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Operating Systems

Submission + - Windows Drive from HP laptop boots in Macbook

Submitted by
Sitrucious
Sitrucious writes: "Today I decided to upgrade my Macbook. I had a 160 GB drive lying around so I figured I'd throw it in. What to my surprise but when I hold down the Option key and select the drive it booted right up. The problem was that it was my Gentoo Drive. I never configured the install for the Macbook but it was installed on another Intel Core 2 System. So I started to pic at my brain and decided to try my Windows Vista drive for the same laptop. Sure enough it also booted. Of course there are a few driver issues currently but I have network connection and I am even running Glass. I currently do not have audio but I'm still impressed with the fact that it booted. Has anyone else tried this?"
Businesses

Submission + - Want Your Boss Managing Your Health Too? (foxnews.com)

Submitted by
cybermage
cybermage writes: "Employers across the country are launching wellness programs in an effort to control rising costs related to health care. I think this is good in spirit, but the right thing done for the wrong reasons often leads to problems too. If employers are motivated by cost, how long before a person's health affects job and advancement opportunities?"
Sci-Fi

Submission + - See-through LCD screen developed

Submitted by
Gary
Gary writes: "Tokyo-based optical component maker Active Inc. has developed a new composite LCD display that allows a user to clearly see objects through the monitor's viewing surface. The company has been researching the use of liquid crystal optical film as a substitute for traditional LCD backlights with the goal of commercializing a display which allows a user's gaze to pass through to the opposite side when the screen is powered on."

iPhone Doesn't Surf Fast Enough for Jobs 436

Posted by Zonk from the must-go-faster-must-go-fastr dept.
ElvaWSJ writes with a link to a Wall Street Journal interview with Steve Jobs and AT&T's CEO Randall Stephenson. As you can imagine, they're pretty enthusiastic. Just the same, they address the possibility that the iPhone will slow internet access on Ma Bell's cell network. "Mr. Jobs acknowledged that the company's new iPhone won't surf the Internet as fast as he would like on the network, called "Edge," but added that the device's ability to connect to Wi-Fi hotspots would give consumers a speedier alternative for Web browsing. For his part, Mr. Stephenson said the iPhone represents a broader push by AT&T into Wi-Fi services, including, potentially, mobile Internet calling. The two men also discussed the iPod's "halo effect" and reflected on the origins of their corporate partnership."
Security

Submission + - New Zealand banks demand a peek at PCs (computerworld.com)

Submitted by
Montgomery Burns III
Montgomery Burns III writes: "Banks in New Zealand are seeking access to customer PCs used for online banking transactions to verify whether they have enough security protection. Under the terms of a new banking Code of Practice, banks may request access in the event of a disputed transaction to see if security protection in is place and up to date. Liability for any loss resulting from unauthorized Internet banking transactions rests with the customer if they have "used a computer or device that does not have appropriate protective software and operating system installed and uptodate, [or] failed to take reasonable steps to ensure that the protective systems, such as virus scanning, firewall, antispyware, operating system and antispam software on [the] computer, are uptodate.""
The Media

Submission + - Wikipedia notes death before bodies found (chicagotribune.com)

Submitted by
vigmeister
vigmeister writes: "WWE wrestler Chris Benoit and his family were found dead in his house in Atlanta last weekend. Chris Benoit's wikipedia entry apparently declared his wife's death 13 hours before their bodies were found and the news was publicly released. This entry has an IP address from Connecticut where the WWE is headquartered. Conspiracy theory?"
Censorship

Submission + - Was this arrest video edited? 1

Submitted by RCulpepper
RCulpepper writes: This video is YouTube's most-viewed for the week. It shows a Hot Springs, Arkansas police officer arresting six teenagers for skateboarding, with a degree of force that appears excessive for the crime committed (the officer, among other things, puts a 16 year old girl in a headlock). The uncut record of the incident is split into two videos here and here. The city paper is circling the wagons and holding out the possibility that these videos have themselves been edited interstitially and that the girl had jumped on the police officer's back before he put her in a headlock. This seems implausible to me, but I'm not an expert. Unless the protectors of the town's image accept that the video is a true record, the officer's likely to get off scot free. What do you think, Slashdot?
The Internet

