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Submission + - How Nintendo's Mario got his name (technologizer.com)

Submitted by harrymcc
harrymcc writes: In 1981, tiny Nintendo of America was getting ready to release Donkey Kong. When the company's landlord, Mario Segale, demanded back rent, Nintendo staffers named the game's barrel-jumping protagonist after him. Almost thirty years later, neither Nintendo--which continues to crank out Mario games--nor Segale--now a wealthy, secretive Washington State real estate developer--like to talk about how one of video games' iconic characters got his name and Italian heritage. Technologizer's Benj Edwards has researched the story for years and provides the most detailed account to date.

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: Wiki & Request Tracking on Windo

Submitted by cmos-reset
cmos-reset writes: I was asked to implement a wiki server and investigate a ticket tracking solution for our ten-staff help desk. I've recommended a LAMP server with MediaWiki and RT, but the solutions absolutely must run on Windows. A Sharepoint Services idea has been proposed by someone else for the ticket tracking but their proposal will require every incoming email to be manually copied and pasted into the ticketing database. Are there simple wiki servers available for Windows that are "$free" or low cost? It needs to be simple to backup as I won't be the only person administering the server — text files in a dir would be "easy" as described here (http://www.wikimatrix.org/wiki/feature:Text%20Files). Finally, does anyone know of a way to get the current version of RT to work reliably under Windows, or know any reasonable alternative (I've looked at WinRT but it's pretty old now)? All advice is greatly appreciated; thanks in advance.
IBM

Submission + - IBM WebSphere software early programs - IBM WebSph (bit.ly)

Submitted by wsemg
wsemg writes: IBM WebSphere eXtreme Scale v7.1 Beta — Download & Education : WebSphere eXtreme Scale provides the technology to enhance business applications, including web commerce, supply chain, financial, trading and on-line gaming, to form new, innovative classes of business applications by extending the data-caching concept with advanced features. These application enhancements can be realized by utilizing WebSphere eXtreme Scale in the following flexible scenarios and configurations:
Privacy

Submission + - Chuck Schumer is not Facebook's friend (skunkpost.com)

Submitted by crimeandpunishment
crimeandpunishment writes: When Facebook announced its new features last week, they said it would make social networking more social. But a lot of people expressed concern about privacy. Now you can add New York Senator Chuck Schumer to the list. He's written to the Federal Trade Commission expressing concern about the changes and asking them to establish guidelines for social networking sites. There's a little irony here....a senator seeking publicity over privacy.
Security

Submission + - McAfee to pay for PC repairs after patch fiasco (pcpro.co.uk)

Submitted by Barence
Barence writes: McAfee has offered to pay for the PC repairs of consumers affected by last week's faulty antivirus update. The problematic patch falsely identified the SVCHOST.EXE Windows file as a virus, causing PCs running Windows XP SP3 to crash or enter endless reboot cycles. In a blog post addressed to "Home or Home Office Consumers", the company offered to reimburse PC repair expenses, though there was a notable caveat. "If you have already incurred costs to repair your PC as a result of this issue, we're committed to reimbursing reasonable expenses," the company said. "Reasonable expenses" has yet to be formally defined.

Submission + - Yahoo's "Chicken Coop" Server Farm Unveiled (datacenterknowledge.com)

Submitted by 1sockchuck
1sockchuck writes: Yahoo is preparing to launch its unusual new data center near Buffalo. It's a server farm that resembles a chicken coop, and uses many of the same heat management principles. The $150 million facility runs on hydro-electric power, uses fresh air cooling for virtually the entire year, and can recirculate server waste heat to regulate the data center environment. Yahoo's new facility has been praised by Greenpeace for its sustainable design, but the company says its focus is driven by the economics of improved efficiency. With images and video.

