bcaulfield writes to tell us Zhou Hongyi has filed a 3.6 million yuan ($450,000) defamation suit against Yahoo China. Hongyi, the former president of Yahoo China, filed his suit in response to comments made in a recent Yahoo press conference accusing him of unethical business practices. From the article: "A rift between Mr. Zhou and Yahoo China has been developing since before his departure from Yahoo last year, just prior to Alibaba's takeover of Yahoo's China operations. Mr. Zhou doled out generous bonuses to Yahoo employees in a ploy his detractors derided as a naked purchase of loyalties. Mr. Zhou defended the disbursements. 'Many of these people were longtime Yahoo employees, and they were under no obligation to follow me,' he said. 'It was my money to do with as I wanted.'" Update 08/20/2006 15:01 GMT by SM: Corrected the currency for the suit.

Carlos asks: "I was searching encryption software for USB pen drives, and came across the U3 Smart Drive platform which offers portability and privacy through software and hardware. There are already several well-known hardware manufacturers offering U3 Smart Drives. Do they are really better than a plain USB drive plus encryption software such as TrueCrypt or it's just marketing hype?"

MJanofsky asks: "I am the IT guy for a new, smallish non-profit organization. I won't always be able to be in my office to access information about our a users machine or to get the word that there is an issue somewhere. What I am looking for is something similar to the likes of Numara Track-It!, but it is very cost-prohibitive despite having all of the features needed. What it needs to include is integration of the HelpDesk and Asset Tracking parts (i.e. a user submits a ticket with equipment associated to it via a web interface and when I view it, I get the option to view the profile of the equipment), it has to be able to use bar-codes, be web-based, and ideally under $300. It would also be nice to have auditing via the network, and remote-control features but those are in the 'if it has it, great' category. Do Slashdot readers have any suggestions in their endless wisdom?"

broswell asks: "We rent computer equipment and occasionally our equipment gets stolen. I wrote a little VBS script that calls our webserver every hour (script below) and installed it on our laptops. Sure enough, some laptops went missing. One of the stolen laptops is now calling in from a Verizon Internet account which appears to be in a neighboring town. The Baltimore City Police grudgingly filled out a police report 'so we could collect insurance' but don't seem willing to subpoena Verizon, find the address of the end user, recover tha laptop and prosecute the thief. They seem clueless. The Maryland State police has a computer crimes unit. The have a clue, but they claim they don't have jurisdiction. It is not about the money (our customer signed for the computers and will pay for the stolen items), we just want justice." With all of the necessary information in hand of the proper authorities, how likely is it that the stolen laptop will be recovered?

bahree writes "Google has launched their beta version of Writely.com. Writely is their word processor and answer to Microsoft Word. In addition to the usual editing features it includes many collaboration features, as well as the ability to save documents as PDFs and RSS feeds."

Underdog asks: "I've seen tons of Slashdot articles on cooling hardware, but my company may be taking on the task of wiring a large sub-zero (as low as -14) warehouse with temperature sensors and the requisite network equipment and computers to read them. Our initial proposal includes at least a dozen acquisition computers, hung from the racks in the freezer. Does anyone have any experience with installing computers in extremely low temperature locations?"

New Scientist is reporting that in the not-so-distant future computer monitors, and televisions may utilize a color changing polymer that responds to a current instead of existing techniques. From the article: "Aschwanden and colleagues built arrays of 10 pixels, each 80 micrometers across. The pixels consist of a piece of polymer covered with ridges tipped with gold. When white light is shone at the polymer from one side it reflects out of the screen and is also split into different wavelengths by this 'diffraction grating'. However, a slit above the polymer ensures that only one wavelength of light escapes, giving the pixel its color. The pieces of polymer also contract in response to current, like simple muscles. As they do so, the fan of light-waves is moved, changing the color that is fed through the slits above and out of the screen. Cutting the current causes the muscle to return to its original state."

Science Daily is reporting that University of California Researchers have discovered a new process in which molecules assemble into complex patterns without any outside guidance. From the article: "Spreading anthraquinone, a common and inexpensive chemical, on to a flat copper surface, Greg Pawin, a chemistry graduate student working in the laboratory of Ludwig Bartels, associate professor of chemistry, observed the spontaneous formation of a two-dimensional honeycomb network comprised of anthraquinone molecules."

wild3rbeast writes "Joe Stewart, a senior security researcher with LURHQ's Threat Intelligence Group has figured out a way to silently spy on a botnet's command-and-control infrastructure, and finds that for-profit crackers are clearly winning the cat-and-mouse game against entrenched anti-virus providers. From the article: 'The lesson here is once you get infected, you are completely under the control of the botmaster. He can put whatever he wants on your machine, and there's no way to be 100 percent sure that the machine is clean. The only way to be [completely] sure the system is malware-free is to completely wipe the hard drive and reinstall the operating system.'"

Tom's Hardware has a nice overview about some of the latest ways to secure your data looking specifically at open source solutions that wont lock down your credit card. Since many people presented performance issues for why they don't implement encryption there was also special attention given to how well your system will perform after implementation of encryption. From the article: "At least where LUKS is concerned, performance is hardly an issue - one must expect to pay some penalty for additional encryption facilities that handle unencrypted data transparently. All of these solutions are simple to set up and use on a daily basis, but LUKS is portable across Windows and Linux platforms."

Earl Bonovich writes to tell us that he recently had a chance to take a look at DirecTV's new HD-DVR, the HR20-700. His results are posted over at DBSTalk including several pictures and videos. Some of the features include high definition output, dual SAT tuners, dual ATSC tuners, wired RJ-45 ethernet port, external SATA connection, and a 300GB SATA internal hard drive that can hold 30 hours of MPEG-2 HD, 50 hours of MPEG-4 HD, or 200 hours of standard definition video.

Lip writes to tell us that a new bacteria killing virus has been deemed safe by the FDA as a food additive for ready-to-eat meats. These bacteriophages are designed to kill a common microbe (Listeria monocytogenes bacteria) to which hundreds of deaths every year have been attributed. From the article: "The viruses are grown in a preparation of the very bacteria they kill, and then purified. The FDA had concerns that the virus preparation potentially could contain toxic residues associated with the bacteria. However, testing did not reveal the presence of such residues, which in small quantities likely wouldn't cause health problems anyway, the FDA said."

MojoDog writes "Today Universal Abit launched their AW9D and AW9D-MAX motherboards based on the Intel 975X chipset. There has been much anticipation in the industry for this series and as far as looks go, these boards are built to please. One interesting bullet point in the spec list is that these boards are "Quad Core Ready", in line with a possible year-end release of Intel's Quad-Core Kentsfield CPU perhaps? Time will tell!"

StrongGlad writes "Screenshots of what could be an Amazon.com video store in the making surfaced Friday on the Web. Alan Taylor, who claims to have worked for the online retailer more than two years ago, said he discovered the screenshots while poking around an area of Amazon.com used by developers. The screenshots can be seen on Kokogiak.com. The pictures show a service called 'Unbox Video' that offers first time users a free TV show or $1.99 off the first movie they download. Instructions are given for downloading the player and buying movies and video that can be played on a PC, TV or portable media player. Amazon.com has declined to comment."

mvdwege writes "Apparently, Eric Raymond has decided that proprietary software is now a good thing, according to The Register. I must say it is rather revealing how easily he is willing to compromise on this particular freedom. Is his earlier vocal proclamation of the importance of freedom (still visible on his homepage) mere posturing? And if so, how about his vocal support of other freedoms?"