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Submission + - Cameron Diaz most dangerous celeb online search (batangastoday.com)

Submitted by richniche
richniche writes: Millions of people around the world look up to Hollywood movie stars, not knowing that they can be dangerous too.

This was the result of the tests done by McAfee last July after they identified the most dangerous websites, and Cameron Diaz was listed as the most dangerous celebrity online search.
Hardware

Submission + - Trojan infected computer linked to Spanair crash 2 (elpais.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: El pais online newspaper (link provided in Spanish) reports that the Spanair ground computer responsible for triggering an alarm when 3 failures are reported in a plane failed to do so in the case of Spanair flight JK-5022 that killed over 150 two years ago. The computer was infected with trojans.
Australia

A How-To Website For Australian Voters 158

Posted by timothy from the voting-by-esp-was-ruled-out dept.
Twisted64 writes "If you're interested in voting below the line in the upcoming federal election in Australia, but don't want to waste time in the booth individually ranking up to 76 candidates (for the unfortunates in New South Wales), then Cameron McCormack's website may have what you need. The website allows voters to set their preferences beforehand, dragging and dropping Stephen Conroy at the bottom of the barrel and thrusting the Sex Party into pole position (as an utterly random example). Once preferences are set, the site can generate a PDF to be printed and taken to the booth." (More, below.)
Data Storage

New PS3 Firmware Causing HDD Upgrade Problems? 82

Posted by Soulskill from the infirm-ware dept.
Channard writes "While there have been occasional reports of previous PS3 firmware upgrades causing system crashes and so forth, Sony's new firmware upgrade for the system, 3.41, is apparently stopping PS3 owners from upgrading their hard disks. This problem has been encountered by many users on Sony's forums and occurs when you try to put a new hard disk into a PS3 that already has the firmware upgrade installed. The general course of action for upgrading a PS3's drive is that you download the latest PS3 firmware onto a memory stick and, after swapping the hard drive in the PS3, plug the stick in, allowing the PS3 to properly prepare the disk for use. But as of upgrade 3.41, the PS3 fails to recognize the firmware on the stick, complaining that it can't proceed until you insert the correct firmware. Repeating the process and re-downloading the firmware does not fix the problem, as I can confirm, having encountered the problem myself. Users can put the old hard disk back in, provided they've not reformatted it for some other purpose, so all is not lost. Sony have apparently told gaming website CVG that 'The information available to our Consumer Services Department does not suggest that this is a problem PlayStation owners are likely to experience when upgrading the HDD with 3.41 update.' This seems to fly in the face of the currently available information — although whether or not this statement was issued by Kevin Butler is unclear. Either way, PS3 owners encountering this problem will likely have to wait a few days for a fix and use their old HDDs for now."
Australia

Submission + - Australian enterprises block political site (itnews.com.au)

Submitted by schliz
schliz writes: Corporate web filters in some organizations are blocking web access to the Australian Sex Party, which is a registered political party that is contesting Australia's upcoming August 21 Federal Election. The site features policies and campaign material, including opposition to the Government's mandatory internet filtering proposal. Party convener Fiona Patten said that although the term 'sex' in the party's website URL could be responsible for its filtering woes, the party is unlikely to consider a name change: "I think the fact that people are still blocking our site just because of the word 'sex' in the name shows that we need this political movement."

Comment Re:Those aren't honey bees, they're yellow jackets (Score 1) 200

by malkman (#29039577) Attached to: Gardeners Told to Give Exhausted Bees an Energy Drink

Yellow jackets are protein eaters (other bugs, roadkill). They don't make honey. In the late summer / early fall they lose their normal food sources and they start going after carbohydrates -- sugary soda and pretty much anything on the picnic table.

They're also super aggressive at that time of year and can sting repeatedly. Which is why I hang a yellow jacket trap to kill as many as possible. 10 in the last day!

I can attest to yellow jackets and the similar colored paper wasp being annoying, but I think they pollinate plants as well, thought not nearly as much as bees...
Security

Submission + - Linux Kernel Exploit Affects RedHat 5 (zdnet.com)

Submitted by B1oodAnge1
B1oodAnge1 writes: ZDNet reports that proof of concept code was released last week that exploits a vulnerability in both the 64 and 32 bit versions of the 2.6.30 and 2.6.18 Linux kernel to gain root access. Apparently this affects Red Hat Enterprise Edition 5, which uses the 2.6.18 kernel.

From the source code:

A vulnerability which, when viewed at the source level, is unexploitable! But which, thanks to gcc optimizations, becomes exploitable :) Also, bypass of mmap_min_addr via SELinux vulnerability! (where having SELinux enabled actually increases your risk against a large class of kernel vulnerabilities)
Security

Submission + - US Trade Officials Tell China to Revoke PC Rule 1

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "The Wall Street Journal reports that senior US trade officials have called on China to revoke an order for personal computers to be shipped with Web-filtering software, saying the requirement could conflict with Beijing's obligations under the World Trade Organization. US Trade Representative Ron Kirk and Commerce Secretary Gary Locke urged the Chinese government to reverse its decision in joint letters submitted to China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the Ministry of Commerce that "expressed that the US. government is seriously concerned about the Green Dam [requirement], including wide-ranging concerns about the scope of the measure, the censorship implications, trade impact and security flaws which create serious problems for the IT industry and Chinese consumers," a US official said. It was the highest-level U.S. complaint so far against the rule, which is due to take effect July 1 and has already angered free-speech advocates and industry groups. Meanwhile the Chinese companies that created the Web-filtering software have been accused of stealing software code from Santa Barbara-based Solid Oak Software, developer of Cybersitter, a program for parents to filter what their children view on the Web. "We're still analyzing [Green Dam], and it's difficult because of the language barriers in writing that program," says founder Brian Mulburn. "But some of it has our name right on it. If you put the programs side by side, you can see numerous things that are identical to ours.""

Comment Re:Finally... (Score 1) 505

by malkman (#28408273) Attached to: Memory Usage of Chrome, Firefox 3.5, et al.
Aha, yeah I just took a look and firefox.exe is using about 418MB of RAM. Honestly though, ram is pretty damn cheap nowadays. Even being broke I've managed to accumulate 8GB worth, and other than the occasional precursory glance, I don't worry about how much I'm using anymore... Actually now that I think about it 418MB is pretty fuckin bad, I need to turn off some of these extensions

Comment I don't understand (Score 1) 173

by malkman (#28152843) Attached to: Microsoft Not the Only Firm Blocking IM Service To US Enemies
It seems that it would be a better idea to willfully accept and clandestinely record communication coming from countries hostile to the United State's interest; now it's not RIGHT, but that would still be the most logical process of dealing with and controlling an entity you believed hostile, right? Hm.....seeing as how VPNs are awfully well known as a way around this type of geological restriction, what if you were to simply sniff traffic on those? Cut off the citizens who are technically inept and cannot find a way around the ban, and then force the majority of those who do know of a way around it to an alternative which you control. Hell maybe not, I don't know. It just seems odd to me that our government would pass up a golden opportunity like this to spy on hostile nations.

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