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Earth

Submission + - North Pole May Be Ice Free This Summer (nationalgeographic.com)

Submitted by
caffeinated seattlelite
caffeinated seattlelite writes: ""Arctic warming has become so dramatic that the North Pole may melt this summer, report scientists studying the effects of climate change in the field. "We're actually projecting this year that the North Pole may be free of ice for the first time [in history]," David Barber, of the University of Manitoba, told National Geographic News aboard the C.C.G.S. Amundsen, a Canadian research icebreaker.""
Security

Submission + - Hardware security for World of Warcraft

Submitted by Snaller
Snaller writes: Since World of Warcraft became a massive success, hackers have created trojans who specifically target WoW players, and try to steal their login credentials. To combat this Blizzard has now created the "Blizzard Authenticator" which can be yours for 6.50 — when a user logs into the game they are directed to press a button on the token generator and will get a short one time code to enter. Those who are sure they will never get hacked are free to ignore this offer.
Biotech

Submission + - IBM to Help Sequence the Chocolate Genome (nytimes.com) 1

Submitted by
Dekortage
Dekortage writes: "The New York Times reports this morning that IBM will work with Mars — the candy company who makes M&Ms and Snickers, among other things — on a five year project to sequence the cocoa genome. According to Howard-Yana Shapiro, global director of plant science at Mars, the goal is to "discover the genetic building blocks of traits like disease and pest resistance, drought tolerance and perhaps flavor." Additionally, the project's results will be available for free from the Public Intellectual Property Resource for Agriculture."
Television

Submission + - BBC unveils iPlayer 2.0 (pcpro.co.uk)

Submitted by
Barence
Barence writes: "The BBC is preparing to unveil a new look iPlayer, integrating radio and television in a single interface. A beta version is due to launch later today and will run alongside the existing iPlayer for the next few weeks while the BBC gathers feedback. It promises "smoother and easier" navigation between TV and Radio programmes, while adding features."
Censorship

Submission + - Sourceforge.net blocked in mainland China (moon-blog.com)

Submitted by
gzipped_tar
gzipped_tar writes: "SourceForge, the world's largest development and download repository of Open Source code and applications, appears to be blocked in Mainland China.

The current blocking may be related to the recent anti-China protests of Beijing Olympic Games, which will begin on 8 August. Some days before, a very popular free source code editor in SourceForge named Notepad++ start to boycott Beijing 2008. The project's developer said that the action is not against Chinese people, but against Chinese government's repression against Tibetan unrest earlier in this year.

SF.net has once been banned by China in 2002. However, the ban was lifted later in 2003.

Submitter's note: As a SourceForge user in Beijing, I can confirm this first-hand. I also tried traceroute to sourceforge.net, only to find the connection being dropped at a Beijing ISP's gateway router. It appears that the projects' respective homepages are available even if they are hosted by SF, but the summary and download pages are blocked."
Earth

Submission + - Explosive Volcanic Eruption Found Under Arctic Ice

Submitted by radioweather
radioweather writes: An international team of researchers was able to provide evidence of explosive volcanism in the deeps of the ice-covered Arctic Ocean for the first time. Researchers from an expedition to the Gakkel Ridge, led by the American Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, report in the current issue of the journal Nature that they discovered, with a specially developed camera, extensive layers of volcanic ash on the seafloor, which indicates a gigantic volcanic eruption.

The Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD and buried thriving Pompeii under a layer of ash and pumice. Far away in the Arctic Ocean, at 85 N 85 E, a similarly violent volcanic eruption happened almost undetected in 1999.

