Vicissidude writes "A team of American and British researchers has made a cloak of invisibility. In their experiment the scientists used microwaves to try and detect a copper cylinder. Like light and radar waves, microwaves bounce off objects making them visible and creating a shadow, though it has to be detected with instruments. If you can hide something from microwaves, you can hide it from radar and visible light. In effect the device, made of metamaterials — engineered mixtures of metal and circuit board materials, which could include ceramic, Teflon or fiber composite materials — channels the microwaves around the object being hidden. When water flows around a rock, co-author David R. Smith explained, the water recombines after it passes the rock and people looking at the water downstream would never know it had passed a rock. The first working cloak was in only two dimensions and did cast a small shadow, Smith acknowledged. The next step is to go for three dimensions and to eliminate any shadow."

An anonymous reader writes to mention a Reuters article about a lawmaker's attempt to stop the Government's interest in taxing Massively Multiplayer Game content. R-New Jersey Jim Saxton is cautioning against exploring the taxable status of in-game items. From the article: "'The goal of the forthcoming Joint Economic Committee study is to help lawmakers understand the issues involved and head off any premature attempt to impose a tax on virtual economies,' he said. Under current law, Saxton said if a transaction takes place solely within a virtual world there is no 'taxable event.' Dan Miller, chief economist for the Joint Economic Committee, said earlier this week that the committee's study would start with a blank slate and be completed by the end of the year."

PadRacerExtreme writes "Vista includes the much maligned 'Genuine Advantage' layer inside, which ensures that your copy of the OS is legit. If you're running a non-validated copy you get no upgrades, no security protection, nothing. That's all well and good, but what happens if a cracker tweaks that Genuine Advantage layer for its own good? Dvorak sees a huge problem, just waiting to happen. What's the vulnerability?" From the article: "I suspect the policeman [WGA] will actually be hacked before the OS. It might actually be easier for the pirates to create a fake cop that constantly authenticates fake versions of Vista than it will be to create a Vista imitation that can pretend to be a legitimate version. There is some irony to that idea. But that's none of my concern. I'm more worried about some joker creating a virus or exploit that turns the good cop into a bad cop, and I can only imagine the destruction and hassle that will ensue."

Loconut1389 asks: "In 1994, Wildfire Communications released a telephone based voice recognition agent that kept track of contacts, and given a schedule or a list of numbers where to reach you, would try and contact you at places you might be when someone calls in. Wildfire was in service through a number of companies, until 2005 when Orange pulled the plug. I had the pleasure of being frustrated with misunderstandings, but thoroughly enjoyed the concept, and it was a worthwhile product. Just before they closed up the Wildfire shop, they had a version that didn't require training. In any case, I was wondering if Asterisk, with some extension modules, had come far enough to replace the functionality of the Wildfire service? Has anyone had experience with the original Wildfire product that could recommend a modern equivalent, even if it was commercial?"

Rub3X writes "The Alexa ranking system is naturally flawed. The data should never be treated as accurate, as it's easily manipulated, and not supported for most browsers in the world. It's an estimate, and nothing more. " I've been saying that forever, but unfortunately for me, since it's a number on a website that is considered "Real" to some, I'm supposed to take it seriously. I imagine this is a problem for many webmasters out there.

The Fun Guy writes "Coca-Cola and Nestle are getting together to introduce a new beverage "proven to burn calories". Enviga will be in the U.S. Northeast in November, nationwide in January 2007. How does it burn calories? With green tea extracts, calcium, and caffeine. No word on how many milligrams caffeine per can. "

slidersv writes "Not 24 hours after the release of IE7, Secunia reports Internet Explorer Arbitrary Content Disclosure Vulnerability. So much for the "you wanted it easier and more secure" slogan found on Microsoft's IE Website."

denebian devil writes "On the heals of allofmp3.com's press conference trying to clean up its image, Visa has suspended its credit card service to allofmp3.com. From the article "[Allofmp3 is] no longer permitted to accept Visa cards," said Simon Barker, a Visa International spokesman. "The action we've taken is in line with legislation passed in Russia and international copyright law." Almost simultaneously, allofmp3.com has announced that it is shifting over to an ad-supported model. For those who don't want to (or can't) buy allofmp3's DRM-free music, they are providing DRM-laden music that can be played only within a restricted player provided by the website."

mjeppsen writes "The Motion Picture Association of America is turning a blind eye towards movie piracy on Usenet, going after torrent link sites instead. PC Magazine says it is because the studios are in bed with GUBA, who is also shilling downloadable movies for the MPAA at a premium price."

bombduck writes "Barablu demonstrates free calling from Nokia Series 60 based phones to Windows Mobile phones and PDAs using a Wi-Fi connection. Both Nokia E Series and N Series Wi-Fi enabled phones tested, showing not only Voice but IM, video and conference calling. "

dptalia writes "Chongqing province in southwest China has just passed a law fining people who post malicious rumors online. An individual can face fines of 1,000 to 5,000 yuan ($630) and an organization can be fined between 3,000 and 15,000 yuan."

DemiKnute writes "According to the official Penguin.SWF blog, the a beta release of the long-awaited Flash 9 for Linux is available for download, a mere year after the release for Windows." From the blog: "While we are still working out exactly how to distribute the final Player version to be as easy as possible for the typical end user, this beta includes 2 gzip'd tarball packages: one is for the Mozilla plugin and the other is for a GTK-based Standalone Flash Player. Either will need to be downloaded manually via the Adobe Labs website and unpacked. The standalone Player (gflashplayer) can be run in place (after you set its executable permission). The plugin is dropped into your local plugin directory (for a local user) or the system-wide plugin directory." Report bugs here.

nuxx asks: "I have a copy of Windows Server 2003 R2 Enterprise x64 Edition here, with 25 Client Access Licenses which I don't need. I don't want to throw it away, but because it's a Not For Resale copy, I can't list it on eBay. So, I'd like to give it to a charity. It's a completely new, unused, legal copy which was handed to me by a Microsoft rep a few weeks ago, so this should be legal to do. The problem is, I'm not really sure how to donate software to a charity. Does anyone have any experience with this? Do you know of any resources available regarding how to send such donations and which organizations find them useful?"

KevHead writes "Speaking at a conference of international police chiefs, FBI Director Robert Mueller called for strict data retention guidelines for US ISPs. Echoing DHS head Michael Cherthoff's assertion that the Internet was enabling terrorists to telecommute to work, Mueller went further and said that the US needs stricter data retention guidelines. '"All too often, we find that before we can catch these offenders, Internet service providers have unwittingly deleted the very records that would help us identify these offenders and protect future victims," Mueller said. The solution? Forcing ISPs to retain data for set periods of time.' If that happens, how long before the MPAA and RIAA start asking to take a peek at the data too, as they have in Europe?"

MaestroRC asks: "I've been looking around online, and I have found several people wanting to do the same thing, but no one seems to have figured it out yet. What I am wanting to do (and before you go further, understand this is for work, i.e.: no innocent people will be harmed in the implementation) is to set up a name server that selectively forwards queries. For example, I would like to create a list of acceptable domains (less than 20) using wildcards such as *.google.com, that the name server will forward a query on to and reply to normally. For anything not in the list, I want it to reply NXDOMAIN or some such. I've looked at BIND, and there doesn't appear to be a way to do what I'm wanting; it can either have recursion on or off, and any specific zones of type forward still do not forward if it is off. The solution doesn't have to be pretty, and it can just be a simple DNS proxy, but I'm not adept at coding, so it needs to be installable by a regular sysadmin on Linux. Has anyone heard of something like this?"