Slashdot

dr_strang writes "Torrent indexing site Torrentspy.com appears to have disabled torrent searches for IPs that originate in the United States. Instead of a results page, users are directed to this page, which states: 'Torrentspy Acts to Protect Privacy. Sorry, but because you are located in the USA you cannot use the search features of the Torrentspy.com website. Torrentspy's decision to stop accepting US visitors was NOT compelled by any Court but rather an uncertain legal climate in the US regarding user privacy and an apparent tension between US and European Union privacy laws."

An anonymous reader writes "Fermilab is one of the great physics research facilities in the U.S. It is mainly known for its Tevatron proton/anti-proton accelerator to help physicists understand how materials interact with each other. TG Daily has a extensive article detailing Fermilab's accelerator chain and the work that is being done there. It's an interesting read, especially since many of us won't have a chance to visit Fermilab and the fact that the Tevatron accelerator is scheduled to be shut down next year."

downix writes "On the way into work today, I heard about Acer buying Gateway. A bold move strategically, I wonder what consequences this will have for Gateway's employees and customers. As the purchase price was at $1.90 per share, those of us that purchased Gateway shares a few years ago are reminded just how far it has fallen."

An anonymous reader writes to tell us F-Secure is reporting that the drivers for Sony Microvault USB sticks uses rootkit techniques to hide a directory from the Windows API. "This USB stick with rootkit-like behavior is closely related to the Sony BMG case. First of all, it is another case where rootkit-like cloaking is ill advisedly used in commercial software. Also, the USB sticks we ordered are products of the same company — Sony Corporation. The Sony MicroVault USM-F fingerprint reader software that comes with the USB stick installs a driver that is hiding a directory under "c:\windows\". So, when enumerating files and subdirectories in the Windows directory, the directory and files inside it are not visible through Windows API. If you know the name of the directory, it is e.g. possible to enter the hidden directory using Command Prompt and it is possible to create new hidden files. There are also ways to run files from this directory. Files in this directory are also hidden from some antivirus scanners (as with the Sony BMG DRM case) — depending on the techniques employed by the antivirus software. It is therefore technically possible for malware to use the hidden directory as a hiding place."

An anonymous reader writes "With a pretty short message on their blog, Allofmp3 announced that they will resume their music store soon. According to a Russian court, their music store did not violate any copyright law in Russia, so there was no reason for them to keep it closed."

Roland Piquepaille sends us word of first results from the Borexino detector in Italy, where an international team of more than 100 researchers has detected low-energy solar neutrinos for the first time. These results confirm recent "theories about the nature of neutrinos and the inner workings of the sun and other stars." In particular, it's now almost certain that neutrinos oscillate among three types, namely electron, muon, and tau neutrinos. The Borexino detector lies almost a mile underground near L'Aquila, Italy, and it sets new standards in the purity of the materials used in its construction.

ConsumerAffairs.com has an article up spotlighting Comcast's tendency to cuts off heavy Internet users without defining in their AUP exactly what the bandwidth limit is. Frank Carreiro of West Jordan, Utah, got cut off by the mystery limit and started a 'Comcast Broadband dispute' blog.

An anonymous reader writes "The French website Deezer.com has struck a deal with the SACEM (the French equivalent to the RIAA) and is now legally providing Internet users around the world with more than 100,000 full songs, streamed on demand and without restrictions. The site, formerly named Blogmuzik.net, had had to close down last March under pressure from the recording industry."

KentuckyFC sends us a report of gamma rays detected at a Japanese nuclear plant, whose origin was thunderclouds high overhead (abstract, article PDF). The theory is that showers of electrons caused by cosmic rays, when they encounter the high electric fields present in thunderstorm clouds, can be accelerated to energies above 10 MeV and result in bremsstrahlung photons detectable on the ground.

jpatokal writes "Singapore Airlines will be rolling out the A380 superjumbo on October 26th, and a surprise awaits in the seat of every passenger: their personal Linux PC, running Red Hat. In addition to running the in-flight entertainment, passengers can also use a full copy of StarOffice, and there's a USB slot for importing/exporting documents or plugging in your own keyboard/mouse. Screen size is 10.6" (1280x768) in economy, 15.4" in business and a whopping 23" in first class (along with free noise-canceling headphones). The system is already available on current B777-300ER planes and will also be outfitted on the upcoming B787 Dreamliners."

quirdan writes "With the discovery last week of the connection between Vista's poor networking performance and audio activities, word quickly spread around the Net. No doubt this got Microsoft's attention, and they have responded to the issue. Microsoft states that 'some of what we are seeing is expected behavior, and some of it is not'; and that they are working on technical documentation, as well as applying a slight sugar coating to the symptoms. Apparently they believe an almost 90% drop in networking performance is 'slight,' only affects reception of data, and that this performance trade-off is necessary to simply play an MP3."

We've gotten a number of submissions about the new tricks the massive Storm botnet has been up to. Estimates of the size of this botnet range from 250K-1M to 5M-10M compromised machines. Reader cottagetrees notes a writeup at Exploit Prevention Labs on a new social engineering attack involving YouTube. The emails, which may be targeted at people who use private domain registrations, warn the recipient that their "face is all over 'net" on a YouTube video. The link is to a Storm-infected bot that attacks using the Q4Rollup exploit (a package of about a dozen encrypted exploits). And reader thefickler writes that the recent wave of "confirmation spam" is also due to Storm, as was the earlier, months-long "e-card from a friend" series of attack emails.

mrcgran writes "Users of Skype for Linux have just found out that it reads the files /etc/passwd, firefox profile, plugins, addons, etc, and many other unnecessary files in /etc. This fact was originally discovered by using AppArmor, but others have confirmed this fact using strace on versions 1.4.0.94 and 1.4.0.99. What is going on? This probably shows how important it is to use AppArmor in any closed-source application in Linux to restrict any undue access to your files."

Lauren Weinstein writes "The day after the issue of cable system incompatibilities with the new HD TiVo and similar devices was discussed on Slashdot, the cable television industry has responded with a workaround proposal in a new FCC filing, though key issues remain to be fully resolved."

Lucas123 writes "Putting the images and film online will allow NASA to more easily share and showcase its achievements, including photos from its Mars rover missions and from its manned and unmanned voyages to the Moon and beyond, according to Computerworld's Todd Weiss. Much of NASA's archived photos and film is currently divided up into more than 20 different imagery categories, making it hard to find specific images or archives unless a user knows exactly where it is. "Much of what is in the collection may be surprising when it is released," according to NASA spokesman Bob Jacobs."