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Submission + - Firefox forbidden by the public services of Wallon 4

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The public services of Wallonia (one of the three Belgium regions) now forbid the use of Mozilla Firefox on corporate computers. They argue Mozilla Firefox contains "a" security vulnerability (despite the 3.5.3 version seems not to have one) and make the use of the old and freaky Internet Explorer 6 mandatory.

TwIP - An IP Stack In a Tweet 81

Posted by timothy from the small-is-good dept.
Adam Dunkels writes "Inspired by the Twitter-sized program that crashes Mac OS X, I just wrote a really, really rudimentary IP stack called twIP, small enough to fit in a Twitter tweet. Although twIP is very far away from a real IP stack, it can do the first task of any IP stack: respond to pings. The entire source code can be found in this 128-character-long tweet. For those who are interested in low-level network programming, a code walkthrough with instructions on how to run the code under FreeBSD is available here. The FAQ: Q: why? A: for fun."
The Courts

RIAA Exec Moves Over To Gaming Industry 66

Posted by timothy from the shake-your-moneymaker dept.
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The same RIAA executive who defended a $222,000 verdict over 24 song files at an academic conference back in March, Kenneth Doroshow, is leaving the RIAA and joining the Entertainment Software Association ('ESA'). As I said on my blog, if Mr. Doroshow 'accomplishes for game manufacturers what he accomplished for the recording industry, I would say the industry's prospects are bleak.'"
Security

Submission + - Mac, BSD prone to decade old attacks 7

Submitted by BSDer
BSDer writes: An Israeli security researcher published a paper few hours ago, detailing attacks against Mac, OpenBSD and other BSD-style operating systems. The attacks, says Amit Klein from Trusteer enable DNS cache poisoning, IP level traffic analysis, host detection, O/S fingerprinting and in some cases even TCP blind data injection. The irony is that OpenBSD boasted their protection mechanism against those exact attacks when a similar attack against the BIND DNS server was disclosed by the same researcher mid 2007. It seems now that OpenBSD may need to revisit their code and their statements. According to the researcher, another affected party, Apple, refused to commit to any fix timelines. It would be interesting to see their reaction now that this paper is public.
Windows

Submission + - A Speedier, More Secure Vista with SP1 (pcmag.com)

Submitted by
CorinneI
CorinneI writes: "Ever since Microsoft released Vista — nearly nine months ago — and people have been tallying up problems like security holes and sluggish operations, we've all been awaiting for Service Pack 1. Now that it's here, albeit in beta form, here's a thorough walk-through that lays out what's improved, from enhanced security to improved media features. The verdict: you need Vista SP1 — no doubt about it."
PlayStation (Games)

Submission + - 40GB PS3 will NOT be backwards compatible! (computerandvideogames.com) 2

Submitted by
gevmage
gevmage writes: "An article on computerandvideogames.com says that the 40GB version of the PlayStation 3 console, which will supplant the 60GB version (at least in Europe) will not be backwards compatible. From the article: 'In a new eye-opener from Sony the company's revealed that it's to drop backwards-compatibility support in PlayStation products.'

Personally, I think that Sony's generally good attitudes about backwards compatibility has been one reason that I own a PlayStation 2. If they dump that completely, then I may go Wii shopping."
Businesses

iPhone Business Model Hits a Snag in France 332

Posted by Zonk from the open-is-as-open-does dept.
Serhei writes "It seems like the iPhone might not be released in France by this holiday season, since French requires by law that all cell phones sold there must be obtainable in an unlocked version. Apple will not be able to do so, since it has launched with a 5-year exclusivity agreement with AT&T. That deal will probably require exclusivity worldwide to avoid grey-market imports. (In return for this agreement Apple receives a large share of AT&T's monthly revenues from iPhone subscribers.) If the iPhone falls through in France, the country can join Belgium and a potentially long list of other countries with unlocking laws, whose Apple fans will have to make do with other, less Apple-y phones. Note that there is currently no mention of the iPhone on the Apple France page."
Microsoft

Submission + - Windows Vista "Non" Downgrade Clause

Submitted by Pissed Off
Pissed Off writes: Alright, so I bought a brand new DELL computer and opted for Windows Vista Ultimate. Figuring that Vista Business and Ultimate both come with downgrade rights I figure that I should not have a problem. None the less, the computer arrived and it got unpacked. So I started doing some tweaking and tuning and then timed the start up only to discover that my old computer running Windows XP blew my Windows Vista rig out of the water!

