Viper2026 - Slashdot User

Comment I've been noticing a lot of weird event logs stuff (Score 1) 200

by Viper2026 on Monday August 29, 2011 @12:50AM (#37238792) Attached to: New Worm Morto Using RDP To Infect Windows PCs

Lots of entries in my event log recently, stuff like: The RDP protocol component X.224 detected an error in the protocol stream and has disconnected the client. Remote session from client name a exceeded the maximum allowed failed logon attempts. The session was forcibly terminated. Just in the past few weeks, starting last week of July or so.

Comment I just hope we can opt out... (Score 1) 131

by Viper2026 on Wednesday April 13, 2011 @12:53AM (#35803964) Attached to: Windows 8 App Store Screenshots

I want nothing like this on my system

Wikileaks To Name Swiss Bank Tax Evaders 783

Posted by CmdrTaco on Monday January 17, 2011 @12:03PM from the oh-this-will-work-out-fine dept.

eldavojohn writes "The old cliche that the rich and corrupt hold all their money in Swiss bank accounts (to avoid taxation) may finally have a bit of transparency, as the news today is that Wikileaks has been handed a list of account holders tendered by Rudolf Elmer, former banker of Julius Baer. Julian Assange promises a 'full revelation' while Elmer cited his motivation as being: 'I want to let society know how this system works. It's damaging society.' This appears to be real, as Mr. Elmer is soon to appear before a Zurich regional court on charges of coercion as well as violations of Switzerland's strict banking secrecy laws. The public may soon find out that their favorite celebrity, politician or employer doesn't feel responsible to contribute financially to the commonwealth at the expense of privacy."

Jimmy Wales Declares App Store Models a Threat 334

Posted by CmdrTaco on Thursday January 13, 2011 @11:53AM from the heard-this-story-before dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Wikipedia's chief says models such as the App Store on the iPad are not only a dangerous chokepoint to internet freedom, but that this is a real and immediate problem that's of more concern than the overblown what if's of the net neutrality debate."

RapidShare Threatens Suit Over Piracy Allegations 183

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday January 13, 2011 @06:25AM from the sticks-and-stones dept.

Hugh Pickens writes "PC Magazine reports that RapidShare, named as a contributor to digital piracy by a MarkMonitor report, has threatened to sue for defamation. 'This defamation of RapidShare as a digital piracy site is absurd and we reserve the right to take legal action against MarkMonitor,' says RapidShare in a statement. 'RapidShare is a legitimate company that offers its customers fast, simple and secure storage and management of large amounts of data via our servers.' MarkMonitor, a Web site that specializes in 'enterprise brand protection,' says in their study that the most-trafficked domains engaged in digital piracy included three sites — rapidshare.com, megavideo.com, and megaupload.com — that combined yielded 21 billion pageviews per year. RapidShare acknowledged that copyrighted files do get uploaded to its site, however 'these users are in the absolute minority compared with those who use our services to pursue perfectly legitimate interests.' RapidShare says that it does not open and view the files of its users, and contains no search function so that other users may look for content."

Submission + - US to reduce fluoride in drinking water (webmd.com)

Submitted by bluefoxlucid on Saturday January 08, 2011 @11:12PM

bluefoxlucid writes: The US is slated to reduce the amount of fluoride recommended for drinking water. According to WebMD, "The HHS is recommending that water supplies contain 0.7 milligrams of fluoride per liter of water, replacing the current recommended range of 0.7 to 1.2 milligrams. [...] The new HHS recommendation, Messina says, makes sense because in recent years the population has gotten more fluoride from other sources, such as toothpaste and mouthwashes. [...] Some data suggest that excess fluoride may also be linked with skeletal bone damage, she says, and possibly hormone disruption. It has also been deemed an emerging neurotoxin." Fluoride supplements are sourced directly from industrial toxic waste, which cannot safely be dumped into the environment and so instead goes into the water supply. Conspiracy theorists and crazy generals obsessed with commie plots to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids are, of course, rejoicing.

Should Dolphins Be Treated As Non-Human Persons? 785

Posted by Soulskill on Friday January 07, 2011 @06:18PM from the as-long-as-cows-are-still-treated-as-delicious dept.

Hugh Pickens writes "Dolphins have long been recognized as among the most intelligent of animals, but now the Times reports that a series of behavioral studies suggest that dolphins, especially species such as the bottlenose, have distinct personalities, a strong sense of self, can think about the future and are so bright that they should be treated as 'non-human persons.' 'Many dolphin brains are larger than our own and second in mass only to the human brain when corrected for body size,' says Lori Marino, a zoologist at Emory University. 'The neuroanatomy suggests psychological continuity between humans and dolphins and has profound implications for the ethics of human-dolphin interactions.' For example, one study found that dolphins can recognize their image in a mirror as a reflection of themselves — a finding that indicates self-awareness similar to that seen in higher primates and elephants. Other studies have found that dolphins are capable of advanced cognitive abilities such as problem-solving, artificial language comprehension, and complex social behavior, indicating that dolphins are far more intellectually and emotionally sophisticated than previously thought. Thomas White, professor of ethics at Loyola Marymount University, has written a series of academic studies suggesting dolphins should have rights, claiming that the current relationship between humans and dolphins is, in effect, equivalent to the relationship between whites and black slaves two centuries ago."

