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The Almighty Buck

Submission + - Major Corporations Screwed in IT Outsourcing Fraud

Tontoman writes: The outsourcing craze of recent years has not out well for Corporate clients of a the Satyam company of India.
From the article: The original intent of shifting IT work like programming and database management to outfits like Satyam was to save on labor costs. The savings for many companies has been 15%-20% on their IT budgets. But for Satyam clients, a potentially expensive and complex process of disentanglement is beginning.
Hardware Hacking

Submission + - What to do with two spare computers?

DissociativeBehavior writes: After buying a laptop to save space in a small apartement, I found myself with two unused desktop PCs. One is a Pentium 4 with a big 19' CRT screen and the other is an AMD64 without screen. Both have more than 1 GB of RAM and relatively good graphics cards. I was thinking about selling them on eBay but there are so cheap that it's probably not worth it. What use can you find for two spare PCs?
Programming

Submission + - Linux kernel 2.6.23 to have stable userspace drive

liquidat writes: "Linus Torvalds included patches into the mainline tree which implement a stable userspace driver API into the Linux kernel. The stable driver API was already announced a year ago by Greg Kroah-Hartman. Now the last patches where uploaded and the API was included in Linus tree. The idea of the API is to make life easier for driver developers:

This interface allows the ability to write the majority of a driver in userspace with only a very small shell of a driver in the kernel itself. It uses a char device and sysfs to interact with a userspace process to process interrupts and control memory accesses.
(more...)"
It's funny.  Laugh.

Submission + - John Edwards Second Life Campaign HQ Vandalized

An anonymous reader writes: It seems that a band of pranksters 'vandalized' the online campaign headquarters of John Edwards in the MMORPG "Second Life". The resultatory blog claims that those responsible were republicans. I can't imagine why...
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft launches the i'm Initiative

Khuffie writes: "Remember those stupid chain letters years ago, that claimed that Bill Gates will pay you for every person you forward the email to? Well, they've turned into reality...kind of. Microsoft has launched the i'm Initiative through Windows Live Messenger. Basically, you add an emoticon to your display name based on the charity you wish to support, and a portion of the advertising revenue generated from your usage of Messenger (remember, it has ads) will be donated to them. A neat idea, and they currently have nine charities to choose from, but unfortunately it is only available if you are in the United States."

Feed Nuke Lab Makes Powerful Dust Rag (wired.com)

A research chemist at a Tennessee weapons plant creates a dust rag that mops up deadly beryllium particles 20 times smaller than the naked eye can see. By the Associated Press.


Microsoft

Submission + - Bill Gates on 640k (1989)

billgatesforpresiden writes: "There's an article at NewsForge about a recently recovered talk that Bill Gates gave back in 1989. He covers many other topics, including OS/2, software piracy, the history of the software industry, and his role at Microsoft. In particular, Gates talks about how in 1981, he thought that 640k would be good enough for at least 10 years. Do we finally have proof of Gates' "640k ought to be enough for anybody" quote?"
Television

Submission + - Analog TV cards banned by FCC as of yesterday

Anonymous Coward writes: "Beginning yesterday, the FCC requirement went in to effect that 'All TV receiving devices sold must possess the capability of supporting digital television signals.' NVidia has already discontinued their fairly new and very popular DualTV MCE (http://www.nvidia.com/page/dualtvmce.html) card, and soon all Non-ATSC cards will be gone from shelves and available only on Ebay."
The Internet

Submission + - "Conservapedia" claims to fight Wikipedia

Ellis D. Tripp writes: "A group of religious right activists has launched "Conservapedia" in an attempt to counter the perceived "liberal bias" in the Wikipedia. A few examples of the "corrections":

Dinosaurs
Wikipedia
"Vertebrate animals that dominated terrestrial ecosystems for over 160m years, first appearing approximately 230m years ago."

Conservapedia
"They are mentioned in numerous places throughout the Good Book. For example, the behemoth in Job and the leviathan in Isaiah are almost certainly references to dinosaurs."

US Democratic party
Wikipedia
"The party advocates civil liberties, social freedoms, equal rights, equal opportunity, fiscal responsibility, and a free enterprise system tempered by government intervention."

Conservapedia
"The Democrat voting record reveals a true agenda of cowering to terrorism, treasonous anti-Americanism, and contempt for America's founding principles."

Article here:

http://www.mg.co.za/articlepage.aspx?area=/breakin g_news/breaking_news__international_news/&articlei d=300812

Site here:

http://www.conservapedia.com/"
Security

Submission + - WordPress 2.1.1 Download Compromised; Upgrade ASAP

Kelson writes: "WordPress developers have announced that sometime within the last few days, the download files for WordPress version 2.1.1 were compromised and remotely exploitable code was added.

It was determined that a cracker had gained user-level access to one of the servers that powers wordpress.org, and had used that access to modify the download file. We have locked down that server for further forensics, but at this time it appears that the 2.1.1 download was the only thing touched by the attack. They modified two files in WP to include code that would allow for remote PHP execution.


The Subversion repository is clean, and WordPress has released a 2.1.2 version with additional fixes (including, judging by the diffs, a fix for a cross-site scripting vulnerability discovered a few days ago). Anyone running 2.1.1, especially if you downloaded it within the past few days, is encouraged to upgrade immediately."
Security

Honeynet Delineates Web Application Threats 40

An anonymous reader sends us to a technical white paper written by the Honeynet Project & Research Alliance: Know Your Enemy: Web Application Threats. Based on analysis of malware collected by the project, the paper outlines a number of HTTP-based attacks against web applications and some ways of protecting Web servers. Included are code injection, remote code-inclusion, SQL injection, cross-site scripting, and exploitation of the PHPShell application.
Biotech

Merck To Halt Lobbying For Vaccine 544

theodp writes "Reacting to a furor from some parents, advocacy groups, and public health experts, Merck said yesterday that it would stop lobbying state legislatures to require the use of its new cervical cancer vaccine Gardasil, which acts against strains of the sexually-transmitted human papilloma virus. The $400, 3-shot regimen was approved by the FDA in June. Later that month, a federal advisory panel recommended that females 11-26 years old be vaccinated. The governor of Texas has already signed an executive order making its use mandatory for schoolgirls."
Biotech

Bionic Eye Could Restore Vision 167

MattSparkes writes "A new bionic eye could restore vision to the profoundly blind. A prototype was tested on six patients and 'within a few weeks all could detect light, identify objects and even perceive motion again. For one patient, this was the first time he had seen anything in half a century.' The user wears a pair of glasses that contain a miniature camera and that wirelessly transmits video to a cellphone-sized computer in the wearer's pocket. This computer processes the image information and wirelessly transmits it to a tiny electronic receiver implanted in the wearer's head."

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