eldavojohn writes "A ZDNet blog reports stats from Secunia showing OSX averaged 20.25 vulnerabilities per month while XP & Vista combined averaged 3.67/month. Is this report card's implication accurate, or is this a symptom of one company turning a blind eye while the other concentrates on timely bugfixes? 'While Windows Vista shows fewer flaws than Windows XP and has more mitigating factors against exploitation, the addition of Windows Defender and Sidebar added 4 highly critical flaws to Vista that weren't present in Windows XP. Sidebar accounted for three of those additional vulnerabilities and it's something I am glad I don't use. The lone Defender critical vulnerability that was supposed to defend Windows Vista was ironically the first critical vulnerability for Windows Vista.'"

Ponca City, We Love You writes "There is an interesting story in Seed Magazine on active SETI — sending out signals to try to contact other civilizations in nearby star systems. Alexander Zaitsev, Chief Scientist at the Russian Academy of Sciences' Institute of Radio Engineering and Electronics, has access to one of the most powerful radio transmitters on Earth and has already sent several messages to nearby, sun-like stars. But some scientists think that Zaitsev is not only acting out of turn by independently speaking for everyone on the entire planet but believe there are possible dangers we may unleash by announcing ourselves to the unknown darkness. This ground has been explored before in countless works of science fiction most notably "The Killing Star," a 1995 novel that paints a frightening picture of interstellar civilizations exterminating their neighbors with relativistic bombardments, not from malice, but simply because it is the most logical action."

sfjoe writes "Are spammers giving up the game? Google seems to think so. In an article at Wired, Google, '... says that spam attempts, as a percentage of e-mail that's transmitted through its Gmail system, have waned over the last year'. They think their own filters are so good that spammers aren't even trying anymore. 'Other experts disagree with Google, pointing out that overall spam attempts continue to rise. By most estimates, tens of billions of spam messages are sent daily. Yet for most users, the amount of spam arriving in their inboxes has remained relatively flat, thanks to improved filtering.'"

LingNoi writes "A man in Korea was found dead at his workplace Wednesday morning and his mobile phone battery was melted in his shirt pocket. No one knows for sure yet but a doctor who examined the body said, "He sustained an injury that is similar to a burn in the left chest and his ribs and spine were broken" We have heard of other dangerous battery products here on Slashdot." Update: 11/30 17:34 GMT by Z : Turns out the melted battery was the least of his worries; he was actually hit by a truck.

A survey by King Research has found that Ninety percent of IT professionals have concerns using Vista, with compatibility, stability and cost being their key reasons. Interestingly, forty four percent of companies surveyed are considering switching to non-Windows operating systems, and nine percent of those have already started moving to their selected alternative. "The concerns about Vista specified by participants were overwhelmingly related to stability. Stability in general was frequently cited, as well as compatibility with the business software that would need to run on Vista," said Diane Hagglund of King Research.

GSGKT writes "About 1,800 brand new 300-GB or 500-GB external hard drives made for Maxtor in Thailand were found to have trojan horse malwares pre-installed (autorun.inf and ghost.pif). When the HD is in use, these forward information on the disk to two websites in Beijing, China: www.nice8.org or www.we168.org. The article implies that authorities believe the Chinese government is behind the trojans. A later article pins down the point of infection to a subcontractor company in China. A couple of months back the Register was reporting on pre-installed malware detected on Maxtor disks sold in the Netherlands. This earlier report was downplayed by a Seagate spokesman." The more recent Taipei Times article says that Seagate admits the problem on its Web site, but a search there turns up nothing.

theodp writes "Maybe you shouldn't get too attached to those new Windows Live services. On Tuesday, the USPTO granted Microsoft a patent for privacy policy change notification, which describes how to threaten users with the loss of their accounts and access to web sites and services should they refuse to consent to changes in a privacy policy. This includes the case where a user might object to allowing personal information, collected earlier with a promise of confidentiality, to be shared in the future with third parties. Also described is a 'Never Notify Me' option so you won't have to 'worry' over privacy policy changes."

An anonymous reader writes "The Computer & Communications Industry Association filed a complaint this month with the FTC 'alleging that professional sports leagues, Hollywood studios, and book publishers were all using copyright notices that misrepresented the law'. That is, they were aggressively pursuing 'right' that they were not entitled to. Now a group, backed by companies like Oracle, Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, Sun, and Red Hat, has launched a web site called Defend Fair Use that shows they are serious about making the complaint stick. From the article: 'In contrast to copyright notices that take no account of fair use and claim control over "all accounts and descriptions" of a game, the CCIA offers a different copyright notice of its own. "We recognize that copyright law guarantees that you, as a member of the public, have certain legal rights," it says, "You may copy, distribute, prepare derivative works, reproduce, introduce into an electronic retrieval system, perform, and transmit portions of this publication provided that such use constitutes 'fair use' under copyright law, or is otherwise permitted by applicable law."'"

Fatty writes "Entry level certifications such as the Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA) have become the source of many jokes to people in the industry, largely because of the seemingly inept people that proudly display their certifications. This is made worse by the volume of books geared only to get people through the exam. Network Warrior bills itself as the exact opposite — if the subtitle is to be believed it contains "Everything You Need to Know That Wasn't on the CCNA Exam". With everything from the architecture of the 6500 to layers 8 and 9 of the OSI model (politics and money), it does a pretty good job." Read below for the rest of Sean's views on this book.

The card in question experienced a partial failure that started about 12:50 p.m. Saturday, said Jennifer Connors, a chief in the office of field operations for the Customs and Border Protection agency. As data overloaded the system, a domino effect occurred with other computer network cards, eventually causing a total system failure. A spokeswoman for the airports agency said airport and customs officials are discussing how to handle a similar incident should it occur in the future.

CNet is reporting that Japanese car manufacturers are teaming up to develop a standard automotive operating system. "Just as computer operating systems [...] allow multiple applications to communicate with one another, an automotive operating system enables different driving systems to work together. The standard automotive operating system from Japan will include everything from fuel injection, brakes and power steering to power windows. Currently, certain mechanical car parts are interchangeable from model to model. Smart car parts that operate off a common software standard would enable that kind of convenience to continue, while allowing them to communicate more easily with other smart components in a car."

Carter writes "Ars Technica is reporting that Musicload, one of Europe's largest movie stores, has found that 75% of its customer support problems are caused by DRM. Users have frequent problems using the music that they have purchased, which has led Musicload to try selling independent label music without DRM. Artists choosing to abandon DRM in favor of good old-fashioned MP3 have seen 40% growth in sales since December. Good to see someone in the business both 'gets it' and is willing to do something about it."

Harry Maugans writes to mention a lawsuit filed by MySpace against Scott Richter, the 'Spam King'. Filed under California's harsh anti-spam laws, the suit alleges that Richter sent millions of unsolicited 'bulletins' to MySpace users over the past few years. From the article: "The suit is aiming for monetary damages and an injunction that would permanently ban Richter and his affiliates from MySpace. The amount of money sought by MySpace has not been disclosed. Richter was already ordered to pay $7 million in a 2003 lawsuit filed by Microsoft after initially refusing to settle the dispute for $100,000. Microsoft announced in 2005 that it would be using the money from the settlement to fuel further antispam operations."