Atari Loses Copyright Suit Against RapidShare 198

Posted by Soulskill on Friday January 07, 2011 @07:28AM from the game-over-play-again? dept.

dotarray writes "Online copyright lawsuits aren't all about music. Video game publisher Atari Europe recently became concerned that copies of its game Alone in the Dark were floating around one-click file-hosting service RapidShare, so it took the hosting company to court. While they won the initial case, the decision was overturned on appeal, finding that RapidShare is doing nothing wrong."

The Continued Censorship of Huckleberry Finn 1073

Posted by CmdrTaco on Thursday January 06, 2011 @12:35PM from the but-there's-a-bad-word-in-it dept.

eldavojohn writes "Over a hundred years after the death of its author, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn will be released in a censored format, removing two derogatory racial slurs: 'injun' and 'nigger.' The latter appears some 219 times in the original novel but both will be replaced by the word 'slave.' An Alabama publisher named NewSouth Books will be editing and censoring the book so that schools and parents might provide their children the ability to study the classic without fear of properly addressing the torturous history of racism and slavery in The United States of America. The Forbes Blog speculates that e-readers could provide us this service automatically. Salon admirably provides point versus counterpoint while the internet at large is in an uproar over this seemingly large acceptance of censorship as necessary even on books a hundred years old. The legendary Samuel Langhorne Clemens himself once wrote, 'the difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter,' and now his own writing shall test the truth in that today."

Houston We Have a Problem 116

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday January 05, 2011 @09:51AM from the oh-tom-hanks dept.

thanosk writes "NASA has started releasing the transcripts from the early NASA missions and started with releasing the transcripts of the Apollo 13 mission and the famous 'Houston we have a problem' quote."

PS3 Root Key Found 380

Posted by Soulskill on Monday January 03, 2011 @03:40PM from the insert-quarter-to-play-again dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The PlayStation 3 'root key' used for code signing has been found by GeoHot. This enables running homebrew without the need for psjailbreak-style USB-devices, and also provides hope for those at firmware version 3.55 that currently cannot be downgraded. The key also cannot be changed without hardware modifications. Oops."

Thousands of Blackbirds Fall From Sky Dead 577

Posted by samzenpus on Monday January 03, 2011 @02:04AM from the silent-spring dept.

Dan East writes "In a fashion worthy of a King or Hitchcock novel, blackbirds began to fall from the sky dead in Arkansas yesterday. Somewhere between 4,000 and 5,000 birds rained down on the small town of Beeb, Arkansas, with no visible trauma. Officials are making wild guesses as to what happened — lightning strike, high-altitude hail, or perhaps trauma from the sound of New Year's fireworks killed them."

Playstation 3 Code Signing Cracked For Good 534

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday December 29, 2010 @05:19PM from the forever-is-a-long-time dept.

ReportedlyWorking writes "It appears that Sony's PS3 has been fatally compromised. At the Chaos Communication Congress in Berlin, a team named 'fail0verflow' revealed that they had calculated the Private Keys, which would let them or anyone else generate signed software for the PS3. Additionally, they also claim to have a method of jailbreaking the PS3 without the use of a Dongle, which is the current method. If all these statements are true, this opens the door to custom firmware, and homebrew software. Assuming that Sony doesn't take radical action and invalidate their private keys, this could mean that Jailbreaking is viable on all PS3, regardless of their firmware! From the article: 'Approximately a half hour in, the team revealed their new PS3 secrets, the moment we all were waiting for. One of the major highlights here was, dongle-less jailbreaking by overflowing the bootup NOR flash, giving complete control over the system. The other major feat, was calculating the public private keys (due to botched security), giving users the ability to sign their own SELFs. Following this, the team declared Sony's security to be EPIC FAIL!'"

EFF Offers an Introduction To Traitorware 263

Posted by timothy on Sunday December 26, 2010 @01:36PM from the stop-being-so-paranoid-number-39 dept.

theodp writes "The EFF's Eva Galperin offers a brief primer on Traitorware, devices that act behind your back to betray your privacy. 'Your digital camera may embed metadata into photographs with the camera's serial number or your location,' writes Galperin. 'Your printer may be incorporating a secret code on every page it prints which could be used to identify the printer and potentially the person who used it. If Apple puts a particularly creepy patent it has recently applied for into use, you can look forward to a day when your iPhone may record your voice, take a picture of your location, record your heartbeat, and send that information back to the mothership.' She concludes: 'EFF will be there to fight it [Traitorware]. We believe that your software and devices should not be a tool for gathering your personal data without your explicit consent.'"

Facebook's Zuckerberg To Give Away Half His Cash 450

Posted by CmdrTaco on Thursday December 09, 2010 @10:20AM from the i'll-take-some dept.

Stoobalou writes "Facebook co-founders Mark Zuckerberg and Dustin Moskovitz are among the latest batch of 17 billionaires who have promised to give away at least half of their fortunes, after signing up to a philanthropic campaign led by Microsoft founder Bill Gates 3.0 and celebrity investor Warren Buffett. By signing up to The Giving Pledge, the mega-rich make a vague promise — sorry, 'moral commitment' — to give away more than half of their fortune at some point during their lifetime."

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