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Government

Submission + - Documentary About Swedish Wiretapping Released (wiretappingsweden.com)

Submitted by
Praedon
Praedon writes: "Recently covered here on slashdot, was about a law that was passed to engage in warrantless wiretapping called the FRA Law in Sweden. It has encouraged a group called Urban Lifestyle to release a documentary expressing the views of Swedish residents on the impact that the law will have on their rights to privacy. More information about the making of the documentary, the people involved in it, and their views on the law can be found on their blog."
Google

Submission + - Gmail backdoor vulnerability (theregister.co.uk)

Submitted by castrox
castrox writes: From the article on The Register:

The technique comes courtesy of Petko D. Petkov, a researcher at GNU Citizen, who writes in a blog post that the backdoor is installed simply by luring a victim to a specially crafted website while logged in to Gmail. The naughty site uses a slight of hand known as a multipart/form-data POST, which writes a filter to Gmail that causes all email with attachments to be forwarded to collect@evil.com.
Looks like a nasty "POST injection" from a malicious site you're visiting while logged into Gmail is all it takes to alter your Gmail settings. Apparently, Google is investigating and has no further comments at this time.
Operating Systems

Submission + - Dell considers bundling virtualization on mobos (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by
castrox
castrox writes: "Ars Technica is reporting on a rumor at The Register that Dell is considering bundling virtualization on some of their motherboards. No more dual boot or VMs inside the running OS? Quoting Ars Technica:

Any way you slice it, though, putting the hypervisor in a chunk of flash and letting it handle loading the OS is the way forward, especially for servers and probably even for enterprise desktops. Boot times, power consumption, security, and flexibility are all reasons to do this.
Though it looks like more than a rumor, considering the following quote from The Register:

Dell CTO Kevin Kettler today confirmed these plans during a speech here at LinuxWorld, saying the company expects to see major performance and power-saving improvements by dumping a hypervisor in flash.
"
Software

Submission + - Logging System Changes 1

Submitted by whiggy
whiggy writes: I am trying to find a suitable application to use for logging changes to the systems that I manually make, e.g., change an IP address on a server, reinstall an application, change config, etc. We have a helpdesk system, but I do not find the format suitable. Does anyone have any recommendations for an application suitable for this? Preferrably some changelog-type FOSS :-)
Thanks.
Software

Submission + - The Economics of Open Source

Submitted by
Alice White
Alice White writes: "Mayank Sharma has put together an article discussing the economics of open source and what the projects do with their donations.

"So why are donations important? Since it seems to bother so many people, I thought I'd ask someone in the know. Fabio Erculiani, lead-developer of the two-man development team that churns out the popular Gentoo-based Sabayon Linux lists some common expenses of running a FOSS project. "We have hosting bills," explains Erculiani who has passed on a job offer by Google to complete his studies,"backup systems such as NASs, RAID arrays (hard drives tend to break often here... I had two breakages in around 6 months)..."

Taken from http://www.packtpub.com/article/the-economics-of-o pen-source-donations"
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft fine overturned

Submitted by ddrichardson
ddrichardson writes: Following up on an earlier story, Microsoft's $1.5bn fine in the case with Alcatel-Lucent has been over turned. Microsoft are claiming a "victory for consumers". From the article:

A US court has overturned a decision ordering Microsoft to pay phone firm Alcatel-Lucent $1.52bn (£777m) for infringing music patents. The federal judge in San Diego reversed a jury's decision which had ruled that Microsoft's Media Player software infringed on two Alcatel patents.
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft patent infringement suit tossed (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by
castrox
castrox writes: "Ars Technica reports on the just tossed verdict on the claimed Microsofts patent infrigement concerning MP3 compression, filed by Alcatel-Lucent. Quoting Ars:

A judge has overturned a jury's $1.52 billion award in a patent infringement lawsuit brought by Alcatel-Lucent against Microsoft. Ruling that Microsoft had not violated one of the two patents in question after all, Judge Rudi Brewster threw out the verdict and indicated that the second patent was on shaky ground as well.
The future of software patents, it seems, will be dominated by people in courtrooms."

