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The Internet

Submission + - SPAM: Redirecting DNS requests can harm the Internet

Submitted by alphadogg
alphadogg writes: ICANN this week has condemned the practice of redirecting Internet users to a third-party Web site or portal when they misspell a Web address and type a domain name that does not exist. Rather than return an error message for DNS requests for nonexistent domains, some DNS operators send back the IP address of another domain, a process known as NXDOMAIN substitution. The target address is often a Web portal or information site. Handling DNS requests this way has a number drawbacks that could lead to the Internet not working properly, according to ICANN. Redirection sites are prime targets for attacks by hackers that want to send users to their own servers.
Link to Original Source
Space

Submission + - SPAM: How NASA connects with its latest moon orbiters

Submitted by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes: "Flying to the moon is not easy feat but communicating with as well as relaying information to and from rocketing space probes is the most critical part of the mission. NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) mission launched June 18 is using modified General Dynamics Advanced Multi-Mode Transceivers that support data rates of up to 512 kbps to send health and status updates and receive command instructions from NASA. LRO will communicate at S-Band frequencies through the NASA Ground Network and Deep Space Network (DSN). The S band ranges between 2 GHz and 4 GHz and is the usual frequency for many satellites. NASA's DSN is made up of myriad systems. It includes an international network of antennas that supports interplanetary spacecraft missions and radio and radar astronomy observations for the exploration of the solar system and the universe. [spam URL stripped]"
Link to Original Source
Music

Amazon & TuneCore To Cut Out the RIAA Middleman 291

Posted by kdawson from the but-who-needs-CDs dept.
eldavojohn writes "So you're an aspiring band and you haven't signed with a record label. Maybe you've got a fan base interested in purchasing your stuff but you're not really into accounting? Enter Amazon's partnership with TuneCore, a CD printing and music distribution service. You want to sell a full album on Amazon of you brushing your teeth? $31. And you get about 40% back on sales, so selling nine digital copies of your CD will put you back in the black. There you have it, public availability on one of the largest online commerce sites for $31 — no RIAA involved!" TuneCore's CEO put it this way: "As an artist, you have unlimited physical inventory, made on demand, with no [sic] upfront costs and worldwide distribution to anyone who orders it at Amazon.com."
The Courts

Submission + - Judge examining Pirate Bay bias removed for bias.

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: According to a Fudzilla article the Judge appointed to investigate whether or not the Judge in the recent Pirate Bay case was biased has been removed...for being biased. "Judge Ulrika Ihrfelt was assigned to investigate whether the four should be granted a retrial based on revelations that the original trial judge is a member of industry copyright-protection groups. However the Swedish Press looked into Ihrfelt and found out that she was a member of the same groups as the trial judge. What is amazing is that who ever appointed her to the job seemed to think that they would get away with it." Having now been removed, a court representative thinks that the question of bias will now be resolved within a few weeks. Assuming no more revelations of bias, that is.
United States

Submission + - Glitch causes Regional Dispatch Center to shut dow (daytondailynews.com)

Submitted by ultraexactzz
ultraexactzz writes: Dayton, Ohio, and many of its surrounding suburbs, switched over to a Regional Dispatch Center on March 26th. The idea was that a single dispatch center would be cheaper and more efficient. Less than one day later, however, officials have shut down the center due to unresolved technical issues. The issue was brought to public attention when a house burned to the ground while dispatchers attempted to figure out which jurisdiction's firefighters to send. From the article, the fire "...burned for nearly 30 minutes before rescue arrived, witnesses said. A total of 14 emergency calls were made, with five of them going unanswered by dispatchers."
Security

Submission + - Social Search Reveals 700 Comcast Customer Logins

Submitted by nandemoari
nandemoari writes: When educational technology specialist Kevin Andreyo recently read a report on people search engines, he decided to conduct a little 'people search' on himself. Andreyo did not expect to find much — so, imagine the surprise when he uncovered the user name and password to his Comcast Internet account, put out there for the entire online world to see. In addition to his personal information, Andreyo also discovered a list that exposed the user names and passwords of (what he believed) to be 8,000 other Comcast customers. Andreyo immediately contacted both Comcast and the FBI, hoping to find the ones responsible for divulging such personal information to the public. While the list is no longer available online, analysts fear that the document still lives on in various cache and online history services.
Moon

Submission + - Mysterious lunar flashes show Moon not dead (phenomenica.com)

Submitted by
goran72
goran72 writes: "Astronomers have suggested that the occasional bright flashes seen on small areas of the Moon, may indicate that some form of geological activity must still be going on the dead satellite. The Apollo instruments spotted several outbursts, all in areas where transient lunar phenomena (TLP) are frequently reported. http://www.phenomenica.com/2009/03/mysterious-lunar-flashes.html"
Security

Submission + - Pwn2Own Event to Offer $10k for 0Day iPhone Expoit

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: TippingPoint, a network-based intrusion prevention system company, has announced its plans for the Pwn2Own 2009 event — for the third year running. The event will be held at the CanSecWest Security Conference March 16th — 20th in Vancouver, BC. This years contest will target two sets of technologies: web browsers and mobile devices. As usual, the ZDI will purchase all winning vulnerabilities that are submitted against these targets, hand them over to the affected vendors, and coordinate public disclosure. The Zero Day Initiative will put up $5,000 per browser bug, and $10,000 per mobile bug. The first person to crack any of the mobile devices will also get to keep that device along with a one year phone contract.
Music

Submission + - SPAM: Eminem v. Universal: What It Says About Apple

Submitted by
narramissic
narramissic writes: "America may be an overly litigious society, but you can't deny that 'stuff comes out in courtroom dramas that you wouldn't hear anywhere else,' says Josh Fruhlinger in a recent blog post. And this is how we learn a little bit about how the relationship between Apple and the music labels works from the battle between rapper Eminem and Universal Music Group. One such nugget: Universal 'asks' companies to pay a service charge for the master music files they send over, but, as former UMG attorney Lawrence Kenswil testified, 'we didn't always manage to collect it.'

