hey0you0guy writes, "The large security firms such as Symantec and McAfee want Microsoft to allow them to replace Microsoft's Windows Security Center. Microsoft is refusing these requests. 'By imposing the Windows Security Center on all Windows users, Microsoft is defining a template through which everybody looks at security,' Bruce McCorkendale, a chief engineer at Symantec, said in an interview. 'How do we trust that Microsoft knows what all the important things about security are to warn users about?' Given Microsoft's past, with vast piles of security flaws and patches, they should at least cooperate with these companies. A dispute still exists over PatchGuard, a security feature that Microsoft says is designed to guard core parts of the 64-bit version of Vista, but which critics say locks out helpful software from security rivals."

Richard Finney asks: "I have a friend who is retired. He was the chief scientist on the Landsat program. Instead of just belting down scotch and cashing social security checks, he is volunteering at Samuel Coleridge Taylor Elementary School #122, in Baltimore. He's trying to set up some old donated computers from the Windows 95 era. Rather than fight with Windows, he's decided to install Linux. How would you set up these systems for these little kids to use and learn about computers using Linux?"

An anonymous reader writes, "Some scientists are suggesting that a short-term solution to global warming could be to inject sulfate-based aerosols into the stratosphere as a 'sunlight-reflecting, cooling foil.' Tom Wigley of the National Center for Atmospheric Research says that adding just 5 million metric tons of sulfur dioxide annually to the stratosphere 'would have a significant influence.'" From the article: "Constant aerosol production also could mean we wouldn't have blue skies anymore, and it could reduce incoming solar radiation enough to hobble such imperatives as replacing fossil fuel with solar energy technologies."

Ars Technica has a good wrap of Napster hanging out a "For Sale or Partner" sign. With half a million subscribers (down from the previous quarter) and $100M in annual revenue, the company is still bleeding cash. El Reg pinpoints the trouble: "The subscription crowd – and Apple via iTunes – must fight over a few pennies per song in profit. More from the Vulture: "You have to wonder if Napster's customer base is really worth the effort for a company such as Microsoft or even Real. The Napster brand has all the gravitas of a Che Guevara t-shirt."

lisah writes, "The Linux distribution Gentoo has a hard-core following, and with good reason. Gentoo is known for its configurability and choices. It's not known, however, for its easy installation. NewsForge's Joe Barr outlined his painful installation experience with Gentoo in an article that explains why, after 10 days, he finally gave up and went with Debian Etch. From the article: '[B]ack in the day, Gentoo users first had to rip the source code from the bone with their teeth before compiling and installing it, but now the live CD had sissified the process to the point that anyone could do it... I exaggerated the ease of installing Gentoo.' And: 'Gentoo doesn't ask what it can do to make things easier, it asks you exactly what it is that you want it to do, and then does precisely and only that.'" Slashdot and NewsForge are both owned by OSTG.

Next Generation explores the possibility that the 18 to 34 year old 'hardcore' male gamer, a coveted demographic, may not actually exist. Research from the NPD Group indicates that most 'heavy use' gamers are younger, between six and 17. From the article: "Frazier explained ... 'The segments were determined by examining player behavior, rather than defining segments demographically. While it's easy to talk about the 18 to 34 core gamer, it's not necessarily accurate. The industry has been in need of much more nuanced information that can be used both when developing and marketing content. In all, 10 behavioral attributes were used to determine the segments, and they fall into four primary areas: ownership of systems, use of systems, frequency of use, and purchase behavior. Segments emerged by minimizing differences within clusters and maximizing differences between the clusters." Is this yet another sign of the 'greying gamer' phenomenon, or simply evidence indicating the marketers have had it wrong all along?

An anonymous reader writes, "The UK Guardian is running an excerpt from the new book "Heat" by George Monbiot (to be published later this month) spelling out the network of funding opposing global action against global warming — specifically, limits on human carbon dioxide generation. The excerpt outlines a web of fake citizens' groups and bogus (but authoritative sounding) research institutes designed to convince laypeople that human causation of global warming is scientifically controversial. Not surprisingly, the article notes funding by ExxonMobil. More interesting is the role played big tobacco, tying their attack on the health risks of second-hand smoke to global warming skepticism." From the article: "What I have discovered while researching this issue is that the corporate funding of lobby groups denying that man-made climate change is taking place was initiated not by Exxon, or by any other firm directly involved in the fossil fuel industry. It was started by the tobacco company Philip Morris."

