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Security

Word Vulnerability Compromised US State Dept. 207

hf256 writes "Apparently hackers using an undisclosed (at the time) vulnerability compromised the State Departments network using a Word document sent as an email attachment. Investigators found multiple instances of infection, informed Microsoft, then had to sever internet connectivity to avoid leaking too much data!"
Linux Business

Submission + - HP: "Massive Deals for Linux Desktops" ahe

Doener writes: "Will the critical mass für Linux on the Desktop soon be reached? LinuxWorld writes :

'Last month, HP revealed that it is involved in 'a number of massive deals for Linux desktops' and called such deals 'an indicator of critical mass.' This is according to Doug Small, the worldwide director of open source and Linux marketing at HP. Small cited a potential sale that could put thousands of Linux-based HP desktops into an enterprise organization.'

Ist this — as LinxWorld reckons — the "news that open source fans have been waiting for"?"
Republicans

Submission + - Conservatives buy VT Professor's domain name

overlook77 writes: "I wanted to make a website honoring the life and bravery of Liviu Librescu, the Engineering professor slain at Virginia Tech this week. However, a WHOIS reveals that LIVIULIBRESCU.COM was purchased on April 17th by Politech Consulting, a conservative fundraising organization. This raises the ethical question: should a political group buy this man's own name for what could easily be interpreted as a strategic move to deflect a website advocating gun control laws? I am very curious to know what the rest of the Slashdot community thinks of this. http://www.networksolutions.com/whois/results.jsp? domain=LiviuLibrescu.com"
Supercomputing

Submission + - Linux runs into a scalability problem

jcaruso writes: "What happens when you try to run Linux on a 4,096-processor system? You get some "interesting kernel behavior," says this article, which lays out the problems and some potential solutions."
The Almighty Buck

Submission + - Fight Fraudulant Disaster Domains

UnderAttack writes: "The SANS Internet Strom Center (ISC) setup a web page listing about 500 domains that use keywords related to the Virginia Tech shooting. Turns out that most of them got registered just the last 2 days. While some are used for innocent purposes, others are used for fraud. The page allows everybody with an ISC or DShield account to help categorize the pages. The ISC did the same after Hurricane Katrina, which spurred a lot of these scum-domains."

Feed Google Makes It Easier For Sites To Cut Off Free Publicity (techdirt.com)

Google's found itself on the end of some lawsuits from people who aren't happy that it links to their web content, usually making the off-base accusation that Google's somehow stealing their content, rather than realizing it makes it more valuable by making it easier to find. While a robots.txt file or the use of meta tags already gave web masters a relatively simple way to keep their content out of Google and other search engines, that apparently wasn't enough, so Google has beefed up its site removal tools, giving webmasters several new ways and options to control how their pages are indexed and displayed in its results. Will this stop the lawsuits and complaints? That's doubtful, since the existing ability for site owners to get themselves taken out of Google's results wasn't enough. Furthermore, it seems like this could open up a new avenue of complaints for Google, since it gives third parties the ability to have pages removed from Google's cache or have pages that contain personal information removed from the index. Anything Google does is unlikely to make much difference, since its power and riches makes it an attractive target for lawsuits. Meanwhile, it would also seem that anything Google does won't make some site owners understand how it and other search engines are their friends, not their foes.
Microsoft

Submission + - MS releases Media Player Firefox plugin

SilentChris writes: Microsoft today released a new Media Player plugin for Firefox. According to MS's Port 25 blog it's backwards compatible to Windows Media Player 6.4. The plugins are Windows XP and Vista only, but if you have to watch WMV video (CNN.com anyone?) at least it's less likely to crash your browser.
Security

Submission + - Spoofing insecure pages as secure

Anorlunda writes: "My broker, TD Ameritrade, has a home page that is not secure according to Firefox or IE. It does not display the SSL icon or the name of the certificate signer in the status bar. Nevertheless, it has log in fields and it shows a little picture of a padlock beside those fields.

TD Ameritrade's customer service people wrote to me with the explantion that although the page is not secure, the login segment of the page is secure, and that I should not the padlock icon. To me that's baloney. Nobody should trust a page to be secure just because the content of the page itself claims to be secure. Especially for something likely to be the target of crooks like a brokerage account login.

What do Slashdotters say? Am I paranoid, or are the TD Ameritrade programmers brain dead?"
Linux Business

Submission + - Linux over Broadband

rar42 writes: "BabelDisc Computing are advertising a trouble free computing service based on Linux. They provide you with a CD that boots your computer and then connects over broadband to their application servers. This a subscription service with a monthly fee of 1 GBP — about 2 dollars.