Submission + - Wikipedia's role in wrestler murder/suicide case

Submitted by
93,000
93,000 writes: "Relating to the apparent murder/suicide, CNN reports that the Wikipedia entry for WWE wrestler Chris Benoit was edited to mention the death of his wife — fourteen hours before the authorities found the bodies. Even more interesting, according to CNN: "A Wikipedia official, Cary Bass, said Thursday that the entry was made by someone using an Internet protocol address registered in Stamford, Connecticut, where World Wrestling Entertainment is based.""
Programming

Submission + - Make a better .Mac that's *worth* the price... (notmacchallenge.com)

Submitted by
Eric Crist
Eric Crist writes: "Although I've often liked the idea of some of the services provided by .Mac, I've never been able to justify [to the other half] the cost of a .Mac membership. I found the following contest to create a free replacement that may offer a little hope:

"Introducing the notMac Challenge to create a free replacement to dotMac's client-based services that's easy enough for a first-time Mac user to install and so fully and transparently integrated that a long-time dotMac user wouldn't notice the difference."

You can get the full story at http://www.notmacchallenge.com/."
Enlightenment

Submission + - Inflatable space station/hotel by 2015

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: An experimental spacecraft designed to test the viability of a hotel in space has been successfully sent into orbit. Bigelow Aerospace hopes to build a full-scale space hotel, dubbed Nautilus, which will link a series of inflatable modules together like a string of sausages. Genesis II the inflatable and flexible core of the spacecraft is a 15 ft (4.5m) inflatable module designed to expand to a diameter of 8ft (2.4m). Later this year it plans to launch another module, Galaxy, described as a halfway house to a human-habitable space module. Mr Bigelow is offering a $50m prize to anyone who can design a craft capable of carrying five people to a height of 400km (250 miles) before 2010.
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft to simplify downgrades from Vista to XP

Submitted by castrox
castrox writes: It seems Microsoft have taken a notice that users may want to run XP instead of Vista. The new deal is to simplify downgrading for the OEMs. Currently, all OEMs must call Microsoft whenever a downgrade is done. After this "simplification" OEMs may submit batches of keys to Microsoft which will save time.

According to the Microsoft blog on ZDNet, the "downgrade software" will still need to be supplied by the end user. The deal is rather perplexing — it does not seem like you can convert the license since the only eligible versions for downgrading is Ultimate and Business.

Effectively, it seems nothing has changed. More on the downgrade "rights" (warning: PDF) here.
Spam

Submission + - How to Avoid Being Blacklisted (axigen.com)

Submitted by
AXIGEN
AXIGEN writes: "What Are Blacklists?

A blacklist usually refers to a list of e-mail or IP addresses known to send spam e-mails or some other type of unsolicited messages. Such lists are currently used by mail servers for filtering incoming e-mails and blocking the ones listed, in order to improve mail security and integrity. The blacklist is also the opposite of what is called a whitelist.

The Basics

First of all, being blacklisted does not mean that you have committed some kind of offense or illegal action. Blacklists have multiple purposes, including the denial of SMTP direct access for dial-up and DSL users, which mostly engage dynamically assigned IP addresses. Users are forced this way to send their mail through their provider's mail servers, which are properly configured.

Blacklists may also define what is considered to be an abuse, sometimes in a debatable manner, as no strict rules are set regarding this matter. Some of them include NDR and other auto-responses in their policy in order to prevent NDR attacks and other similar problems. During normal operations, as the RFC states, any server is forced to accept NDR messages. Other lists aim to limit the networks assigned to certain countries. In such cases, a provider can use a policy and not accept any emails sent from or through those countries.

