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The Almighty Buck

Submission + - Netflix Now Limited To One Stream At A Time (tekgoblin.com)

Submitted by
tekgoblin
tekgoblin writes: "Until recently, Netflix users could stream to two devices at the same time per account. This feature was very useful say if you had a family and wanted to watch different things on each TV.

Now Netflix has removed that ability to watch more than one stream at a time and has added higher pricing if you wish to continue to do so"
Technology

Submission + - Why the Fax Machine Refuses to Die (infoworld.com) 1

Submitted by
snydeq
snydeq writes: "Deep End's Paul Venezia waxes befuddled on the ongoing existence of the fax machine. 'Consider what a fax machine actually is: a little device with a sheet feeder, a terrible scanning element, and an ancient modem. Most faxes run at 14,400bps. That's just over 1KB per second — and people are still using faxes to send 52 poorly scanned pages of some contract to one another. Over analog phone lines. Sometimes while paying long-distance charges! The mind boggles,' Venezia writes. 'If something as appallingly stupid as the fax machine can live on, it makes you wonder how we make progress at all. Old habits die hard. It just goes to show you: Bad technology generally isn't the problem; it's the people who persist in using that technology rather than embracing far superior alternatives.'"

Submission + - Security firm settles Ohio woman's privacy lawsuit (www.cbc.ca)

Submitted by
Maow
Maow writes: "An Ohio woman who sued a Vancouver company for releasing to police explicit images from her laptop has accepted a settlement only a short time after the judge rejected a motion to dismiss.

One thing never made clear (to me) was: did they intercept her email and instant messages, or take the web cam shots themselves, coincidentally at the same time she was naked-chatting with her boyfriend.

One thing made explicit in aforementioned link is that charges of is that "But charges of receiving stolen property were quickly dropped.""
Security

Submission + - Evidence of SCADA Hacks Emerges in Support Forums (threatpost.com)

Submitted by Trailrunner7
Trailrunner7 writes: While security experts and lawmakers debate the seriousness of cyber threats to critical infrastructure, one security researcher says that evidence that viruses and spyware already have access to industrial control systems is hiding in plain sight: on Web based user support forums.

Close to a dozen log files submitted to a sampling of online forums show evidence that laptops and other systems used to connect to industrial control systems are infected with malware and Trojan horse programs, including one system that was used to control machinery for UK based energy firm Alstom UK, according to industrial control systems expert Michael Toecker.
Graphics

Submission + - Making Graphics in Games "100,000 Times Better"? (ausgamers.com)

Submitted by
trawg
trawg writes: "A small Australian software company — backed by almost AUD$2 million in government assistance — is claiming they've developed a new technology which is "100,000 times better" for computer game graphics. It's not clear what exactly is getting multiplied, but they apparently "make everything out of tiny little atoms instead of flat panels". They've posted a video to YouTube which shows their new tech, which is apparently running at 20 FPS in software. It's (very) light on the technical details, and extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, but they say an SDK is due in a few months — so stay tuned for more."

Submission + - LibreOffice 3.4.2 for enterprise users released (documentfoundation.org)

Submitted by Bill_the_Engineer
Bill_the_Engineer writes: The Document Foundation (TDF) announces LibreOffice 3.4.2, the third version of the 3.4 family, targeting both private individuals and enterprises. LibreOffice 3.4.2 fixes the majority of the most-important bugs identified by users in the previous version, and can be deployed for production needs by most enterprises.
Social Networks

Submission + - Researcher Trolls MMO, Ethical violations (cityofheroes.com)

Submitted by Chas
Chas writes: Approximately two years ago, a story popped up on Slashdot about a researcher, David Meyers (aka Twixt) who had supposedly spent time "studying" players in the City of Heroes MMO. At the time, there was a lot of media attention about the subject. After a short time, it dropped and nothing more was heard on it until now.

Apparently one of the players who was upset did more than simply rant on a board. The player, who had some of their own training in sociology contacted both NCSoft and Loyola University to notify them about the ethical violations of experimenting on people (especially minors) without their permission.

Since then the Mr. Meyers has scrubbed almost all reference to his paper from his CV, and a book deal was quietly killed.
China

Submission + - How do you test for in-hardware spyware? (dailymail.co.uk)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: In the light of chinese technology firm Huawei (which has close ties to the Chinese military) selling more and more of its communication hardware to companies of the West, I'd like to know what measures are there to test such imports against in-hardware spyware? TheRegister already published a warning in 2009 but it'd seem that money speaks before security. If I buy a Wifi router which is made in Israel or China, how can I test it against hardware spyware? Also will this test matter if the spyware is located elsewhere, such as in a telephone exchange or servers within the ISP?

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