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Submission + - Foxconn Lays Down Employee Commandments (itworld.com) 1

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes: Foxconn, the company that produces Apple's gadgets, has put in place 8 commandments that it believes will stop suicides. While most of the list has to do with avoiding illegal activities, a few exceptions stand out: #5 Do not engage in improper male-female relations, i.e. extramarital affairs; #7 Do not participate in activities that are bad for physical or mental health; and #8 Employees who are on duty during long public holidays, or take an overseas trip, must sign an 'employee safety agreement' and inform the company of their whereabouts. The company had previously taken measures to try and reduce the numbers of suicides by raising workers pay and improving their working conditions, and, according to a recent Slashdot post, was on the verge of pulling out of China altogether.
Security

Submission + - Bank software update hits mortgage repayments (computerworlduk.com)

Submitted by ChiefMonkeyGrinder
ChiefMonkeyGrinder writes: Clydesdale Bank and Yorkshire Bank have blamed a software glitch for under-calculating customer mortgage repayments. In a statement, the banks have admitted to miscalculating around 18,000 borrowers’ repayments, which has led to customers underpaying. Customers are now being told to fork out more money as the banks try to recoup the money customers should have been paying in line with their mortgage terms.
Government

Submission + - Why Taking Photos in Public Places Is Not A Crime (popularmechanics.com)

Submitted by longacre
longacre writes: Blogger, lawyer and Popular Mechanics contributor Glenn Reynolds calls out the legally dubious practice of restricting photography in public places in the name of national security. From the article, "Legally, it's pretty much always okay to take photos in a public place as long as you're not physically interfering with traffic or police operations. As Bert Krages, an attorney who specializes in photography-related legal problems and wrote Legal Handbook for Photographers, says, "The general rule is that if something is in a public place, you're entitled to photograph it." What's more, though national-security laws are often invoked when quashing photographers, Krages explains that "the Patriot Act does not restrict photography; neither does the Homeland Security Act." But this doesn't stop people from interfering with photographers, even in settings that don't seem much like national-security zones."
Music

Submission + - Space Music Vol. 12: Solar Music Explained (howstuffworks.com)

Submitted by OMGTSFS
OMGTSFS writes: Remember the "solar music" or "music of the sun" sound clips that made the rounds last month without much in the way of explanation of what we were hearing and why? Well here's an explanation from a solar astrophysicist about what it all means (if anything). No science babel! Just answers!
Iphone

Submission + - Apple "under-reported" scale of iPhone Antennagate (pcpro.co.uk) 1

Submitted by Barence
Barence writes: The number of customers affected by iPhone 4's antenna issues is likely to be far higher than Apple reported, industry insiders have told PC Pro. Apple CEO Steve Jobs stated that only 0.55% of iPhone 4 customers had contacted the company's support desk to complain about reception issue, in last week's press conference. However, that represents only a tiny fraction of the customers affected by the issue, according to WDS Global, a company that provides customer support desks for several leading phone networks and handset manufacturers. "If you look at the mobile industry as whole, only about 20-30% of consumers will ever actually phone their carrier or handset manufacturer to report a fault," WDS Global's Tim Deluca-Smith told PC Pro, with most people visiting online forums or asking friends and family to solve issues.
"Saying that everybody who had a problem would have phoned AppleCare is not a true representation of the issue."
Open Source

Submission + - Lightspark 0.4.2 open source Flash player released (h-online.com)

Submitted by suraj.sun
suraj.sun writes: The Lightspark project has released version 0.4.2 of its free, open source Flash player. According to Lightspark develoepr Alessandro Pignotti, the alternative Flash Player implementation is "designed from the ground up to be efficient on current and (hope fully) future hardware".

The latest release of Lightspark features better compatibility with YouTube videos, sound synchronisation support and the ability to use fontconfig for font selection. Other changes include plug-in support for Google's Chrome/Chromium web browser and support for Firefox's out of process plug-in (OOPP) mode, which was added in version 3.6.4 of the browser.

H-online: http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Lightspark-0-4-2-open-source-Flash-player-released-1042757.html
Bug

Submission + - MS Releases Tool to Fix Shortcut Risk ... Sort of (krebsonsecurity.com) 1

Submitted by
eldavojohn
eldavojohn writes: "Last week, we heard that Microsoft has no plans to fix a shortcut file exploit in Windows. This week, Krebs walks you through a sloppy stopgap that Microsoft threw together instead of asking the user to edit their registry by hand. For your average joe user, Krebs warns that the "fixit" button you click on Microsoft's tool will restart your computer and "remove the graphical representation of icons on the Task bar and Start menu bar and replace them with plain, white icons.""
Games