Yahoo! is reporting that, in the race to claim E3's crown, the Game Developer's Conference has announced there will be more than twice the space on the show floor next year. From the article: "When GDC was last in San Francisco in 2005, the show occupied the three floors of Moscone West. For GDC 07, the organizers reserved both Moscone West and Moscone North. With the Moscone West show floor virtually sold out, the organizers have now additionally secured the keynote hall in Moscone South in order to convert Moscone North into a second dedicated show floor. This will allow the GDC to accommodate the voluminous requests coming in for exhibition space and to include fresh exhibitor opportunities, such as the all-new Game Demo Theater." With PAX, GDC, GenCon, Leipzig, and others all lining up to be 'the next E3', is it too early to place bets? Will one event reign supreme, or is the E3 cake going to be shared by all these groups from now on?

florescent_beige writes, "Newsday is reporting that Hezbollah was able to monitor secure Israeli military communications, perhaps using technology supplied by Iran, during the recent Lebanon war. A former Israeli general, speaking anonymously, called the results 'disastrous' for Israel. The story reports that an anonymous Lebanese source said that Hezbollah might have taken advantage of Israeli soldiers' mistakes in following secure radio procedures. The radio gear uses frequency hopping and encryption." The article identifies the Israeli communications equipment as the US-designed Single Channel Ground and Airborne Radio System.

Krishna Dagli writes, "MIT researchers are putting a tiny gas-turbine engine inside a silicon chip about the size of a quarter. The resulting device could run 10 times longer than a battery of the same weight, powering laptops, cell phones, radios, and other electronic devices." From the article: "All the parts work. We're now trying to get them all to work on the same day on the same lab bench." The goal is to do that by the end of the year.

An anonymous reader writes "Another wave of video-game-violence panic is upon us. The pressed suits who read the pop news on television are wagging their so-called neutral fingers at an industry they have never understood. Planet Xbox 360 considers the many games they have played and the real-life murderers they have known in their own lives, and how little the talking heads know about either."

dominator writes "It's been nearly 20 months since the last major release of the Python programming language, and version 2.5 is probably the most significant new release of Python since 2.2. The latest release includes a variety of additions to the standard library, language extensions, and performance optimizations. This is a final release, and should be suitable for production use. Read the release announcement, the highlights, what's new, and download it."

nmb3000 writes "Avast, me maties! Today be th' International Talk Like a Pirate Day! Fer today only, ye lubbers no worthy 'nough t' enjoy th' noble vocation o' Pirate can join th' ranks! Firs' ye'll need t' lern t' talk like a pirate, then find yer pirate name, doonload yer ringtones, an' finally sling back some grog. Be smart aboot it, fer today's th' day ninjas fear...ever'one's a pirate! Arrrr!"

Giants2.0 writes "A survey conducted by the Commerce Committee says that Americans don't know what net neutrality is, and they don't want it. Ars Technica reports that only 7% of respondents had ever heard of net neutrality, but the report questions the fairness of the survey, which was crafted by the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation to assess support for the current version of the Telecommunications Act of 2006. The survey suggested to respondents that net neutrality would prevent ISPs from selling faster service or security products, both of which are not true." From the article: "The very brief net neutrality description used by the pollsters is somewhat misleading insofar as it suggests that net neutrality would bar Internet Service Providers from selling faster service than is available today. Strict net neutrality does not concern itself with ultimate transfer speeds available to subscribers, but instead focuses on how different kinds of Internet traffic could be shaped by ISPs for anti-competitive purposes. For instance, strict net neutrality would not prevent an ISP from selling extremely fast 35Mbps connections, but it would prevent ISPs from privileging traffic for their own services for competitive advantage, or degrading the traffic of competing services."

Billosaur writes "Apparently the 'scurvy dawgs' are still in control. Results from Sunday's Swedish national election were not favorable for the Pirate Party, according to Wired News. According to the article, 'The Pirate Party not only failed to score the 4 percent required for a seat in Sweden's Parliament, but appears to have missed the 1 percent that would have afforded the party state assistance with printing ballots and funding staff in the next election.' However, the party sees this as a learning experience and morale is still good."