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Security

Submission + - First peek at Norton AntiBot (atgnow.com)

Submitted by
ygsymc
ygsymc writes: "Symantec has released the beta version of a new product called Norton AntiBot. Designed to work in conjunction with your existing security product, Norton AntiBot protects users from malicious bots and other forms of malware in real-time. To learn more and download the beta, click here"
Netscape

Submission + - First peek at Netscape Navigator 9

Submitted by
lisah
lisah writes: "Netscape released a beta version of Navigator 9 today that includes several new components while giving some old ones the boot. This release will no longer ship with mail or composer but does have URL correction, a pre-populated RSS feed menu, and a neat clipboard in the browser's sidebar that will hold links to websites you want to visit again but not necessarily bookmark."
Music

Guitartabs.com Suspends Under Legal Pressure 348

Posted by kdawson from the not-another-mpaa dept.
Music publishers are stepping up their campaign to remove guitar tablature from the Net. Recently Guitartabs.com received a nastygram from lawyers for the National Music Publishers Association and The Music Publishers Association of America. These organizations want to stretch the definition of their intellectual property to include by-ear transcriptions of music. Guitartabs.com is currently not offering tablature while the owner evaluates his legal options.
Space

Space Elevator Company LiftPort In Trouble 257

Posted by kdawson from the going-dwn dept.
TropicalCoder writes "The LiftPort Group, founded four years ago with the lofty dream of building a stairway to heaven, has seemingly reached the end the line. The dream was to develop a ribbon of carbon nanotubes 100,000 km long, anchored to the Earth's surface and with a counterweight in space, providing a permanent bridge to orbit. Elevator cars would be robotic 'lifters' which would climb the ribbon to deliver cargo and eventually people to orbit or beyond. Now LiftPort has all but run out of funds, and the State of Washington's Securities Division has entered a Statement of Charges (PDF) against LiftPort Inc. dba LiftPort Group and founder Michael Laine."
Wireless Networking

Submission + - Turning cars into wireless network nodes

Submitted by
Roland Piquepaille
Roland Piquepaille writes: "Everyday, our cars are using more computing technology, primarily for safety reasons. So why not turning them into computer nodes of a mobile network? This is what UCLA engineers are working on. According to them, this would just need the relatively low-cost addition of sensors to the vehicle's roof and bumpers. They say their mobile ad-hoc networking platform (MANET) would allow 'moving vehicles within a range of 100 to 300 meters of each other to connect and create a network of cars.' Of course, not every driver would like to be part of this network because of privacy concerns. This is why 'the first mobile networks will be implemented in emergency response vehicles such as police cars, ambulances and hazardous materials response units.' But read more for additional details about these upcoming vehicular sensor networks (VSNs)."
GNU is Not Unix

Submission + - Emacs 22 released

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: Emacs22 has been released. Notable features include GTK(2.4+) support, along with i18n, and probably lots more!
Google

Submission + - Inside Google's Black Box

Submitted by
Pcol
Pcol writes: "Google's "ranking algorithm" — the formulas that decide which Web pages best answer each user's question is crucial part of Google's inner sanctum, a department called "search quality" that the company treats like a state secret. Google recently allowed a reporter from the New York Times to spend a day with Google Fellow Amit Singhal and his search-quality team who explained how every week they make about a half-dozen major and minor changes to the vast nest of mathematical formulas that power the search engine. Mr. Singhal has developed a far more elaborate system for ranking pages than PageRank. The system, involving more than 200 types of information, are what Google calls "signals." Some signals are on Web pages — like words, links, images and so on. Some are drawn from the history of how pages have changed over time. Some signals are data patterns uncovered in the trillions of searches that Google has handled over the years. Increasingly, Google is using signals that come from its history of what individual users have searched for in the past, in order to offer results that reflect each person's interests. "People still think that Google is the gold standard of search," says John Battelle, author of "The Search," a book about Google. "Their secret sauce is how these guys are doing it all in aggregate. There are 1,000 little tunings they do.""
Spam

Submission + - Phishing scams net millions (theage.com.au)

Submitted by
randy parker
randy parker writes: "The Age has published a story that puts '419' emails from Nigeria into an Australian context. It seems that people are still falling for these calls for help from an aging heirless billionaire or national lottery desperate to palm off unclaimed winnings. The article has some incredible stats on the amount of cash transferred to West Africa from Australia and the implications to the victims and their families. From the article:

Superintendent Hay said when people realised they had been ripped off, they had "attempted suicide, lost their wealth, lost friends, become estranged from their family, deceived partners, suffered divorce, committed criminal offences to obtain further funds to send to Nigeria, lost their dignity and suffered depression"."
Microsoft

Submission + - Gates wasted $60 million Education '08 campaign (crosscut.com)

Submitted by
NewsCloud
NewsCloud writes: "NYT Columnist Timothy Egan suggests Bill Gates should apply his $60 million Education '08 campaign more directly (NYT subscribers) i.e. into the pockets of politicians. Excerpted here:

Following the life of Bill Gates himself, Egan notes, "has been like watching Pete Townshend go from smashing his guitar with The Who to the aging master who just wants world peace and a complex string arrangement of Tommy. He was the high-voiced bully boy of Microsoft, snarling at people with less intellectual bandwidth, a Napoleon Dynamite with money — idiots!" ... The campaign could use a little remedial schooling. Three of the Republican candidates don't even believe in evolution. Don't know much about history, don't know much biology. ... the world's richest man has little leverage in a wide-open presidential campaign. At the early debates, the Gates' group took out ads and held press conferences. But what did it get them? The candidates barely mentioned education.
For those keeping score at home, Gates' contribution to the campaign is less than half one thousandth of his net worth."
It's funny. Laugh.

Submission + - Swimming with 100,000 volts (tesladownunder.com)

Submitted by
tesladownunder
tesladownunder writes: "If you worry about electrocuting yourself by dropping the hairdryer in the bath then don't look at this. 100,000 volt sparks from a Tesla coil jump onto the "tin-foil hat" of this seemingly crazy Australian high voltage experimenter while he is in the pool and otherwise unprotected. He says that the stunt would be not be possible without the water which is conductive like a large electrical ground connection. Somehow it just doesn't look safe to me. Lots of pics and other weird Tesla effects on the site too."
Mozilla

Submission + - Firefox Usage Hits 25% (www.kbox.cc)

Submitted by
googtube
googtube writes: "According to W3counter.com, The website statistics provider, Firefox usage has reached an all time high of almost 25%. For those of you who suck at maths, that is nearly one in four internet users using Firefox. Go Firefox!

W3counter.com have based these numbers on the last 31,612,302 unique visits to 4,511 websites, So it should be a fairly accurate representation of the internet as a whole, Even though figures may be skewed on industry specific sites, Such as slashdot."

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