writes: "Engadget is running a story, "Namco Bandai is shuttering between 50 and 60 arcades in Japan, and it's laying the blame squarely on Nintendo's shoulders. "A lot of the types of games that people played at an arcade can now be done at home," said company spokesman Yuji Machida. Namco figures that Japanese kids are saving up their pocket money to buy the latest and greatest Wii game or accessory, which is clearly unacceptable. Sega Sammy also has plans to close about 100 of its arcades, but there's no word of finger pointing from that camp. While we're certain the Wii's popularity has a little something to do with it, perhaps Japanese gamers are just beginning to learn something their American counterparts got down years ago: why leave the couch? Ever?""

Feed Engadget: Thor Shield ensures you can't tase me, bro! (engadget.com)

Filed under: Wearables

So Point Blank Solutions, Inc. and G Consulting apparently went right ahead despite the existing patent app and came up with an anti-Taser material called Thor Shield, which weighs two ounces per square foot and can be integrated into anything from a flak jacket to gloves (pictured) to a standard issue t-shirt. We totally can't wait to wear our hilarious / ironic Thor Shielded Threadless shirts to the next G8 summit, yo.

[Via Danger Room]

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The Internet

W3C Gets Excessive DTD Traffic 334

eldavojohn writes "It's a common string you see at the start of an HTML document, a URI declaring the type of document, but that is often processed causing undue traffic to W3C's site. There's a somewhat humorous post today from W3.org that seems to be a cry for sanity and asking developers and people to stop building systems that automatically query this information. From their post, 'In particular, software does not usually need to fetch these resources, and certainly does not need to fetch the same one over and over! Yet we receive a surprisingly large number of requests for such resources: up to 130 million requests per day, with periods of sustained bandwidth usage of 350Mbps, for resources that haven't changed in years. The vast majority of these requests are from systems that are processing various types of markup (HTML, XML, XSLT, SVG) and in the process doing something like validating against a DTD or schema. Handling all these requests costs us considerably: servers, bandwidth and human time spent analyzing traffic patterns and devising methods to limit or block excessive new request patterns. We would much rather use these assets elsewhere, for example improving the software and services needed by W3C and the Web Community.' Stop the insanity!"

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