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Cabbages decided no patch needed

Microsoft has admitted that it was first aware of bugs in its Jet Database Engine way back in 2005, but decided not to patch the problems because the software giant thought it had blocked the attack vectors.

http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.channelregister.co.uk/2008/03/26/jet_database_engine_security_flaws/

Two peace activists were stopped and harassed when traffic cameras claimed they were terrorists based on license plate ID.

John Catt, an 80 year old pensioner at the time and his daughter Linda (with no criminal record between them) - were stopped and their vehicle searched under section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000 by City of London police. They were both threatened with arrest if they refused to answer police questions. Unbeknown to them the vehicle in which they were travelling had triggered an alert as it passed an automatic vehicle number plate recognition camera part of the cops Ring of steel around the City of London.

Now you see what traffic cameras are really for. Because the UK has more cameras than anywhere else, it's natural that the first political abuse happened there. This case is much like an earlier FBI database abuse against US peace activists, which showed us what these terrorists "watch" lists are really for.

"Watch" lists which accuse people of an infamous crime and punish them without due process of law are explicitly prohibited by the fifth, sixth and seventh amendments of US Constitution. When you allow such violations, government wastes your tax money to target and harass innocent people who are fighting for your rights.

NIckGorton writes "Bush uses 9th veto of his presidency to stop Congress' attempt to prevent interrogation techniques like waterboarding whose use is prohibited by the military and law enforcement agencies in the us (aka torture)."
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/08/washington/08cnd-policy.html?em&ex=1205125200&en=a82d4a826021d30d&ei=5087%0A

Seems like the folks at Wikileaks are on an anti-censorship-spree again: In a press release announced earlier, the site calls for global awareness and support in a boycotting campagin headed towards eNom., Inc., one of the top internet domain registrars, apparently involved in systematic domain censoring.
It appears eNom on Feb 28th shut down wikileaks.info, one of the many Wikileaks mirrors held by a volunteer as a side-effect of the court proceedings around wikileaks.org. That not being enough, the New York Times reported earlier this weekon numerous cases of domains held with eNom just disappearing, in connection to a Treasury Department driven blacklist that looks like a fairly random compilation of domains and information in a massive file.
Wikileaks calls for a global boycott of eNom and its parent Demand Media, its owners, executives and their affiliated companies, interests and holdings, to make clear such behaviour can and will not be tolerated within the boundaries of the internet and its global community.
https://secure.wikileaks.org/wiki/WIKILEAKS.INFO_censored_by_eNom_and_Demand_Media

A blog entry I read recently points out that Apple's WebKit (or at least the OS X version of it) contains various closed-source and binary only pieces of code that make use of Mac OS X internals. This is, by itself, morally dubious and not really compatible with the idea of open source. However, it may also be a violation of the LGPL.

While the LGPL allows closed source software to make use of the library, it still requires that the whole of any modified version of the library is distributed under the LGPL. It would appear that WebKit is violating this requirement by keeping parts of its code closed-source. (Of course, since WebKit is based on the LGPL-licensed KHTML, which Apple don't own the copyright to, they can't relicense it under more favourable terms.)

An anonymous reader writes "Ever since the initial launch of the iTunes Music Store, an intrepid group of programmers over at the Hymn Project have engaged in a marvelous cat-and-mouse game with Apple. Now they're finally being hobbled by Apple's lawyers.

The purpose of the project has always been to provide software that can be used to losslessly remove Digital Rights Management (DRM) protection from music purchased through iTunes, so that the buyer may exercise their right of fair use and play the music on non-Apple devices (Hear Your Music aNywhere).

The software has gone through many incarnations. The original hymn has been succeeded by JHymn, QTFairUse6, MyFairTunes, and others. Regardless of the program, the emphasis has always been squarely on fair use — not piracy. Any discussions of piracy have been strongly and actively discouraged on the site's forums.

For years now, Apple has been content to mostly ignore the Hymn Project. At worst, they would introduce subtle changes to new versions of iTunes that would break the Hymn software. Nobody really knows if this was done intentionally, but it was usually just a matter of time before a new solution was found. This seemed like a reasonable approach for Apple to take. After all, why should they care? The DRM was only in place to placate the record companies. Apple CEO Steve Jobs has even expressed his opinion that all music should be free of DRM.

Well, now things have changed. Recently, a new program called Requiem was announced that appears to be a complete crack of the iTunes DRM scheme. Previous programs had relied on various forms of trickery or memory hooks to access the unencrypted audio data — none had ever completely cracked the encryption algorithms.

Requiem seems to have been the last straw. Earlier this week, the ISP hosting the site received a Cease and Desist order from Apple Legal, demanding that all downloads be removed from the site, and that the site post no links to any programs that could remove DRM from Apple music or video. Reportedly, similar C & D orders were also sent to at least one of the project's developers, and to another ISP where Reqiuem had been hosted. Ironically, Requiem was never actually hosted on the Hymn site — merely mentioned and linked to in one of the forums. Nevertheless, the Hymn Project has now come into the crosshairs of Apple's lawyers and, lacking legal resources, has seen no choice but to comply with the order."
http://www.hymn-project.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=2496

FuriousRage writes "Freenet version 0.7a2 is now available for public testing.