The Details

There are a few steps you should take to in order to prevent being blacklisted. The most important ones are closely related to securing your mail server and making sure no third-party can use it to send e-mails in an unsecured fashion:
  • Do not allow unsolicited ads and other bulk e-mails to be sent from your server, by the hosted accounts;
  • Do not run pro spam services like: spam websites, drop mail boxes for replies to spam e-mail ads, DNS for junk mailers, payment processing services for the products advertised in spam messages, junk mail tools (like lists of e-mail addresses);
  • Make sure all your hosts are as secure as possible;
  • Make sure you do not have any spam bots on your systems;
  • Make sure your mail server is not an open relay;
  • Make sure your proxy server is not an open proxy;
  • Check that the abuse@yourdomain.tld and postmaster@yourdomain.tld addresses exist and that they are functional;
  • Make sure the information provided in the domain registration service (whois) is updated and complete;
  • Make sure all your mail servers accept mail from: <> delivery notifications (NDR);
  • Don't use an ISP that has a bad reputation when it comes to spam. Doing so may get you blacklisted just because your IP address is part of their allotted subnet;
  • Make sure your DNS is properly set up and that you are complying with the RFC rules regarding service configuration;
  • Make sure your mail server does not send poorly-formatted messages;
  • Deploy Domain Keys and SPF for outgoing messages;
  • Use secured connections (SSL/TLS) as much as possible;
  • Do not allow unauthenticated users to send e-mails neither locally nor remotely.
When you feel that your server is correctly configured and spam-safe, you can use one of the open relay testing and DNS testing tools available on the Internet to make sure everything is working as it should. If any errors are then reported, they should be fixed before taking any server into production.

Also, never forget that there are distributed lists that do not provide any method of removal from the database. In such cases it is best to prevent being added in the first place.

References
The article is also available here: How to Avoid Being Blacklisted
For information about how to get removed from blacklists, please check this article as well:What to Do if You Are Blacklisted."
Privacy

CallerID Spoofing to be Made Illegal 351

Posted by CowboyNeal from the phoning-home dept.
MadJo writes "US Congress has just approved a bill that will make it illegal to spoof CallerID. From the bill: 'The amount of the forfeiture penalty (...) shall not exceed $10,000 for each violation, or 3 times that amount for each day of a continuing violation, except that the amount assessed for any continuing violation shall not exceed a total of $1,000,000 for any single act or failure to act.'"
Windows

Vista Security Claims Debunked 315

Posted by CowboyNeal from the setting-things-straight dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Apparently Microsoft still hasn't learned that counting vendor acknowledged vulnerabilities isn't a good way to establish the security of an OS. As an analysis of Microsoft's claims on Full Disclosure shows, we see that the methodology used was badly flawed. A bug in Firefox (not to mention emacs), counts as a flaw for Linux, while IE bugs get ignored on Vista's chart. Then we see that vulnerabilities aren't vulnerabilities when they're security-challenged features such as Vista's Teredo. Also, there's far too little consideration given to severity, given that it stoops to counting even extra access restrictions on a file in OSX to have something to show. In short, the original Microsoft analysis was good PR and poor research."
Mars

Mars Rover Ready for Risky Descent into Crater 156

Posted by Zonk from the go-opportunity-do-your-best dept.
Riding with Robots writes "After months of scoping out the terrain, the robotic geologist Opportunity is ready to drive down into Victoria Crater on the Meridiani Plains of Mars. Mission managers acknowledge the hardy rover may never come back out, but say they think the potential for discovery is worth it. 'The rover has operated more than 12 times longer than its originally intended 90 days. The scientific allure is the chance to examine and investigate the compositions and textures of exposed materials in the crater's depths for clues about ancient, wet environments. As the rover travels farther down the slope, it will be able to examine increasingly older rocks in the exposed walls of the crater. '"

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