Kaizenlog

12 04 2007

[Slashdot] Stories for 2007-04-08

Posted by: kaizenlog in Kaizenlog

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Slashdot Daily Newsletter

In this issue:
* Turkish Assembly Votes For Censoring of Web Sites
* 1-800-Google Launches
* Japanese Mileage Maniacs
* Blogger Freed After 226 Days in Jail For Contempt
* Hacker Turns $300 Apple TV into Cheapest Mac Ever
* An iPod For Every Kid In Michigan
* EFF Patent Busting – Prior Art Needed for VOIP
* Current Owner of BeOS Code Claims Zeta is Illegal
* Vonage Allowed to Sign New Customers
* Paul Graham Claims “Microsoft is Dead”
* First AACS Blu-Ray/HD-DVD Key Revoked
* Vista Protected Processes Bypassed
* GPL Code Found In OpenBSD Wireless Driver
* Does the Windows Logo Mean Anything?
* Cable Packet Shaping Causing Slowdowns
* RIAA & MPAA Seek Authority To Pretext
* Linux Fund Loses MasterCard Funding Source
* Asus.com Compromised With Exploit Code

+—————————–—————————————+
| Turkish Assembly Votes For Censoring of Web Sites |
| from the we’re-actually-really-nice-out-here-guys dept. |
| posted by Zonk on Friday April 06, @20:49 (Censorship) |
| http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/04/06/2125206 |
+—————————–—————————————+

[0]unity100 writes “CNN has some news about a recent development in
Turkey where the Turkish assembly, totally out of line with Turkey’s
commitment to EU membership, has voted to have sites that ‘insult to the
founder of modern Turkey’ [1]censored from entire Turkish population.
This, just about a month after the decision to censor YouTube was reached
by the Turkish courts. ‘On Thursday, lawmakers in the commission also
debated whether the proposal should be widened to allow the Turkish
Telecommunications Board to block access to any sites that question the
principles of the Turkish secular system or the unity of the Turkish
state — a reference to Web sites with information on Kurdish rebels in
Turkey.’”

Discuss this story at:
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=07/04/06/2125206

Links:
0. http://www.jokesjokes.net/
1. http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/internet/04/06/turkey.youtube.ap/index.html

The Webguy wrote to mention a C|Net article talking about [0]Google’s
newest toy – [1]Local Voice Search. The service is dirt simple: you call
a 1-800 number and, via voice recognition software, say the category of
business you’re trying to reach. You can also try for a specific name,
though the C|Net blogger had some problems with that. The Google Blog has
been [2]updated with details as well: “Google Voice Local Search lets you
search for local businesses from any phone and for free. If you’re in the
US, call 1-800-GOOG-411 and say what you want to find. Here are some of
the features -You can find a business listing by category. Just say
“pizza,” for example. You can send the listing details to your mobile
phone via SMS. The service is fully automated, so it doesn’t rely on
human operators. It connects you directly to the business, free of
charge.”

Discuss this story at:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=07/04/07/0339229

Links:
0. http://news.com.com/2061-10803_3-6174124.html?part=rss&tag=2547-1_3-0-5&subj=news
1. http://labs.google.com/goog411/
2. http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2007/04/google-voice-local-search.html

WY writes “Bloomberg reports on the quirky world of [0]Japanese hybrid
car hackers: ‘Toyota Motor Corp. says its Prius gasoline-electric hybrid
car gets about 55 miles to the gallon, making it one of the most
fuel-efficient cars on the road. That’s not good enough for Takashi
Toya.’ He managed to reach as high as 115 MPG. He is one of about 100
nenpimania, Japanese for mileage maniacs.”