Freenet is a global peer-to-peer network designed to allow users to publish
and consume information without fear of censorship. To use it, you must
download the Freenet software, available for Windows, Mac, Linux and other
operating systems. Your computer will then form part of a global,
decentralized P2P network, and you will be able to publish and consume
information anonymously, either through your web browser, or through a
variety of third party applications, such as Frost (see
http://jtcfrost.sf.net/).

Since the first alpha there have been vast numbers of changes, in particular
significant improvements in user friendliness. For example, it is no-longer
necessary to find other people to connect to, Freenet can find other people
for you. However, you can still connect to your friends for maximum security.
It is also a good deal faster, and many bugs have been fixed.

There have been many many other changes, and we will release a feature
complete beta followed by 0.7.0 itself in the coming months (we hope to have
regular point releases after that). But we thought it would be best to get
some wider testing at this point. There is more to do before 0.7.0, and one
or two features which need to be completed before that.

Freenet 0.7a2 can be downloaded from:

http://freenetproject.org/download.html

This release would not have been possible without the release of numerous
volunteers, and Matthew Toseland, Freenet's full time developer. Matthew's
work is funded through donations via our website (as well as a few larger
sponsors from time to time), we ask that anyone who can help us to ensure
Matthew's continued employment by visiting our donations page and making a
contribution at:

http://freenetproject.org/donate.html

_______________________________________________
Announce mailing list
Announce@freenetproject.org
http://emu.freenetproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/announce"
http://freenetproject.org/

Filed under: Gaming, Peripherals

We've got to give credit where it's due, and there's no room to debate that David McNeel deserves quite a helping of kudos. Shortly after crafting a fully-functional Gibson Explorer Guitar Hero controller, this Lego modder extraordinaire has created yet another axe that totally outdoes the more traditional (read: factory built) alternatives. Modeled after a Fender Jazz Bass, this thing includes all of the electronics from an original axe, and it maintains every ounce of utility while attracting quite a few extra members for your ever-expanding fan club. Hit the read link to check out a couple more shots.

[Via Technabob]

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/205062899/

Cabal writes "Clinton reveals today that she sees the affair as a victory for child safety. She describe her introduction of the doomed Family Entertainment Protection Act as a response to the "illicit" sexual content in San Andreas, and says, as president, she'd support regulation of the gaming industry."
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/12/clinton-would-c.html

Pro-Linux reports that KDE 4, scheduled to be released in January 2008, consumes almost 40% less memory than KDE 3.5, despite the fact that version 4 of the Free and Open Source desktop system includes a composited window manager and a revamped menu and applet interface. KDE developer Will Stephenson showcased KDE 4's 3D eye-candy on a 256Mb laptop with 1Ghz CPU and run-of-the-mill integrated graphics, pointing out that mini-optimizations haven't even yet been started. Will this combination of resource efficiency and consumer appeal make KDE 4 the leader in the booming Linux-based ultra mobile laptop and energy efficient desktop markets?

JaJ_D writes "According to Paul Kidby's website, Terry Pratchet has been diagonsed with early onset Alzheimer's.

From the site:

would have liked to keep this one quiet for a little while, but because of upcoming conventions and of course the need to keep my publishers informed, it seems to me unfair to withhold the news. I have been diagnosed with a very rare form of early onset Alzheimer's, which lay behind this year's phantom "stroke".

Jaj"

According to the linked thread on the forums of AnimeSuki, a popular anime bittorent index site, Comcast has begun sending DCMA letters to customers downloading unlicensed (meaning that no english language company has the rights to) fan-subtitled anime shows via bittorrent. The letters are claiming that the copyright holder or an authorized agent are making the infringement claims, though usually these requests are also sent to the site itself rather that individual downloaders.

My question is have they really been in contact with Japanese anime companies, or is this another scare tactic by Comcast to try and reduce the bandwidth use of their heavier customers now that their previous tactics have come under legal fire?
http://forums.animesuki.com/showthread.php?t=58005

ThinkingInBinary writes "The results from the Urban Challenge are in! Carnegie Mellon's Tartan Racing team came in first (earning a $2 million prize), followed by Stanford's Stanford Racing team in second (earning $1 mil) and Virginia Tech's Victor Tango in third (earning $500k). Cornell's Team Cornell, University of Pennsylvania and Lehigh University's Ben Franklin Racing Team, and MIT, also finished the race in that order."

henry writes "eBay Australia has a fraud awareness page and a related flash game, both of which feature a depiction of a fraudster as a balding, bespectacled man with Tux, the Linux mascot, prominently displayed on his shirt. The big question is: why? Why such a gratuitous smear against the Linux community? Is it something we said?"
http://pages.ebay.com.au/protectyourself/

wolfeon writes "The story http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/10/11/2157244 posted today is a fake, sorry. After doing a simple google search, the facts were very clear on the following, http://taint.org/2007/10/11/203243a.html Please ignore the story and lets move on, this is a very bad practical joke. I was very excited and happy until I performed a google search and looked on the ROSKO list.

The story originated from this site, http://loonov.com/russian-viagra-and-penis-enlargement-spammer-murdered.htm The creation date of loonov.com is "11-oct-2007". Did anyone else see this before making comments or giving a thumbs up on firehose?"
http://taint.org/2007/10/11/203243a.html