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From my point of view, anytime any institution mentions child porn, they are actually using that as a cover to gain control. Since when did everyone become so altruistic and when has child porn become a rampant problem? The FBI has been using this line also but only to gain control over the networks for other purposes. The ISPs will be the same in which case, it is the first blow against net neutrality for them. It is also a clever trick since no one would be against a plan to go against child porn. A bit of a political move in my eyes.

Actually, I am sorry for the webmasters. They have to deal with this. OTOH it IS part of the job.

I don't know what you folks expected. The web is infested with all sorts of malicious code. Are users not supposed to protect themselves in the interests of the website? After we manage to make the browsing experience safe for "teh n00b" then this won't be a problem. So all we have to do is get all webpages standardized, sanitized, and secured. That includes all the people using IE.

Another option is that we could stop promoting the Internet as a good tool for consumer level financial transactions. Then there won't be ANY need for privacy and security. Then we might not have jobs either.

It is yellow journalism to report this story in this way. Another way to put it would be "AVG forces issue of PC Security versus bandwidth usage." Then they look like heroes instead of villains. You're just putting spin on the issue because this is affecting your cost/income ratio.

Since AVG is producing something that helps end-users do you really want to be seen as a promoter of the problem? Since the problem of malware sites is not going to go away and since AVG is effective more antivirus software will start using these techniques. Unless you have something better to suggest?

Frankly, as an end user, I don't give a damn about your costs and stats. I don't care about it for amazon, ebay, myspace, or paypal. I do care that if I follow a link to an unsavory site that I am protected.

Here is another question. Do you want a userbase that is populated by malware infected computers? Is that preferable to figuring out a way to work with AVG new technique?

Dont throw your users under the train. They have a right to their security and peace of mind.

DRAGONWEEZEL writes "Hi! I am at a crossroads in my life, and one path leads to excessive responsibillity and mediocre pay, but no commute. The other path leads to good pay, a carrer step up, and a horrible commute. Both jobs have great long term outlooks, and if I succeed at the first, moving above and beyond the later would be simple. I have no education, and came to my knowledge through HKU. (Hard Knox University) My real question is... How long do you work for "submarket pay" to gain easy access to greater responsibility and experiences than your qualifications would indicate that you're capable of? What determines for you that you are "there." How do you make the leap from proving yourself to being payed what you are now worth? I know that if your thinking about spreading your wings, you are usually ready to leave, but right now, my options aren't so clear to me, and I was wondering how You feel about it."

nilbog writes "PayPal has been down most of the day. As a result, Ebay has come to a halt as people cannot pay for their won auctions, sellers cannot see if users have paid, and no money can be moved or accessed. Even people who get paid through paypal at the beginning of the month are now suffering during the outage.

Ebay has recognized the problem and issued two statements, claiming to be working on a fix.

This marks one of the rare occasions when a major website experiences a long-term outage. It has obviously effected some more than others, and serves as a healthy reminder of how much we have come to rely on Internet-based technologies."
http://www.paypal.com/

Goalie_Ca writes "Smoking Chatting Surfing Sleeping Golfing Cybering with Cowboy Neal"

pwp writes to mention that researchers at the University of New Brunswick are reporting they have found a new method of storing hydrogen gas. The new method is able to condense hydrogen gas into a usable solid under mild conditions. "Hydrogen gas is typically stored under pressure in large metal cylinders, approximately four feet high. These cylinders are heavy and expensive to transport. Since they are under pressure, they also pose a safety hazard. 'We've reached a milestone with our ability to condense hydrogen into a usable solid,' said Dr. McGrady. 'The next step is to produce a safe, compact storage system for the compound that is both lightweight and affordable.' The research is expected to produce reversible hydrogen storage materials that can be processed into a powder for use in limitless commercial applications."

modapi writes "Google's wasn't the best storage paper at FAST '07. Another, more provocative paper looking at real world results from 100,000 disk drives got the "Best Paper" award. Bianca Schroeder of CMU's Parallel Data Lab paper Disk failures in the real world: What does an MTTF of 1,000,000 hours mean to you? (pdf) crushes a number of (what we now know to be) myths about disks such as:

• vendor MTBF validity
• "consumer" vs "enterprise" drive reliability (spoiler: no difference)
• RAID 5 assumptions

A good summary of the paper's key point is at StorageMojo."

steve_bedrick writes "Researchers at the Oregon Health and Science University have published a clinical observation in this week's Annals of Internal Medicine (reg. required, unfortunately; here's a press release). They examined the security systems used by several of the more popular USB-based portable personal health records. Their findings? From the article:

We obtained 3 of these devices... analyzed them to determine their structure, and attempted to modify the software program on each device to perform actions of our choosing. No device was manufactured with protections against this... Each of the devices we reviewed contains a program that must be used to view the patient record, and no reliable mechanism can verify the integrity of these programs.

"

http://www.semanticseo.co.uk/articles/poisonkeywords

An anonymous reader writes "The BBC http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/6377423.stm is reporting that the Scottish Executive has announced funding for a project to create what will be the worlds largest wave farm.
The location off Orkney has been used to test the Pelamis device in the past and is now to be the location for commercial testing. It is estimated that waters off Scotland could provide 25% of the wave power available to Europe"

Chouonsoku writes "Before yesterday, PlayStation 3 owners had to be running the latest system firmware in order to access the PlayStation Network. The PlayStation Network allows users to play their games online, download demos, trailers and add-ons for their games. However, with a simple DNS request redirection, the firmware check becomes null and void, allowing users to access the PlayStation Network from any firmware, up-to-date or not."

AT22 writes "Ok so I was listening to a WoW podcast last night and they said that there have been rumors that WoW will work and can be played on an iPhone. I was wondering if you guys think this is a possibility? If so do any of you have any idea how you would get the game imported onto and iPhone please tell me b/c I am a huge WoW fan and would love to play the game on a machine this portabel. Thanks"

ichthus writes "Poll: 'I empty my recycle/trash bin..."

* Immediately
* Daily
* Weekly
* Never
* Don't have/never use
* Into Cowboy Neal's drawers (OR) Onto Cowboy Neal's head (OR) Into Cowboy Neal's MR. Fusion(TM) (OR) Something something Cowboy Neal blah"

dhart writes "PC payola is why new PCs aren't pre-installed with free and open source software, and why consumers are deprived of choice. Payola perpetuates force-feeding consumers with pre-installed popup-infested circus-ware, leaving them confused about 'what to click' and feeling helpless about their out-of-control PCs. This sad situation creates fertile ground for sleazy malware writers. Here's a chance to tell one OEM, Dell, what you think about PC payola. (dhart strikes again)."

musicon writes "A group of scientists at Purdue University have created a portable refinery that efficiently converts food, paper, and plastic trash into electricity. The machine, designed for the U.S. military, would allow soldiers in the field to convert waste into power. It could also have widespread civilian applications in the future. Researchers tested the first tactical biorefinery prototype in November and found that it produced approximately 90 percent more energy than it consumed."