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HP

Submission + - Recent HP Laptops shipped CPU-Choking WiFi Driver (superuser.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Computer manufacturers have recently come under fire for the continued practice of shipping machines with excessive bloatware. Software preinstalled on some recent HP laptops was worse than normal though, consuming anywhere from 25-99% CPU by making incessant WMI queries, resulting in overheating laptops and reduced battery life. Users on a computer Q&A site did some sleuthing, and revealed that HP Wireless Assistant — software which does nothing but tell the user when their WiFi adapter is turned on or off — was causing the problem. According to an HP support forum, the problem is fixed in later versions, but thousands of laptops have the software installed, and the software does not get updated automatically.

Comment Re:Stupid prosecution (Score 1) 496

by etymologik (#34691288) Attached to: Is Reading Spouse's E-Mail a Crime?

he successfully used a computer, which makes him a nerd. The prosecutor is a chick, and chicks hate nerds.

You assume there are no nerdly chicks. You are wrong. Some women ARE nerds and LOVE nerds.

That said, I agree something is out of kilter with this prosecution. And it could be racial. A black guy who can use a computer? Gasp! He must be an evil dangerous SOB! Plus, the prosecuting attorney is getting great publicity out of the deal.
Space

Collision of Two Asteroids Spotted For the First Time 31

Posted by timothy from the delicious-space-dust dept.
sciencehabit writes "Astronomers report that a small asteroid located in the inner asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter took a major hit early last year. Previously rendered only in artists' conceptions, the first asteroid collision known in modern times revealed itself in a tail of debris streaming from what astronomers at first assumed was a comet. Instead of a steady stream of dust, however, they found boulders near the object with dust moving away from them."
Apple

Submission + - Apple Pays Couple $1.7m for 1 Acre Plot (itworld.com) 1

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes: Chris Nerney is blogging about Apple's $1.7 million purchase of a 1-acre lot in Maiden, N.C. where it plans to build a $1 billion, 500,000 sq. ft. data center. The couple who owned the land, and the home that sat on the land, Donnie and Kathy Fulbright (hereafter known as Apple's shrewdest investors) reportedly 'rejected two previous offers from Apple before being told to name their price,' says Nerney.
Advertising

DMCA Takedown Notice Leveled Against Ohio Congressional Race Ad 130

Posted by timothy from the jeff-gannon-is-my-stage-name dept.
Ponca City, We Love You writes "EFF reports that after Ohio Congressman John Kasich put out a commercial featuring a man dressed as a steelworker discussing Governor Ted Strickland's record, Strickland's campaign folks apparently realized that the 'steelworker' was really a paid actor, and put together their own video, mixing in clips of some of the actor's other work to make fun of Kasich. Now the DMCA has been used to send a takedown demand to YouTube that it remove Stricrkland's video for at least 10 days because it uses short clips from the actor's movies." The video has since been restored, some of the reasons for which are listed below.
Censorship

China Blanks Nobel Peace Prize Searches 326

Posted by Soulskill from the par-for-the-course dept.
1 a bee writes "CNN is reporting that China is attempting to block all communication regarding Peace prize winner Liu Xiaobo. Even texting is affected: 'Text-messaging on mobile phones is not immune from censors, either. A Shanghai-based netizen, @littley, tweeted his unfortunate experience: "My SIM card just got de-activated, turning my iPhone to an iPod touch after I texted my dad about Liu Xiaobo winning the Nobel Peace Prize."' Might as well add Slashdot to the censored list." Further coverage is available from NBC.
The Military

Mystery of the Dying Bees Solved 347

Posted by Soulskill from the flower-counterattack-theories-disproved dept.
jamie points out news of a study attempting to explain the decline of honeybee populations across the US. As it turns out, the fungus N. ceranae that was thought to be killing off bee colonies had a partner in crime — a DNA-based virus that worked in tandem with N. ceranae to compromise nutrition uptake. From the NY Times: "Dr. Bromenshenk's team at the University of Montana and Montana State University in Bozeman, working with the Army's Edgewood Chemical Biological Center northeast of Baltimore, said in their jointly written paper that the virus-fungus one-two punch was found in every killed colony the group studied. Neither agent alone seems able to devastate; together, the research suggests, they are 100 percent fatal. 'It's chicken and egg in a sense — we don't know which came first,' Dr. Bromenshenk said of the virus-fungus combo — nor is it clear, he added, whether one malady weakens the bees enough to be finished off by the second, or whether they somehow compound the other's destructive power. 'They're co-factors, that's all we can say at the moment,' he said. 'They're both present in all these collapsed colonies.'"
Privacy