The old computer specs: Pentium M 1.4GHz / 60GB 7200RPM / 1GB RAM
The new computer specs: Core 2 Duo 2GHz / 100GB 7200RPM / 2GB RAM

So I did what any sane person would do and turfed Windows Vista and started installing Windows XP. In order to attain my downgrade rights I called Dell and asked them about this and they told me to call a 1-800 number or the Microsoft Volume Licensing department where they pretty much told me that since I have an OEM copy of Vista that my reseller (Dell) should assist me. Since then I have been back and forth with Dell and Microsoft and have not reached a solution.

After digging around I found a couple web sites describing the whole downgrade process. Some going as far as suggesting that I call and explain to the Windows Activation team my issue and that they should take care of it and activate my computer. So, I just got off the phone and sure enough they told me that the CD Key that i used (legitimate) has already been activated on another computer and that it is licensed for only one system.

This issue is still pending a resolution and neither Dell nor Microsoft seem to be much help! Has any one else out there gone through this with success or lack there of??? I have not yet tried to downgrade my Windows Vista Ultimate retail box... I wonder what Microsoft's excuse will be then >:|

My beef is that no where in the End User License Agreement does it say that I have to:

a) provide my own media (Volume License, Retail, OEM System Builder)
b) provide my own cd key (and not an OEM key)

Had I known that I would not have bothered with Vista and gotten my notebook with Windows XP right out of the gate.

Now I'm faced with the costs of returning my laptop at my cost and then having to wait another 2-3 weeks in order to get the replacement.
Graphics

AMD Promises Open Source Graphics Drivers 264

Posted by Zonk from the feel-the-love-linux-gamers dept.
MoxFulder writes "Henri Richard, AMD's VP of sales, has promised to deliver open-source drivers for ATI graphics cards (recently acquired by AMD) at the recent Red Hat Summit. A series of good news for proponents of open-source device drivers. In the last year, Intel, the leading provider of integrated graphics cards, has opened their drivers as well. But ATI and NVidia, the only two players in the market for high-performance discrete graphics cards, have so far released only closed-source drivers for their cards. This has created numerous compatibility, stability, and ethical problems for users of Linux and other open source OSes, and prompted projects like Nouveau to try and reverse-engineer NVidia drivers. Hopefully AMD's decision will put pressure on NVidia to release open-source drivers as well!"
Programming

Submission + - AMD will deliver open graphics drivers

Submitted by
derrida
derrida writes: "After Intel's announcement, AMD also announced that they will soon deliver open graphics drivers, as Henri Richard said, at the opening keynote of the Red Hat Summit. Richard, AMD's executive vice president of sales and marketing, promised: "I'm here to commit to you that it's going to get done." He also promised that AMD is "going to be very proactive in changing way we interface with the Linux community.""
Operating Systems

Submission + - Are .tmp files necessary or just bad programming?

Submitted by planckscale
planckscale writes: After spending another hour deleting .tmp files from a bloated XP machine I started to wonder, is the .tmp file necessary when coding an application on the MS platform? Why do so many apps produce .tmp files and is it just because of bad coding or does the use of them dramatically speed up an app? Don't coders use dev/null to reduce them in linux? I can understand the use of them in case an app crashes for recovery purposes, but why don't more apps have the capacity to delete their own .tmp files once they are done with them? Is it too much to ask to at least have the option when closing an app to delete your temp files?
Microsoft

Submission + - MRT Issues Cease and Desist to MS, Apple, Adobe

Submitted by
St0nY
St0nY writes: "Media Rights Technologies (MRT) and BlueBeat.com have issued cease and desist letters to Microsoft, Adobe, Real Networks and Apple with respect to the production or sale of such products as the Vista OS, Adobe Flash Player, Real Player, Apple iTunes and iPod. MRT asserts Apple, Microsoft, Real and Adobe have produced billions of these products without regard for the DMCA or the rights of American Intellectual Property owners, actively avoiding the use of MRT's technologies. Failure to comply with this demand could result in a federal court injunction to any of the above named parties to cease production or sale of their products and/or the imposition of statutory damages of at least $200 to $2500 for each product distributed or sold. "Together these four companies are responsible for 98 percent of the media players in the marketplace; CNN, NPR, Clear Channel, MySpace Yahoo and YouTube all use these infringing devices to distribute copyrighted works," states MRT CEO Hank Risan. "We will hold the responsible parties accountable. The time of suing John Doe is over.""

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