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Operating Systems

Submission + - Which OS did you teach/raise your children on?

Submitted by
crypticalias
crypticalias writes: "I have a daughter who is almost two, she loves using my computer (to the extent she can) whenever she gets a chance. I would like to build her a machine of her own and was thinking about which OS to install on it. Windows would obviously be easier to learn but I think learning some *NIX based system would be much better. Have any of you parents out there done any testing of this type of situation? Which OS did you choose and how easily were your children able to pick it up?"
HP

Submission + - H.P.'s statuatory damages funding anti-piracy? WTF

Submitted by bhance
bhance writes: Will Slashdot please post something regarding this weird twist in the H.P. pretexting case? According to the New York Times — the vast bulk of H.P.'s statuatory damages will not be spent to help consumers maintain their privacy, or even to compensate those whose privacy was violated — but instead to help fight movie and music piracy?

"... The fund is to finance the investigation of consumer privacy violations and of intellectual-property theft, including the copying of movies and music ..." (emphasis mine)

Why is this money not being spent to, say, combat consumer identity theft? Or to dissuade other companies from invading the privacy rights of individuals? Or defend the legions of innocents from frivolous lawsuits from litigation-happy IP rights organizations?
Security

Submission + - Why can't registrars filter out blatant phishers?

Submitted by
netbuzz
netbuzz writes: "(Note to Slashdot editors: There are now three followup posts to the orignal submission, which I see is still pending. Thought you might want to consider the package in total. Thanks.)

Can't registrars just say no to blatant phishers?

Security expert Mikko Hypponen asks an interesting question: Why can't domain name registrars simply refuse to accept the business of individuals who are trying to register names that would only be used for phishing? Example: directNIC's granting to a "Craig Smith" the obviously phishy "signin-ebay-c.com."

http://www.networkworld.com/community/?q=node/9540

Head of the Anti-Phishing Working Group says ICANN policies are responsible for enabling much of the abuse, and hence the issue is "complex."

http://www.networkworld.com/community/?q=node/9565

DirectNIC's CEO defends his company's anti-fraud practices, acknowledges the system isn't perfect, and suggests a measure that might help make it better.

http://www.networkworld.com/community/?q=node/9573

Finally, directNIC's CEO accuses Network World of throwing stones while working in a glass office building because he registered on the magazine's site using the same telltale sign — eBay — that got his company dinged in the press. Editor explains the difference."
Security

Submission + - Do-it-yourself Service Pack

Submitted by
juct
juct writes: "Christmas time means visiting family — and quite often spending hours to fix your dad's or auntie's computer. Save time with Offline Update, that builds a CD containing all Microsoft updates and an installation script to get those windows systems up to date without internet connection."
Classic Games (Games)

Submission + - Deep Fritz Beats Chess World Champion

Submitted by The Saint (ST)
The Saint (ST) writes: Computer chess program Deep Fritz (http://www.chessbase.com) scored a clear victory (4-2) against the chess World Champion V.Kramnik in a match of six games that finished on Dec.5, 2006. This victory is considered more profound than the one of Deep Blue against Kasparov in 1997, because Deep Fritz is actually a commercial product (although running on a very fast computer). More about the duel here: http://www.kramnik.com/default.aspx and here: http://www.chessbase.com/eventlist.asp?eventname=K ramnik%20vs%20Deep%20Fritz

Feed New Rubber Lets Sweat Out (wired.com)

From feed by wiredfeed
Scientists develop a light, breathable material for hazmat suits that keeps toxins out while letting water vapor escape. This could be the new Gore-Tex. By Cyrus Farivar.


Feed Backstage With a Text Actress (wired.com)

From feed by wiredfeed
Horny housewives want to meet you now? Maybe not, but they do enjoy flexible hours and the ability to work from home -- even if the pay is crap. Commentary by Regina Lynn.


