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Snaller writes "Since World of Warcraft became a massive success, hackers have created trojans who specifically target WoW players, and try to steal their login credentials. To combat this Blizzard has now created the "Blizzard Authenticator" which can be yours for 6.50 — when a user logs into the game they are directed to press a button on the token generator and will get a short one time code to enter. Those who are sure they will never get hacked are free to ignore this offer."

gadzook33 writes "CNN is reporting that oil billionaire T. Boone Pickens is planning to invest billions of dollars in what will probably be the world's largest wind farm. It will eventually generate 4 gigawatts, enough to power 1.3 million homes. The first 600 GE wind turbines are scheduled for delivery in 2010. Pickens says that each turbine will generate about $20,000 in income annually for the landowner who hosts it."

In a departure from the usual video game setting a recent educational video game called "Cool School" was designed to teach kids peaceful conflict resolution. Unfortunately Congress has decided to slash the funding of this program that has been receiving rave reviews from the testers at schools in Illinois. "Cool School focuses on taking players through a school where just about everything (desks, books, and other objects) are alive and have their own personality. Over the course of ten levels and over 50 different situations designed by Professor Melanie Killen and then-doctoral student Nancy Margie (both of the University of Maryland). The primary goal of the game is to teach students how to solve social conflict through skills like negotiation and cooperation. During the title's development, Killen and Margie were able to work with some talented members of the video game industry, including independent developer F.J. Lennon and animator Dave Warhol." The game is now available as a free download and will play on both Mac OS X and Windows XP.

Binge notes CNet coverage of the Netflix Player by Roku, which it calls "bare-bones." Less than 10% of Netfilx's catalog is available for the Instant Viewing option. Three more Netflix players are said to be due for release by the end of the year. The Roku is "...the first product that allows subscribers to have movies and TV shows from the service's Instant Viewing feature (aka 'Watch Now') to be streamed directly to their TV screen... With the release of the Netflix Player, subscribers need only have a wired or wireless broadband connection to access the entire Instant Viewing catalog through their TV."

JavaLord writes "The new expansion to World of Warcraft titled "Wrath of the Lich King" recently went into friends and family alpha testing. Some of the first screenshots, along with notes on new spells have been leaked on the world of warcraft forums and other websites only to be pulled down. As usual, the internet routes around censorship, and the low down on Wrath of the Lich King can be found here."

Saiyine sends word that the mysterious code received at Fermilab, which we discussed last Friday, has been mostly decoded, inside of two days, by two separate people. The poster at the second link seems to have constructed a more complete rationale for the message.

mishmash writes "The Times of London is reporting a proposal for a massive government database holding details of all phone calls, emails, and time spent on the Internet. This is to be justified as being 'part of the fight against crime and terrorism.' Quoting: 'Internet service providers and telecoms companies would hand over the records to the Home Office under plans put forward by officials.' If you want to write to representatives to let them know your views, contact details are available at Write to Them." UK telecoms are already required to keep records of phone calls and text messages for 12 months, accessible by subpoena; the requirement is already slated to expand to records of Internet usage, emails, and VoIP. This new proposal aims to centralize all that information in a single database in the Home Office.

Snaller writes "Unfortunately I can find no English news sites reporting this, so i guess it may never go beyond your eyes (or ours), but at least one American (I'm assuming) will have read it then:

During this weekend the real big brother put his foot down on the country of Denmark, in Europe, in the name of fighting terrorism the government has ordered all Internet providers and telcos to log: who you call on your phone, who calls you, the addresses of the calling parties and for cell phones where you are when you make/receive the call. Times of messages you send and receive on your phone. Internet providers must log who a user connects to via his computer, this includes the users IP address, the destination IP address, what port numbers are used on the sending end, and port numbers used at the receiving end, and the duration of the communication. They must log the identity of the user initiating the communication and the precise geographic location of the user. In addition to this they must log the email address of people the user sends email to, and the email address used to send from, and the time of the email transmission. By law these loggings must be carried out for every single citizen who uses the Internet or the phone system, and these logs must be kept for one year, to be made available to the police if it is found relevant for an investigation. A judge needs sign of on it, however apparently the secret Danish police does not need that — they can simply demand to see it.

Some Danes are pragmatically pointing out that there is a bit of a hole in the law since libraries are currently not included, hotels are confused since they are included but not sure if they need to write down the names of all of their guests who try to use the Internet or just that the hotel computer was used, while others are outraged at what they consider a gross violation of their privacy, but apparently, and unfortunately, many seem to accept it when the blonde minister of justice opinions that only people who plan on doing crime could object to these measures.

This is the full text of the law (in Danish) http://147.29.40.91/DELFIN/HTML/B2006/0098805.htm

And a couple of articles about the subject (alas, in Danish)

Newspaper Information
News paper Arbejderen
Newspaper Politiken and here
Newspaper Jyllands Posten
And The Danish Library Agency"
http://information.dk/146473

An anonymous reader writes "ArsTechnica is reporting how detached and manipulative the discussion about copyright is becoming: 'NBC/Universal general counsel Rick Cotton suggests that society wastes entirely too much money policing crimes like burglary, fraud, and bank-robbing, when it should be doing something about piracy instead. "Our law enforcement resources are seriously misaligned," Cotton said. "If you add up all the various kinds of property crimes in this country, everything from theft, to fraud, to burglary, bank-robbing, all of it, it costs the country $16 billion a year. But intellectual property crime runs to hundreds of billions [of dollars] a year." '"

DogBotherer writes "The BBC is reporting that the film Serenity has been voted the number-one Sci Fi film of all time. Serenity is a followup to the series Firefly. The 2005 film beat out Star Wars better than two-to-one for the top honors. This result came in a poll of 3000 readers of SFX magazine.

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