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Worms

Submission + - The Computer Virus Turns 25 in July 1

Submitted by bl8n8r
bl8n8r writes: In July of 1982, an infected Apple II propogated the first computer virus onto a 5-1/4" floppy. The virus, which did little more than annoy the user, Elk Cloner, was authored in Pittsburgh by a 15-year-old high school student, Rich Skrenta. The virus replicated by monitoring floppy disk activity and writing itself to the floppy when it was accessed. Skrenta describes the virus as "It was a practical joke combined with a hack. A wonderful hack." Remember, he was a 9th grader when he did this.
The Courts

Submission + - Imprisonment without trial proposed in UK (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: According to a BBC article, the head of the UK Association of Chief Police Officers has asked for terrorism suspects to be held "for as long as it takes" to finish an investigation, without being charged, without being given a trial, and with no upper limit to the time this could go on for. I, for one, would be more afraid of the police than of the terrorists if they were given this power.
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft DRM protection for Zune hacked (doom9.org)

Submitted by
Abdul
Abdul writes: "A new version of FairUse4WM v1.3 Fix2 from Doom9 is available that allows you to remove the DRM license protection from songs and music downloaded from Microsofts Zune Marketplace allowing you to play them on any portable media player. This version uncovers individual keys from Microsofts DRM blackbox components (IBX), up to version 11.0.6000.6324 (Windows Media Player 11). Users have had success using the software.

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=127943"
Windows

Submission + - Programs cannot be uninstalled in Vista

Submitted by
Corson
Corson writes: "I am surprised nobody seems to have reported this on /. yet. Possibly after one of the latest updates in Windows Vista, two strange things happened: first, the Uninstall option is no longer available in the Control Panel when you right-click on older programs (most likely, those installed prior to the update in question, because uninstall works fine for recently installed programs; the Uninstall button is also missing on the toolbar at the top); second, some programs are no longer shown on the applications list in Control panel (e.g., Yahoo Messenger). A Google search returns quite a few hits on this issue (e.g., here, here, here, and here) but everybody seems to be waiting patiently for a sign from Microsoft. But M$ seem to have no clue or they would have fixed it already. I am just curious how many of you are experiencing this nuisance."
Announcements

Submission + - Italian Parlament moves to Linux

Submitted by 10am-bedtime
10am-bedtime writes: According to la Repubblica, the Italian Parlament is moving to GNU/Linux. Aside from cost savings of three million EUR (mostly for Microsoft Office licenses), the advantages are freedom from the "chains of proprietary software", and transparency and security, which are "encumbent upon a public institution".

I think if the land of Da Vinci, Pacioli, and Machiavelli is making the transition, others might do well to take heed and listen, lest they be bocciati by the future...
Security

Submission + - Secretly monopolizing the CPU without being root

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: This year's Usenix security symposium includes a paper that implements a "cheat" utility, which allows any non-privileged user to run his/her program, e.g., like so

cheat 99% program

thereby insuring that the programs would get 99% of the CPU cycles, regardless of the presence of any other applications in the system, and in some cases (like Linux), in a way that keeps the program invisible from CPU monitoring tools (like 'top'). The utility exclusively uses standard interfaces and can be trivially implemented by any beginner non-privileged programmer. Recent efforts to improve the support for multimedia applications make systems more susceptible to the attack. All prevalent operating systems but Mac OS X are vulnerable, though by this kerneltrap story, it appears that the new CFS Linux scheduler attempts to address the problem that were raised by the paper.
Republicans

Submission + - Gonzales Caught Lying About FBI Lawbreaking (wired.com)

Submitted by
That depends on what the definition of "is" is
That depends on what the definition of "is" is writes: "Although Alberto Gonzales told Congress that "there has not been one verified case of civil liberties abuse" via National Security Letters, new documents obtained from the EFF's FOIA requests show that Gonzales knew or should have known that the abuse of NSLs was rampant. Of course, when he said there had been "not one" case of abuse, he really meant that there had been not one, but a great many cases of abuse and just forgot to inform Congress of that fact due to his chronic memory problems."
Security

Submission + - Up to 40 million Mastercards compromised by theft (securityfocus.com) 2