Hardware Hacking

Submission + - Locating a server in your home

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: It's going to be 41 degrees C here tomorrow. At the moment my server (with 5 hard disks) is located temporarily in a room on it's own, mostly because no one wants to be in the same room as all those fans and disk motors. This is not a wise allocation of limited house space :-} (Yes — you guessed it — I am single) Q: Where do folks locate their servers in suburban homes? Q: Whats your best tricks and tips for making that server more house friendly? I am thinking about security, heat, noise, space, access...I guess in cooler climates any cupboard will do....
Announcements

Submission + - Free Multilingual guide VoIP in developing regions

Submitted by
Alberto Escudero
Alberto Escudero writes: "The "VoIP-4D Primer" is a free guide available in four major languages (english, french, arabic and spanish) under Creative Commons. The booklet is an effort to disseminate the use of telephony over the Internet in developing regions.

The 40-page guide targets both technical and non-technical readers. The first part presents the essentials of telephony over the Internet. For those interested in the more technical details, hands-on guidelines and configuration files are included in the second part. The examples provide essential background to build your own low-cost telephony system.

More info, media coverage and free PDF downloads are available here: http://voip4d.it46.se/"
Networking

Submission + - DNS All Over the Place

Submitted by
Juha Holkkola
Juha Holkkola writes: "On November 15, SANS published 2006 annual update of the Top-20 Internet Security Attack Targets (www.sans.org/top20/). Each year, some of the most security conscious organizations all over the world help SANS in compiling this list based on severe vulnerabilities that have been discovered during the last 12 months or so. If any network service or product that has made this list has been more or less safe for more than 12 months, it gets dropped out. What strikes me the most with SANS's Top-20 is that DNS and BIND have made the list every single year since SANS started publishing it in 2000. That's every year for seven years now. And so, one would imagine that the networking community would finally like to do something to address the associated security problems, DNS being one of the most critical TCP/IP services and all. As some information security experts have recently pointed out, network administrators often shun away from interfering DNS as that could potentially have dire implications on functioning networks. I guess what they mean by this is that as DNS is one of the few applications that dates back to the pre-firewall-era of Internet, managing and securing DNS is like having a pet dinosaur. It's really not that cute and you'd really prefer not to touch it at all. Pet talk aside, perhaps the time has come to take the bull by the horns? While DNS and plain BIND may be somewhat cumbersome to secure and to manage, there are also more advanced options out there that make protecting and managing DNS servers a walk in the park."
It's funny. Laugh.

Submission + - Wozniak's secret history of Apple

Submitted by
destinyland
destinyland writes: "Steve Wozniak shares his life story, debunking the started-in-my-garage myth and remembering his idolization of phone phreaker Captain Crunch. His father couldn't discuss his top secret work on the Polaris missile, but he taught him to love and understand technology, and today the passion gives him "a kind of innocence there you don't see often among billionaires." And while telling the stories to his biographer, he also kept playing practical jokes on her."
Linux Business

Submission + - Malaysian Open Source Procurement Policy Reversed

Submitted by
Ditesh
Ditesh writes: "The Malaysian Open Source Masterplan, which favoured open source over proprietary public sector procurements when all other evaluations are equal, has been reversed to a purely "neutral technology platform" policy due to "negative reaction towards open source (from the IT market)". This comes after months of hard lobbying by Microsoft Malaysia. This reversal is certainly unfortunate, as the policy has helped raise comfort levels of other policy makers worldwide in pursuing similar goals. The Malaysian Open Source Alliance has published a position statement asking for clarification of the term "neutrality", and has received support from MNC's, local companies and free software developers in Malaysia."
HP

Submission + - HP Agrees to Pay 14.5 Million to Settle Civil Suit

Submitted by
elzurawka
elzurawka writes: "HP has agreed to pay 14.5 Million dollars to settle a civil suit brought on them by California Attorney General. This stiff fine goes to show that need to watch out how they conduct business. HP may have saved themselves a world of hurt by cooperating instead of trying to cover this us. FTA:
"Hewlett-Packard (HP) has agreed to pay $14.5m (£7.4m) to settle a civil lawsuit over its much-criticised investigation into a boardroom leak. The probe by the Californian attorney general came after allegations that HP had wrongly spied on its directors to try and find the source of the leak....The investigators were said to have illegally gained phone records by pretending to be the people they were spying on, a practice known as 'pretexting'. HP's chief executive Mark Hurd has already admitted that the methods the investigators used to try and identify who was behind the boardroom leaks were 'very disturbing'.""

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