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Security

Submission + - U.S. blocks entry for German Black Hat attendee

Submitted by bushwhacker2000
bushwhacker2000 writes: "Thomas Dullien, a prominent security researcher who has been a fixture at the annual Black Hat security conference, has been denied entry into the U.S. to attend and conduct training at this year's confab. Dullien, a German reverse engineering whiz known in hacker circles as "Halvar Flake," said he was blocked from entering the U.S. after customs officials found printed "training materials" in his suitcase." Read the rest of the article at ZDNet
Music

Submission + - Getting free legal music (webupon.com)

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: Although the RIAA's efforts are proving to have limited effect in deterring copyright infringing music downloads, it's still worth knowing about places which offer free music for the asking which is entirely legal. Webupon has a nice list of five here
Businesses

Submission + - Ubuntu for business (allbusiness.com)

Submitted by
James Allgood
James Allgood writes: "I was reading an article (Can Ubuntu Linux Really Run My Small Business?) about the huge savings that companies are realizing by running Ubuntu over M$ or OS X. Hundreds of thousands of dollars. Why do you think that more companies have not made the switch? My IT guy is scared to death of letting me install it on my box at work. Is it just an establishment thing?"
The Courts

Submission + - Army Sergeant in Tennessee Sues RIAA

Submitted by
NewYorkCountryLawyer
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: "A 33-year old Army Sergeant stationed at Fort Campbell, in Tennessee, has counterclaimed against the record company palintiffs, in Warner v. Paternoster. His counterclaim seeks forfeiture of the plaintiffs' copyrights, and other relief, against Warner, BMG, Arista, Virgin,, and UMG, based on his claim (pdf) that they had colluded together in violation of the antitrust laws, had deliberately padded their court filing with embarrassing material in order to "shame" the defendant into paying a settlement for actions he did not commit, and "conspired together on other activities ...including: (1) bringing, without investigation sufficient to establish that the allegations ... have evidentiary support, lawsuits against persons who are not specifically known to have infringed copyrights, including persons who are deceased, disabled or who lack knowledge of how to use computers or download files from the internet; (2) making false and unsupported allegations ... by making the unwarranted and technologically erroneous assumption that an Internet Protocol address is a unique identifier of a computer or an individual; (3) using a corporation as their agent to make extortionate threats to take criminal action and to defame defendants' names and credit, in order to force defendants to pay sums which have no relation to plaintiffs' actual damages, if any, and by delivering releases to settling defendants (few of whom are represented by counsel) which are fraudulent in that they do not constitute true releases of all claims by putative plaintiffs, thereby misleading settling defendants into erroneously believing that they cannot be sued again; (4) jointly agreeing upon exorbitant settlement amounts which are nonnegotiable and are arbitrarily increased at set intervals thereby depriving the defendants in these actions of any reasonable opportunity to negotiate a settlement; (5) commencing ex parte "John Doe" lawsuits which they have no intention of pursuing, but by means of which they are able to communicate with District Judges, Magistrate Judges, and other judicial officials on a daily basis, without providing defendants with notice or opportunity to be heard, in violation of attorneys' ethical obligations as officers of the Courts; (6) invading the privacy of these "John Doe" defendants by then serving subpoenas on Internet Service Providers without notice to the putative defendants; (7)withdrawing such actions upon being challenged and thereby preventing defendants from obtaining relief for having to defend them; and (8) engaging in other unconscionable conduct.....[They] have commenced tens of thousands of actions in the District Courts of the United States in the past five years, the overwhelming majority of which have resulted either in default judgments or extortionate settlements far in excess of any actual damages incurred by Counter-Defendants... Such actions represent an attempt by Counter-Defendants to secure for themselves rights far exceeding those provided by copyright laws....""
The Courts

Submission + - Imprisonment without trial proposed in UK (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: According to a BBC article, the head of the UK Association of Chief Police Officers has asked for terrorism suspects to be held "for as long as it takes" to finish an investigation, without being charged, without being given a trial, and with no upper limit to the time this could go on for. I, for one, would be more afraid of the police than of the terrorists if they were given this power.
PC Games (Games)

Submission + - Free PC Games List (esgameservers.com)

Submitted by sleepysentry
sleepysentry writes: eSports Game Servers has a good list of 200 free PC games. Among the goodies on the list include FPS shooters, MMORPGs, puzzle games, RPGs, and flight simulators. You won't find the latest and greatest games on the list, but many of the games come close to rivaling their commercial counterparts. Some of the games work for Linux and Mac, too.
Security

Submission + - Spammers overcome Hotmail/Yahoo CAPTCHA systems

Submitted by thefickler
thefickler writes: It appears that spammers have found a way of automatically creating Hotmail and Yahoo email accounts, having already created more than 15,000 bogus Hotmail accounts, according to security company BitDefender.p>

BitDefender says that a new threat, dubbed Trojan.Spammer.HotLan.A, is using automatically generated Yahoo and Hotmail accounts to send out spam email, which suggests that spammers have found a way to overcome Microsoft's and Yahoo's CAPTCHA systems.p>
The Internet

Submission + - Swedish Police Prepares To Block ThePirateBay.Org (www.dn.se) 1

Submitted by
Xemu
Xemu writes: "The Swedish National Police Board has issued a statement that the famous file-sharing site ThePiratebay.Org will be added to the Swedish national Web blacklist next week, which in effect would shut down public access to the site. The Swedish national Web blacklist was created to give the Police means to prevent access to sites offering child pornography. When the blacklist was first implemented, many critics voiced concern that it would later be used to block non-child pornography sites with contents less liked by authorities, and indeed this now seems to be happening. In a blog interview, Anakata from ThePiratebay says "We see ThePiratebay as a search engine like any other. The police has never contacted us about suspected child porn. They should block Google." ( Sorry, links in Swedish only, this scoop is less than 30 minutes old. )"
Displays