Submitted by
John3
John3 writes: "Mastercard announced that at least 68,000 and possibly as many as 40 million Mastercard accounts were compromised by a security breach at Cardsystems Solutions. Cardsystems Solutions has been in trouble before due to security breaches, so one would have hoped that they would have beefed up security. I received a replacement Mastercard yesterday in the mail (with a totally new account number) due to this security breach, and a number of customers shopping at my hardware store today commented that they also received new Mastercards. Anyone else receive a replacement Mastercard in the past few days and how much is this breach costing the banks (and ultimately the cardholders)?"
Games

Submission + - Duke Nukem Forever Release Date: 12/1/07! (bestbuy.com)

Submitted by wiggles
wiggles writes: It's offical. According to this Best Buy page, Duke Nukem Forever is scheduled for release on December 1st of 2007. Talk about a solution to global warming! All we need to do is find hell, and use the sub-zero temperatures to siphon off our excess heat!
Technology (Apple)

Submission + - Top-end iPhone will cost $3,515 (t3.co.uk)

Submitted by l-ascorbic
l-ascorbic writes: Apple have released some of the details of the price plans for the iPhone, and it's not pleasant reading. If you choose a top-spec iPhone with all the options (and let's face it, that's what you'll want to get), plus the top price plan, it will set you back $3,515 over the life of the contract. Ouch.
Education

Submission + - If you're American, odds are you're dumb

Submitted by hoyeru
hoyeru writes: We asked Americans about current events, history and cultural literacy. And we got some pretty disheartening results.

Even today, more than four years into the war in Iraq, as many as four in ten Americans (41 percent) still believe Saddam Hussein's regime was directly involved in financing, planning or carrying out the terrorist attacks on 9/11, even though no evidence has surfaced to support a connection. A majority of Americans were similarly unable to pick Saudi Arabia in a multiple-choice question about the country where most of the 9/11 hijackers were born. Just 43 percent got it right — and a full 20 percent thought most came from Iraq.

http://www.wakeupfromyourslumber.com/node/2249

or from http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19375611/site/newsweek /
Windows

Submission + - The most elusive Windows bug ever? (neosmart.net) 1

Submitted by Jennifer MacMahon
Jennifer MacMahon writes:
Press Start | Programs; and right-click on "Accessories," then press "Open." Close the window that opens up, then go to your taskbar (next to the system clock) and hover over an icon, what do you see?
For 13 years, Windows has had a bug where tooltips will appear behind the taskbar, making them impossible to read. This bug was invented along with explorer.exe back in 1994 with Windows 95, and now, 13 years later, still persists in Windows Vista & Microsoft's only "solution" is to reboot your PC!

A 3rd party patch by NeoSmart Technologies' called ToolTipFixer seems to have accomplished what Microsoft couldn't — in just 2 hours and 88kb at that!
The Courts

Submission + - RIAA throws in the towel in Atlantic v. Andersen (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Quantrell
Quantrell writes: The RIAA has decided to cut its losses in the case of Atlantic v. Andersen, a case where the RIAA sued a 42-year-old disabled single-mother with a single seven-year-old daughter for file-sharing. 'What's unusual is that the RIAA has stipulated to a dismissal with prejudice, completely exonerating Andersen. Next to a negative verdict, an exonerated defendant is the last thing the RIAA wants. When faced with an undesirable outcome, the RIAA's tactic has been to move to dismiss without prejudice, a "no harm, no foul" strategy that puts an end to a lawsuit without declaring a winner and a loser. Dismissing a case with prejudice opens the RIAA up to an attorneys' fee award, which happened in the case of another woman caught in the music industry's driftnet, Debbie Foster.
PC Games (Games)

Submission + - $73 million and counting: the downfall of Phantom (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Ghost in the Machine
Ghost in the Machine writes: Ars Technica has a story on Phantom Entertainment (formerly Infinium Labs), the company behind the never-released Phantom console and lapboard. So far, the company has burned through over $73 million in cash without earning a cent of revenue. 'Amazingly, Phantom lives on, a testament to just how long a company can survive without cash when it simply stops paying creditors. The company is down to three full-time employees but still hopes to launch its Phantom Wireless Lapboard in September — if it survives that long. When Phantom's outside auditors prepared its most recent financial statement for the year ended on December 31, 2006, they "expressed substantial doubt about our ability to continue as a going concern."'

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