Comment: Re:Another WIN in WINdows (Score 4, Informative) 184
depends.exe does exactly this and ships with the platform sdk.
Comment: Re:PCI Compliance? (Score 1) 402
No, such companies can be and are PCI-DSS compliant as long as their declared PCI information security policy includes the transmission of payments data to the DHS (and there certainly is space for such things in PCI to meet regulatory requirements), that transfers to DHS are suitably cryptographically protected if over an public network, and as long as the company informs the DHS in their role as a PCI "third party" of their responsibility to also store payments data securely under the PCI.
Of course, whether the DHS are *actually* following section 9 of the PCI-DSS by mailing the guy his payment data is very questionable.
Judge Rules WoW Bot Violates DMCA 498
Posted
by
ScuttleMonkey
from the bot-having-trouble-climbing-the-slippery-slope dept.
from the bot-having-trouble-climbing-the-slippery-slope dept.
An anonymous reader writes to tell us that Blizzard has added another victory in their campaign against World of Warcraft bots. A federal judge has ruled that not only did the Glider bot break the EULA, it can be classified as a circumvention device under the DMCA. "As we've noted before, Blizzard's legal arguments, which Judge David G. Campbell largely accepted, could have far-reaching and troubling implications for the software industry. Donnelly is not the most sympathetic defendant, and some users may cheer the demise of a software vendor that helps users break the rules of Blizzard's wildly popular role playing game. But the sweeping language of Judge Campbell's decision, combined with his equally troubling decision last summer, creates a lot of new uncertainty for software vendors seeking to enter software markets dominated by entrenched incumbents and achieve interoperability with legacy platforms."
Do Game Demos Have an Adverse Effect On Sales? 178
Posted
by
Soulskill
from the why-buy-the-cow dept.
from the why-buy-the-cow dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Unigamesity has an analysis of the effects game demos and beta tests have on the full release of video games. Quoting: 'If we think about LittleBigPlanet, Age of Conan or Mirror's Edge, we notice they have two things in common: very successful and well received demo versions (or beta stages) and very poor, lower than anticipated game sales. And since these are not the only titles in which a demo (or the lack of it) appears to be connected with their commercial success, I believe we should analyze the influence demos have in the game world and debate: are game demos game killers?'"
Craigslist Agrees With State AGs To Curb "Erotic Services" Ads 402
Posted
by
timothy
from the right-to-pursue-happiness dept.
from the right-to-pursue-happiness dept.
The New York Times reports that Craigslist has reached an agreement with 40 state attorneys general to tame its notoriously unruly "erotic services" listings. Clever diplomacy: according to the article, Craigslist "said that it will charge erotic services vendors a small fee for each ad — about $10, Mr. Buckmaster said — and require that they use a credit card for the payment. It will donate the money to charities that combat child exploitation and human trafficking. This, theoretically, will let the company confirm not just a phone number but also an identity." I hope they work on cleaning the weird spammers from the ordinary personal ads, too.
Enterprise Software Sales Dried Up In September 173
Posted
by
kdawson
from the surprise-surprise dept.
from the surprise-surprise dept.
CurtMonash writes "As I predicted a week ago, it looks as if the third quarter was ugly for software vendors, due to the economic crisis. SAP said 'The market developments of the past several weeks have been dramatic and worrying to many businesses. These concerns triggered a very sudden and unexpected drop in business activity at the end of the quarter.' My old acquaintance John Treadway, who used to work in Sybase's financial services vertical unit, reports that things are even worse than that in the financial services industry, Wall Street and retail banks alike. So now what? Well, IT is a huge part of capital spending, and at enterprises that have to cut back capital spending, IT is going to get hurt. On the other hand, high-growth companies — Web businesses, analytic services providers, etc. — may try to power through the downturn. And the more directly an IT project affects near-term profits, the more likely it is to survive."
Comment: Re:Free Time (Score 1) 29
It's true that if you just rely on free time to do work on a mod you'll never get it done.
Disagree. I'm lead coder for a fairly sizable and popular mod (4th in moddb awards 2007, honourable mention and 2nd unreleased 2006, 14th and 2nd unreleased 2005) and I get everything I need to done just in my spare time, juggling a full-time job, a full-time girlfriend and a full-time cat. What I think he really means is only antisocial types need apply.
Unencrypted Lost Tape Affects 230 Retailers 75
Posted
by
Soulskill
from the keep-an-eye-out dept.
from the keep-an-eye-out dept.
Lucas123 tells us that a backup tape lost by Iron Mountain reportedly contains credit card information from 650,000 customers. The unencrypted tape also holds Social Security numbers for 150,000 customers. Quoting the Computerworld Article:
"Although J.C. Penney was the only company that Jones would confirm as affected by the missing tape, that retailer accounts for just a small percentage of all accounts that were compromised. In total, 230 retailers are affected by the breach. 'Clearly that number includes many of the national retail organizations,' he said."
Atom Smasher May Create "Black Saturns" 423
Posted
by
kdawson
from the distinctive-Hawking-radiation dept.
from the distinctive-Hawking-radiation dept.
David Shiga writes "If we ever make black holes on Earth, they might be much stranger objects than the star-swallowing monsters known to exist in space. According to a new theory, any black hole that pops out of the Large Hadron Collider under construction in Switzerland might be surrounded by a black ring — forming a microscopic 'black Saturn'. This could happen if extra dimensions exist, as string theory suggests, and if they are large enough." An evocative excerpt from the article: "...there is an outside chance that in a few years in a tunnel near Geneva, physicists will make a black hole far smaller than a proton and circled by a squashed four-dimensional black doughnut."
Apple Sics Lawyers on SomethingAwful 512
Posted
by
ScuttleMonkey
from the rabid-lawyers dept.
from the rabid-lawyers dept.
bheer writes "Apple has sent a threatening letter to SomethingAwful about a post in its forums that describes how to fix the overheating in some MacBook Pros by applying thermal paste properly, according to a post on Gizmodo. The post includes a brief excerpt from Apple's Service Source Manual which Apple wants removed. Gizmodo continues: 'the real problem [is] that the image shows the extremely sloppy manufacturing process that is causing the MacBook Pro to run at temperatures as high as a 95 degrees Celcius under full load.'"