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Submission + - ICANN Approves .XXX (pcworld.com)

lothos writes: "Pornography will have its own top-level domain, dot-XXX, the board of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers decided today."

Comment Re:Oh well. (Score 3, Interesting) 116

If you use Firefox there is an add-on called Scroogle that sidesteps these cursor-movement worries, plus leaving no tracks for Google to assimilate. It will add itself to the list of available search engines. I use it almost exclusively nowadays. Of course one must trust Pathetic Cockroach, the author, but the 5-star reviews speak loudly to me. I've never heard any criticism of it and would be interested if there is...

Microsoft

Submission + - BBC News - Two million US PCs recruited to botnets (bbc.co.uk)

MollyB writes: From the BBC: "The US leads the world in numbers [2.2 million] of Windows PCs that are part of botnets, reveals a report.

More than 2.2 million US PCs were found to be part of botnets, networks of hijacked home computers, in the first six months of 2010, it said.

Compiled by Microsoft, the research revealed that Brazil had the second highest level of infections at 550,000."

The Microsoft Security Intelligence Report (PDF) discusses almost every aspect of botnets, complete with charts, graphics, and tables. One notable exception is the vulnerability of Windows to infection by malware, a seemingy myopic omission.

Submission + - Unpublished Iraq War Docs Trigger WikiLeaks Revolt (wired.com)

Tootech writes: A domino chain of resignations at the secret-spilling site WikiLeaks followed a unilateral decision by autocratic founder Julian Assange to schedule an October release of 392,000 classified U.S. documents from the war in Iraq, according to former WikiLeaks staffers.

Key members of WikiLeaks were angered to learn last month that Assange had secretly provided media outlets with embargoed access to the vast database, under an arrangement similar to the one WikiLeaks made with three newspapers that released documents from the Afghanistan war in July. WikiLeaks is set to release the Iraq trove on Oct. 18, according to ex-staffers — far too early, in the view of some of them, to properly redact the names of U.S. collaborators and informants in Iraq.

“The release date which was established was completely unrealistic,” says 25-year-old Herbert Snorrason, an Icelandic university student who until recently helped manage WikiLeaks’ secure chat room. “We found out that the level of redactions performed on the Afghanistan documents was not sufficient. I announced that if the next batch did not receive full attention, I would not be willing to cooperate.”

At least half a dozen WikiLeaks staffers have tendered their resignations in recent weeks, the most prominent of them being Daniel Domscheit-Berg, who, under the name Daniel Schmitt, served as WikiLeaks’ German spokesman.

Comment Re:Lucky us to see it this way: (Score 4, Informative) 79

Makes me wonder the same thing about all the planet hunters and exo-planets that we are finding - how many more would we be able to find if it didn't rely on having just the right angle from our vantage point...

There are many ways to detect extrasolar planets besides the angle of our line of sight. And, as the above poster noted, they've probably got those weird angles figured out, too.

Comment LTS releases (Score 1) 291

My experience has been positive with both Dapper Drake and Hardy Heron. I still have Karmic installed on my notebook because I don't like either the new color schemes or the buttons-on-the-left. I'm annoyed at the high-handed way that Canonical treats long-time users, so I've refrained from upgrading to Lucid Lynx on the desktop until, kicking and whining, I have to next March if I'm sticking with Ubuntu. Hardy has been stable, quick and thanks to Ubuntuzilla, I've got the newest Firefox. I'm also using ALSA, not PulseAudio, but have no issues with sound. This is a factory-installed version of Hardy Heron on a Dell desktop, btw.

I'm certainly not refuting your point; just giving the upside of less-than-perfect LTS versions. They at least shield a user from future capricious corporate folly to some extent.

Censorship

Submission + - Assange Rape Case Reopened -- Wikileakileaks.org (bloomberg.com)

eldavojohn writes: Wikileaks' Julian Assange had a warrant issued for his arrest in Sweden on the charges of rape. But it was withdrawn shortly thereafter. Now the case has been reopened to investigate 'molestation charges.' On top of that, a new site (parody?) called wikileakileaks.org has been launched by the chief editor of Gawker to give Wikileaks a taste of its own medicine. You can find links to details on the molestation charges there.

Submission + - Sweden to reopen rape case involving WikiLeaks (cnn.com)

johnhp writes: Looks like Julian Assange is not out of the woods yet. The investigation against him will continue, and Sweden's top prosecutor seems confident that he's guilty. Is it really just PR, or was a crime committed after all?

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