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The Internet

Nationwide Domain Name/Yard Sign Conspiracy 324

Posted by timothy from the tragically-yes-I'm-single dept.
robertjmoore writes "Everywhere I go lately, I see these lawn signs that say "Single?" and then give a URL with my town's name in it. Being a huge business intelligence geek with too much time on my hands, I decided to track down who was behind them and wound up uncovering ten thousand domain names, a massively coordinated and well-funded guerilla marketing machine, and the $45 Million revenue business hiding behind it all. Hot off the presses, these are my findings."
Censorship

Debunking the Google Earth Censorship Myth 294

Posted by timothy from the just-what-they-want-you-to-think dept.
waderoush writes "There's a persistent Web meme to the effect that Google obscures sensitive or top-secret locations in Google Maps and Google Earth at the insistence of national governments. A July IT Security article promoted on Digg, 'Blurred Out: 51 Things You Aren't Allowed to See on Google Maps,' revived this notion. But the article has been widely criticized, and I did some fact-checking this week on the six Boston-area locations mentioned in the IT Security list. As it turns out, not one of the allegedly blurred locations has degraded imagery in Google Maps, as my screen shots demonstrate. My post looks into the sources of the misleading IT Security piece, and of other mistaken rumors about Google Maps."
Security

Submission + - Crooked Exec Wrestles to Retrieve Smoking Laptop

Submitted by
darkreadingman
darkreadingman writes: "First-person account of how a penetration testing company caught an executive stealing data from his company. After discovering that the pen testers were making off with his laptop, this executive attacked two security experts, wrestled his laptop away, and tried to delete the incriminating data before the guards arrived. A real lesson in what happens when insiders are caught red-handed, with the smoking gun (or in this case, a smoking laptop) in their hands. http://www.darkreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=117 531&WT.svl=column1_1"
Security

Submission + - Credit Card security: Who pays for breaches?

Submitted by
PetManimal
PetManimal writes: "A scheme to steal customers' credit and debit card information at a New England supermarket chain highlights a little-understood fact about credit card security: Customers still think that the credit-card companies have to eat fraudulent charges, but since PCI DSS standards were adopted, it's actually the merchant banks and merchants who have to pay up. And, according to the author of the last article, it's a good thing:

The main reason PCI exists is that there are tens of thousands of merchants who don't understand the basics of information security and weren't even taking the very minimum steps to secure their networks and the credit card information they stored. ... PCI pushes that burden downstream and forces merchants to take on a preventative role rather than a reactive role. They have to put in a properly configured firewall, encrypt sensitive information and maintain a minimum security stance or be fined by their merchant banks. By forcing this to be an issue about prevention rather than reaction, the credit card companies have taken the bulk of the financial burden off of themselves and placed it on the merchants, which is where much of it belongs anyways.
"
Moon

Submission + - " Work starts on Arctic seed vault"

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science/02/09/climate .deep.freeze.reut/index.html "LONDON, England (Reuters) — Deep inside the Arctic Circle work is about to begin on a giant frozen Noah's Ark for food crops to provide a last bastion in the battle against global warming. And within a year the first seeds of what will eventually be home for samples of all 1.5 million distinct varieties of agricultural crops worldwide will be tucked safely inside the vaults deep in a mountain on the archipelago of Svalbard."
HP

Journal Journal: Eco-disaster! HP uses Vista to enforce product obsolesence.

Journal by Ecowarrior42
HP Printer and Scanner owners should beware of buying a new Vista PC or upgrading to Vista.
Douglas Adams had it wrong when he predicted that the alien archaeologists would find a shoe layer, they are more likely to find a Vista induced Printer and Scanner layer! A large number HP printer and scanner owners that have chosen to upgrade to Vista will receive the following message when attempting to download Vista drivers for their Scanners and Printers:
"We are sorry to inform you that
Privacy

Submission + - Should I "cheat" on my psychometric test?

