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Censorship

Submission + - News must be at least 50% Doubleplusgood

Submitted by Nymz
Nymz writes: Russian journalists today learned of new rules regarding free speech (the acceptable type). Namely that 50% of reports about Russia must be positive (the government perspective type), and that criticism of Putin is considered extremism (the land you in jail type), and that America must be portrayed as an enemy (the elimination of free speech type). Expect these new rules to be applied liberally (the coming soon to online speech type). New York Times article.
Security

Submission + - New Details On OS X Bug: Firefox Also Vulnerable

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: More details have emerged about the MacOS X vulnerability Dino Dai Zovi developed to win the $10,000 CanSec PWN-2-0WN challenge; contrary to CNet's report, the vulnerability involves Java applets, and affects FireFox as well as Safari. MacOS X users can disable Java support in their browsers to mitigate the vulnerability.

http://www.matasano.com/log/806/hot-off-the-matasa no-sms-queue-cansec-macbook-challenge-won/
Google

Submission + - Google's Froogle gets renamed to Product Search

Submitted by
priestx
priestx writes: "Google Inc. has renamed its "Froogle" product display and search system to "Google Product Search." Google's Froogle was one of the company's earliest moves into offering a search system for products that would allow Google to connect a buyer and seller directly outside of the text ads displayed on its market-leading web search engine."
Microsoft

Submission + - Users force Dell to resurrect XP

Submitted by jakosc
jakosc writes: The BBC reports that Dell continues to respond to feed back from their ideastorm website, and has restarted selling new PCs with Windows XP installed on them, reversing a January policy decision to abandon XP for Vista. The article quotes from analyst Michael Silver, 'This is really odd. On new PCs, consumers usually do want the latest and greatest.'
Patents

Submission + - IBM patents dynamic web pages

Submitted by bluehat
bluehat writes: From the patent 7,058,671: A method and system for delivering dynamic web pages in the INTERNET. Compiled programs embedding static queries to a database are stored on a server computer; view templates with HTML tags defining the layout of corresponding dynamic web pages and data tags instructing where and how to include each record of the query result into the respective dynamic web page are further stored on the server computer. When a dynamic web page must be distributed, the corresponding program is run, and the query result is stored into a shared memory structure. The query result is combined with the corresponding view template, by replacing the data tags with the associated records in the shared memory structure. The resulting web page is then distributed to client computers of the network.

Better start converting all your websites back to static page content. Seriously, folks this is not funny.
Security

Submission + - How to make your web browsing safer

Submitted by
caluml
caluml writes: "Browsers are one of the most common ways that malware gets onto your system. And if they get in, as the user account you're using now — what files would they have access to? Probably all your important stuff — vids, music, documents, etc, right? This shows how to run your browser automatically as another user, using sudo.
This mini-Howto shows you how to run Firefox as another user, using sudo"
Education

Submission + - CU Student Arrested For Dorm Room Weapons Cache

Submitted by championsoftware
championsoftware writes: Officers then went to Kittredge West and contacted Matthew Furnish at his room. After interviews with Furnish and a search of his room that was done with his consent, officers seized a Glock .40 caliber handgun, a Remington12-guage shotgun, several hundred rounds of ammunition, magazine clips for weapons and a 12-inch knife. Click here for article
Security

Submission + - MacBook hacked via zero-day hole in Safari

Submitted by EMB Numbers
EMB Numbers writes: Shane Macaulay just won a MacBook as a prize for successfully hacking the Mac at CanSecWest conference in VANCOUVER, B.C. CNet covers the story here. http://news.com.com/2100-7349_3-6178131.html?part= rss&tag=2547-1_3-0-5&subj=news The hack was based on a Safari vulnerability found by Dai Zovi and written in about 9 hours. However, CanSecWest organizers relaxed the contest rules http://news.com.com/8301-10784_3-6171472-7.html to make the hack possible because nobody at the event had breached the Macs under official contest rules.
Space

Submission + - Man kills self, hostage at NASA building

Submitted by
jhfry
jhfry writes: "According to the Associated Press [yahoo.com], a man, likely a NASA employee, killed himself hours after killing his hostage earlier today on NASA's Houston Johnson Space Center campus. The recent shooting at VA Tech is obviously going to be brought up in relation to this, so I'll ask before anyone has the chance. Was this inspired by, or in some way related to the heinous murders in VA?"
Biotech

Submission + - Metacognition in Rats

Submitted by ticacms
ticacms writes: Scientists at the University of Georgia at Athens, have added rats to the group of animals capable of metacognition. 'If rats have knowledge about whether they know or don't know the answer to the test, we would expect them to decline most frequently on difficult tests. They would also show the lowest accuracy on difficult tests that they can't decline. Our data showed both to be true, suggesting the rats have knowledge of their own cognitive states.' How long until we find out that they are actually experimenting on us?
Privacy

Journal Journal: Orkut quietly removes https login

Journal by hlh_nospam
When I tried to access my Orkut account on Monday morning, I got an "Unable to Connect" message. I just assumed that they were having some temporary problems. When I couldn't login on Tuesday, I thought maybe the company had tightened down the firewall, so I tried later that evening from home with the same result. So I did a Google search to see if anything had been reported, and found a Wikipedia entry. Other than that, it seems very few people noticed this security problem.
Media

Submission + - BBC Opens up Archive, extends iPlayer to Mac's

Submitted by
RotateLeftByte
RotateLeftByte writes: "THe BBC is reporting that they are going to trial opening up their vast archives to 20,000 lucky users.

They will be able to access a huge range of content for download.
Also planned in the future is the ability to access this archive via Digital Terrestrial TV

This is plan is slightly ironic in a week when we have seen the end in sight for US Internet Radio, we have a major world broadcaster opening up their archives for download.
One objective of the trial is to determine which parts of the archive should be "free" and which should be operated under commercial terms.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6568163.stm"
Sci-Fi

Submission + - British Developing Star Trek Shield Technology

Submitted by freshmayka
freshmayka writes: From the article: "British scientists are planning to see whether a Star Trek-style deflector shield could be built to protect astronauts from radiation. They argue that magnetic shields could be deployed around spacecraft and on the surfaces of planets to deflect harmful energised particles."
The Courts

Submission + - Montana says no to Real ID, passes law to deny it

Submitted by SoCalChris
SoCalChris writes: Montana's governor signed a bill yesterday saying "no, nope, no way, hell no" to the Real ID Act. House Bill 287 (pdf) requires the Montana Motor Vehicle Division to not implement the provisions of the Real ID Act, and to report to the governor any attempts by any agent or agency of the Department of Homeland Security to attempt to implement the bill. Montana is the first state to implement such a law, the Billings Gazette has more info

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