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Mozilla

Submission + - EverQuest II embeds Mozilla browser

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: EverQuest II's next release will include an embedding of the Mozilla browser. It's currently live on the test server and has a few issues that will hopefully be resolved before release.

http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/posts/list.m?st art=15&topic_id=347230

Some interesting uses of the browser such as automatically searching for quest hints are being discussed on the interface board:

http://www.eq2interface.com/forums/showthread.php? t=7846
Data Storage

Submission + - Google paper on disk reliability

Submitted by oski4410
oski4410 writes: The Google engineers just published a paper on Failure Trends in a Large Disk Drive Population. Based on a study of 100,000 disk drives over 5 years they find some interesting stuff. To quote from the abstract:

"Our analysis identifies several parameters from the drive's self monitoring facility (SMART) that correlate highly with failures. Despite this high correlation, we conclude that models based on SMART parameters alone are unlikely to be useful for predicting individual drive failures. Surprisingly, we found that temperature and activity levels were much less correlated with drive failures than previously reported."
Patents

Submission + - Microsoft Wants Patent on Indentation

Submitted by
theodp
theodp writes: "Throw some text in a worksheet, make the columns small, and color the cells to denote a hierarchy. Like this. That, my friend, may constitute patent infringement for the next twenty years if the USPTO grants Microsoft the patent it's seeking for Minimizing Indenting (actual patent image). Just one more example of how Microsoft's lawyers are making the world a better place through more joyful and inclusive design."
Security

Submission + - Researchers highlight a router route to pharming

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Researchers at Symantec, along with Sid Stamm and Markus Jakobsson of the Indiana University School of Informatics, have uncovered an almost trivial means of hijacking web browsing. The attack involves little more on the victim's part than simply visiting a web page. http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/105032/researchers-hig hlight-a-router-route-to-pharming.html
Role Playing (Games)

Journal Journal: So I Bought the Core Rule Books 3.5 Edition... 1

Journal by cyranoVR

Last month I discovered Order of the Stick. After reading the whole series and buying Neverwinter Nights Diamond I decided to buy the Core Rulebook set.

What's interesting, is that a lot of the content is the same as first edition, but revised. So the Monster Manual has a lot of the same monsters as the original, such as devils and demons, unlike the Second Edition.
Google

Submission + - Google Search Screws Over SomethingAwful.com

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: You may have heard of the humour website SomethingAwful.com. Apparently, for all of their long history they've been having a problem where their website is listed far down Google's results (often last) for searches related to the site (such as the names of features and articles on the site). For example, when I google for "Photoshop Phriday", the site isn't in the first ten pages of results, despite the fact that Google has indexed the relevent page. In fact, the first result is a noproxy.us proxied version of the relevant page, and the rest of the results are blog and forum entries referring to Something Awful. (Results are apparently better on many non-English versions of Google, however.)

It's far from clear what's causing this; the site's PageRank is apparently fine. Attempts to contact Google have fallen on deaf ears and dumb autoresponders. The site was even recently redesigned in the hope of fixing the problem, with no luck so far. Is the world's most popular search engine really this broken, and how much money are people bringing in from knowing the black magic to work around it?
Space

Submission + - Hayabusa to begin long journey back to Earth

Submitted by
Sparky
Sparky writes: "Japan is planning to set the Hayabusa spacecraft on a trajectory back to Earth next month after a delay of more than a year, but it's far from certain that it will get back safely. It was supposed to retrieve asteroid debris, but it's thought that a computer error meant that this didn't happen. A fuel leak means that it's chemical thrusters are out of action, and the craft is relying on it's weaker ion engines. The journey back will take 3 years, and the capsule will be on Earth in June 2010 — even if it is empty."
Movies

Submission + - BulRay, HD-DVD encrytion defeated

Submitted by Linuxploitation
Linuxploitation writes: As reported at The Register: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/02/14/aacs_hack/ A lone hacker has unlocked the master key preventing the copying of high-definition DVDs in a development that is sure to get the entertainment industry's knickers wrapped tighter than a magnet's coil. What's more, the individual was able to defeat the technology with no cracking tools or reverse engineering, despite the millions of dollars and many years engineers put into developing the AACS (Advanced Access Content System) for locking down high-definition video.
Education

Submission + - Big Brother Disapproves of Weekend Boozing

Submitted by
MattSparkes
MattSparkes writes: "Staff at Pequannock Township High School in New Jersey are going to start using a sneaky new test that can detect if students have been drinking in the last week. The test measures urine concentrations of an ethanol breakdown product called ethyl glucuronide (EtG). I find it bizarre that in the US you can't drink until 21; at 21 I had spent already three years completing my undergraduate degree and drinking copious amounts of Guinness."
Space

Submission + - Low Earth Orbit Junk Yard Nearly Full

Submitted by
vlado4
vlado4 writes: "The New York Times has an article on how the amount of space junk in Earth Orbit is at critical levels. Additionally they have great graphics of the nearly 1000 new pieces resulting from testing the new Chinese anti-satellite weapon as well as the damage to Hubble's solar array. Space Debris (Wikipedia) appear to be a difficult problem to deal with and may hinder future space exploration. Somehow this is not surprising considering the tendency for humans to trash every environment they come in contact with."
Slashback

Submission + - More on the Vista speech security "flaw"

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: MS blogger Long Zheng posts a funny response to recent speech recognition Vista security hole: "Last week, the media went schizophrenic over the Windows Vista speech recognition 'loophole' which allowed anyone with a microphone to have full access over your computer. Granted, you must also be partially-deaf, turned your speaker volume to full, carefully place your microphone next to the speakers, turn on speech recognition and train your speech profile as if you were someone else..."
IBM

IBM Releases Fastest SDK For Java 6 117

Posted by kdawson from the early-start dept.
IndioMan writes "IBM is releasing an SDK for Java 6 and is sponsoring an Early Release Program to gather feedback from the Java community. Product binaries and documentation are available for Linux on x86 and 64-bit AMD, and AIX for PPC for 32- and 64-bit systems. In addition to supporting the Java SE 6 Platform specification, IBM's SDK also focuses on platform stability, performance, and diagnostics. It's tops on every benchmark."

ISPs Offer Faster Speeds, Why Don't We Get Them? 688

Posted by Cliff from the where-did-the-extra-bits-go dept.
Ron Williams asks: "I'm infuriated every time I see that companies are raising their speeds when they can't maintain their current speeds. Here's my biggest issue: my grandmother signed up for the 3Mbps DSL plan through Verizon, however a speed test said she was only getting 750Kbps. Why pay for the extra bandwidth when she's not getting it? She downgraded to the 768K plan expecting to still have 750K. Wrong, instead her speed dropped to 300K. So, how about instead of companies constantly claiming to increase their speeds, they get their actual speeds correct. Comcast has done the same thing, I had their 6Mbps plan at one point, I got 2.5Mbps usually and sometimes 3Mbps, so they're all doing the same thing. In closing, with all these speed increases, why is my Internet not getting faster?" What practices and tools do you use to test your bandwidth speed and how have you approached your ISP when the performance repeatedly fell short of your expectations?

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