jrepin - Slashdot User

Security Tool HijackThis Goes Open Source-> 0

Submitted by wiredmikey on Friday February 17, @01:05PM

wiredmikey writes "The popular free security tool HijackThis has been open sourced by its owner, Trend Micro. The tool scans systems to find settings that may have been modified by spyware, malware or other programs that have wiggled their way onto a system and caused problems.

Downloaded over 10 million times, HijackThis generates reports to help users analyze and fix an infected or problemed computer. But the tool is not designed for novices – and doesn’t actually determine what’s good or bad. That’s up to you, but it is a good way to keep an eye on things and possibly locate anomalies that may have been missed by other security products. Trend Micro warns that if you don’t know what you’re doing, it’s probably not a good idea to make any changes to your computer settings and system files.

Trend Micro acquired the tool from creator Merijn Bellekom in 2007, and has offered it for free ever since, but now is making the code available to the public. The code, originally written in Visual Basic, is now officially available at Sourceforge here."
Link to Original Source

Relinquishing copyright on death 0

Submitted by dadioflex on Sunday February 19, @05:42AM

dadioflex writes "Whitney Houston's death prompted Sony to make a mistake that would have seen their profits from her album sales quadruple, or more.

I was browsing wikipedia, looking at comics and their creators, and saw that Dave Sim has made arrangements for the copyright to his revolutionary Cerebus comics to be transferred to the Public Domain on his death.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Sim#Cerebus

My initial thought was "wow", an already cool guy got a lot cooler.

So I want to Ask Slashdot, have any other creators arranged to give away, or given away, the copyright to their works to the vast mass of humanity when they die?"

UK plans more spying of people on the internet under "terrorism" pretext 1

Submitted by Wowsers on Saturday February 18, @08:07PM

Wowsers writes "In vogue with other countries cracking down on freedom and democracy on the internet as discussed in Slashdot recently, the UK is joining in with plans to track all phone calls, text messages, email traffic and websites visited online, all to be stored in vast databases under new Government anti-terror plans. As reported in The Telegraph.

Security services will have access to information about who has been communicating with each other on social networking sites such as Facebook, direct messages between subscribers on Twitter would also be stored, as well as communications between players in online video games.

The scheme is a revised version of a plan drawn up by the ex-Labour government which would have created a central database of all the information. The idea later dropped in favour of requiring communications providers to store the details at the taxpayers’ expense."

Universities agree to email monitoring for copyright agency-> 1

Submitted by fish waffle on Saturday February 18, @11:15AM

fish waffle writes "The universities of Western Ontario and Toronto have signed a deal with Access Copyright that allows for surveillance of faculty correspondence, defines e-mailing hyperlinks as equivalent to photocopying a document, and imposes an annual $27.50 fee for every full-time equivalent student to pay for it all.

Access Copyright is a licensing agency historically used by most universities in Canada to give them blanket permission to reproduce copyrighted works, largely to address photocopying concerns that may extend beyond basic fair-use. Since the expiration of this agreement, and with recognition that many academic uses do not require copyright permissions or payments or are already covered under vendor-specific agreements, Canadian academic institutions have been united in opposing continuation of the agreement with the agency. Access Copyright has countered with a proposal for increased fees, and expansion of the definition of copyright to include linking and the need for online surveillance. In a strange breaking of ranks, the University of Western Ontario and the University of Toronto have capitulated and signed agreements that basically accede to the licensing agency's demands.

The Canadian Association of University Teachers bulletin provides detailed background on the issue."
Link to Original Source

EU court rules social networks cannot police downloads-> 0

Submitted by arnodf on Friday February 17, @12:24PM

arnodf writes ""The European Court of Justice (ECJ) has struck the latest blow in the debate over internet policing, ruling on Thursday (16 February) that online social network sites cannot be forced to construct measures to prevent users from downloading songs illegally.

The court, which is the highest judicial authority in the EU, stated that installing general filters would infringe on the freedom to conduct business and on data privacy."

"The case was brought before the ECJ by Sabam, the Belgian national music royalty collecting society, against social network site Netlog. In 2009, Sabam went to the Belgian Court of First Instance to demand that Netlog take action to prevent site-users from illegally downloading songs from its portfolio. It also insisted that Netlog pay a €1,000 fine for every day of delaying in compliance. Netlog legal submission argued that granting Sabam’s injunction would be imposing a general obligation to monitor on Netlog, which is prohibited by the e-commerce directive."

In other new: Sabam is going to be prosecuted (google translation, dutch original) for "forging accounts, abuse of trust, bribery, money laundering and forgery" which took place from the early 90's till 2007"
Link to Original Source

Samsung Launches New Low-Cost Android 4.0 Tablet-> 0

Submitted by

slashdottech

on Friday February 17, @11:48AM

slashdottech writes "This New Year 2012 is turning out to be really a pretty good year for the people who are seeking to buy a 7-Inch Android Tablet. Samsung has launched its first Galaxy Tab 2 (7.0), to ship with Android 4.0 with dual core 1GHz processor and a 7-inch screen along with 1024-by-600 pixel resolution and its own Touch wiz user interface."
Link to Original Source

Quatum Dots in the Brain?-> 0

Submitted by

lee1

on Friday February 17, @11:08AM

lee1 writes "Quantum dots are nanometer-sized, light-sensitive, semiconducting
particles. Researchers at the University of Washington have discovered
that when these particles are in proximity to a nerve cell, shining
light on the dots causes the neurons' ion channels to open and the
nerve cell to fire. This opens up a new vista of possible treatments for
various brain disorders. The dots can be implanted by coating them with
molecules with an affinity for the targeted tissues and injecting them
into the bloodstream. After that, the main problem will be to figure out
how to shine light into the brain. But there are high hopes for the
treatment of retinal disorders, where this problem is, obviously,
already solved."
Link to Original Source

Polish prime minister is offitialy anti-ACTA since now-> 0

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 17, @10:08AM

An anonymous reader writes ""- I sent a letter today to all the party leaders who cooperate with the Platform and the Polish Peasant Party [goverment coalition parties in Poland] in the so-called, European People's Party, the prime ministers, the chancellor, the presidents of some countries and the authorities of European People's Party, with a proposal to reject ACTA in shape, which was negotiated by the European Commission — said Tusk"
The link is in polish I'm sorry."
Link to Original Source

Spark Linux tablet now available to pre-order-> 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 17, @09:40AM

An anonymous reader writes "A tablet running Mer OS and KDE Plasma Active that is completely open source (apart from a few hardware drivers)? And only $260? Yes please. The Spark Linux tablet was announced last month and went up for pre-order today. The nice folks at Make Play Live don't even ask for a credit card when ordering, you just give them an email, name, region, and quantity,and you are added to the list. When stock is available you'll get sent a product code ensuring your device/s. Go pre-order!"
Link to Original Source

China to launch manned space mission-> 0

Submitted by EwanPalmer on Friday February 17, @07:08AM

EwanPalmer writes "China's next space mission will carry three astronauts and attempt to dock with an experimental module launched last year, state media reported.

The Shenzhou-9 spacecraft will be launched aboard its Long March 2F rocket sometime between June and August."
Link to Original Source