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Comment Re:just silly (Score 1) 479

by nelk (#26851969) Attached to: Microsoft Sued Over Vista-To-XP Downgrade Fees

This would be like suing ford or gm for not continuing to keep last years engines for sale in new cars... this is just silly.

It would be more like Ford telling a car dealership that they cannot sell last year's model (which they have in stock) to a customer who wants it. Instead, they need to sell the new model to the customer first, and only then can they sell the old model (so long as the customer gets rid of the new model first).

Yes, this is just silly (but in a different way than your comment suggested).
Image

Indian Court Is 466 Years Behind Schedule 5

Posted by samzenpus from the try-and-reach-a-settlement dept.
The High Court in New Delhi is so behind in its work that it could take 466 years to clear the backlog, the court's chief justice said in a report. Even though the average case takes about 5 minutes to decide, the court still has tens of thousands of cases pending, including upward of 600 that are more than 20 years old. The United Nations Development Program says some 20 million legal cases are pending in India. "It's a completely collapsed system," said Prashant Bhushan, a well-known lawyer in New Delhi. "This country only lives under the illusion that there is a judicial system." Maybe we could stimulate the economy a little and help India out by shipping them a few hundred reality TV judge shows — we seem to have an abundance.
Sony

Submission + - Blue Blu-ray?

Submitted by TopSpin
TopSpin writes: According to this story, at Japan's recent euphemistically named Adult Treasure Expo 2007, adult filmmakers said Sony had begun offering technical support — which was later confirmed by Sony PR, which stated that Sony would offer support to any filmmaker working on the format, no matter their industry. Apparently, Blu-ray is now the preferred media for Japanese porn.
NASA

Submission + - NASA building largest single-kernel Linux system

Submitted by wellingj
wellingj writes: NASA and SGI are building a new Linux super computer that contains a total of 1024 Dual-Core Intel Itanium 2 processors, resulting in 13.1 TFLOPs. This computer would rank as the 64th fastest computer. As some may know, 1024 cores is the current max for SMP (symmetric multiprocessing) support. SGI has therefor developed the necessary modifications and submitted them upstream.
Portables (Apple)

Submission + - iPhone Hacked to Work in Australia (smh.com.au)

Submitted by g0rAngA
g0rAngA writes: The Sydney Morning Herald is running a story on the iPhone, which has been hacked to work with Telstra, one of the main telecommunications providers in Australia. From the article: 'The hack, which was demonstrated in a video clip posted to YouTube over the weekend, does not allow the user to receive calls or send and receive SMS. It is the furthest anyone has come to unlocking the iPhone for use outside the AT&T mobile network in the US.'
The video on YouTube has been taken down, however instructions for unlocking the phone can still be found on the hackint0sh forums.
Software

Submission + - SearchInform Technologies Inc. announces a new ver

Submitted by
Alena Siameshka
Alena Siameshka writes: "May 28, 2007 — SearchInform Technologies Inc. announces a new version of SearchInform, a corporate system of full text search and search for documents with similar content in large data volumes, featuring an enhanced data indexing algorithm. New functions of SearchInform 4.0.09 Fundamental changes took place in intranet computers indexing algorithm. Now an agent program tracking all changes is installed on each computer and all data gets recorded into a log file. Before scanning all these files for changes used to be extremely time-consuming, now only the log file created by agent-program gets scanned. As a result of this innovation (only modified and new files being indexed) the index updating speed has significantly increased. Another important detail is that now all information gets indexed regardless of whether the folder is in common access or not. All indexed data gets placed into the storage located on the server. This allows the user to conduct search through all information regardless of the computer it was indexed on, so even if the computer containing needed information is switched off, the information will still be found. Even if certain files were deleted from the computer by accident, they will still be available in the storage for a set period of time. The size of the storage and the time intervals throughout which the information will be stored in it are defined by the user. Main features of SearchInform: — Phrase search with due consideration to stemming and thesaurus — New SoftInform Search Technology of search for similar documents — High indexing speed (from 15 to 30 Gb/hour), — Client-server architecture — Scalability — Query caching system — Support of over 60 most popular text formats, Outlook & TheBat electronic messages, mp3 & avi tags, and logs of MSN and ICQ instant messaging programs — Indexing DBMS fields (Lotus, SQL, Oracle) About SearchInform Technologies SearchInform Technologies was founded in 1995 and has been operating in the area of information technologies with special focus on information searching, storing and processing. The range of company's products is quite large and encompasses from mass production of single user-oriented products to ready business solutions to be integrated into corporate systems. Owing to its extensive experience in various projects, the company offers its services on developing custom information systems of any complexity. More information on our website: http://www.searchinform.com/ For all inquiries mailto:alena.siameshka@searchinform.com Alena Siameshka, Head of PR & Marketing Department at SearchInform Technologies"

Submission + - ISPs willingly accepting abuse?

Submitted by beh
beh writes: Yesterday, at 2:30pm GMT someone started ssh scanning my servers — thanks to fail2ban, there's not much chance of anything happening there, but nevertheless, when I finally saw all the fail2ban messages about it 2 1/2 hours later, I reported the issue to theplanet.com, the provider from which the attack originated.

At first, there was no response apart from 'This is an auto-response'. A further 12 hours later, finally an answer "we will investigate", in the meantime, the attack continues.

