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Google

Submission + - Google Ads vs. Adblockers - more to follow? (schucan.com)

Submitted by
Luzi Schucan
Luzi Schucan writes: "Google seems to be the first to have attacked the bastion of adblock software — by finally doing the obvious, yet server-side expensive. Ad URLs are now dynamically renamed so adblockers can't distinguish them from content anymore. Let's watch the progress on this front! more"
Security

Submission + - Trojan found in brand new HD sold in Taiwan (taipeitimes.com)

Submitted by
GSGKT
GSGKT writes: "About 1800 of these brand new 300GB or 500GB external HD made for Maxtor in Thailand have Trojan Horse malwares (autorun.inf and ghost.pif) pre-installed. When the HD is in use, these will forward information on HD to two websites in Beijing, China): www.nice8.org or www.we168.org. Potential users of these large HD would be mid/small business, the military, and the government in Taiwan, although no one can prove this to be the continuing war/spying efforts on Taiwan by the People's Liberation Army. /. has a story on Russian Business Network moving to China recently (http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/11/09/1957239). Together, these two stories make an interesting new cyber-crime model: Infecting the HD at the manufacturing sites is far more efficient than to phish the end-users!"
Announcements

Submission + - Anti-Bacterial Soap No Better than Plain Soap (physorg.com)

Submitted by
eldavojohn
eldavojohn writes: "Stop buying antibacterial soap as it's no more effective than the regular stuff and, on top of that, you are introducing a risk to a mutation of bacteria! From the article, "The team looked at 27 studies conducted between 1980 and 2006, and found that soaps containing triclosan within the range of concentrations commonly used in the community setting (0.1 to 0.45 percent wt/vol) were no more effective than plain soaps. Triclosan is used in higher concentrations in hospitals and other clinical settings, and may be more effective at reducing illness and bacteria. Triclosan works by targeting a biochemical pathway in the bacteria that allows the bacteria to keep its cell wall intact. Because of the way triclosan kills the bacteria, mutations can happen at the targeted site. Aiello says a mutation could mean that the triclosan can no longer get to the target site to kill the bacteria because the bacteria and the pathway have changed form." For the love of god, stop endangering everyone with your soapy hand held mutation experiments!"
The Almighty Buck

Submission + - Ref admits in court NBA is fixed (cnn.com) 1

Submitted by LoveMe2Times
LoveMe2Times writes: Former NBA referee Tim Donoughy pleaded guilty to charges related to his gambling on NBA games, including those he officiated. While many suspected him of fixing games or altering the outcome of games he officiated, the real story — that the mainstream media only mentions in passing — is that he didn't need to fix games. As a ref, he had access to "non-public" information about the games, including the real nature of injuries, who would ref the game, and the extent to which those refs favored the players. This inside information was enough for him — and presumably any NBA insider — to pick winners with enough accuracy to get paid $5000 for correct picks. In other words, referee bias is statistically significant enough for those in the know to make lots of money betting on it. In essence, the referees decide the game more than the players in a known, predictable way; hence, the game is fixed by choice of refs for a game.
Encryption

Submission + - Wikipedia Bans HD-DVD Encryption Key

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: Much like Digg, Wikipedia is deleting edits to pages that include the key. They've even locked down the HD-DVD so that users can't edit it. How many more web sites will be brainwashed into believing that a number can be copyrighted?
Censorship

Digg.com Attempts To Suppress HD-DVD Revolt 1142

Posted by kdawson from the toothpaste-back-in-the-tube dept.
fieryprophet writes "An astonishing number of stories related to HD-DVD encryption keys have gone missing in action from digg.com, in many cases along with the account of the diggers who submitted them. Diggers are in open revolt against the moderators and are retaliating in clever and inventive ways. At one point, the entire front page comprised only stories that in one way or another were related to the hex number. Digg users quickly pointed to the HD DVD sponsorship of Diggnation, the Digg podcast show. Search digg for HD-DVD song lyrics, coffee mugs, shirts, and more for a small taste of the rebellion." Search Google for a broader picture; at this writing, about 283,000 pages contain the number with hyphens, and just under 10,000 without hyphens. There's a song. Several domain names including variations of the number have been reserved. Update: 05/02 05:44 GMT by J : New blog post from Kevin Rose of Digg to its users: "We hear you."
Censorship