Submission + - World of Warcraft Can Boost Your Career

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "Forbes reports that although videogames have long been thought of as distractions to work and education rather than aids, there is a growing school of thought that says game-playing in moderation, and in your free time, can make you more successful in your career. "We're finding that the younger people coming into the teams who have had experience playing online games are the highest-level performers because they are constantly motivated to seek out the next challenge and grab on to performance metrics," says John Hagel III, co-chairman of a tech-oriented strategy center for Deloitte. Elliot Noss, chief executive of domain name provider Tucows, spends six to seven hours a week playing online games and believes "World of Warcraft" trains him to become a better leader. "'You have these events [in "World of Warcraft"] that are very leadership-driven," Noss says. "For example, when you're in a raid that's poorly led, it's really easy to see how valuable are skills like managing the social dynamic, making sure there was the right level of preparation and making sure that there was a clear hierarchy in terms of who is performing what roles." Noss does a regular lunchtime series called "Tucows Lore" where he plays the company poet, telling tales of Tucows over the years--its heroes, villains, battles with large telecommunications companies or the early days of the domain registration market. "The feedback is fantastic. It helps people feel they are part of something bigger.""
Botnet

Submission + - Inside the Black Energy 2 Botnet (threatpost.com)

Submitted by Trailrunner7
Trailrunner7 writes: Threatpost has an interesting column that provides a detailed analysis of the notorious Black Energy 2 botnet, which has been wreaking havoc with DDoS attacks, spam operations and playing a part in web redirects and malware campaigns. "The bot has several main functions: it hides the malware code from antivirus products, infects system processes and, finally, offers flexible options for conducting a range of malicious activities on an infected computer when commands are received from the botnet command-and-control (C&C) center. Each task is performed by a different component of the malicious program.

Initially, the Black Energy bot was created with the aim of conducting DDoS attacks, but with the implementation of plugins in the bot’s second version, the potential of this malware family has become virtually unlimited. (However, so far cybercriminals have mostly used it as a DDoS tool). Plugins can be installed, e.g. to send spam, grab user credentials, set up a proxy server etc. The upd command can be used to update the bot, e.g. with a version that has been encrypted using a different encryption method. Regular updates make it possible for the bot to evade a number of antivirus products, any of which might be installed on the infected computer, for a long time.

This malicious tool has high potential, which naturally makes it quite a threat. Luckily, since there are no publicly available constructors online which can be used online to build Black Energy 2 bots, there are fewer variants of this malware than say, ZeuS or the first version of Black Energy. However, the data we have shows that cybercriminals have already used Black Energy 2 to construct large botnets, and these have already been involved in successful DDoS attacks.
Windows

Submission + - Researchers prep windows that work as solar cells (eetimes.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Researchers at New Energy Technologies Inc. (Burtonsville, Maryland), are developing SolarWindow technology, and plan to unveil a working prototype of the world's first-ever glass window capable of generating electricity in a matter of weeks, according to this EE Times story . Up until now solar cells have been opaque. But if you can see through a solar cell why shouldn't we make every window a solar cell?
Government

Survey Says To UK — Repeal Laws of Thermodynamics 208

Posted by kdawson from the einstein-is-next-up-against-the-wall dept.
mostxlnt writes "As we noted, the new Tory UK government has launched a website asking its subjects which laws they'd most like repealed. There are proposals up for repeal of the Laws of Thermodynamics: Second, Third, and all (discussion thread on this one closed by a moderator). One comment on the Third [now apparently deleted] elucidated: 'Without the Third Law of Thermodynamics, it would be possible to build machines that would last forever and provide an endless source of cheap energy. thus solving both potential crises in energy supply as well as solving the greenhouse gas problem in one step... simples... eh?'"
Piracy

Ubisoft's Authentication Servers Go Down 634

Posted by kdawson from the single-point-of-well-you-know dept.
ZuchinniOne writes "With Ubisoft's fantastically awful new DRM you must be online and logged in to their servers to play the games you buy. Not only was this DRM broken the very first day it was released, but now their authentication servers have failed so absolutely that no-one who legally bought their games can play them. 'At around 8am GMT, people began to complain in the Assassin's Creed 2 forum that they couldn't access the Ubisoft servers and were unable to play their games.' One can only hope that this utter failure will help to stem the tide of bad DRM."

Microsoft Demos Three Platforms Running the Same Game 196

Posted by Soulskill from the pick-up-and-play dept.
suraj.sun writes with this excerpt from Engadget: "Microsoft's Eric Rudder, speaking at TechEd Middle East, showed off a game developed in Visual Studio as a singular project (with 90% shared code) that plays on Windows with a keyboard, a Windows Phone 7 Series prototype device with accelerometer and touch controls, and the Xbox 360 with the Xbox gamepad. Interestingly, not only is the development cross-platform friendly, but the game itself (a simple Indiana Jones platformer was demoed) saves its place and lets you resume from that spot on whichever platform you happen to pick up."
Patents

Patent Markings May Spell Trouble For Activision 82

Posted by Soulskill from the almost-rocket-docket dept.
eldavojohn writes "If you pick up your copy of Guitar Hero and read the literature, you'll notice it says 'patent pending' and cites a number of patents. A group alleges no such patent pends nor are some of the patents applicable. If a judge finds Activision guilty of misleading the public in this manner, they could become liable for up to $500 per product sold under false patent marking. The patents in question seem to be legitimately Guitar Hero-oriented, and little is to be found about the mysterious group. The final piece of the puzzle puts the filing in Texas Northern District Court, which might be close enough to Texas Eastern District Court to write this off as a new kind of 'false patent marking troll' targeting big fish with deep coffers."

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