By now, it has been 23 hours since the attack started, and over 20 since I reported it to the ISP; no further reaction, the ssh scans continue to come in from 70.87.55,194; and since the attack goes again all IP addresses of both of my servers, I can only assume it will go against the entire subnet of those servers (especially since a third server belonging to the same domain, with another ISP is not the target).

I've just had a quick online chat with their support desk, and all they tell me is "I can't do anything about it; my hands are tied. Mail the abuse desk again, but please note, the investigation and actions from it can take between 24 and 72hours.".

My question now is this — when does an ISP become an accomplice to an attacker, by willingly leaving him to continue to attack other systems, even though the provider knows full well about what's going on?

Where are the rights of those people that are on the receiving end of those attacks — I can hardly 'take my business elsewhere', since I'm not a customer of theplanet.com... For the moment, I'm 'happy' with the attacks to continue, as the attacker seems to be using dictionary based attacks and hasn't hit on any accounts that could be vulnerable; but obviously, I can't say how safe other systems on the same subnets, or on other subnets that are being attacked might be. Leaving this unchallenged for 24-72 hours seems a sure-fire way to exacerbate the problem, as any additional host someone might be able to break into, will only make future attacks worse.

So, what can/should be done?
Programming

Submission + - Ubuntu - Easier to Install than Sowing a dress

Submitted by
Dan the man
Dan the man writes: "Linux in the past has always had a bad reputation of being difficult to install. I remember installing Redhat in the late 90's. I had to go on to their ftp site, download some crazy dos utilities, pull out 4 floppy disks, and somehow write the install diskettes without getting errors. Once this difficult process was completed, and the system was rebooted, often times, the floppies that I had used turned out to be erroneous, and I'd have to head to the local radio shack to get more floppy disks. After the daunting task of getting through the ugly ANSI graphics of the install program, it would complain that my network card was not supported, and that I needed to get a driver, and put it on yet another floppy disk. After all of the hardship, I will have to admit that it was neat to watch the distro be installed over the network through FTP. However, upon rebooting, a myriad errors would come up on my screen about my graphics card, network card, sound card etc. You pretty much had to dedicate a full day to the installation of Linux. I remember one Saturday, I spent all day installing Linux, and getting my hardware to work with it. That night, a bunch of my friends picked me up to go out. We were talking about what we did that day, and one girl in the car said that she had sown a dress. Everyone congratulated her, smiled, and praised her for her dedication. They turned and asked me what I had been up to. I quickly responded, "Oh, I finally got that Linux installed on my computer". They all stopped talking and looked at me like I had come from another planet. Those long hours spent installing Linux now have turned to minutes with the latest install from Ubuntu. Below I have a guide to show just how easy it is to install Ubuntu. http://pimpyourlinux.com/linux-feature-review/inst alling-ubuntu-easier-than-sowing-a-dress/"
Data Storage

Submission + - VIZO eSATA Uranus & Saturno HDD Enclosures

Submitted by
Benchmark Reviews
Benchmark Reviews writes: "We are in the age of mobile data and removable media. You can see it all around us. Most industry professionals keep a portable computing device in close company, and nearly everyone carries a USB flash drive on them. Cell phones double as MP3 players, and MP3 players double as personal video devices. It seems progressive then that external hard disks are quickly becoming something more of a personal carry item as their size grows smaller. Conversely, some stylish trends have managed to give a new look to the old ideas. So whether you are a mobile power user with compact storage needs, or discerning office user who enjoys a stylish environment, VIZO offers products to satisfy both needs, and Benchmark Reviews helps you to pick the best fit between their eSATA Uranus or the SATA Saturno.

http://benchmarkreviews.com/index.php?option=com_c ontent&task=view&id=16&Itemid=1"
The Internet

Submission + - P2P Networks supplement Botnets

Submitted by stuckinarut
stuckinarut writes: Peer to peer file sharing network popularity is at an all time high, with hundreds of thousands of computers connected to a single P2P network at a given time. These networks are increasingly being used to trick PCs into attacking other machines, experts say. In fact, some reports indicate that peer-to-peer may actually exceed web traffic. Computer scientists have previously shown how P2P networks can be subverted so that several connected PCs gang up to attack a single machine, flooding it with enough traffic to make it crash. This can work even if the target is not part of the P2P network itself. Now, security experts are warning that P2P networks are increasingly being used to do just this. "Until January of this year we had never seen a peer-to-peer network subverted and used for an attack," says Darren Rennick of internet security company Prolexic in an advisory released recently. "We now see them constantly being subverted."
Handhelds

Submission + - Why Your BlackBerry Causes Nearby Speakers to Buzz

Submitted by
AZA43
AZA43 writes: "Ever wondered why your BlackBerry — or other mobile device — causes nearbly speakers and electronics to buzz like a swarm of disgruntled honey bees? Ever wondered what handset makers and cell phone carriers think about the buzzing and whether or not they're doing anything about it? Or why some phones seem to cause more buzzing than others? I did, and I asked Research In Motion (RIM) for information on the subject. Duncan Bradly, RIM's global intelligence director, let me in on where RIM stands on the issue, what they're doing about it and even offered up a few ways you can muffle the sound — though he cautions against them since they'll void warranties. Check it out."

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