Submission + - Users Overtake Digg

Submitted by
econoar
econoar writes: "Well, digg pissed off their users, and the users have just fought back. I've never really seen anything like this on user run websites, but chaos is taking place over on Digg. As I have mentioned before, Digg is my favorite website out there, but after they banned me earlier today I got a little pissed. I submitted a story about a T-Shirt with the now famous HD-DVD hex key on it, and I was banned for "violating the terms of use". Stories were getting deleted and user accounts were being banned all because of a stupid HD-DVD copyright Hex code that can be used to unlock HD-DVD. Digg claimed that they could be sued and what not for it so they decided to censor all of the stories that had to deal with the key. The whole thing is just bull, you can't copyright a sequence of numbers and letters. People come to digg for the sole reason of not having to deal with censorship. The users have become pissed and now every story on the front page is about the HEX key. I'm not going to post it here, but you can go see for yourself. Oh, and not to mention that HD-DVD is a main sponsor on Digg's podcast, Diggnation, of which I am a fan of. Digg really screwed the pooch on this one. Don't fuck with your users. Submissions are now shut down on digg also."
The Internet

Submission + - The downfall of digg summarized by numbers.

Submitted by
Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward writes: "There has been quite a bit of talk going on lately regarding the HDDVD code- Followed by C&D letters from HDDVD lawyers. For the most part, these are being ignored- However, Digg Has chosen to remove all story's containing the code, as well as banning any user who submits such a item. The community fought back, and now the entire homepage is being overrun by HDDVD story's and the site is failing. Is this the expected result from no moderation? Was this Doomed to happen? As of yet- Digg has no official response- However the damage already done is unspoken, with many users returning to age old sites such as slashdot and newcomers like reddit."
Censorship

Submission + - HD-DVD key censorship revolt at digg.com

Submitted by
earthforce_1
earthforce_1 writes: "It looks like the founders at digg.com have received and complied with a takedown notice regarding the HD-DVD master keys, and blocking accounts of some users attempting to repost the keys. Subscribers have revolted en-masse and have reposted the keys in at least a dozen story threads and thousands of comments in countless ways. They also modded up all stories about the censored keys until at one point, every single front page story was about the HD-DVD keys! Until the original story was taken down, it was modded up over 15,000 times, an all time record.

This has been a totally unprecedented subscriber revolt against the website moderators, and at least one story thread suggests one of the founders had taken promotional money from the HD-DVD consortium."
Businesses

Submission + - T-Mobile Hacker Penetrates Secret Service

Submitted by
eieken
eieken writes: "According to this article, "The US Secret Service, which played the dual role of investigator and victim in the drama, said Tuesday it couldn't comment on Jacobsen because the agency doesn't discuss ongoing cases". For a secret intelligence agency, makes me wonder what else they don't know about."
Programming

Submission + - Choosing to program or stay at home with the kids

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: I have been back working for 10 months after taking a one year leave of absence to stay at home with our first baby. I loved it, but also love programming, so I went back to work. Now our second child is here, and I'm thinking about going back to being Mr. Mom for a few years until the kids are in grade school. My question is, if I quit doing software development for 5 years, how hard would it be to get back into it? I have six years experience now and a BS in CSci. Thoughts on what my chances would be of getting a job with a company at an entry level since my skills would probably be out of date? What could I do for a few hours per week to keep my skills at least somewhat up to date? Thanks.
Software

Submission + - Co-Processors Used for Bloatware

Submitted by
RX8
RX8 writes: "Velocity Micro Director of Product Development, Chris Morley says that system builders are taking advantage of the new Dual-Core processors and "load down their systems with extraneous software that you do not need and only chew up clock cycles. Microsoft has dubbed this bloatware "craplets," and they're worried it's going to ruin Vista's reception by the public. These craplets of course are revenue streams for the Tier 1s." Some of the worst manufacturers to do this include Dell and Hp. Microsoft is worried that this bloatware will lead consumers to blame Vista for the slowdown."

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UNIX was not designed to stop you from doing stupid things, because that would also stop you from doing clever things. -- Doug Gwyn

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