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Submission + - Utah considers warrantless internet subpoenas (sltrib.com)

seneces writes: The Utah State Legislature is considering a bill, HB150, granting the Attorney General's Office the ability to demand customer information from internet or cell phone companies via an administrative subpoena, with no judicial review. This is an expansion of a similar law passed last year, which granted that ability when "it is suspected that a child-sex crime has been committed", and has led to more than one non-judicial request for subscriber information per day since becoming law. Pete Ashdown, owner of a local ISP and 2006 candidate for the United States Senate, has discussed his position and the effects of this bill. This would undoubtably set an uncomfortable precedent for ISPs being compelled to release subscriber information on the mere suspicion of a crime, or even "electronic communication harassment".

Submission + - Scaling algorithm bug in Photoshop/GIMP (4p8.com) 1

Wescotte writes: There is an important error in most photography scaling algorithms. All software tested have the problem: The Gimp, Adobe Photoshop, CinePaint, Nip2, ImageMagick, GQview, Eye of Gnome, Paint and Krita. Also three different operating systems were used: Linux, Mac OS X and Windows. These exceptions have subsequently been reported: the Netpbm toolkit for graphic manipulations, the developping GEGL toolkit, 32 bit encoded images in Photoshop CS3, the latest version of Image Analyzer, the image exporters in Aperture 1.5.6, the latest version of Rendera, Adobe Lightroom 1.4.1, Pixelmator for Mac OS X, Paint Shop Pro X2 and the Preview app in Mac OS X starting from version 10.6.

Photographs that have been scaled with these software have been degradated. The degradation is often faint but probably most pictures contain at least an array where the degradation is clearly visible. I suppose this happens since the first versions of these software, maybe 20 years ago.

Media

Flash Vulnerability Found, Adobe Says No Fix Forthcoming 355

An anonymous reader writes "Security researchers at Foreground Security have found an issue with Adobe Flash. Any site that allows files to be uploaded could be vulnerable to this issue (whether they serve Flash or not!). Adobe has said that no easy fix exists and no patch is forthcoming. Adobe puts the responsibility on the website administrators themselves to fix this problem, but they themselves seem to be vulnerable to these problems. Every user with Flash installed is vulnerable to this new type of attack and — until IT administrators fix their sites — will continue to be."
Image

Keeping Pacemakers Safe From Hackers 167

An anonymous reader writes "Researchers from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich and the French National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Control have now developed a scheme for protecting implantable medical devices against wireless attacks. The approach relies on using ultrasound waves to determine the exact distance between a medical device and the wireless reader attempting to communicate with it." I had no idea that things have gotten so bad that hearts are being hacked.

Comment Re:Speaking as a user (Score 2, Informative) 433

Applications can statically link the CRT with /MT or /MTd instead of the (default) /MD and /MDd. It's pretty common, and i've found that the actual increase to binary size is very small. It often cuts down on distribution size anyway, since that allows /OPT:REF (eliminate unreferenced code) to take effect. It'd be nice if the CRT was available on all systems by default and we didn't have to worry about it, but failing that, static linking is a *necessity* for anything that doesn't use a full installer.
Censorship

Submission + - Microsoft Censoring the Search Term "Sex" 4

An anonymous reader writes: One more reason not to use the new Microsoft search engine bing — apparently Microsoft is censoring search results for bing in India and other countries. If you try to search for the term "sex," along with lots of variations, from India using Microsoft's new search engine, an error message is returned that says, "the search sex may return sexually explicit content. To get results, change your search terms." There's no preference setting or toggle on or off choice, you simply cannot search for the term "sex" in India if you are using bing. While a user still can change their country and try the non-Indian version of bing, this seems like an unnecessary step and unnecessary censorship on the part of Microsoft. Apparently Google has no problem with Indians searching for the term "sex." http://thomashawk.com/2009/06/microsoft-doesnt-think-people-in-india-should-be-allowed-to-search-for-the-term-sex.html
Education

Windows Security and On-line Training Courses? 189

eggegick writes "My wife has taken a number of college courses over the last three years and many of the classes used on-line materials rather than books. The problem was these required IE along with Java, Active X and/or various plug-ins (the names of which escapes me), and occasionally I'd have to tweak our firewall to allow these apps to run. I don't think any of these training apps would work with Firefox. All of this made me cringe from a security point of view. Myself, I use Firefox, No-Script, our external firewall and common sense when using the web. I have a very old Windows 2000 machine that I keep up to date. To my knowledge, I've never had a virus or malware problem. Her computer is a relatively new XP machine, and at this point she feels her computer has something wrong. But now she prefers to use my old machine instead of hers since it seems to be more responsive. We plan to run the recovery disk on hers. Assuming the college course work applications were part of the cause, what recommendations do any of you have for running this kind of software? Is there a VMware solution that would work — that is, have a Windows image that is used temporarily for the course work and then discarded at the end of the semester (and how do you create such an image, and what does it cost?)."
Security

