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Internet Explorer

Reports of IE Hijacking NXDOMAINs, Routing To Bing 230

Posted by kdawson from the if-I-want-bing-I-will-type-bing dept.
Jaeden Stormes writes "We just started getting word of a new browser hijack from our sales force. 'Some site called Bing?' they said. Sure enough, since the patches last night, their IE6 and IE7 installations are now routing all NXDOMAINs to Bing. Try it out — put in something like www.DoNotHijackMe.com." We've had mixed results here confirming this: one report that up-to-date IE8 behaves as described. Others tried installing all offered updates to systems running IE6 and IE7 and got no hijacking.
Update: 08/11 23:24 GMT by KD : Readers are reporting that it's not Bing that comes up for a nonexistent domain, it's the user's default search engine (noting that at least one Microsoft update in the past changed the default to Bing). There may be nothing new here.
The Courts

NY Court Says Police Can't Track Suspect With GPS 414

Posted by kdawson from the when-a-cop-slaps-you-on-the-back-check-your-back dept.
SoundGuyNoise sends in a story that brings into relief just how unsettled is the question of whether police can use GPS to track suspects without a warrant. Just a couple of days ago a Wisconsin appeals court ruled that such tracking is OK; and today an appeals court in New York reached the opposite conclusion. "It was wrong for a police investigator to slap a GPS tracking device under a defendant's van to track his movements, the state's top court ruled today. A sharply divided NY Court of Appeals, in a 4-3 decision, reversed the burglary conviction of defendant Scott Weaver, 41, of Watervliet. Four years ago, State Police tracked Weaver over 65 days in connection with the burglary investigation."
Operating Systems

Submission + - Apple freezes Snow Leopard APIs as software nears (appleinsider.com)

Submitted by DJRumpy
DJRumpy writes:

Apple this past weekend distributed a new beta of Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard that altered the programming methods used to optimize code for multi-core Macs, telling developers they were the last programming-oriented changes planned ahead of the software's release.

More specifically, Apple is said to have informed recipients of Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard build 10A354 that it has simplified the application programming interfaces (APIs) for working with Grand Central, a new architecture that makes it easier for developers to take advantage of Macs with multiple processing cores.

This technology works by breaking complex tasks into smaller blocks, which are then routed — or dispatched — efficiently to a Mac's available cores for faster processing. This allows third-party developers to leverage more of a Mac's hardware resources without having to be well-versed in multithreaded programming.

I had a conversation in a thread earlier about the fact that Linux wasn't scaling well and I asked why the OS wasn't doing exactly what is stated above. I was told it wasn't feasable due to overhead. Seems that may not be the case. I'm psyched about this release. Rumor has it that it will also include read/write access to HFS+ partitions via boot camp.

Comment Re:We already have faster-than-light communication (Score 1) 627

by Floody (#27445009) Attached to: Quantum Setback For Warp Drives

No. EPR does not allow FTL communication. FTL communication means causality violation: A causes B but B happens before A.

There is no causality violation if you travel FTL to some point in the expanding universe that is beyond our light cone, as long as expansion never reverses. In other words, FTL is "causality safe" between two reference frames that can never come in contact with each other.

Additionally, within a local reference frame, causality violation presumes the existence of free will. Dr. Robert L Foward posited that the instant one transmits information FTL (i.e. time travel), restrictions begin to be placed on free will such that causality can not be violated, and thus preventing paradoxes.

You might be able to go back in time, but you can't go back and kill your own grandfather.

Forward saw this as essentially the inverse of forward causality, i.e. if I'm going to break my leg tomorrow skiing, I don't really have any choice in the matter.

Comment Re:What's the difference? (Score 1) 453

by Floody (#26260835) Attached to: Evolution of Intelligence More Complex Than Once Thought

So what I want to know is, what was it about human beings that caused us to develop the capacity to drive cars, build computers and walk on the moon?

Maybe we were created to be creative. Maybe that's part of being "made in God's image". I mean, even if you take away tools and anything with practical survival benefits - what drives humans to express themselves through words and art and music and dance? Sure, even I could come up with theories that reduce all of that to "survival of the fittest", but I don't see the need.

A possible explanation for the base drive: Expression allows humans to feel more connected to each other, either directly or indirectly. It's a socialization function. Improved socialization leads to increased survivability.

Every form of creativity is derived from this base drive.

Comment Re:Apple's Moving Aggressively On Performance (Score 1) 328

by Floody (#25665683) Attached to: Ubuntu 8.10 vs. Mac OS X 10.5.5 Benchmarks

I've been using *nix machines for decades, and still use Linux on my desktop and server machines. But since since I inherited a Mac laptop (actually, two now) I have become something of a fanboy for Mac. It is very pleasant to have a (nearly) consistent, intelligently designed interface to a system where everything "just works" with a minimum of effort.

Yes, Linux supports much more hardware, but I can understand why "Joe Sixpack" (or even maybe "the Plumber") would find OS X easier to deal with.

Indeed, I'm in the same camp. It's comfortable feeling to have a clean, workable and immediately usable interface (although certainly not perfect) on top of a unix paradigm that we (old *nix heads) are already comfortable with.
Democrats

Submission + - A Congressman who can code assembly

Submitted by
christo
christo writes: "In what appears to be a first, the US House of Representatives now has a Congressman with coding skills. Democratic Representative Bill Foster won a special election this past Saturday in the 14th Congressional District of Illinois. Foster is a physicist who worked at Fermilab for 22 years designing data analysis software for the lab's high energy particle collision detector. In an interview with CNET today, Foster's campaign manager confirmed that the Congressman can write assembly, Fortran and Visual Basic. A geek congressman!

Will having a tech-savvy congressman change the game at all? Can we expect more rational tech-policy? Already on his first day, Foster provided a tie-breaking vote to pass a major ethics reform bill."

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