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: I've been for a second job interview, which was quite positive — and it's for a job I want. The company's HR division does psychometric tests on all new employees. This is (apparently) so that your manager can know what kind of person you are, and whether you are achieving your potential, or if you can be pushed for more. Now here's the question: what are these tests really for? I have a friend who deliberately fuzzed his IQ test at school, and his teachers still think he worked very hard. If I don't want to be squeezed for my dying drops of blood and sweat, should I answer every 8th question at random and fuzz the results a bit? Has anyone done this? Or wished they did?
User Journal

Journal Journal: $25M Virgin Prize to Cleanup Greenhouse Gases

Journal by syguy
Sir Richard Branson is offering a $25 million prize to anyone who invents a way to remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. The Virgin Earth Challenge as it will be known is part of Branson's commitment to spend 100% of Virgin's airline and train proceeds, estimated to total $3 billion over 10 years. Making the announcement with 'Inconvenient Truth' star and former Vice President, Al Gore, Branson said, "Man created
Hardware Hacking

Submission + - 150x compact flash raid

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Having just found out that CF (compact flash) to IDE adapaters are cheap 'cos they do nothing, has anyone on slashdot actually used 2 — 4 CF cards at 150x (about 22.5mb/s, apparently) with DMA support in a raid setup for a linux system? These cards at, say, 2gb a piece aren't too pricey, so I can't see any reason why you're not getting a 90mb/sec 8gb disk with 0 seek time using 4 cards. I'm not seeing many actual results on the web, which seems to tell me that it's just not worth it. Anyone actually have some first-hand experience? Don't get distracted with "limited write cycles" and stuff! With just system files on it, I can't see any problem. I'm just interested in some actual performance figures.
Space

Submission + - Astro Breakdown Spells Changes for Mars Mission

Submitted by FloatsomNJetsom
FloatsomNJetsom writes: Popular Mechanics has a fascinating story on what the Lisa Nowak astronaut lovetriangle/breakdown/attempted murder charges could mean for Mars Mission crew decisions: With a 30-month roundtrip, this isn't the sort of thing you'd want to happen in space. Scientists have been warning about the problems of sex on long-term spaceflight, and experts are divided as to whether you want a crew of older married couples, or a-sexual unitard-wearing eunuchs. But the big deal is that NASA's current archetype of highly-driven, task-oriented people might be precisely the wrong stuff for a Mars expedition. In addition, this is crazy, scientists might use genomics or even functional MRI in screening astronauts, in addition to facial-recognition computers to monitor mental health during the mission. "You're putting together the crew psych workup, aren't you HAL?"
Space

Submission + - New universes will be born from ours

Submitted by
David Shiga
David Shiga writes: "What gruesome fate awaits our universe? Some physicists have argued that it is doomed to be ripped apart by runaway dark energy, while others think it is bouncing through an endless series of big bangs and big crunches. Now, physicists have combined these two ideas to create another option, in which our universe ultimately shatters into billions of pieces, with each shard growing into a whole new universe. The model could solve the mystery of why our early universe was surprisingly well ordered."
Security

Submission + - University professor chastised for using Tor

Submitted by
Irongeek_ADC
Irongeek_ADC writes: "As reported in the The Chronicle of Higher Education, University IT "professionals" came knocking on Professor Censarini's door asking about why he was using the Tor network. While there they also asked that he not teach his students about it, and said it was likely against university policy. An interesting read that goes to show even Universities are turning big brother."
Media (Apple)

Submission + - Music Industry to Jobs: Open up FairPlay

Submitted by
Jabrwock
Jabrwock writes: "The music industry responded to Apple co-founder Steve Jobs' call for DRM to be discontinued with a counter offer: You first.

Mitch Bainwol, chairman of the RIAA, said that Apple should be opening up FairPlay to work on rivals' devices, rather than telling the industry to drop DRM altogether. Bainwol believes that the market would be better served if the public could chose which device to play their media on, rather than be linked to one particular vendor. But the industry still wants some controls over what kind of choices the public has with regards to how to enjoy that media..."

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