Submission + - How to Import your Blog into LinkedIn (anguloconsulting.com)

Submitted by FishRep
FishRep writes: If you keep an outside blog, you can import it to your LinkedIn account using an RSS feed. By importing an RSS feed, you can easily have those blog articles also appear on your LInkedIn profile without having to re-key your posts on several Web sites. Having those articles appear on your LinkedIn profile helps increase the ranking of your blog for the search engines (SEO). Here are the steps to take to do this:
  1. Make sure your blog is listed in the my websites section of your profile
  2. Click the home link at the top of any LinkedIn page
  3. At the bottom right, click the Add more to your home page link
  4. Click on the Blog Link link
  5. That's it. Your blog will be imported into your LinkedIn profile. To see blog articles from you and also from your connections, go to the my network section on the home page

Also, note that you can import your blog into your Facebook profile
Programming

Submission + - Stanford parallel programming course for free (stanford.edu)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Beginning today, the school's Stanford Center for Professional Development will make recorded lectures of the computer science course CS 193G: Programming Massively Parallel Processors with CUDA available through Stanford on iTunes U. A direct link to the course that includes slides and support materials can be found through Stanford Engineering Everywhere, the school's free course website.
Security

Submission + - Hackers exploit McAfee false positive disaster (sophos.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: As if the false alarm wasn't bad enough...

Blackhat hackers are exploiting interest in the McAfee bug which has caused hundreds of thousands of computers to crash around the world, by creating malware-infected webpages and seeding them into search engine results.

Security firm Sophos reports that internet users who Google for phrases such as "McAfee false positive" and "Wecorl" (the name of the virus McAfee incorrectly detected in svchost.exe) can be taken to pages hosting fake anti-virus attacks.

According to researchers "if you click on a dangerous link like this then you risk the chance of your computer being hit by a fake anti-virus attack (also known as scareware) which may attempt to con you out of your credit card details or trick you into install malicious code onto your computer."
Security

Submission + - Spying The Spy: Turn Trojans Against Criminals (net-security.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: "Researchers do vulnerability research on so many various application, why not to do it on this one?" asked himself Andrzej Dereszowski, founder and director of Signal 11, a Polish firm focused on analyzing information leakage incidents and their prevention. In his research paper titled "Targeted attacks: From being a victim to counter attacking", he describes common targeted attacks and analyzes the remote administration tools (Trojans) that are used to control the victim's computer. Using a particular incident as an example, he manages to identify the software being used through analysis of traffic, behavior, and code. This analysis makes is possible for him to identify potential vulnerabilities in the code that could be used for a counter-attack aimed at the attacker.

Submission + - Number of Malware Attacks Up by 71% (anguloconsulting.com) 1

Submitted by FishRep
FishRep writes: Hi-tech criminals are racking up more than 100 attacks per second on the world's computers, according to an annual report by Symantec. The number of malware (malicious software) samples that Symantec saw in 2009 was 71% higher than in 2008. This meant, said Symantec, that 51% of all the viruses, trojans and other malicious programs it has ever seen were logged during 2009. In total, Symantec identified almost 2.9 million items of malicious code during that 12 month period.

The steep rise in malware was driven largely by the growing popularity of easy to use toolkits that novice cyber-criminals are using to turn out their own malware, said Tony Osborn, a technology manager for the public sector at Symantec. Some of the kits were available for free, said Mr Osborn but others cost a lot of money. One, called Zeus, was available for around $700 and many had become so successful that their creators now offer telephone support for those who cannot get them to work.
Anime

Submission + - Porn virus publishes web history of victims on the (anguloconsulting.com)

Submitted by FishRep
FishRep writes: A new type of malware infects PCs using file-share sites and publishes the user's net history on a public website before demanding a fee for its removal. The Japanese trojan virus installs itself on computers using a popular file-share service called Winni, used by up to 200m people. It targets those downloading illegal copies of games in the Hentai genre, an explicit form of anime. Website Yomiuri claims that 5500 people have so far admitted to being infected. The virus, known as Kenzero, is being monitored by web security firm Trend Micro in Japan. Masquerading as a game installation screen, it requests the PC owner's personal details. It then takes screengrabs of the user's web history and publishes it online in their name, before sending an e-mail or pop-up screen demanding a credit card payment of 1500 yen (£10) to "settle your violation of copyright law" and remove the webpage. Read summary article Porn Virus Publishes Web History of Victims on the Net at Angulo Consulting Read the original BBC article

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