Perfect MITM Attacks With No-Check SSL Certs 300

StartCom writes "In a previous article I reported about Man-In-The-Middle attacks and spotlighted an example showing that they really happen. MITM attacks just got easier. In the attack described previously, untrusted certificates from an unknown issuer were used. Want to make the attack perfect with no error and a fully trusted certificate? No problem, just head over to one of Comodo's resellers. Screenshots and disclosure provided at the link."
Security

McCain Campaign Sells Info-Loaded Blackberry PDAs 165

An anonymous reader writes "A news station in Washington D.C. has reported that the McCain Campaign has allegedly sold to reporters Blackberry handhelds with campaign-related information such as e-mail messages and phone numbers: 'We traced the Blackberry back to a staffer who worked for "Citizens for McCain" ... The emails contain an insider's look at how grassroots operations work, full of scheduling questions and rallying cries for support ... But most of the numbers were private cell phones for campaign leaders, politicians, lobbyists and journalists. "Somebody made a mistake," one owner told us. "People's numbers and addresses were supposed to be erased."'"
Image

World of Warcraft, the Restaurant 73

An Anonymous Coward writes "China's online gaming themed service industry appears to be booming, riding China's fascination with online gaming all the way to the top is a Chinese restaurateur with his World of Warcraft inspired eatery." I would recommend the Critter Bites and the Haunted Herring, but would warn against the Carrion Surprise.
Google

Google Chrome Is Out of Beta 444

BitZtream writes "This morning Google announced that Chrome is out of Beta, and showing improvements for plugin support, most notably video speed improvements. It also contains an updated javascript engine, claiming that it operates 1.4 times faster than the beta version, and work has begun on an extensions platform to allow easier integration with the browser by third parties."
Supercomputing

Windows Breaks Into Supercomputer Top 10 294

yanx0016 writes "Wow, that's some news this week at SuperComputing 08. Apparently Microsoft Windows HPC Server 2008, with a Chinese hardware OEM (Dawning), made #10 on the Top500 list, edging out #11 by only 600 Gflops. Folks were shocked to see Microsoft getting so serious around HPC; I think we are only beginning to see a glimpse of Microsoft in the HPC field."

Why Developers Are Switching To Macs 771

snydeq writes "Programmers are finding themselves increasingly drawn to the Mac as a development platform, in large part due to Apple's decision to move to Intel chips and to embrace virtualization of other OSes, which has turned Mac OS X into a flexible tool for development, InfoWorld reports. The explosion of interest in smartphone development is helping the trend, with iPhone development lock-in to the Mac environment the chief motivating factor for Apple as a platform of choice for mobile development. Yet for many, the Mac remains sluggish and poorly tuned for development, with developers citing its virtual memory system's poor performance in paging data in and out of memory and likening use of the default-network file system, AFS, to engaging oneself with 'some kind of passive-aggressive torture.' What remains unclear is whether Apple will lend an ear to this new wave of Mac-based development or continue to develop products that lock out uses programmers expect."
Communications

Adobe Releases Preview of 64-bit Flash For Linux 329

Rinisari writes "Finally, the day has come. Adobe has released a pre-release version of the 64-bit Flash player. It is available at the Adobe Labs Flash Player 10 download site immediately. Where are the Windows and Mac versions? 'Release of this alpha version of 64-bit Flash Player on Linux is the first step in delivering upon Adobe's commitment to make Flash Player native 64-bit across platforms. We chose Linux as our initial platform in response to numerous requests in our public Flash Player bug and issue management system and the fact that Linux distributions do not ship with a 32-bit browser or a comprehensive 32-bit emulation layer by default. Until this pre-release, use of 32-bit Flash Player on Linux has required the use of a plugin wrapper, which prevents full compatibility with 64-bit browsers. With this pre-release, Flash Player 10 is now a full native participant on 64-bit Linux distributions.' Windows and Mac OS X 64-bit versions will follow, and the final versions all will be released simultaneously. Tamarin, the JIT compiler in Flash, is now capable of producing 64-bit code and nspluginwrapper is no longer required. There are, however, no plans to release a debugger version of the 64-bit plugin."

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