Discuss this story at:
http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=07/04/07/0424220

Links:
0. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601080&sid=atw_4DmW_OjA&refer=asia

+—————————–—————————————+
| Blogger Freed After 226 Days in Jail For Contempt |
| from the little-site-big-stand dept. |
| posted by Zonk on Saturday April 07, @03:12 (The Internet) |
| http://politics.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/04/07/0428225 |
+—————————–—————————————+

frdmfghtr writes “Over at CNN is a report that [0]a blogger has been
freed after spending 226 days in jail — a record for a journalist held in
contempt. ‘Wolf had been found in contempt for refusing to obey a
subpoena to turn over his video from a July 2005 protest during the G-8
economic summit where anarchists were suspected of vandalizing a San
Francisco police car. One city officer was struck during the rally and
his skull was fractured … California’s shield law allows reporters to
keep sources and unpublished material secret. But there is no federal
shield law protecting reporters from federal investigations. The National
Writer’s Union, which represents freelance writers, said in a statement
that Wolf should never have been jailed. “The abuses visited on Josh and
other journalists are part of an effort by governments at all levels to
control the volume, flow and content of the information that reaches the
public,” the union said.’”

Discuss this story at:
http://politics.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=07/04/07/0428225

Links:
0. http://www.cnn.com/2007/LAW/04/04/jailed.journalist.ap/

+—————————–—————————————+
| Hacker Turns $300 Apple TV into Cheapest Mac Ever |
| from the another-bite-at-the-buck dept. |
| posted by Zonk on Saturday April 07, @05:07 (The Almighty Buck) |
| http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/04/07/0621222 |
+—————————–—————————————+

An anonymous reader wrote with a link to a Wired story about a fun
play-along-at-home project: [0]Turning Apple TV into a very tiny workable
computer. “Apple TV is dead, long live the Mac Nano. Sort of. Just two
weeks after Apple released its streaming media box to the public, hackers
successfully installed OS X, Apple’s desktop operating system, on the
$300 device, making it the cheapest PC Cupertino has ever sold. ‘The
breakthrough is done, OS X runs on Apple TV!’ wrote Semthex, the
anonymous hacker responsible for the mod, at his website. ‘Now we got
(the) low-budget Mac we ever wanted.’”

Discuss this story at:
http://apple.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=07/04/07/0621222

Links:
0. http://www.wired.com/gadgets/mac/news/2007/04/appletvhacks_0406

[0]mikesd81 writes “Over at C|Net there is an article about Michigan
spending [1]$38 million to distribute an iPod to every kid, for learning
purposes. From the article: ‘On Thursday, House Democrats delivered a
spending bill that includes the idea of putting $38 million worth of
public funds toward outfitting every student with a digital music
player.’ The plan included [2]measures to tax soda and satellite TV
services to pay for it, among other things, to raise funds. If you
recall, Duke University tried [3]something like this with mixed results.
How financially strained will Michigan residents feel about paying higher
taxes to buy someone else’s kid an iPod?”

Discuss this story at:
http://apple.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=07/04/07/0417219

Links:
0. http://mikesdatptd.net/
1. http://news.com.com/2061-10801_3-6174170.html
2. http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2007704060315
3. http://news.com.com/Dukes+free+iPod+program+has+mixed+results/2100-1025_3-5754005.html

JumperCable writes “The Electronic Frontier Foundation is [0]seeking to
bust an overly broad patent by a company called Acceris. Acceris
[1]claims patents on processes that implement voice-over-Internet
protocol (VoIP) using analog phones as endpoints. These patents cover
telephone calls over the Internet. Specifically, the claims describe a
system that connects two parties where the receiving party does not need
to have a computer or an Internet connection, but the call is routed in
part through the Internet or any other ‘public computer network’. The
calls must also be ‘full duplex’, meaning that both parties can listen
and talk at the same time, like in an ordinary phone call. To bust these
overly broad claims, we need ‘prior art’ — any publication, article,
patent or other public writing that describes the same or similar ideas
being implemented before September 20, 1995.”

