22329260
submission
phantomfive writes:
A Minnesota man hacked his neighbor's WEP secured wifi, trying to frame him with a child-porn website, fake emails to female coworkers, and death threats to the vice president. Occasionally people will claim it is easy to frame someone this way; is it really that easy?
14735278
submission
phantomfive writes:
The company everyone loves to hate is after your private information, as the Wall Street Journal reports. The IE8 design team had planned on adding the best privacy features available, but the advertising executives wanted to track users. From the story, "In the end, the product planners lost a key part of the debate. The winners: executives who argued that giving automatic privacy to consumers would make it tougher for Microsoft to profit from selling online ads. Microsoft built its browser so that users must deliberately turn on privacy settings every time they start up the software."
14254984
submission
phantomfive writes:
The NHTSA has investigated data recorders from Toyota cars whose owners claimed to have crashed due to an accelerator error. They found that the throttles were wide open and the brakes weren't being pressed. The investigation looked at a sample of the cars, selected by the NHTSA.
10789932
submission
phantomfive writes:
GoDaddy has announced they will no longer register domain names in China, in response to new requirements that each registrant be photographed, and their business ID number be submitted. GoDaddy's representative said, "The intent of the procedures appeared, to us, to be based on a desire by the Chinese authorities to exercise increased control over the subject matter of domain name registrations by Chinese nationals." Is it possible that GoDaddy has any ethics at all?
10083130
submission
phantomfive writes:
Edmunds Auto has offered a $1million prize to anyone who can find the cause of unintended acceleration. As Wikipedia covers, this is a problem that has plagued not only Toyota, but also Audi and other manufacturers. Consumer Reports has some suggestions all automakers can implement to solve this problem, including requiring breaks to be strong enough to stop the car even when the accelerator is floored.
6330923
submission
phantomfive writes:
In Iowa and Scotland there are reports of a type of cloud not yet recognized by the World Meteorological Foundation. It seems the cloud does not match any of the clouds in the International Cloud Atlas, and thus there is a campaign underway to have it included. Some have said the clouds look like armageddon has arrived. For me, writing clouds all these times makes me want to eat cotton candy.
5636973
submission
phantomfive writes:
Terry Childs, who was arrested nearly a year ago for refusing to turn over the passwords to the San Francisco's FiberWAN network has been cleared for three of the four charges against him. The charges that were dropped referred to the attachment of modems to the network. The remaining charge is for refusing to turn over the password. The prosecutor has vowed to appeal, to have the charges reinstated. We have the original story, and the story where Childs tells his side, for those who want a refresher.
5242591
submission
phantomfive writes:
Redhat has made it onto the S&P 500, an important measure of the stock market. It is replacing CIT, which is expected to go bankrupt after the government refused to bail them out. Redhat is the first Linux company to make it on to the S&P500. While this means little directly for the company, it is an indication of the importance Linux is taking on in the world.
5118997
submission
phantomfive writes:
As a follow up to the story about Carnegie Mellon demonstrating how easy it is to guess social security numbers, we have the Government Accountability Office doing a study showing that "85% of large counties and 41% of small counties in the U.S. make records that may contain SSNs generally available in bulk or online." Maybe it's time we stopped using the social security number as a shared secret?
2152459
submission
phantomfive writes:
The patent office has released some patent filings by apple which indicate that the company is working on a 3D desktop of some sort. They call it a multi-dimensional desktop, according to the patent filing.
642668
submission
phantomfive writes:
In a decision showing that sometimes common sense DOES prevail, that there is freedom and justice in America, a federal court has ruled that people who've been detained must be informed if they are on the terrorist watch list. The list is known for being unreliable, having included nuns, senators and even children.
The government attempted to defend itself by invoking the "State Secret" privilege, which the Bush administration has used in a number of recent cases. The judge ruled that this was not sufficient to keep the information hidden.
579184
submission
phantomfive writes:
Business Week has an analysis up of Apple's security future. They suggest that since Apple has developed a reputation for being secure (relative to Windows), once hackers start to target Apple more, they will prove just as vulnerable as Windows; as Roger L Kay of Endpoint technologies says, "There is no such thing as real security....The elegant simplicity of your platform just makes hacking easier."
448472
submission
phantomfive writes:
Two Baylor college of Medicine researchers are working on a vaccine for cocaine. The immune system has trouble recognizing the cocaine molecules because they are so small, so the researches attached inactive cocaine molecules to inactive cholera molecules. This allowed the body to recognize and defend against both entities. In the future, these vaccines may be required for addicts.
335253
submission
phantomfive writes:
Forbes is reporting that despite Radiohead giving their latest album away for free, more copies of the album were pirated than downloaded from their site. Also, the reaction of the chairman of EMI, "The industry, rather than embracing digitalization and the opportunities it brings for promotion of product and distribution through multiple channels, has stuck its head in the sand. Radiohead's actions are a wake-up call which we should all welcome and respond to with creativity and energy."
