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Comment Re:Spare me the hyperbole (Score 1) 369

by JonTurner (#26294355) Attached to: Security Checkpoints Predict What You Will Do

Then I would suggest this hypothetical person is too emotionally fragile and delicate to live! If the psychological "trauma" of being asked some questions about where you're going, what you've packed, how long you plan to stay, chit-chat about the destination, the weather, etc. leave, as you say, "mental scars" then that person is an emotional basket case already and probably unfit to travel anywhere, by any means.

Your comment is exactly what I meant when I said hyperbole. Emotional scars? Puh-leeze. Your silly hypothetical trivializes those who have endured real trauma.

It can be deeply unpleasant, and for some people it can leave mental scars that take a very long time to heal.
Television

Octopuses Have No Personalities and Enjoy HDTV 482

Posted by kdawson from the or-was-that-redundant dept.
Whiteox writes about an Australian researcher named Renata Pronk, who has discovered that octopuses prefer HDTV. She recruited 32 gloomy octopuses from the waters of Chowder Bay. Previously, researchers have reported little success when showing video to octopuses. Miss Pronk's insight was that the octopus eye is so refined that it might see standard PAL video, at 25 fps, as a series of stills. She tried HDTV (50 fps) and her subjects reacted to the videos of a crab, another octopus, or a swinging bottle on the end of a string. A further discovery is that octopuses show no trait of individual personalities, even though they exhibit a high level of intelligence. It would certainly be possible to quibble about the definition of "personality" employed, and whether Miss Pronk had successfully measured it.

Comment operate the ***ANTENNA*** (Score 1) 160

by JonTurner (#26180085) Attached to: Student Invention May Significantly Extend Mobile Device Battery Life

If the circuite powering the antenna was the greatest consumer of power in the device, this would result in a significant improvement to the end-user. However, it's all the other bits in the device which eat thousands of times more power -- the CPU, the display, the speakers, etc.

Interesting discovery, but the real-world savings will be few.
The Almighty Buck

GoDaddy VP Caught Bidding Against Customers 222

Posted by timothy from the strong-accusations-so-consider-the-source dept.
An anonymous reader writes "A GoDaddy Vice President has been caught bidding against customers in their own domain name auctions. The employee Adam Dicker isn't just any GoDaddy employee; he's head of the GoDaddy subsidiary that controls the auctions. Dicker won some of the domains he bid for, and pushed up the bid price on auctions he didn't win. The conflict of interest is unethical, but could this practice also be illegal? Said a representative for a competitor, 'Even if controlled, that practice has bad news written all over it.' This comes hot on the heels of news that despite earlier promises to ICANN to end their 60-Day ban on transfers, GoDaddy quietly circumvented it by forcing customers to agree to the ban anyway. ICANN doesn't appear to be investigating or asking follow-up questions about this. What can be done to force ICANN to police the registrars for which it is responsible?"
Music

Submission + - Apple cracks down on the Hymn Project (hymn-project.org) 2

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Ever since the initial launch of the iTunes Music Store, an intrepid group of programmers over at the Hymn Project have engaged in a marvelous cat-and-mouse game with Apple. Now they're finally being hobbled by Apple's lawyers.

The purpose of the project has always been to provide software that can be used to losslessly remove Digital Rights Management (DRM) protection from music purchased through iTunes, so that the buyer may exercise their right of fair use and play the music on non-Apple devices (Hear Your Music aNywhere).

The software has gone through many incarnations. The original hymn has been succeeded by JHymn, QTFairUse6, MyFairTunes, and others. Regardless of the program, the emphasis has always been squarely on fair use — not piracy. Any discussions of piracy have been strongly and actively discouraged on the site's forums.

For years now, Apple has been content to mostly ignore the Hymn Project. At worst, they would introduce subtle changes to new versions of iTunes that would break the Hymn software. Nobody really knows if this was done intentionally, but it was usually just a matter of time before a new solution was found. This seemed like a reasonable approach for Apple to take. After all, why should they care? The DRM was only in place to placate the record companies. Apple CEO Steve Jobs has even expressed his opinion that all music should be free of DRM.

Well, now things have changed. Recently, a new program called Requiem was announced that appears to be a complete crack of the iTunes DRM scheme. Previous programs had relied on various forms of trickery or memory hooks to access the unencrypted audio data — none had ever completely cracked the encryption algorithms.

Requiem seems to have been the last straw. Earlier this week, the ISP hosting the site received a Cease and Desist order from Apple Legal, demanding that all downloads be removed from the site, and that the site post no links to any programs that could remove DRM from Apple music or video. Reportedly, similar C & D orders were also sent to at least one of the project's developers, and to another ISP where Reqiuem had been hosted. Ironically, Requiem was never actually hosted on the Hymn site — merely mentioned and linked to in one of the forums. Nevertheless, the Hymn Project has now come into the crosshairs of Apple's lawyers and, lacking legal resources, has seen no choice but to comply with the order.
Portables (Apple)

Submission + - Ipod's success baffles Sony Japan (japanesecustomer.com)

