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The Internet

Submission + - Pirate Bay earns 20,000 Euros a day (rixstep.com) 2

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: controverisal pro-piracy website the piratebay likes to portray itself as an innocent hobby site that provides a free index without censorship, but recent facts show that the site is earning up to 20,000 Euros per day from its advertising. Taking in money on this scale puts a different slant on the motives behind the Swedish filesharing site, and could open up the runners of the site to prosecution for profiting from copyright infringement.
Music

Submission + - Multiformat Listening Test at 64kbps

Submitted by Anonymous
Anonymous writes: The Hydrogenaudio community is conducting a "Public, Multiformat Listening Test" (http://www.listening-tests.info/mf-64-1/) to see which codecs (AAC, WMA Pro and Vorbis) provide the best sound quality when compressing samples at 64kbps.

This test is open until the 5th of August and seems to be much, much harder than what one would expect, even for experienced developers of sound codecs, at bitrates that the public would find "too little", as the comments on the thread at the discussion forums (see: http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?show topic=56397).

Do you think that you have good ears? That 64kbps is "too little"? Then try it for yourself and participate. Your participation will help us improve the codecs so that they are even closer to being "transparent" at such "low" bitrates.
Security

Submission + - New Tool Automates Webmail Account Hijacks (washingtonpost.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A pair of software tools demonstrated at the Black Hat security conference today automate the interception of cookie files transmitted over a wireless network that allow attackers to hijack accounts for Gmail, Hotmail, Facebook and a number of other Web 2.0 services, washingtonpost.com's Security Fix reports. From the story: "the attack works even if victims subsequently change their passwords, or actively sign out of their accounts. However, attackers would be unable to change the victim's password, as all of the above-named services force the user to reenter the current password before changing it to a new one."
Media (Apple)

Submission + - Apple May Track IPod Thieves & You (msn.com)

Submitted by
Ryan N. Kamfolt - ClickAway
Ryan N. Kamfolt - ClickAway writes: "Apple may begin implementing software in its I-Tunes suite to track serial numbers of I-Pods and compare them to a stolen I-Pod database. Due to the worlds most successful and popular product being on the #1 most stolen items list. This may alert the local police to come knocking on your door, if "Your" I-Pod is in question. Weather it be stolen or legit, people are not taking this to heart kindly at all. With the right to privacy walls closing in on us ever so fast, this seems to be another push to take our privacy rights away even more, or is it? Those who have had their I-Pods stolen love the idea. Others are not so happy about the idea. Some privacy right advocates have suggested implementing I-Pods or I-Phones with owner ID verification, such as a password or other forms of verification that must be entered into the devices before they will take a charge or allow you to place songs on the device. Or offer a service that is apart of Apple iCare, which allows users who feel they may become a victim of theft, to join this database, to further protect them in the even their I-Pod is stolen."
Supercomputing

Submission + - World's Most Powerful Single-kernel Linux System?

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: NASA has selected an SGI Altix supercomputer to help it meet future high-performance computing requirements. The new system will be the first supercomputer to operate 2,048 processor cores in SMP mode under control of one Linux kernel, creating the world's largest single-kernel Linux system. Driven by 1,024 Dual-Core Intel Itanium 2 processors, the new system will generate 13.1 TFLOPs of compute power. To accomplish this feat, SGI had to extend the Linux kernel's SMP support from 1,024 CPUs to 2,048 CPUs. Fancy that on your desktop!
Security

Submission + - Next-generation 911 system almost ready (networkworld.com)

Submitted by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes: "Six years after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks demonstrated weaknesses in the nation's telecommunications infrastructure, the Internet engineering community has come up with a new way to handle emergency communications. The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) plans to wrap up work on key components of its next-generation emergency communications system by year-end. The new system will support voice calls, text messages and images sent over the Internet. The current 911 system will not work for voice, text or real-time multimedia communications sent over the Internet. The ECRIT working group has developed a way for IP-based phones, mobile devices and network gear such as proxy servers to handle 911-style emergency services. http://www.networkworld.com/news/2007/072507-next- gen-911.html"
Privacy

Submission + - Merely "cloaking" data may be incriminatin

Submitted by n0g
n0g writes: In a recent submission to Bugtraq, Larry Gill of Guidance Software refutes (successfully or not, you decide) some bug reports for the forensic analysis product EnCase® Forensic Edition. The refutation is interesting, but one comment raises an important privacy issue: When talking about perps creating "loops" in NTFS directories to hide data, Gill says, "The purposeful hiding of data by the subject of an investigation is in itself important evidence and there are many scenarios where intentional data cloaking provides incriminating evidence, even if the perpetrator is successful in cloaking the data itself."