The thrust of Eminem's argument is that record labels are taking "distribution costs" out of the artist's cut of music for digital downloads that are based on the model of distributing physical media and that don't actually exist in electronic distribution. But more philosophical questions about the digital music business are being raised in courtroom testimony that could have a huge impact on how the law treats the digital download market. For instance, Eminem's lawyers are emphasizing that customers aren't buying music that they download, but licensing it. And while UMG is insisting that the music is still a real product that it owns, Michael Ostroff, the company's general counsel and executive VP of business and legal affairs, admitted that 'I don't know what ownership of a digital file means.'

"
Link to Original Source
Wireless Networking

Submission + - Obama's broadband stimulus: Will wireless work? (networkworld.com)

Submitted by
Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward writes: "When President Obama said during his address to Congress this week that "laying broadband" was going to one of the main priorities of his recently-passed stimulus package, the first question that comes to mind is, "What sort of broadband?" Although the government has allotted $7.2 billion for broadband deployment in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, the bill does not specify what sort of technology the money will be spent on. Wireless broadband technologies such as should play a major role in any national broadband infrastructure because of their ability to cover large areas with a single base station, thus providing a more cost-effective alternative to deploying fiber-to-the-home in sparsely-populated areas. Harold Feld, the senior vice president for the open media advocacy group Media Access Project, says that one wireless technology that could really take off in the wake of the broadband stimulus package is 802.11y, a new Wi-Fi standard approved by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) last September that runs over the 3.65 GHz band. http://www.networkworld.com/news/2009/022609-obama-broadband-stimulus.html?hpg1=bn"
Patents

Submission + - Microsoft sues Linux device maker over FAT (linuxdevices.com)

Submitted by nerdyH
nerdyH writes: Microsoft filed a patent infringement action against Linux navigation device maker TomTom, over TomTom's use of certain technologies related to the FAT filesystem. If Microsoft wins the right to charge for ubiquitous FAT features like long filenames and flash wear leveling, it could spell real trouble for Linux device makers (not to mention SAMBA distributors). On the other hand, as with the GIF patents that went by the wayside a couple years ago, decades of non-enforcement could make tough sailing for Redmond legal. We suspect the real suit is over the proprietary app layer, with the FAT scare tacked on for FUD value.
United States

Submission + - House Kills Nuclear Power (house.gov)

Submitted by
tjstork
tjstork writes: "Buried in the latest 410 billion dollar bill to pass the House of Representatives is an item that zeros out funding for reprocessing spent nuclear rods for re-use. This dramatically increases the amount of nuclear waste that must be stored, and undermines the ability of the country to develop nuclear power plants. So essentially, Democrats are taking the first steps for the United States to bail on nuclear power."
Software

Submission + - Android Gathers Steam Among Open Source Developers (itworldcanada.com)

Submitted by svonkie
svonkie writes: Despite launching on the T-Mobile G1 with little mainstream fanfare, Google Inc.'s Android OS appears to have gained strong interest in the open source development community, reports Computerworld Canada. According to a survey of Black Duck Software's Knowledge Base, Apple Inc.'s iPhone led the industry with 266 open source project releases during 2008, while Android followed in second place with 191 releases. Black Duck compiled the data after scouring through over 185,000 of open source projects across 4,000 Internet sites.
The Internet

Submission + - Quebec ISP To Terminate Subscribers over Copyright

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Quebecor, which owns Quebec's biggest ISP, has thrown in with Hollywood interests by arguing for the "graduated response" approach that would kick off subscribers based on three allegations of infringement. The company told Canada's telecom regulator that net neutrality rules are not needed since content blocking has social benefits, including the potential for a three strikes and you're out policy.
Books

Submission + - Why Kindle 2's Screen Took 12 Years, $150 Million (xconomy.com)

Submitted by
waderoush
waderoush writes: "Critics are eating up everything about Amazon's Kindle 2 e-book reader except its $359 price tag. But if you think that's expensive, take a look behind the Kindle at E Ink, the Cambridge, MA, company that has spent $150 million since 1997 developing the electronic paper display that is the Kindle's coolest feature. In the company's first interview since the Kindle 2 came out, E Ink CEO Russ Wilcox says it took far longer than expected to make the microcapsule-based e-paper film not only legible, but durable and manufacturable. Now that the Kindle 2 is finally getting readers to take e-books seriously, however, Wilcox says he sees a profitable future in which many book, magazine, and newspaper publishers will turn to e-paper, if only to save money on printing and delivery. (Silicon Alley Insider recently calculated that the New York Times could save more than $300 million a year by shutting down its presses and buying every subscriber a Kindle). 'What we've got here is a technology that could be saving the world $80 billion a year,' Wilcox says."

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