Submission + - Gateway customer has to sue to get his PC fixed (sacbee.com)

Submitted by
prostoalex
prostoalex writes: "Sacramento Bee tells the story of an El Dorado resident who had to go to the small claims court to get his Gateway PC fixed: "Right out of the box, he says, the computer displayed scattered graphics and wouldn't work properly. He says he called a Gateway salesman five times and sent him an e-mail to get an authorization number to send the computer back, but his phone calls and message were never returned. Then, over the course of months, Sheehan said he called Gateway technical support dozens of times. Technicians kept telling him the problems could be fixed, but they never were, he says." What's more alerting in the story is that Gateway insists that by clicking 'Accept' on customer service EULA, Mr. Sheehan has waived his rights to sue the computer manufacturer in United States courts, agreeing to resolve the conflicts via private arbitrage."
The Media

Submission + - The Unravelling of the Global Warming Crisis

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: The United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and hundreds of government agencies and environmental groups around the world claim that the science is settled and the time for debate is over. But the list of distinguished scientists who question the IPCC grows daily.
NASA

Submission + - NASA Administrator: Don't fight Global Warming

Submitted by
mdsolar
mdsolar writes: "Engineer and NASA Administrator Michael Griffin revealed in an NPR interview that he was unsure there was any need to take steps to make sure that the climate remain stable. Now the NYT has editorialized that his lack of vision may help explain NASA's back peddling on its planet protection mission. The post of NASA Administrator is a tough one, with the last one being chased out of office for being too cautious. Is Griffin stepping into a meat grinder on this one?"
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."
First Person Shooters (Games)

Submission + - Excalibur: Morgana's Revenge 3.0 Official Release (excaliburworld.com)

Submitted by
Bill Catambay
Bill Catambay writes: "Excalibur: Morgana's Revenge 3.0 — Official Release
June 2, 2007 — For Immediate Release

After three long years, and countless all-nighters, we are proud to announce that the official release of Excalibur: Morgana's Revenge (EMR) v3.0 is now available for download. EMR 3.0 is a unique scenario that uses the Aleph One game engine, providing huge improvements over all past versions.

EMR 3.0 is a first-person action adventure game, featuring an epic and in-depth story line. As a Federation Marine resting after your last mission, you start aboard the exploration class Starship Kronos where you learn that your real mission has yet to begin. You are re-acquainted with the A.I. Merlin, who introduces you to Kronos time traveling technology, and reveals your new mission: to save mankind from the clutches of Morgana and her minions. Through untamed raptor-infested jungles, castle arenas, and war-torn streets of the future, you will wield weapons from all time periods — including the Sword of Power, Excalibur — in an effort to thwart the diabolical plot that unfolds. The EMR adventure, spread across 42 solo levels, weaves a tale of truth and honor, knighthood and bravery, and darkness and treachery. EMR also delivers 27 adrenaline pumped network levels. EMR immerses you in an amazing new world, creating an addictive, fun and unique gaming experience.

For those that played EMR under the old Marathon Infinity engine, EMR 3.0 brings exciting new maps, new high resolution textures and landscapes, a completely new set of weapons, new monsters and friends, new scenery, new 16-bit sounds, original music, and a carefully woven original and updated story line that transcends time. Using the Aleph One engine, EMR now sports hundreds of new special features using Aleph One's MML and Lua scripting languages.

Here's just a sample of the new and exciting features available in EMR 3.0:
- Levels with fog and mist
- Persistent effects such as poison, earthquakes, fire storm spell, and timed grenades
- Original MP3 music
- 12 unique weapons, including a new Dragon Flamer and T9000 Railgun
- New spells for your wand, including fire storm, teleportation, and raise the dead
- Beautifully rendered OpenGL textures and landscapes
- New Morgana and Trex hi-res sprites
- A huge variety of new hi-res scenery items
- New holodeck programs, including driving a Flintstone mobile through Bedrock!
- Blood Gulch style net map with 8 simulated net players and a huge battlefield
- A basketball court netmap where grenades in a basket win points for your team
- A beautiful new future level that let's you drive a Hoverbike!
- A total of 5 brand new solo maps, giving you a total of 42 intriguing single player levels
- Lots of updated maps with new areas, new tasks, new features, and new secrets
- New powerups, such as apples, bananas, health kits, emergency kits, and finally a use for all those magic scrolls!
- And much, much, more...

NOTE: The Aleph One engine is old technology improved. Architecture is still simulated 3D, so there are no ramps, bridges, and balconies, nor horizontal doors. The sprites in EMR are made up of 2D images posed in different views, not 3D models. Although you will not find the latest state-of-the-art graphics engine, you will find an intriguing storyline, creative map architectures, engaging graphics, original spellbinding music, and mood-setting effects. We have taken the engine to its limits!

EMR is created by the Marathon Map Makers Guild and published by ExcaliburWorld Software. It is available now for Mac OS X PPC and Mac OS X Intel, and is also now available for Linux and other Unix-like platforms. The Windows version should be available within a week.

EMR home page:
http://excaliburworld.com/emr/

EMR download page:
http://www.excaliburworld.com/emr/emr3/main/instru ctions/download.html

In-game screenshots:
http://www.excaliburworld.com/emr/emr3/main/screen shots.html"

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