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Security

SPAM: FBI warns of Valentines Day Storm Worm virus

Submitted by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes "The FBI and the Internet Crime Complaint Center today said that with the Valentine's Day holiday approaching, users should be on the lookout for spam e-mails spreading Storm Worm malware. The Storm Worm virus has capitalized on various holidays in the last year by sending millions of e-mails advertising an e-card link within the text of the spam e-mail. Valentine's Day has been identified as the next target. Others note another nefarious malware attack known as the Mega-D botnet, which offers discounted sexual enhancement pills to users, delivers a unreal 30% more spam than Storm, is also out the waiting to be set free in malicious Valentines cards. [spam URL stripped]"
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Graphics

Excellent OC guide for the GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB->

Submitted by
crazyeyes
crazyeyes writes "Did you celebrate Christmas with a new NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB graphics card? Or did Crysis put you down in the dumps with poor frame rates?

Let us show you how to "correct" that problem and achieve better frame rates by overclocking the GPU and memory bus . We will also show you how much performance advantage you can expect from overclocking the GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB in games like Crysis, Company of Heroes, BioShock and Supreme Commander. Here's a quote from the guide :-

"However, we did not want this to be an example of extreme overclocking, where you would need to resort to third-party coolers. With that method, you can achieve an incredible degree of overclocking but it would come at a significant cost. We wanted this attempt to come at "no cost" to the user. That meant overclocking the GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB using its standard cooler."
"
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Programming

What is preventing FLOSS Nvidia 3D Drivers? 1

Submitted by Slithe
Slithe writes "What information is Nvidia not providing that would allow one to write FLOSS drivers for Nvidia cards? I am not an expert on this topic, so this is why I am asking Slashdot. A modern graphics card is basically a piece of hardware that can do matrix and vector operations very quickly, and modern graphics cards are programmable with shaders. I know that Nvidia graphics cards use the GPU assembly language, whose instructions are available and form the basis of writing shaders. I also know that X.Org has an open-source Nvidia driver for basic (i.e. not 2d or 3d accelerated) operation of the graphics card. Could someone take the Mesa OpenGL library and write a shader or set of shaders for every OpenGL function that the card should accelerate? What am I not seeing that would allow this to work?"
Data Storage

MegaUpload refuses payout - claims "fraud" 2

Submitted by
Farasha SilverSand
Farasha SilverSand writes "Earlier this year, in October to be precise, LiveJournal user Cleolinda Jones updated her blog with an entry regarding a special campaign known as Project Download.

To make a long story short, Oregon resident Erin (LJ username redscorner) needed a series of brain surgeries that were both expensive and life-saving.

I suffer from two neurological disorders (Chiari malformation and cranial lesions) that will require a combined total of 2-4 brain surgeries. I'm unemployed and uninsured and the state I live in is so broke, they have strictly limited who qualifies for Medicaid. Because I have no children and am not pregnant, I don't qualify.

To Erin, MegaUpload's download reward program must have seemed like a godsend. For five million downloads, Erin would recieve $10,000, enough to pay for her brain surgeries.

The file to be downloaded was a small .txt file, basically thanking the downloader for participating and again explaining her situation.

In December, Erin reached her first milestone — 100,000 download points, listed on the reward page as paying out $100. Instead of waiting until the five million mark to cash in, Erin decided to claim her $100 reward, just to make sure MegaUpload really meant business.

Instead of her reward, Erin received an e-mail from MegaUpload stating that they would not pay her.

Dear Erin,

Our apologies for the late reply, our rewards staff was not in during Xmas.

We have decided not to pay you because of fraud. Your reward points were earned through small 2 KB txt files which were downloaded many times from the same IP's. This against our terms of service and reward rules.

Sincerely,

Megaupload Abuse Department

Aside from being wholly unprofessional, the e-mail is not even consistent with MegaUpload's own Terms of Service regarding their rewards program, which state:

What is a qualifying download?

Up to one download per IP address per file per day will be counted. Downloads from certain countries or territories do not qualify. Click here for the current list of qualifying countries.

Absolutely no fraud

You will be disqualified and banned if you try to manipulate the results. Automated mass downloads are easily detected and strictly forbidden.

Only files up to 100 MB

Files larger than 100 MB do not qualify for the Rewards program.

The ToS do not state that files must meet a minimum requirement. They also do not state that multiple downloads from the same IP address on different dates are fraudulent and against the rules.

