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Submission + - New peer-to-peer tracking technology?

Submitted by
jetkins
jetkins writes: "The Melbourne, Australia, Age reports on a new "tracking program" which local police are using to pinpoint child pornography without the need for search warrants or other invasive techniques.

Is this simply a matter of seeding the PtP smut networks with digitally signed files, and then tracking the IP addresses of the peers that leech and seed them, or is this something new? One has to presume that if law enforcement agencies are using this for criminal investigations, the RIAA and MPAA surely can't be far behind."
Privacy

Submission + - SPAM: Survey: US Residents Don't Want Targeted Ads

Submitted by
itwbennett
itwbennett writes: "A survey by the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology at the University of California Berkeley School of Law and the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania finds that U.S. residents do not want to receive Web advertising tailored to their interests. 66% of those surveyed said they don't want tailored, or targeted, online ads and when asked if online ad vendors should deliver targeted ads by tracking customers' behavior across multiple Web sites, 86% of the 1,000 respondents said no. 35% percent of respondents said executives of companies that use personal information illegally should face jail time, and 18% said those companies should be put out of business. 'While privacy advocates have lambasted behavioral targeting for tracking and labeling people in ways they do not know or understand, marketers have defended the practice by insisting it gives Americans what they want: advertisements and other forms of content that are as relevant to their lives as possible,' the study said. 'In high percentages, [U.S. residents] stand on the side of privacy advocates.'"
Link to Original Source

Submission + - Online thieves step up bank raids (wordpress.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Cyber-criminals have developed sophisticated ways to remain undetected, a new report finds.The report, from security firm Finjan, describes how one gang, based in the Ukraine, stole 300,000 euros (£269,000) in 22 days.
Security

Submission + - SPAM: Fake antivirus overwhelming scanners

Submitted by
ChiefMonkeyGrinder
ChiefMonkeyGrinder writes: "Rogue or bogus programs passing themselves off as real antivirus software have been one of the malware themes of 2009, but the APWG's numbers for the first half of the year show that the organisation's members detected 485,000 samples, more than five times the total for the whole of 2008."
Link to Original Source

Submission + - Canadian Minister Caught Lying About Net Surveilla (michaelgeist.ca)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Canadian government has introduced Internet surveillance legislation that requires ISPs to disclose customer information without a warrant. Peter Van Loan, the Minister in charge, claims that a Vancouver kidnapping earlier this year shows the need for these powers. Michael Geist has done some digging and shows this to be a lie — the Vancouver police acknowledge that the case did not involve an ISP request and the suspect is now in custody.
Science

Submission + - 2009 Ig Nobel Awards are Tonight! (improbable.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Ig Nobel Prizes honor achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think. The prizes are intended to celebrate the unusual, honor the imaginative — and spur people's interest in science, medicine, and technology. This year, the 19th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony at Harvard's Sanders Theater will introduce ten new Ig Nobel Prize winners. The winners are traveling to the ceremony, at their own expense, from several continents. The Prizes will be handed to them by a group of genuine, genuinely bemused Nobel Laureates, assisted by a large number of assorted Ig personnel, all before a perpetually standing-room only audience. Best of all, it will be webcast live.

How Do You Deal With Sensitive Data? 226

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the just-turn-off-db-access-for-everyone dept.
imus writes "Just wondering how most IT shops secure sensitive data (customer records). Most centrally managed databases seem to be monitored and maintained very well and IT workers know when they are tampered with or when unauthorized access occurs. But what about employees who do legitimate selects from these databases and then load CSV files and other text files onto their laptops and PDAs? How are companies dealing with situations where the database is relatively secure, but end-use devices contain bits and pieces of sensitive business data, and sometimes whole segments? Does anyone use sensitive data discovery software such as Find_SSNs or Senf or other tools? Once found, how do you deal with it? Do you force encryption, delete it or prevent extracts?"
The Internet

How To Deal With Internet Bullies? 724

Posted by timothy from the warning-link-contains-classic-deep-trolling dept.
creyes123 writes "I run a free website with an online model airplane design calculator. The number of registered users has quickly climbed and I've gotten many compliments. Out of nowhere, a fellow shows up and proceeds to bad mouth the calculator in a posting in one of my forums. After I politely point out that he's mistaken and should have looked at the documentation before posting, he changes the subject and bad mouths a different 'flaw.' The cycle repeats a few more times, with no apparent end in sight. I want to encourage folks to share their opinions, but constructive criticism was clearly not his goal. I feel that the whole episode was just a massive time waster for me. What did I do to deserve this? Could I have handled this better?"
Communications

HD Radio Recording In the US? 303

Posted by timothy from the line-out-and-a-zoom-recorder dept.
unreceivedpacket writes "The public radio stations I listen to have been advertising their conversion to HD Radio format for some time. They advertise multiple channels, their second channel playing all classical, all the time. I am interested in purchasing a receiver so I can listen to this extra content, and was also hoping to find a receiver with a built-in recorder so I could time-shift programs that are not otherwise available as legal pod-casts. My initial queries have returned few models that support any kind of digital recording, and the existing ones seem out of production or sorely lacking features. Is this the state of Digital Radio in the US? Are there any legal recording devices for HD Radio? Any good solutions for recording and time-shifting, perhaps through Linux?"

Comment Re:Download DAY, Justin (Score 2, Insightful) 1080

by jetkins (#23824719) Attached to: Firefox Download Day To Start At 1 p.m. EST
Many folks are moaning because Mozilla made absolutely no mention of the start time until now. Enthusiastic supporters the world over have organized "download parties" on the evening of 6/16, ready to download FF3.0 en masse on the stroke of midnight in their local time zone. Silly, yes, because those organizers should have had enough nouse to realize that there was no way that it could be progressively made available around the world as there's no way to know what timezone any given requester is in, but there you go - that was the expectation.

Mozilla really dropped the ball on this. If they had detailed up front exactly when their "Day" was planned to start, then all this angst could have been avoided. Ideally they should have had a countdown timer on their site so that everyone was on the same page. Announcing the rules after the game has already kicked off was just plain stupid.
Intel

Submission + - Intel in the GHz game again: Skulltrail hits 5 GHz

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Intel's Skulltrail dual-socket enthusiast platform has been making the rounds on the web for half a year or so, but we haven't seen many details yet. TG Daily got a close look at an almost complete prototype, which surely sounds almost like a production ready version, judging from the article. Everything that TG Daily describes sounds like Skulltrail PCs will be very limited in availability and insanely expensive: A taste: Intel said it has developed "special" Xeon processors with desktop processor attributes just for Skulltrail. These chips are currently running at a stable 5 GHz. Time to start playing the lottery.
Data Storage

Submission + - Seagate 'misled on storage capacity'

Submitted by jetkins
jetkins writes: The Melbourne Age reports that Seagate has capitulated in the kilo/kibi wars and agreed to settle a class action suit which charged that their drives do not actually provide the advertised capacity.

"Seagate believes that its advertising and other business practices were, and are proper in all respects. However, because of the expense and burden of litigation, Seagate believes that resolving the matter through settlement is in the best interests of Seagate and its customers."

Under the terms of the settlement, Seagate will label its products with disclosures regarding the storage capacity of its hard drives, and will pay court costs of $US1.75 million ($A1.91 million).

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