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Security

How To Catch a Laptop Thief? 485

Posted by samzenpus from the dirty-rat dept.
First time accepted submitter otaku244 writes "I spent a day in Vancouver this week while working in Seattle. While I enjoyed the area, some Vancouver citizen decided to enjoy my Macbook Pro. Unfortunately, I didn't discover this until I was already back at my Seattle hotel. Needless to say, I am quite miffed at the whole experience. Fortunately, I have LogMeIn installed on that machine. I provided the IP address to the VPD, but they say that laws don't allow warrants solely on the physical address tied to an IP. It sounds like the silver bullet is to take a picture of the person using the laptop. The question becomes, how do I convince the guy to run a script that will take a picture of him and smtp it to me? I promise to post pics of the guy if this gets pulled off successfully!"
Security

New Alureon Rootkit Takes Malware To New Level 135

Posted by CmdrTaco from the boot-the-root dept.
Trailrunner7 writes "A new version of the venerable Alureon malware has appeared, and this one includes some odd behavior designed to prevent analysis and detection by antimalware systems. However, this isn't the typical evasion algorithm, as it uses some unusual encryption and decryption routines to make life much more difficult for analysts and users whose machines have been infected. Alureon is a well-known and oft-researched malware family that has some rootkit-like capabilities in some of its variations. The newest version of the malware exhibits some behavior that researchers haven't seen before and which make it more problematic for antimalware software to detect it and for experts to break down its components."

Comment Re:Drank one before I proposed to my wife (Score 1) 500

by ThatGuyJon (#34146362) Attached to: I drink too much...

much like the "I, Robot" adaption with Will Smith

Funny, I never knew there was an "I, Robot" adaption. I mean, I saw a film with Will Smith in it which had the same name as I Robot, but that film was nothing like Asimov's collection of short stories. In fact, if I remember correctly, Asimov voiced his distaste for hollywood-style movies where robots kill people in the preface to his book.

Comment Re:Legal troubles? (Score 5, Informative) 121

by ThatGuyJon (#34133840) Attached to: CDN Optimizing HTML On the Fly

https://code.google.com/speed/page-speed/docs/rules_intro.html

I think this link answers all your questions.
After a quick first glance, it seems like it isn't doing anything that a good web designer shouldn't have already have done. Then again, the percentage of well-designed pages out there mean this could still provide a speedup...
NES (Games)

Nintendo Entertainment System Turns 25 164

Posted by Soulskill from the mine-still-works dept.
harrymcc writes "On October 18th 1985, Nintendo launched its NES console in the US, reviving a near-dead video game industry and establishing Nintendo as a leader in home consoles. We've celebrated with a roundup of some of the stranger spinoffs that the NES has inspired over the last quarter century, from odd controllers to a lock parents could use to disable the console to do-it-yourself projects like an NES built into a Super Mario cartridge."
The Internet

Bittorrent To Replace Standard Downloads? 591

Posted by samzenpus from the sharing-the-load dept.
Max Sayre writes "Have you ever tried to download an operating system update only to have it fail and have to start all over? What about patches for your favorite games? World of Warcraft already uses Bittorrent technology as a way to distribute large amounts of content at a lower cost to the company and faster speeds to all of their clients. So why haven't they replaced the standard downloading options built into any major OS? Companies like Opera are including the downloading of torrents in their products already and extensions have been written for Firefox to download torrents in-browser. Every day Bittorrent traffic is growing. Sites like OpenBittorrent already exist and DHT doesn't even require a tracker. So why isn't everyone doing it? Is it finally time to see all downloads replaced with Bittorrent?"

Comment Re:Nintendo is destroying Sony? (Score 5, Interesting) 273

by ThatGuyJon (#32600342) Attached to: Nintendo 3DS Early Impressions

I did read through Malstrom's explanation of Nintendo's "Disruption" strategy, and found it quite eye-opening.
However, I'm afraid I'll have to disagree with you on the hardcore's reaction to NSMBW. Although you may have described the reaction of a portion of the hardcore, all the "hardcore" gamers who I know actually enjoyed NSMBW a lot, praising the way Nintendo wasn't afraid to put in difficult levels, and the way that the multiplayer "co-op" could be easily played competitively, with all the players trying to throw each other off ledges/push them into lava/jump off each others heads. The hardcore is not opposed to 2D gameplay - see the success of Street Fighter IV compared to other 3D fighting games.
This is part of Nintendo's genius -- NSMBW caters to a wide slice of the market.

Comment Who is this for? (Score 0, Troll) 288

by ThatGuyJon (#32305350) Attached to: Google Offers Encrypted Web Search Option

Although I concede that this is a good thing, I can't help but question who this feature is for. Surely all the privacy-concious people who want SSL search have already moved to other search engines (given google's questionable record on privacy issues)? SSL will only protect against man-in-the-middle attacks; if anything, it's meaningless privacy theatre.
Transportation

Inventor Demonstrates Infinitely Variable Transmission 609

Posted by Soulskill from the clutch-discovery dept.
ElectricSteve writes with this excerpt from Gizmag: "Ready for a bit of a mental mechanical challenge? Try your hand at understanding how the D-Drive works. Steve Durnin's ingenious new gearbox design is infinitely variable — that is, with your motor running at a constant speed, the D-Drive transmission can smoothly transition from top gear all the way through neutral and into reverse. It doesn't need a clutch, it doesn't use any friction drive components, and the power is always transmitted through strong, reliable gear teeth. In fact, it's a potential revolution in transmission technology."
Hardware

Submission + - The Holy Grail Of Infinitely Variable Transmission (gizmag.com)

Submitted by ElectricSteve
ElectricSteve writes: Ready for a bit of a mental mechanical challenge? Try your hand at understanding how the D-Drive works. Steve Durnin's ingenious new gearbox design is infinitely variable — that is, with your motor running at a constant speed, the D-Drive transmission can smoothly transition from top gear all the way through neutral and into reverse. It doesn't need a clutch, it doesn't use any friction drive components, and the power is always transmitted through strong, reliable gear teeth. In fact, it's a potential revolution in transmission technology — it could be pretty much the holy grail of gearboxes... if only it wasn't so diabolically hard to explain.
Idle

The Neo-Geo Song 70

Posted by samzenpus from the old-school dept.
At least 50% of my paychecks would be converted into tokens and put into one of many Neo-Geo machines at the arcade when I was in high school. It's good that my favorite old games finally have an anthem.

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