Comment Linux security flaw discovered (Score 4, Funny) 99
If you set the root password to 'password' and allow root login via ssh, attackers could compromise your system.
Comment Re:I make a point not to buy from BP anymore (Score 1) 368
And what if this leads to this person having to go out of business? Is it still worth boycotting BP then? If it starts to substantially negatively impact your life.
Comment funny story (Score 1) 103
Funny story, back when I as a young-mid teen, I made a simple little phishing site aimed at habbo. Made accounts, told people to visit it. Filled rooms with furniture, used the acquired accounts to tell all their friends...
I'm sure I could've worked out how much it was all worth, but who's stupid enough to spend money on virtual furniture anyway?
Satellites Keep Aircraft Away From Volcanic Cloud 109
coondoggie writes "A range of satellites from a host of different nations are pumping out images and data on the Icelandic volcano currently wreaking havoc on commercial airline traffic and aviation in general. The European Space Agency today noted four major satellites that are monitoring the volcano that erupted this week under Iceland's Eyjafjallajoekull glacier. They include NASA's Aqua and Aura as well as the European Space Agency's Envisat and MetOp spacecraft. Other satellites such as NASA's Terra and NOAA's GOES satellite also provide images." Updated 20100416 01:17 GMT by timothy: Apropos that, 2Y9D57 writes with this "Image of the Icelandic volcano, Eyjafjallajökull, after it began erupting on 15 April. Acquired by the German TerraSAR-X synthetic aperture radar satellite from a height of about 500 kilometers / 300 miles."
UK Scientists Create a Three-Parent Embryo 201
Troll-Under-D'Bridge writes "The BBC reports that British scientists have manufactured embryos containing genetic material from a man and two women. Under the procedure developed by scientists from Newcastle University, the nuclei from a father's sperm and a mother's egg are transferred into a second woman's egg 'from which the nucleus had been removed, but which retained its mitochondria.' The research, which may 'help mothers with rare genetic disorders have healthy children,' used embryos left over from in-vitro fertilization treatment."
Comment Fake Street (Score 1) 309
Are you implying I don't live at 123 Fake Street, Fakesville, Hertfordshire (this changes depending on mood)?
Comment Re:Fishing(yes "f"ishing) for ideas... (Score 2, Insightful) 394
WPA2 with a well-chosen password (ie, not vulnerable to a dictionary attack) is more than trivial to break and so probably not worth it just for 'cred'. If someone has to get into a network like that, they're probably going to be up to something. And if someone breaks in just for cred anyway, they're not going to do any damage. So I guess you could say the *only* people that matter are people who intend to do something malicious/illegal, not the ones just looking for a challenge.
Comment Railcards (Score 1) 691
Will this be covered by our railcards?
UK Internet Filtering Bill Watered Down 183
superapecommando writes in with news that in the UK, Liberal Democratic peers will soften their filtering amendment to the Digital Economy Bill, to allow those wrongfully accused of illegal filesharing to sue the rightsholders in court. The previous version of the Bill had drawn instant criticism from some of the world's largest technology companies, including eBay, Google, and Yahoo, who signed an open letter against the filtering proposal. Blogger Glyn Moody summed up opposition to the Bill, stating that in its previous form, it was "utterly one-sided, where the only winners are a music recording industry too lazy to change, and the losers are everyone else."
Hackers Attack AU Websites To Protest Censorship 334
An anonymous reader writes "A band of cyber-attackers has taken down the Australian Parliament House website and hacked Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's website in coordinated protests against government plans to filter the Internet. The group responsible, called Anonymous, is known for coordinated Internet attacks against Scientology and other groups in the past. It recently turned its attention against the AU government after it said in December that it would block access to sites featuring material such as rape, drug use, bestiality and child sex abuse."
Comment Re:The right way of fighting piracy (Score 1) 188
Actually, the best way to fight piracy is to make a product pirates aren't interested in.
Comment Re:Statistics! (Score 1) 1142
Yes, but if you can't communicate your results, what good are they to the rest of us?
I voted for communication because the state of science journalism compelled me to.
First Room-Temperature Germanium Laser Completed 80
eldavojohn writes "MIT researchers have built and demonstrated the first room-temperature germanium laser that can produce light at wavelengths suited for communication. This achievement has two parts: '[U]nlike the materials typically used in lasers, germanium is easy to incorporate into existing processes for manufacturing silicon chips. So the result could prove an important step toward computers that move data — and maybe even perform calculations — using light instead of electricity. But more fundamentally, the researchers have shown that, contrary to prior belief, a class of materials called indirect-band-gap semiconductors can yield practical lasers.' While these are only the initial steps in what may become optical computing devices, the article paints it as very promising. The painful details will be published in the journal Optics Letters."
Comment Re:Complicated = Interesting = Popular. Usually (Score 1) 204
So it's a bad thing that people enjoy Blumps? And Peggle? These 'dumb' games? Get down off your high-horse. Mindless games are sometimes the best kind of games. One of the reasons being people like you don't appear half as often in multiplayer.
Comment Re:Let's face it (Score 1) 342
While market share might be a factor (infact almost definitely IS a factor) in the security of Windows vs OS X/Linux, IE vs Firefox, etc, it's more likely the architecture.
The architecture of Unix systems (running as root, user permissions, etc) makes/made it very hard for malware to be written for it. At least, to cause any significant damage.
Though in the case of Firefox vs IE, I'm not so sure. I know little about either browser's architecture. But it might not be just market share that's the reason for the huge number of sploits for IE as opposed to firefox.
