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Education

Submission + - Substitute teacher convicted on porn charge

Submitted by
rilian4
rilian4 writes: "eSchool News online(http://www.eschoolnews.com/ Free registration required to see more than the first page) has the following: A substitute teacher in Connecticut has been convicted of exposing middle school students to porn but she claims she was the victim of pop-up ads and spyware...

From the article: "A substitute teacher in Connecticut has been convicted of exposing students to pornography on a classroom computer in a high-profile, and controversial, case. Prosecutors claim she clicked on pornographic web sites, but the teacher says she's the victim of graphic pop-up images generated by spyware and adware."

This is a brutally unfair conviction. I am an IT staffer at a high school and anyone w/ half a brain should know this substitute did nothing wrong here. Pop-up porn is sometimes very very difficult to get rid of and I would not expect a sub to know how to do it. Her story as related in the article is very believable to me as someone who is in IT in a school.

I hope she appeals and gets this overturned. A conviction like this can and will ruin her life.
I am posting this story here in the hopes her case makes a big news splash. This needs more attention!

Get the full story here: http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/showStory.cfm?Arti cleID=6873 test"
Microsoft

Submission + - EU sticks it to Microsoft over Windows Licensing

Submitted by
EnderGT
EnderGT writes: "According to the Financial Times, Microsoft will be forced to hand over to rivals what the group claims is sensitive and valuable technical information about its Windows operating system for next to no compensation.

Seems Microsoft wanted 5.95% of server revenues as a license fee. Too bad the expert (oh by the way — recommended by Microsoft) on the Commission said that "even 1% would be too much"."
Security

Submission + - Hackers offer subscription, support for malware

Submitted by Stony Stevenson
Stony Stevenson writes: Organised gangs are taking a page out of security vendors' books and setting up their own websites that offer support and subscriptions for malware and spyware.

From the article: "For subscriptions starting as low as $20 per month, enterprises can sell "fully managed exploit engines" that spyware distributors and spammers can use to infiltrate systems worldwide, said Gunter Ollmann, director of security strategies at IBM's ISS X-Force team.

Many exploit providers simply wait for Microsoft's monthly patches, which they then reverse engineer to develop new exploit code against the disclosed vulnerabilities, Ollmann said. "Then all you've got to do is just subscribe to them on a monthly basis."
Role Playing (Games)

Submission + - Dungeons & Dragons and IT Part II: Tech Evange

Submitted by
boyko.at.netqos
boyko.at.netqos writes: "Network Performance Daily follows up on their first editorial about D&D and IT, which addressed why so many technical people like the game (or vice versa.) Now it goes into the relationship between players who stubbornly evangelize a favorite roleplaying system and IT staff who evangelize a specific hardware or software solution.

From the article: "It is no secret that the technically inclined — geeks for short — are often stubborn, opinionated and do not move from an idea. This is doubly true either when discussing a technical solution or choosing a particular roleplaying game to play. For the same reason. [...] Smart people, however, are often used to situations where they are told that they are wrong by large numbers of people only to be proven right at the end. [...] One of the problems with learning to stick to your guns because you're usually right is that you have a tendency to stick to your guns even when you're wrong.""
Java

Submission + - The Java 6.0 Compiler API

Submitted by
Shunmuga Raja
Shunmuga Raja writes: "One of the cool features available in Java 6.0 (Mustang) is the 'Java Compiler API'. This API is a result of the JSR (Java Specification Request) 199 which proposes that there must be a standard way to compile java source files. The result of the JSR is the new 'Java Compiler API' and one can use this new feature to compile java source files from within java files. Previously developers were depending on the low-level issues like starting a process representing the javac.exe. Though this feature is not intended to every one, Editors or IDE (Integrated Development Environment) can make much use of this new feature for compiling Java source files in a better manner.Read More"

Feed LED Array Signals Successful Binding Of Drug-delivery Molecules To DNA (sciencedaily.com)

From feed by sdfeed
Biology and chemistry researchers from Virginia Tech are creating molecular complexes to bind to and disrupt the DNA of diseased tissues, such as tumors or viruses. Testing the activity of each of the therapeutic molecule designs has been a time-consuming process. But a student's invention now provides rapid screening to accelerate discovery of promising new drugs.
Portables (Apple)

Submission + - Intel Mac Performance Comparison

Submitted by jfpoole
jfpoole writes: Primate Labs has a processor performance comparison of almost all the Intel Macs Apple's shipped over the past sixteen months (the only omission being the new Xeon-based Xserve). It's interesting to see just how little processor performance varies across the entire Intel Mac lineup (except for the quad-core Mac Pro, of course).
Businesses

Submission + - When is "open source" just marketing?

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Matasano, a security consulting and research firm, has chosen to expose a company that is releasing a supposed "open source" project as a marketing and publicity stunt. The debate has included a lot of famous security people including Ron Gula and Martin Roesch. Stillsecure has had a somewhat checkered past with various open source projects and their CSO has routinely tried to pick fights with other executives in his blog. They have also recently hired a blogger who's job is to promote their products in blogs. It's an interesting debate, which companies are good open source companies and which ones are just trying to exploit it for a few bucks? Is this just the status quo in open source any more?
Software

Submission + - Gaim is being renamed to "Pidgin IM"

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: After some legal threats from AOL, the GAIM project is undergoing a name change in preperation for the 2.0 release. The project will now be known as Pidgin IM, and libgaim will now be known as libpurple, according to discussions on the GAIM project mailing lists

The new site will be located at http://www.pidgin.im/ , and the developers site is at http://developer.pidgin.im/
Microsoft

Submission + - Interview with initiator of DirectX

Submitted by
Miguel de Icaza
Miguel de Icaza writes: "there's a great interview from Shacknews with Alex St. John, one of the earlier DirectX / gaming guys. He talks about almost losing his job going against Bill Gates, and talks a bit about the MS development & political process.

'You know why the "X" on the Xbox is a glowing green X? The original codename for Direct X was "the Manhattan Project," because strategically it was an effort to displace Japanese game consoles with PCs and ultimately the Xbox. We called it "The Manhattan Project" because that was the codename for the program developing the nuclear bomb. We had a glowing radiation logo for the prototype for Direct X, and of course as soon as that got out and the press covered it, it caused a scandal' "

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