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Music

$90 Asus Sound Card Whips Creative's Best 387

Posted by kdawson from the listen-up dept.
EconolineCrush writes "Sound card giant Creative caught plenty of flak for its recent driver debacle, and has long been criticized for bullying competitors and stifling innovation. But few have been willing to compete with Creative head-on, allowing the company to milk its X-Fi audio processor for more than two and a half years. Now the SoundBlaster has a new challenger in the form of Asus' $90 Xonar DX, which delivers much better sound quality than the X-Fi, PCI Express connectivity, and support for real-time Dolby Digital Live encoding. The Xonar can even emulate the latest EAX positional audio effects, providing the most complete competition to the X-Fi available on the market."
Security

CIA Claims Cyber Attackers Blacked Out Cities 280

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the say-g'night-dick dept.
Dotnaught writes to tell us InformationWeek is reporting that the CIA admitted today that recent power outages in multiple cities outside the United States are the result of cyberattacks. "We have information, from multiple regions outside the United States, of cyber intrusions into utilities, followed by extortion demands. We suspect, but cannot confirm, that some of these attackers had the benefit of inside knowledge. We have information that cyberattacks have been used to disrupt power equipment in several regions outside the United States. In at least one case, the disruption caused a power outage affecting multiple cities. We do not know who executed these attacks or why, but all involved intrusions through the Internet."
Education

Submission + - OLPC a hit in remote Peruvian village (chicagotribune.com)

Submitted by
mrcgran
mrcgran writes: "Chicago Tribune is running a story about the effects of OLPC on a remote village in Peru: "Doubts about whether poor, rural children really can benefit from quirky little computers evaporate as quickly as the morning dew in this hilltop Andean village, where 50 primary school children got machines from the One Laptop Per Child project six months ago. At breakfast, they're already powering up the combination library/videocam/audio recorder/music maker/drawing kits. At night, they're dozing off in front of them — if they've managed to keep older siblings from waylaying the coveted machines. Peru made the single biggest order to date — more than 272,000 machines — in its quest to turn around a primary education system that the World Economic Forum recently ranked last among 131 countries surveyed." A detailed log has been kept and a youtube video is also available."
Windows

The Advantages of Upgrading From Vista To XP 765

Posted by kdawson from the open-and-shut-case dept.
An anonymous reader passes us a blog posting, which may be just a bit tongue-in-cheek, about the pros and cons of upgrading from Vista to XP. "...there is only one conclusion to be made; Microsoft have really outdone themselves in delivering a brand new operating system that really excels in all the areas where Vista was sub-optimal. From my testing, discussions with friends and colleagues, and a review of the material out there on the web there seems to be no doubt whatsoever that that upgrade to XP is well worth the money. Microsoft can really pat themselves on the back for a job well done, delivering an operating system which is much faster and far more reliable than its predecessor. Anyone who thinks there are problems in the Microsoft Windows team need only point to this fantastic release and scoff loudly."
It's funny. Laugh.

Note To Criminals — Don't Call Tech Support 266

Posted by kdawson from the caught-short dept.
Billosaur writes "Darwin Awards, here he comes: Ars Technica has up a story about a would-be identity thief who did himself in by calling tech support about printer drivers. Timothy Short must have thought he'd hit the mother-lode when he stole a PC and a Digimarc printer from the Missouri Department of Revenue, perhaps with dreams of cranking out thousands of fake ids. Problem: he could not unlock the computer he stole and without the necessary drivers, he couldn't use the printer. Ever resourceful, Short called Digimarc tech support a couple of days later (twice), which brought him to the attention of a Secret Service agent, who recognized his voice from a recording of the calls. Short now faces a $250,000 fine and up to 10 years in prison."

Feed Oz teen copyright vigilante dupes YouTube (theregister.com)

From feed by registerfeed
ABC clips pulled following letter from 'employee'

A 15-year-old Perth teenager persuaded YouTube to pull hundreds of clips by masquerading as an employee of state broadcasting outfit the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), Reuters reports.

Feed Teen Fakes Out Google With DMCA Notices On A Show Producers Were Happy To Have O (techdirt.com)

From feed by techdirtfeed
With all the stories about TV execs trying to get their content off of YouTube, here's one that's a bit... different. Apparently, the makers of a TV show in Australia were perfectly happy with the free promotion they were getting from fans putting clips on YouTube. However, a teenager decided to take the matter into his own hands and sent a bogus DMCA takedown notice to Google -- who proceeded to pull the clips and warn those who uploaded them. This raises all sorts of issues. Filing a bogus DMCA takedown notice on content you don't own is against the law -- though, it seems unlikely anyone is going to go after this kid. Still, it does raise questions about the process by which Google follows through on a takedown notice -- and makes you wonder if anyone could just force them to take down just about any video. While some networks are recognizing that letting fans promote their shows for them helps build up a larger audience for the actual TV programming (and its ads), at some point you have to wonder if the networks that are too confused to figure this out will simply try to "help out" the other networks and pull their content for them -- especially if leaving it up on YouTube shows that their own strategy is backfiring.
Censorship

Gary Kasparov Arrested Over Political Fight 427

Posted by Zonk from the more-active-than-chess dept.
geddes writes "World chess champion turned opposition leader Gary Kasparov was arrested this morning while leading an march through Moscow in opposition to Russian President Vladamir Putin. Kasporov is a leader of the 'Other Russia' coalition which has been banned by the government from appearing on TV, and had been denied a marching permit. From the New York Times: 'Essentially barred from access to television, members of Other Russia have embraced street protests as the only platform to voice their opposition ahead of parliamentary elections in December and presidential elections next March. Early this month, Mr. Kasyanov's and Mr. Kasparov's Web sites were blocked, though it was unclear by whom.' Kasparov was later released from detention, though he was still fined for participating in the event."

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