Aryabhata writes "According to scientists, climate change and human activity have allowed bark beetle populations to soar. They decided to fight the beetles by using the 'nastiest, most offensive sounds' that they could think of. These sounds included recordings of Guns & Roses, Queen, Rush Limbaugh and manipulated versions of the insects' own sounds. The research project titled 'Beetle Mania' has concluded that acoustic stress can disrupt their feeding and even cause the beetles to kill each other."

Philips Electronics, a Netherlands-based company, has come up with a device designed to protect day traders from emotionally based trading decisions. The Rationalizer measures your galvanic skin response and lets you know when you are under stress. An online trader can then take a "time-out, wind down and re-consider their actions," according to the company. This may have come too late for us, but at least future generations won't have to live through the horror of angry day trading.

FiveRings writes "BusinessInsider has a story about Worlds.com, a company that inherited the patent on virtual worlds from the Starlight Starbright Foundation and is taking it to court against NCSoft over the company's various MMOs. If successful, he will press on and sue the makers of Second Life and World of Warcraft as well. The article notes that the NCSoft case is being held in east Texas, which has been a favorable venue for patent trolls in the past."

Frequent Slashdot contributor Bennett Haselton comments on a breaking news story out of the Canadian courts: "An Ontario Superior Court Justice has ruled that Canadian police can obtain the identities of Internet users without a warrant, writing that there is 'no reasonable expectation of privacy' for a user's online identity, and drawing the analogy that 'One's name and address or the name and address of your spouse are not biographical information one expects would be kept private from the state.' But why in the world is it valid to compare an IP address with a street address in the phone book?" Read on for Bennett's analysis.

smee2 writes "In the past, when a family member died, you could look through their files and address books to find all the people and businesses that should be notified that the person is deceased. Now the hard-copy address book is becoming a thing of the past. I keep some contact information in a spreadsheet, but I have many online friends that I only have contact with through web sites such as Flickr. My email accounts have many more people listed than my address book spreadsheet. I have no interest in collecting real world info from all my online contacts. The sites where I have social contact with people from around the world (obviously) require user names and passwords. Two questions: 1. How do you intend to let the executors of your estate or family members know which online sites/people you'd like them to notify of your demise? 2. How are you going to give access to the passwords, etc. needed to access those sites in a way that doesn't cause a security concern while you're still alive?"

Dave Knott writes "After winning the outstanding drama performance prize at the British National Television Awards, David Tennant announced that he will be quitting the iconic role of The Doctor. Quoting Tennant: 'When Doctor Who returns in 2010 it won't be with me. Now don't make me cry. I love this part, and I love this show so much that if I don't take a deep breath and move on now I never will, and you'll be wheeling me out of the Tardis in my bath chair.' Tennant will appear in a Christmas special, titled The Next Doctor, before filming four more specials in January. After that, the search will be on for the actor to play the 11th incarnation of The Doctor."

An anonymous reader writes "API Lead at Twitter, Alex Payne, writes today that the Internet was 'built wrong,' and continues to be accepted as an inferior system, due to a software engineering philosophy called Worse Is Better. 'We now know, for example, that IPv4 won't scale to the projected size of the future Internet. We know too that near-universal deployment of technologies with inadequate security and trust models, like SMTP, can mean millions if not billions lost to electronic crime, defensive measures, and reduced productivity,' says Payne, who calls for a 'content-centric approach to networking.' Payne doesn't mention, however, that his own system, Twitter, was built wrong and is consistently down."

Well, yet another teenage hacker who "did the right thing" by reporting a security flaw is being punished for his actions. Although it definitely sounds like the whole story may not be in the clear yet, a 15-year-old New York high school student has been charged with three felonies claiming that he accessed a file containing social security numbers, driver's license numbers, and home addresses of past and present employees ... and then sent an anonymous email to the principal alerting him to the security flaw. "All that was needed to access the information was a district password. School officials have admitted that thousands of students, faculty and employees could have accessed the same file for up to two weeks."

mattOzan writes "On the tenth anniversary of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act [PDF], Wired Magazine posits that the DMCA should be praised for catalyzing the interactive '2.0' Web that we enjoy today. While acknowledging the troublesome 'anti-circumvention' provision of the act, they claim that any harm caused by that is far outweighed by the act's "notice-and-takedown" provision and the safe harbor that this provides to intermediary ISPs. Fritz Attaway, policy adviser for the MPAA weighed in saying 'It's not perfect. But it's better than nothing.'"

An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft said late Wednesday that it plans to release a critical security update today to plug a security hole present in all supported versions of Windows. The company hasn't released any details about the patch yet, which is expected to be pushed out at 1 p.m. PT. Normally, Redmond issues security updates on Patch Tuesday, the second Tuesday of each month. The Washington Post's Security Fix blog notes that each of the three times in the past that Microsoft has departed from its patch cycle, it was to fix some really nasty vulnerability that criminals already were exploiting to break into Windows PCs." Reader filenavigator points out an article which describes the hole as an SMB vulnerability, and says it "allows anyone to access a Windows machine remotely without any user name or password. Any machine that exposes Windows file sharing is vulnerable." Update: 10/23 17:42 GMT by T : Reader AngryDad adds a link to Microsoft's more detailed memo.

CWmike writes "A Citizenship and Immigration Services spokesman said today that the agency is weighing a series of reforms to the H-1B application process, including the use of 'independent open-source data' to obtain information about visa seekers or the companies that file the petitions on their behalf. The move follows a report by the agency that found widespread problems and evidence of fraud in the nation's H-1B program, including forged documents, fake degrees and shell companies being used in H-1B applications. It also comes after the controversy caused by changes to the H-1B rules earlier this year."