There is a little technical detail on the site, but it is a safe bet that they are using something like FreeNX to compress the X session between server and client."
Graphics

Submission + - NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GTS - cheap DirectX10 card

Tim Reilly writes: "It's happy time again! Those who waited for the cheaper version of NVIDIA 8800 GTX can now rejoin. The new GeForce 8600 GTS not only costs $200, it also comes with a new video processor that takes over all decoding job of HD DVDs .

Performance-wise, it soundly beats the GeForce 7600 GT and even beats/matches the GeForce 7950 GT at 1024x768. Excellent mid-level DirectX 10 card.

Here's an excerpt from the review :

For those who are interested in HD DVD decoding, you will also be happy to know that the GeForce 8600 GTS comes with a new video processor (VP2) that allows the CPU to completely offload the processing of H.264 a new content to the GeForce 8600 GTS. This means much lower CPU utilization than even the GeForce 8800 GTX, whose VP1 processor can only do motion compensation and deblocking.

So, if you have been waiting for an affordable DirectX 10 graphics card, the Sparkle GeForce 8600 GTS is definitely something you should consider. Priced around $200, it offers you an affordable DirectX 10 graphics solution with a taste of the GeForce 8800 GTX's processing power. Add full H.264 decoding capability to the list and you have a really attractive card crying out for a new home in your PC!
"
Quickies

Submission + - Oil Production Peak Looms

anthemaniac writes: Oil prices are rising again and 'will move inexorably higher' in the face of 'a stormy geopolitical climate' according to one analyst. We're all used to seeing oil prices rise and fall because of global politics and big-business policies, of course. But what if the amount of oil that can be produced reaches a peak? Talk about a stormy geopolitical climate. That's just what a new Swedish study predicts might happen next year. Fredrik Robelius, a physicist and petroleum engineer, analyzed the production rates of 333 existing giant oil fields known and concludes the global production peak will occur between 2008 and 2018. Caltech physicist David Goodsteinagrees with the methodology and also thinks the peak is near. But the controversial prediction doesn't take into account new extraction technologies and other possible discoveries, critics say.
United States

Submission + - Chemical ban in Washington Beginning of the End

Frosty Piss writes: "Although since 2005, the chemical industry has spent more than $220,000 in Washington State lobbying against a it, Gov. Chris Gregoire is scheduled to sign the legislation today to ban flame retardants called PBDEs in Washington furniture, televisions and computers. Why the big spending? Because at a time when the federal government is largely ineffectual in its regulation of long-used but potentially dangerous industrial chemicals, a ban here could be the beginning of the end for PBDEs, or polybrominated diphenyl ethers across the nation. 'The industry that makes deca and PBDEs is freaking out because they lost so severely in Washington state and other states will follow,' said Laurie Valeriano, policy director for the Washington Toxics Coalition, an environmental group. 'It really is a message from Washington state and policymakers that we won't accept chemicals that build up in our bodies and our children.' Reads more at the Seattle Post Intellegencer."
The Internet

Canadian DMCA Coming This Spring 153

An anonymous reader writes "The Canadian government is reportedly ready to introduce copyright reform legislation this spring, provided that no election is called. The new bill would move Canada far closer to the U.S. on copyright, with DMCA-style anti-circumvention legislation that prohibits circumvention of DRM systems and bans software and mod chips that can be used to circumvent such systems."
XBox (Games)

Submission + - Xbox destroys disks

morie writes: The dutch consumer program "Kassa" got Microsoft to acknowledge that even normal use of an Xbox 360 will result in damage to your games, DVDs or CDs (English story here). Up until now, Microsoft had always responded to the complaints by blaming scratches on wrong use of the equipment. The problem turned out to be a design problem in the drive.

"Kassa" did recieve over a thousend complaints adressed to Microsoft. In the show (streaming video, dutch, start min 17), they admitted there was a problem and said they would arrange for replacements, but they did not want to take full responsibility.
Hardware Hacking

Submission + - Teardown of Prius Reveals Toyota Design Philosophy

MarsGov writes: "A group of automotive engineers recently tore down a Toyota Prius to dissect the design techniques and choices that went into the vehicle. The results are becoming available at AutomotiveDesignLine and at TechOnline's Under The Hood — search for "Prius" at both of these links — and will be also published as a paper supplement to the May 14th issue of EE Times. There's even a video."

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