Discuss this story at:
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=07/04/07/0623246

Links:
0. http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/005188.php
1. http://www.eff.org/patent/wanted/prior.php?p=acceris

Hank Powers writes “The legal status of the Zeta operating system that
was derived from the source code Be Inc. left shortly before going
bankrupt has been unclear for several years. Now, the current owner of
the source code, ACCESS, claims “if Herr Korz feels that he holds a
legitimate license to the BeOS code he’s been using, we’re completely
unaware of it, and I’d be fascinated to see him produce any
substantiation for that claim”. The sales of Zeta have been suspended and
so has the development been halted as well. OSNews has an article about
the [0]recent developments.”

Discuss this story at:
http://developers.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=07/04/07/1240206

Links:
0. http://www.osnews.com/story.php/17628/Timeline-of-Zeta-Developments/

[0]terrymr writes “The Court of Appeals for the federal circuit has
[1]stayed the injunction against Vonage pending their appeal.” The
appeals judge agreed with Vonage’s argument that the amount of consumer
churn that Vonage or any telco suffers from would surely mean disaster
for their bottom line, were they denied an influx of new customers.

Discuss this story at:
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=07/04/07/1250238

Links:
0. http://moc.liamgtarmyrret/
1. http://news.com.com/Vonage+Court+OKs+signing+new+customers/2100-1036_3-6173991.html

[0]netbuzz writes “He doesn’t mean dead as in six feet under, but rather
that [1]the software giant no longer instills the kind of fear —
particularly among entrepreneurs — that it did back in the day when it
was making road kill out of companies like Netscape. Microsoft obits have
been around for almost as long as the company, but Graham’s stature,
style and devoted following are likely to make this one a classic.”

Discuss this story at:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=07/04/07/1341210

Links:
0. http://www.networkworld.com/community/?q=buzzblog
1. http://www.paulgraham.com/microsoft.html

[0]Thomas Charron writes “[1]An update posted for Intervideo WinDVD 8
confirms that it’s AACS key has been possibly revoked. WinDVD 8 is the
software which [2]had it’s device key compromised, allowing unfettered
access to Blu-Ray and HD-DVD content, resulting in HD movies being made
available via many torrent sites online. This is possibly the first known
key revocation which has taken place, and little is known of the actual
process used for key revocation. According to the release, ‘Please be
aware that failure to apply the update will result in AACS-protected HD
DVD and BD playback being disabled,’ which pretty much confirms that the
key revocation has already taken place for all newly released Blu-Ray and
HD-DVD discs.”

Discuss this story at:
http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=07/04/07/1417253

Links:
0. mailto://twaffle [Email address: //twaffle #AT# nospam.gmail.com/ - replace #AT# with @ ]
1. http://www.intervideo.com/jsp/Press.jsp?mode=04-06-2007
2. http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070126-8710.html

Anonymous Hero writes “Security Researcher [0]Alex Ionescu strikes again,
this time with a [1]proof of concept program that will arbitrarily enable
and foremost disable the protection of so-called ‘protected processes’ in
Windows Vista. Not only threatening Vista DRM and friends, it’s also
another step towards hardened and even more annoying malware. Normally,
only specially signed processes made by special companies (decided by
Microsoft) can be protected, but now the bad guys can protect any evil
process they want, including the latest version of their own keylogger,
spambot, or worm, as well as unprotect any ‘good’ one.”

Discuss this story at:
http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=07/04/07/1426200

Links:
0. http://www.alex-ionescu.com/?p=34
1. http://www.alex-ionescu.com/?p=35

NormalVisual writes “The mailing lists were buzzing recently when Michael
Buesch, one of the maintainers for the GPL’d bc43xx Broadcom wireless
chip driver project, [0] called the OpenBSD folks to task for apparently
including code without permission from his project in the OpenBSD bcw
project, which aims to provide functionality with Broadcom wireless chips
under that OS. It seems that the problem has been resolved for now with
the BSD driver author totally giving up on the project and Theo De Raadt
taking the position that Buesch’s posts on the subject were ‘inhuman.’”
More [1]commentary from the BSD community is over at undeadly.org.

