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Comment Re:Utter mess (Score 1) 302

by praseodym (#24547507) Attached to: Net Shoppers Bullied Into "Verified By Visa" Program
Paying bills is usually done by wiring money using the bank's online banking interface (or paper) or by automatic billing through the bank account. Credit cards aren't used to pay bills; paying in stores is usually done with debit cards (Maestro) or credit cards (but people rarely use them). The online system is used only to purchase over the web; it's way more popular than credit cards (everybody has a bank account and fees are low). The API system works a bit like PayPal.
Security

Fingerprints Recoverable From Cleaned Metal 178

Posted by Soulskill from the leaving-a-mark dept.
dstates points out a recent article from guardian.co.uk which discusses a new method by which to recover fingerprints from metal. The method relies on corrosion caused by sweat and other biological residues on the metal's surface. Quoting: "The patterns of corrosion remain even after the surface has been cleaned, heated to 600C or even painted over. This means that traces of fingerprints stay on the metal long after the residue from a person's finger has gone. The chemical basis of the change is not yet clear, but [Dr. John Bond] believes it is corrosion by chloride ions from the salt in sweat. These produce lines of corrosion along the ridges of the fingerprint residue. When the metal is heated, for example in a bomb blast or when a gun is fired, the chemical reaction actually speeds up and makes the corrosion more pronounced."
Microsoft

Return of the '70s Microsoft Weirdos 338

Posted by kdawson from the kodachrome-moments dept.
theodp writes "On the eve of the company's move from Albuquerque to Seattle in 1978, a famous photo was taken (in a shopping mall no less) of the original Microsoft team, looking mighty sharp in their '70s outfits. Almost 30 years later, as Bill Gates prepares to depart from Microsoft, the group (looking older, but better) reconvened for a retake."
Bug

Hotmail Full Version Incompatible With Firefox 3 258

Posted by kdawson from the smells-like-a-varmint dept.
An anonymous reader notes that Hotmail's full version doesn't work with Firefox 3. Users get the following message when they try to log in: You are temporarily on the classic version of Windows Live Hotmail due to an error encountered during login. Before trying again, please clear your cache and cookies. (Clearing cache and cookies doesn't fix it.) At least 8 other bug reports have been duped to this one. The fault apparently lies with the Hotmail site, not Mozilla — maintainer Dave Garrett assigned the bug to Tech Evangelism, explaining: "I'll... move this over to TE, as my guess is this [is] the site's fault (just bad user agent sniffing?)."
Security

Submission + - Hacker Defeats Hardware-based Rootkit Detection

Submitted by
Manequintet
Manequintet writes: "Joanna Rutkowska's latest bit of rootkit-related research shatters the myth that hardware-based (PCI cards or FireWire bus) RAM acquisition is the most reliable and secure way to do forensics. At this year's Black Hat Federal conference, she demonstrated three different attacks against AMD64 based systems, showing how the image of volatile memory (RAM) can be made different from the real contents of the physical memory as seen by the CPU. The overall problem, Rutkowska explained, is the design of the system that makes it impossible to reliably read memory from computers. "Maybe we should rethink the design of our computer systems so they they are somehow verifiable," she said."
Education

University Migrating Students to Windows Live Mail? 450

Posted by Cliff from the does-this-sound-like-a-good-idea dept.
An anonymous reader wonders: "My University has begun a migration of student email services to Windows Live Mail. All students will be forced onto the system by the end of the semester, but it doesn't support POP or IMAP. Because of that limitation, the only freely available mail client it supports is Windows Live Desktop, which is only available on Windows and I'm worried its ads might be vulnerable to malware just like the ones in Live Messenger. I depend on my mail client and I am concerned about this, because we're not allowed to forward our mail but are responsible for information received there from the University and classes, I'm not on a Windows machine, and I don't have the time to regularly check for web-mail, during the day." What are the pros and cons of such a move for a mid-sized or large college? If you were in charge of the communications of a such a university, would you outsource [please note the vendor neutrality, here] your e-mail?
Microsoft

Submission + - Apache and IIS: Another Firefox and IE?

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: The article Apache vs. IIS at TechX World describes the current state between Apache and IIS. One notable item in the article is that in some areas, such as performance optimization, both Apache and IIS seem to share a lot of the same features. Are Apache and IIS headed down the same path as Firefox and IE? And if so, who is actually innovating?
Microsoft

Microsoft Charging Businesses $4K for DST Fix 395

Posted by Zonk from the pricey-way-to-tell-time dept.
eldavojohn writes "Microsoft has slashed the price it's going to charge users on the daylight saving time fixes. As you know, the federal law that moves the date for DST goes into effect this month. Although the price of $4000 is 1/10 of the original estimate Microsoft made, it seems a bit pricey for a patch to a product you've already paid for. From the article: 'Among the titles in that extended support category are Windows 2000, Exchange Server 2000 and Outlook 2000, the e-mail and calendar client included with Office 2000. For users running that software, Microsoft charges $4,000 per product for DST fixes. For that amount, customers can apply the patches to all systems in their organizations, including branch offices and affiliate.' The only thing they can't do, said a Microsoft rep, is redistribute them."

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