This discovery of a major volcanic eruption under sea ice is the second one this year, another active volcano was found in Antarctica under the West Antarctic Ice Sheet by members of the British Antarctic Survey in January.
Spam

Submission + - One botnet sends 46 percent of all spam (itwire.com)

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: http://www.itwire.com/content/view/19009/53/ The Srizbi botnet seems unstoppable at the moment, if the Marshal TRACE research analysts are to be believed. It seems that the volume of malicious spam tripled in just one week (the second week of June, compared to the first) and that the Srizbi botnet is behind the jump. TRACE reckon it now accounts for distributing 46 percent of all the spam that flows through its monitoring kit and warns the crime gang behind it are on an expansion drive right now. Frightening stuff.
Software

Submission + - Liberation Fonts Increase Interoperability (quantenblog.net) 1

Submitted by
hweimer
hweimer writes: "Most problems when opening Word documents under GNU/Linux are due to missing fonts. Therefore, Red Hat published a set of fonts metric-compatible with the Windows core fonts last year. However, there were some concerns regarding the licensing that prevented many other distros to ship them. We finally managed to settle these problems, leading to better document interoperability for all GNU/Linux users."
Media

Submission + - New media centre distro eAR OS

Submitted by spandex_panda
spandex_panda writes: I read just now about a new media centre version of Ubuntu, actually it is an independent distro but seems to be including a new media center app which is GPL licensed. A developer has posted something here talking about a few things regarding it.

I think this is one of those things Ubuntu really needs, although I haven't tried it it looks great from the screen shots and the developer sounds very professional and organised. I personally don't like myth-tv as it is not quite 'shiny' enough! Something like eAROS could be the beginning of some more Linux migration as people move from windows based media centers to linux based ones.
Software

Submission + - Can Linux find one good way to install software? (practical-tech.com)

Submitted by
fyc
fyc writes: "Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols has written about the latest attempt to create an API that would allow independent software vendors to create software packages that are integrated into the distro's package manager, the LSB Package API. There are similar projects to this, including Linspire's CNR (Click N Run), which is planned to support distros using the Debian and RPM package managers, including Debian, Fedora, OpenSUSE, Ubuntu and Linux Mint."
Music

Submission + - RIAA Demands Radio Royalties

Submitted by
digitrev
digitrev writes: "Wired has an article regarding the RIAA's latest foray into procuring royalty payments from the radio industry. From the article

On Monday, the recording industry sent the National Association of Broadcasters — the trade group representing the $16 billion a year AM-FM broadcasting business — a can of herring to underscore that it believes its arguments against paying royalties are a red herring. The NAB says its members should not pay royalties because AM-FM radio "promotes" the music industry.
musicFIRST, another industry group, sent the NAB four different songs, "Take the Money and Run" by the Steve Miller Band; "Pay me My Money Down" by Bruce Springsteen; "Back In the U.S.S.R" by Paul McCartney and "A Change Would Do You Good" by Sheryl Crow.

It's also worth noting the 6 year old Onion story. Yet another sad case of reality imitating fiction."
Role Playing (Games)

Submission + - Blizzard Entertainment Hinting at Diablo III? (diablofans.com)

Submitted by tigreye007
tigreye007 writes: Something is stirring over at Blizzard Entertainment, but as per usual, they're keeping it hush-hush, and all the while giving us vague hints at the possibilities. The most obvious hint is a newly-added splash screen on most of Blizzard's web sites. The splash image at first glance looks like a cracking chunk of ice, but a closer look reveals small runic symbols with circles around them that most people currently believe will continue to be added each day leading up to this weekend. With the start of their annual Worldwide Invitational (WWI) on Saturday, they're definitely building up a buzz, and many signs are pointing to the coming of the next version of Diablo, i.e. Diablo III. A 50+ page (and quickly growing) thread filled with speculation and hope can be found here.
Networking

Submission + - Time Warner Dumps Usenet

Submitted by TheGrumpster
TheGrumpster writes: Following in the footsteps of Verizon, it would seem, Time Warner has apparently dumped all usenet newsgroup service. A connection to any of their groups gives the following: "Time Warner Cable will be discontinuing its newsgroup service effective 06/23/2008. For more information please visit: http://help.rr.com/HMSFaqs/e_newsgroups_termination.aspx" Comically, they cite a "lack of use" as the reason for dropping usenet. I guess the 1.5 TB of goodiez I downloaded during the past year isn't sufficient to demonstrate "use".

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