New Tool Suite Helps Track Privacy Policies 25

Posted by Soulskill from the watching-the-watchers dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Forbes reports that The Internet Society announced this week the availability of the Identity Management Policy Audit System, a suite of tools designed to give Internet users a clearer understanding of the online usage policies of the websites they visit. Born out of a collaboration between The Internet Society, the University of Colorado, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and the Center for Democracy and Technology, the system consists of a free, open-source Firefox plug-in that checks a library of scraped terms of service and privacy policies from several popular websites. If a site changes the fine print of one of its policies, the plug-in notifies the user when they visit the website next. According to Forbes, 'that functionality would help users spot controversial switcheroos in sites' legalese, such as Facebook's change last year that suddenly gave the site the right to use your photos and other content.'"
Government

College Student Finds GPS On Car, FBI Retrieves It 851

Posted by Soulskill from the everybody-gets-one-in-the-tailpipe dept.
mngdih writes with this excerpt from Wired: "A California student got a visit from the FBI this week after he found a secret GPS tracking device on his car, and a friend posted photos of it online. The post prompted wide speculation about whether the device was real, whether the young Arab-American was being targeted in a terrorism investigation and what the authorities would do. It took just 48 hours to find out: The device was real, the student was being secretly tracked and the FBI wanted their expensive device back ... His discovery comes in the wake of a recent ruling by the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals saying it's legal for law enforcement to secretly place a tracking device on a suspect's car without getting a warrant, even if the car is parked in a private driveway. ... 'We have all the information we needed,' they told him. 'You don't need to call your lawyer. Don't worry, you're boring.'"
Privacy

New Class of Malware Will Steal Behavior Patterns 73

Posted by Soulskill from the your-mojo-is-next dept.
KentuckyFC writes "The information within huge, supposedly anonymized data sets can be used to build a detailed picture of an individual's lifestyle and relationships. This data is hugely valuable, which is why many companies already mine the pattern of links in their data to help them build things like recommender systems. Now a group of computer scientists say it is inevitable that a new class of malware will emerge for stealing this behavioral pattern data from social networks. They've analyzed the types of strategies this malware will use to collect information from a real mobile phone database of 800,000 links between 200,000 phones. They point out that the theft of behavioral data can be much more serious than the theft of other personal information. If somebody steals your credit card or computer password, for example, you can just get another card or change your password, thereby limiting the damage. That can't be done with behavioral data, they say. Who would be willing or able to change their real world pattern of person-to-person relationships, friendships and family ties?"
Businesses

Countering a DMCA Takedown In the Magnet Wars 475

Posted by kdawson from the not-attractive dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Zen Magnets, a maker of neodymium magnet toys, has been under assault by the much larger and better distributed Buckyballs, maker of a nearly identical toy. After Zen Magnets listed a couple of eBay auctions with a set of Buckyballs and a set of their own, asking customers to decide which was of higher quality, Buckyballs replied with a legal threat. Zen Magnets countered with an open video response, in which they presented the voicemail from Buckyballs and demonstrated their claims of quality through repeatable, factual tests, providing quantitative data to back up their assertions. Soon after, Buckyballs CEO Jake Bronstein got the video taken down from YouTube via a DMCA takedown, despite the fact that the only elements not made by Zen Magnets are the voicemail he left and some images of himself, which are low-resolution and publicly available online. Zen Magnets has decided to file a counter-takedown notice — not effective yet apparently, since the video is still marked as taken down." Slashdot's sister company ThinkGeek sells Buckyballs. No, we don't get kickbacks, but we totally should.
Update: 09/23 13:23 GMT by KD : Reader Coopjust (872796) points out one place where the disputed video has been mirrored.

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A method of solution is perfect if we can forsee from the start, and even prove, that following that method we shall attain our aim. -- Leibnitz

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