Submission + - Keeping track of all your systems

Submitted by FrodoTeeBagins
FrodoTeeBagins writes: Managing multiple servers, programs, and updates is something that IT professionals do everyday. Keeping track of all the servers, passwords, software versions, update history, and logs is becoming a chore that builds up and becomes more complex day by day. What program or method do you use to keep track of all your systems information?
Intel

Submission + - EU slaps Intel with formal antitrust charges (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by
castrox
castrox writes: "Quoting Ars Technica

Intel faces a long and costly legal battle in Europe after the European Commission formally lodged antitrust charges against the world's leading CPU manufacturer.

Seems Intel has been playing dirty. A suit filed by AMD last year includes Intel making at least one sell-only-Intel deal in Germany. Sort of interesting since this is what e.g. Microsoft does on a daily basis?"
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft to simplify downgrades from Vista to XP

Submitted by castrox
castrox writes: It seems Microsoft have taken a notice that users may want to run XP instead of Vista. The new deal is to simplify downgrading for the OEMs. Currently, all OEMs must call Microsoft whenever a downgrade is done. After this "simplification" OEMs may submit batches of keys to Microsoft which will save time.

According to the Microsoft blog on ZDNet, the "downgrade software" will still need to be supplied by the end user. The deal is rather perplexing — it does not seem like you can convert the license since the only eligible versions for downgrading is Ultimate and Business.

Effectively, it seems nothing has changed. More on the downgrade "rights" (warning: PDF) here.
Censorship

Submission + - RIAA going bust in Sweden

Submitted by mengu
mengu writes: It seems that a recent decision by Swedish court will make it more difficult for the **AA to find the persons behind the ip-addresses. From TFA "The court is confirming that file sharing is punishable by fines. This means that the police are not permitted to demand details of the addresses behind IP addresses and cannot carry out house searches," said Piratbyrån's Tobias Andersson. What it translates to is that since the crime will only render in fines and not prison time, Search-warrants cannot be issued. http://www.thelocal.se/7581/20070612/
United States

Submission + - DST has come in like a lion in the USA

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The SANS Internet Storm Center at http://www.isc.sans.org/ is keeping a running commentary of US Daylight Saving Time problems that people are reporting. DST in the USA starts three weeks earlier than it has for the past two decades. Reported problems include GPS units, cell phones, home "atomic" clocks, backup software, and electronic time clocks. It's going to be an interesting day at work on Monday...
Music

Submission + - Students busted on piracy charges

Submitted by taoman1
taoman1 writes: The music industry is asking 50 Ohio University students to pay $3,000 each to avoid lawsuits accusing them of pirating songs off the Internet. The Recording Industry Association of America asked the university to pass along letters to the students with Internet addresses accused of being involved with the illegal sharing of copyrighted music. The university notified the students on Monday. "The downloading has occurred and we can't change that, but we can let them know what their options are," OU spokeswoman Sally Linder said Wednesday.
Operating Systems

Submission + - Dell is taking Vista surveys...

Submitted by NIN1385
NIN1385 writes: I thought the readers might be interested to know that Dell is taking surveys on why people don't want Windows Vista. I called Dell earlier today because I was planning on purchasing a new Dell notebook and wanted to find out if I could get either Windows XP or no OS pre-installed on it, but the sales associate proceeded to inform me that the only way they were able to sell the new systems was with Windows Vista pre-installed on them. I then asked if I could get Linux pre-installed just for you know whats and giggles, but they told me they weren't offering that either. The next thing out of his mouth was: "I am being instructed to ask some brief questions about why users don't want Windows Vista, would you mind answering a few questions?". I of course agreed and told him how I have read numerous horror stories about installing the new version and how none of the devices on the market right now are currently supported. I also told him what I'm sure he already knew which was that it's never a good idea to buy any new operating system, Windows or otherwise, before at least a year after the initial release date. After a few minutes of listing problems off I eventually told the guy, who was actually very professional about the whole thing, that I would more than likely be looking at other notebook vendors. I will miss Dell's business, but if they improve I may go back.

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