slashthedot - Slashdot User

Submission + - Google's DoubleClick deal under US scrutiny

Submitted by

slashthedot

on Wednesday May 30, 2007 @09:59AM

slashthedot writes: "The Federal Trade Commission has opened a preliminary antitrust investigation into Google's planned $3.1 billion purchase of DoubleClick.

It was decided last week that the Federal Trade Commission instead of the Justice Department would conduct the review.

In the complaint, the groups noted that Google collects the search histories of its users, while DoubleClick tracks what Web sites people visit. The merger, according to their complaint, would "give one company access to more information about the Internet activities of consumers than any other company in the world."
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/29/technology/29ant itrust.html?ex=1338091200&en=95699bd4ea8a1b59&ei=5 088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss"

Submission + - Ubuntu vs Vista

Submitted by

slashthedot

on Saturday May 26, 2007 @06:50PM

slashthedot writes: "InformationWeek compared Ubuntu's latest release with Vista. The review found Ubuntu better during Installation, and its word processing was better with builtin OpenOffice, while Vista lead in Hardware support and search functionalities.
There was a tie in Multimedia, Image editing, Backup/Restore something Ubuntu should be commended for.

Overall, the reviewer was pretty impressed with Ubuntu. "To be honest, there's a lot about Ubuntu that impresses me. The out-of-the-box software available with the OS is well-chosen, and the Ubuntu community folks have made a good effort to support the vast majority of the things people do with their PCs. The fact that Ubuntu is free is of course another big motivator"

"But there's at least as much about Ubuntu that I find disheartening or frustrating. There are still too many places where you have to drop to a command line and type in a fairly unintuitive set of commands to get something done, or edit a config file, or — worst of all — download and compile source code"

http://www.informationweek.com/windows/showArticle .jhtml?articleID=199201179&pgno=1&queryText="

Submission + - CERN Collider ready; get ready for data deluge

Submitted by

slashthedot

on Monday May 21, 2007 @12:27AM

slashthedot writes: "The world's largest science experiment, a physics experiment designed to determine the nature of matter, will produce a mountain of data. And because the world's physicists cannot move to the mountain, an army of computer research scientists is preparing to move the mountain to the physicists.
At universities across the United States and at other institutions around the world, teams of computer research scientists and physicists are preparing for the largest physics experiment ever.
The collider will give protons a pop hoping to catch a glimpse of the Big Bang, or at least the subatomic particles that are thought to have last been seen at the big event 10 billion to 15 billion years ago that led to the formation of the universe. The CERN collider will begin producing data in November, and from the trillions of collisions of protons it will generate 15 petabytes of data per year.
By comparison, 15 petabytes would be the equivalent of all of the information in all of the university libraries in the United States seven times over. It would be the equivalent of 22 Internets, or more than 1,000 Libraries of Congress. And there is no search function.
More at: http://www.hpcwire.com/hpc/1572567.html"

Submission + - Indian retailers raided by Microsoft

Submitted by

slashthedot

on Saturday May 19, 2007 @12:59PM

slashthedot writes: "Microsoft caught some Indian retailers selling pirated copies by sending a dummy customer asking for a copy of Windows to be installed on their PC. The retailers say Microsoft products are too highly priced for Indian market, so many people won't be interested in buying original copies at that price. They even go on to say they are promoting MS software in this way.
One retailer was heard saying:
"Since we are are not charging anything extra for installing the software, it means that we are actually not trading in pirated software. For us this is just a sewa (selfless act) that we are offering to our customers. Besides, the pricing of their operating systems is way too high for the Indian markets."

More here "

Submission + - Open standard for biometric passwords

Submitted by

A student from the University of Amsterdam:

on Friday May 18, 2007 @09:39AM

A student from the University of Amsterdam: writes: "Students of the University of Amsterdam are doing research to a make a 'weak' password 'strong'. This will be done by analyzing and registering the typing behaviour of individual users and add the gathered information to the password. The students comment: "Our goal is to create an open standard for stronger passwords by adding biometric properties of typing behaviour." Because there needs to be a lot data to analyze biometric properties of typing behaviour, they created a test at http://keystroke.projects.os3.nl. After doing this test there will be a description of the typing behaviour in comparison with the typing behaviour of another person. The students hope that there will be a lot of individuals (as well IT as non-IT) that do the test so that they can gather enough data. For more information — http://keystroke.projects.os3.nl."

Documents Reveal US Incompetence with Word, Iraq 419

Posted by Zonk on Friday May 18, 2007 @09:27AM from the see-there's-this-thing-called-covering-your-tracks dept.

notNeilCasey writes "The U.S. Coalition Provisional Authority, which formerly governed Iraq, accidentally published Microsoft Word documents containing information never meant for the public, according to an article in Salon. By viewing the documents using the Track Changes feature in Word (.doc), the author has been able to reconstruct internal discussions from 2004 which reflect the optimism, isolation and incompetence of the American occupation. Download the author's source document or look for more yourself. 'Presumably, staffers at the CPA's Information Management Unit, which produced the weekly reports, were cutting and pasting large sections of text into the reports and then eliminating all but the few short passages they needed. Much of the material they were cribbing seems to have come from the kind of sensitive, security-related documents that were never meant to be available to the public. In fact, about half of the 20 improperly redacted documents I downloaded, including the March 28 report, contain deleted portions that all seem to come from one single, 1,000-word security memo. The editors kept pulling text from a document titled "Why Are the Attacks Down in Al-Anbar Province -- Several Theories." (The security memo and the last page of the March 28 report can be seen here, along with several other CPA documents that can be downloaded.)'"

Submission + - Planet could harbor Life

Submitted by

BlueMorpho

on Friday May 18, 2007 @09:15AM

BlueMorpho writes: "Planet of Promise: Small, Rocky World Could Harbor Life

For the first time, astronomers have discovered a planet far, far away that might be similar to Earth. This distant world, which pirouettes around a dim bulb of a star with the unglamorous name Gliese 581, may possibly sport a landscape that would be vaguely familiar to us — a panorama of liquid oceans and drifting continents. If so, there's the chance that it's a home to life — perhaps even advanced life.

http://www.space.com/searchforlife/070517_seti_pla net.html"

Submission + - Hundreds Click on 'Click Here to Get Infected' Ad

Submitted by

slashthedot

on Friday May 18, 2007 @08:17AM

slashthedot writes: "In an example of how people will click anything with no security concerns, 409 people clicked on an ad that offers infection for those with virus-free PCs. It was an experiment so they were not affected. The ad, run by a person who identifies himself as security professional Didier Stevens, reads like this:

Drive-By Download
Is your PC virus-free?
Get it infected here!
drive-by-download.info

Stevens has posted a video of Google showing his ad on YouTube at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LSgy2c_-CU/"

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