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Sleep Mailing 195

Doctors have reported the first case of someone using the internet while asleep, when a sleeping woman sent emails to people asking them over for drinks and caviar. The 44-year-old woman found out what she had done after a would be guest phoned her about it the next day. While asleep the woman turned on her computer, logged on by typing her username and password then composed and sent three emails. Each mail was in a random mix of upper and lower cases, unformatted and written in strange language. One read: "Come tomorrow and sort this hell hole out. Dinner and drinks, 4.pm,. Bring wine and caviar only." Another said simply, "What the......." If I had known that researchers were interested in unformatted, rambling email I would have let them read my inbox. They could start a whole new school of medicine.
Microsoft

Microsoft Exploit Predictions Right 40% of Time 182

CWmike writes "Microsoft today called its first month of predicting whether hackers will create exploit code for its bugs a success — even though the company got its forecast right just 40% of the time for October. 'I think we did really well,' said Mike Reavey, group manager at the Microsoft Security Research Center (MSRC), when asked for a postmortem evaluation of the first cycle of the team's Exploitability Index. 'Four of the [nine] issues that we said where consistent exploit code was likely did have exploit code appear over the first two weeks. And another key was that in no case did we rate something too low.' Microsoft's Exploitability Index was introduced last month."
Google

Free IMAP On Gmail 440

A number of readers are writing in to tell us that Google is rolling out IMAP support for Gmail accounts. Several people say that some of their gmail accounts offer the IMAP option (in Settings, Forwarding and POP/IMAP) and others do not.
Google

Submission + - Free IMAP on GMAIL? (google.com)

Demaratus writes: "It looks like Google is rolling out free IMAP service on select GMAIL accounts. One one of my gmail accounts, IMAP is now available in addition to POP in the settings for the account. I checked several of my other accounts, but it appears that only one of them has this new feature available. I can't find any information on this anywhere else after a few brief search engine queries, so I figured I'd share this great news with other \.ers. How long until Google rolls out free IMAP to all Gmail accounts?"
Patents

Submission + - Would you fight your own software patent?

ingo23 writes: Everybody knows that the Slashdot crowd just loves the software patents. If not the patents, what would you rant about? Now imagine this — at work you are developing a piece of some cool software. And one day your employer decides to file a patent for it naming you as an inventor. Would you gladly accept the honor or would you get on a soap box and stir up a little revolt against software patents?
Privacy

Submission + - Thumbprint required to buy a car in Southern CA

saccade.com writes: "Here's an insidious use of biometrics: A southern California car dealership actually refuses to sell you a car unless you submit your thumbprint. From the posting:

The dealership claimed that the fingerprinting was for my protection. To make sure I'm really who I say I am, and haven't just stolen someone's social security number.

But I don't get it. How does that work? No one's checking to make sure the fingerprint I leave matches the one on file with the DMV. There's no forensics expert on staff. And I don't have data on this but I feel pretty certain that any car thief worth his salt probably already has more than one set of prints on file.
...
Dollar Rent-A-Car tried fingerprinting their customers for a while. They gave up after realizing that it had no effect on fraud or theft. Simply, treating your customers like felons is bad for business.
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Feed Google's Next-Gen of Sneakernet (wired.com)

For scientists dealing in terabytes of data, Google offers help. There's 'FedExNet" for those times when it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight (or thereabouts). By Cyrus Farivar.


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