Erin is considering filing suit in small claims court, but since MegaUpload is allegedly based in Hong Kong, little to nothing might come from legal action.

MegaUpload's rewards program was more of a last-ditch effort than anything for Erin, and he whole situation should reiterate what most of us already know — if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is."
Google

Gmail accounts being deactivated.->

Submitted by
zratchet
zratchet writes "My Google account was disabled yesterday, and hundreds of other people have been seeing accounts randomly disabled since the beginning of December. See here, here, and here for the hundreds of people that have been frustrated by this issue. Thankfully Google is working on the issue, but my account is not re-enabled yet. Just getting the news out, and wondering if anyone else has had this happen. The last two URLs need a Google Account to log in."
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Programming

[Easy as Pie] Ajax Requests->

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes "This article offers some good advice on forming XMLHttpRequests (AKA Ajax) in an easy-to-understand tutorial. The author gives two examples, a voting script and a 'shout box' which are run with Ajax and PHP. (The previous article is equally informative, [Easy as Pie] Unobtrusive JavaScript details the benefits of unobtrusive JavaScript and offers a function to do it very easily.)"
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Government

CIA analyst addresses public in Portsmouth, NH->

Submitted by
How To Get Your Ex Back
How To Get Your Ex Back writes "The story was first reported in The Portsmouth Times Newspaper, a small town paper and not online. The article, Former CIA Analyst Says Evidence Abounds for Impeachment, has been relayed to online new sites. Ray McGovern, a former CIA analyst, addressed a group of people in Portsmouth, NH, December 17th, with evidence relating directly to the non-evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and the President's desire to invade and cover up the truth. "Don't let anyone tell you the President was deceived by false intelligence ... they knew," McGovern said. Mr. McGovern is also supported by Dennis Kucinich, a lagging but hopeful Democratic Presidential Candidate. "The argument for impeachment is overwhelming," Randy Kezar of Kingston said after the event. "Impeachment is constitutionally required.""
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Robotics

i-Snake, a new robotic surgeon

Submitted by
Roland Piquepaille
Roland Piquepaille writes "Several newspapers in the UK have published today very short articles about the i-Snake, a new surgical robot which will be developed at the Imperial College London (ICL). For example, The Times of London writes that the ICL team has won a £2.1 million grant (2.84 million or US$4.2 million) to design this surgical robot over the next four or five years. This highly flexible robot 'could allow coronary bypass operations to be performed without the need for open-heart surgery.' And it would help heal your heart after travelling through blood vessels. The research team thinks that the i-Snake could also be used as a diagnosis tool replacing the eyes of a surgeon when looking inside us. But read more for many additional details."
OS X

Emulated Mac OS X->

Submitted by
Alexander Graf
Alexander Graf writes "Have you ever been in the position of running Linux as main Operating System on your Intel Mac and you were in dire need of an OSX only program? This is no longer a problem, as I modified Qemu and KVM to run Mac OS X, so you can just boot Mac OS X in a virtual machine, just like you did with Windows anyway.
If you don't have a Mac though, don't despair. This works for non-Macs too.

@staff I don't think this is enough of a description. Please ask me something I can answer directly your readers would like to know and visit the project site, especially the FAQ section.
http://alex.csgraf.de/self/?qemu/"
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IBM

IBM's U.S. Operations Continue to Shrivel

Submitted by
theodp
theodp writes "While you haven't seen any IBM press releases lately concerning U.S. layoffs or force reductions, Robert X. Cringely reports that IBM is getting leaner and meaner still. It's not that the company isn't continuing to lose U.S. workers, says Bob, they've just stopped talking about it. While the company boasted to Wall Street of its 20,000 additional hires in India last year, bringing IBM's Indian employment to 73,000 workers (100,000 in the 'BRIC' countries of Brazil, Russia, India, China), it took the fifth on how many workers it employs in the United States. The comments are also worth a gander, with tales from purported IBM and H-1B insiders. There's also a tip for Bob to check out an under-the-radar IBM subsidiary called GS Technical Services (aka GST Services), which apparently requires 'Immigration Partners' to conduct its business and allegedly pays abysmal salaries to IBM India employees located in the States according to tipster 'an ibmer.' On its cheesy website, GST advertises that it 'has U.S assignments available for global associates who possess highly specialized technical and applications development skills.'"

QOTD: Silence is the only virtue he has left.