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: Sony, large, powerful and technological wizards cant work out why apples ipod is so popular? Duh These quotes from a recent article here in Japan explain why Sony is baffled. "We researched the iPod and fixed what [we considered] was difficult to use about it," said Takashi Kinouchi, head of Sony's product planning department". "it is not easy to lure customers used to Apple's software over to Sony products". Source: Sony trying to bite into Apple's iPod market share, Shigeki Kurokawa / Yomiuri Shimbun Staff Writer, November 5, 2007. Daily Yomiuri
Programming

Submission + - Valve's Steam API uncovered (myg0t.com)

Submitted by
Anonymous User
Anonymous User writes: "Programmers from the internet harassment group known as "myg0t" have recently released a source code to the public exposing some sensitive "hidden material" in the Steam.exe and steam_api.dll, this hidden content includes Steam's billing interface, utility interface, client interface, user interface and many login exports from steam.

In the news post it states:
"This is a 100% complete Steam API hooking base written by [myg0t]s0beit. It will allow you access to several well hidden interfaces inside the Steam application and some games as well. Here is a short run-down of the basic interfaces it will allow you to completely hook:

ISteamFriends — the steam friends and community class
ISteamUser — user information on the steam client
ISteamClient — client information
ISteamBilling — steam billing information
ISteamUtils — misc steam utilities

It's important to mention that while this is 100% fully functioning, it is outdated as of the release of TF2; they use several new interfaces inside the game and have moved other interfaces into the Steam application itself or vice-versa. That said, the current updated base will not be released anytime soon if ever, if you can understand this release well enough then this should be a non-issue for you.

We must insist that you use this proof of concept code only for non-harmful, peaceful, education purposes only and that it not be discussed anywhere outside of our news forum. myg0t does not and has never condoned illegal activity of any kind or activities with otherwise malicious intent. This is a learning tool so please use it responsibly, as we have for the last year."

No doubt this is something Valve must take seriously, hopefully they will fix this soon."
Security

Submission + - German police arrest admin of Tor anonymity server (cnet.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: In a recent blog posting, a German operator of a Tor anonymous proxy server revealed that he was arrested by German police officers at the end of July. Showing up at his house at midnight on a Sunday night, police cuffed and arrested him in front of his wife and seized his equipment. In a display of both bitter irony and incompetence, the police did not take or shut-down the Tor server responsible for the traffic they were interested in, which was located in a data center, over 500km away. In the last year, Germany has passed a draconian new anti-security research law and raided seven different data centers to seize Tor servers. While back in 2003, A German court ordered the developers of a different anonymity network to build a back-door into their system. CNET's article has the full details.
Security

Submission + - 700MB of MediaDefender internal emails leaked (torrentfreak.com) 2

Submitted by qubezz
qubezz writes: The company MediaDefender which works with the RIAA and MPAA against piracy (setting up fake torrents and trackers and disrupting p2p) had earlier set up a fake internet video download site designed to catch and bust users. They denied the entrapment charges. Now 700MB of internal emails from the company from the last 6 months leaked onto BitTorrent trackers detail their entire plan, how they intended to distance themselves from the fake company they set up, future strategies, and reveal other company information such as logins and passwords, wage negotiations, and numerous other aspect of their internal business! torrentfreak.com details some of the jems!
Businesses

Submission + - AT&T to Block Content For RIAA/MPAA

Submitted by Nom du Keyboard
Nom du Keyboard writes: Several sources are reporting an agreement between AT&T and the RIAA/MPAA alliance to block copyrighted material on their network. And as has been pointed out, AT&T has a lot of network, meaning most packets traverse a piece of it at some point. Money quote: "As AT&T has begun selling pay-television services, the company has realized that its interests are more closely aligned with Hollywood." Nice to know that their interests aren't aligned with their paying customers any longer.
Privacy

Submission + - AT&T will spy on network users for RIAA and MP (zeropaid.com)

Submitted by
Jared
Jared writes: "It seems AT&T Inc is joining forces with the MPAA and RIAA to keep pirated content off its internet network, making it the first ISP to do so, and perhaps heralding a new age where providers begin to police the content shared on their networks."
Technology (Apple)

Submission + - Apple TV to be a centrally controlled P2P network?

Submitted by Rolgar
Rolgar writes: This week, Bob Cringely states that since the Apple TV will be an always on device (unless you unplug it) with a 40GB hard drive, Apple will distribute content to Apple TVs for every ISP, and then use centrally controlled P2P sharing on those Apple TVs to distribute the content to the rest of the owners of the Apple TV, cutting their own bandwidth costs and providing video faster to the consumers. The ISPs will incur higher (essentially free) bandwidth locally, possibly lose some subscribers to cable TV, but have fewer costs through the Tier II Internet backbone providers, which I suspect would possibly undercut the Apple and Google's need to worry about net neutrality for video. Bob also expects that Google will be involved with their fiber network and advertising expertise, and I suspect that they'll bundle in YouTube content as well and maybe Google has worked out a way to distribute YouTube video to PCs through this network. Bob suspects that they won't get around to announcing the full details of this plan until they hit a half million units or more, and that this Apple and Google pairing will become the equivalent of a cable TV provider with almost none of the infrastructure costs, and that eventually the real HD revolution will come from Apple and Google.

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