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trainman writes "With the release of Firefox 3, those who have been using self-signed certificates for SSL now face a huge issue — the big, scary warning FF3 issues which is very unintuitive for non-technical users. It seems Firefox is pushing more websites in to the monopolistic arms of companies such as Verisign. For smaller, especially non-profit groups, which will never have issues with domain typo scammers, this adds an extra and difficult-to-swallow cost. Does a service such as this need the same level of scrutiny and cost since all that is being done is verifying domain and certificate match? This extra hand holding adds a tremendous cost and allows monopolistic companies such as Verisign to thrive. Can organizations such as Mozilla not move towards a model that helps break this monopoly, helping establish a CA root authority that's cheap (free?) and only links the certificate to the domain, not actual verification of who owns the domain?"

tuxeater123 writes "According to a blog posting at BusinessWeek.com, the iPhone SDK could be pushed back by another 1-3 weeks. Unfortunately, the evidence provided, such as the media announcements that are usually made before most Apple releases, suggests that this may indeed be true. Apple usually sticks to their announced deadlines, however they have been known to break them occasionally."

aero2600-5 writes "While many media outlets are yet to cover this breaking news, it appears that Fox News has decided to exclude Republican Presidential candidate Ron Paul from their January 6th debate in New Hampshire. Ron Paul set a fundraising record two weeks ago ($6 million in one day) and has been climbing in the polls, especially in New Hampshire where he is polling better than candidate Fred Thompson, who was invited to the forum. Is the Media trying to control our electoral process again? So far, only USA Daily has this story, and there's a press release from the Paul campaign."

54mc writes "Oink.cd, A popular, yet exclusive bittorrent tracker has gone down. TorrentFreak reports that the servers were raided and seized by agents working under IFPI. The new homepage indicates that the IFPI will be conducting an investigation into the identities and activities of the users of the site. TorrentFreak also points out that IFPI has threated such before, but nothing has ever come of it."

Monkeyknifightz writes " OiNK.cd has been shutdown and their servers confiscated. A 24-year-old admin was arrested today in Middlesbrough and the server data is being analyzed to identify users "criminal" activities.

"This site has been closed as a result of a criminal investigation by IFPI, BPI, Cleveland Police and the Fiscal Investigation Unit of the Dutch Police (FIOD ECD) into suspected illegal music distribution. A criminal investigation continues into the identities and activities of the site's users""
http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2007/10/23/oink-shut-british-dutch-police

geekboxjockey writes "It is a sad day in the world of file-sharing. According to the BBC in this article it appears that the mecca of online music file-sharing OiNK was shutdown today. Will the music industry ever realize that their arcane methods of music distribution further motivate all the solutions that starve them of profit?"

An anonymous reader writes "All those hard-core gamers that lined up for 'Halo 3' are finding some of their games scratched. Apparently, the Special Limited-Edition packaging is scratching the disks. The Associated Press has the story. Microsoft already has a replacement form on their XBOX website."
http://wire.jacksonville.com/pstories/business/20070925/202776388.shtml

It's been a long time since anyone has explored the surface of the moon. But now Google has teamed up with the X PRIZE Foundation to offer a $30,000,000 bounty to the first privately funded organization to land a robotic rover on the moon. Google, of course, has offered the free Google Moon mapping service for a few years now. Looks like the other search engines have some catching up to do in the space exploration department.
http://www.googlelunarxprize.org/

criticalmass24 writes "Attackers have injected exploit code into the downloadable software for the WordPress blogging service. The open source software allows users to set up and publish postings to a blog. The company has issued an update that repairs the vulnerability. Although blogging services such as Blogger, TypePad and WordPress allow users to publish blog postings directly from a browser, client software offers users more flexibility."

UndergroundNews writes "Using your computer productivity really can make life easier, Firefox has really made my life more productive just with the simple capability of tabbed browsing. Firefox extensions have also been making life more productive, here's a countdown Top 10 Firefox extensions to improve your productivity."

WebHostingGuy writes "The State of Maine rejected the federally mandated ID cards passed by Congress. In a non-partisan vote the legislature flatly stated that they would not force its citizens to use driver's licenses that comply with digital ID standards, which were established under the 2005 Real ID Act. It also asked Congress to repeal the law."

WaltonNews writes "The Mars Express spacecraft, from the European Space Agency (ESA), has indicated to scientists that the dry atmosphere and surface on the planet Mars does not necessarily mean Mars is dry underneath the surface. In fact, a huge storehouse of water and carbon dioxide could be found in underground reservoirs. More of the story appears at: http://www.itwire.com.au/content/view/8959/1066/."

Mr_5tein writes "Groklaw has reported that the US Patent and Trademark Office has just ordered re-examination of the e-learning patent owned by Blackboard Inc (http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20070125 20202052), thanks to a filing by the Software Freedom Law Center. SFLC's press release states, "The Patent Office found that prior art cited in SFLC's request raises 'a substantial new question of patentability' regarding all 44 claims of Blackboard's patent..."

The SFLC goes on to explain that though such re-examinations may take a couple of years to complete, approx. "70% of re-examinations are successful in having a patent narrowed or completely revoked.""

syguy writes "Never ones to give up easily after their failed Mars mission, British scientists are hoping to try again with a series of robotic missions to the dark side of the moon by 2010. Pink Floyd's album Dark Side of the Moon was also themed on exploration, though of the human condition, but I digress. One mission — MoonRaker — will look for possible moon base sites. Who could resist naming a space mission after a Bond movie? Let's hope the spacecraft is more durable than the one in the movie. They are probably saving the other obvious TV show reference — Moonbase Alpha from Space 1999 — for the base itself."

Neil Jacksons writes "Randy Allen, AMD's corporate vice president for server and workstation products said AMD's "Barcelona" quad-core chip, due to arrive midway through 2007, will be a significant notch faster than the Clovertown chips expected to be on the market at that time. "We expect across a wide variety of workloads for Barcelona to outperform Clovertown by 40 percent," The quad-core chip also will outperform AMD's current dual-core Opterons on "floating point" mathematical calculations by a factor of 3.6 at the same clock rate, he said."