That begs the question, if one "cloaks" data by encrypting it, say, exactly what incriminating evidence does that provide? And how important is that evidence compared to the absence of anything else found that was incriminating? If you find an encrypted hard drive on my system, that doesn't mean there's pr0n in there, that's just to hold my bank records. No, seriously.
The Internet

Submission + - Internet Rage Strikes Again! (physorg.com)

Submitted by
eldavojohn
eldavojohn writes: "The internet is literally turning a little bit more into a an information super highway in that it now comes with road rage. A Navy man drove from Virginia to Texas, taking pictures and posting them online as he made progress along the way to set fire to another internet user's trailer. From the article, "The feud started when Anderson, who runs a haunted house near Waco, joined a picture-sharing Web site and posted his artwork and political views. After he blocked some people from his page because of insults and foul language, they retaliated by making obscene digitally altered pictures of him, he said. Anderson, who went by the screen name "Johnny Darkness," traded barbs with Tavares, aka "PyroDice." Investigators say Tavares boiled over when Anderson called him a nerd and posted a digitally altered photo making Tavares look like a skinny boy in high-water pants, holding a gun and a laptop under a "Revenge of the Nerds" sign." Tavares has been sentenced to 7 years in prison after pleading no contest to arson."
Hardware Hacking

Submission + - Apple TV harddrive upgrade

Submitted by RhinoFriend
RhinoFriend writes: AppleTVHacks.net has published the first step by step tutorial on upgrading the the Apple TV's harddrive. The default 40gb harddrive was replaced with a 120gb model.

The process works by removing the harddrive and transferring the pre-installed Harddrives contents by way of a Firewire drive bay an, in this case, a Mac. This should be a boon to those people with large collections of iTunes content.
The Courts

Submission + - Hans Reiser stands trial for murder, no bail money

Submitted by
mtaht
mtaht writes: "Announced today: Hans Reiser to stand trial for murder. He's too broke to make bail, so will remain in jail (hopefully doing something productive) until the jury trial starts May 7th.

To me, the evidence — with one notable exception — seems far more flimsy than in the OJ Simpson case. Trace samples of blood in the home? How many times have you bled in your house over the last 4 years? If your wife had gone missing, and you knew from watching hundreds of tv shows who was usually investigated — wouldn't a normal person (geek) that otherwise had had no encounter with the law previously — buy a book or two on the subject? (admittedly, pre-patriot act, I'd have got mine from the library). If innocent, would you get annoyed at being trailed everywhere and start playing games with the cops? Since when did washing your car "frequently" become evidence of a crime?

Still... what did you do with the damn car seat, Hans?"
Security

Submission + - Drive-By Pharming Attack Could Hit Home Networks

Submitted by Rob
Rob writes: CBRonline.com is reporting that security researchers at Symantec and Indiana University have figured out a way to compromise home networks using a single line of JavaScript in a web page. The attack, which they have called "drive-by pharming", would enable attackers to convincingly pretend to be any web site on the internet, making it fairly trivial to repeatedly phish for sensitive information, install malware on users' machines, or steal email.
The Internet

Submission + - Spam-free Recommendations claims "Trusted Opin

Submitted by
tgreene
tgreene writes: "www.trustedopinion.com launched a public beta a few hours ago. They claim to be the first "Social Recommendation" site, linking reviews with a social network. The idea is that each user sees a unique score for each item based on how those in their social network ranked it. The site launched with movies as an initial testbed but plans to expand into a bunch of entertainment-related categories. This model is interesting because it ensures users get recommendations from people they trust; opinions of people outside of their social network can't affect an item score. Since insiders at Amazon claim that over 50% of online reviews are commercially biased, this new model is looking timely."
Sci-Fi

Submission + - Possible 25 million year old frog found

Submitted by dispatch
dispatch writes: A frog was found that researchers in Mexico City are saying could be 25 million years old! According to the article, "The chunk of amber containing the 0.4-inch frog was uncovered by a miner in southern Chiapas states in 2005 and was bought by a private collector, who lent it to scientists for study." Unfortunately, it doesn't seem as though the scientists will be allowed to drill into the rock at the owner's request which means we're going to have to wait a while longer before we can make Jurassic Park a reality...

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