Discuss this story at:
http://bsd.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=07/04/07/1618239

Links:
0. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel.wireless.general/1558
1. http://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=20070406104008

Dan writes “The Windows Logo Program was supposed to be Microsoft’s key
to ensuring that all hardware devices work well with the Windows
operating system. It worked in Windows XP, it would be expected to work
just as well in Windows Vista. Unfortunately, there are obvious signs
that the [0]Windows Logo Program is no longer a trustworthy standard.
Recently, even graphics cards are getting certified without working
drivers. The article digs into the 321-page Microsoft Windows Logo
Program 3.0 document to find out what the Windows logo is supposed to
mean in Vista.”

Discuss this story at:
http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=07/04/07/1744206

Links:
0. http://www.techarp.com/showarticle.aspx?artno=396

[0]knorthern knight writes “To counter P2P programs that encrypt their
traffic to evade detection, Rogers Cable in Canada has apparently started
[1]degrading all encrypted IP traffic, according to a post on Michael
Geist’s blog. How many of you log in to work over a VPN or ssh-tunnel?
How many get usenet news or email over an encrypted connection? This
could be a problem for Rogers Cable customers. Geist, who teaches at U of
Ottawa, has ‘been advised that the University computer help desk has
received a steady stream of complaints from Rogers customers about
off-campus email service.’”

Discuss this story at:
http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=07/04/07/1755230

Links:
0. mailto://waltdnes [Email address: //waltdnes #AT# waltdnes.org/ - replace #AT# with @ ]
1. http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/1859/

msblack writes “The RIAA and MPAA are [0]lobbying California legislators
for an exemption to proposed legislation that would outlaw pretexting.
Pretexting is the practice of pretending to be someone else in order to
obtain personal information on a person, such as telephone or banking
records. According to an article in the LA Times, the RIAA and MPAA
sometimes need to lie in their pursuit of bootleggers. They would like
the legislation to exempt anyone who owns a copyright, patent, trademark,
or trade secret from restrictions against pretexting. An interesting line
from the article is, ‘[RIAA's Brad] Buckles said the recording industry
had never, nor would it ever, assume someone’s identity to access that
person’s phone or bank records.’ Fortunately, Senator Corbert, the bill’s
author, is unlikely to accept these hostile changes.”

Discuss this story at:
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=07/04/07/1917255

Links:
0. http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-pretext7apr07,1,1936238.story?coll=la-headlines-business

An anonymous reader writes “The [0]Linux Fund was established in 1999 to
provide grants to free and open source software projects from funds
raised via a credit card featuring a picture of Tux, the Linux penguin.
This credit card was offered through MBNA America Bank, which was
purchased in 2006 by Bank of America. Last week, LinuxFund credit card
holders received mail from Bank of America informing them that the
LinuxFund card would be discontinued. Linux.com has a few [1]details
about the end of the credit card including statements from executive
director David Mandel, assuring that the LinuxFund will look different
but will continue. In the past, the LinuxFund provided one-time grants of
$500-$1,000 USD to many projects including SDL, FilmGimp, Xiph.org
Foundation, CrystalSpace, K12LTSP, and Kismet. The LinuxFund stagnated in
2003, and in 2005 it was revitalized by new leaders and by 2006 provided
a stable $6,000 per year contribution to a number of larger projects
including Wikipedia, Blender, Debian, Gentoo, and OpenSSH.” Linux.com and
Slashdot are both part of OSTG.

Discuss this story at:
http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=07/04/07/1939236

Links:
0. http://www.linuxfund.org/
1. http://community.linux.com/community/07/04/02/1356254.shtml?tid=11

[0]Juha-Matti Laurio writes in with news that the Web site of [1]ASUSTeK
Computer (asus.com) has been compromised to spread exploit code. The
[2]original report from Kaspersky Lab claimed that the compromise lead to
code exploiting the recently patched Microsoft Windows [3]Animated Cursor
(.ANI) 0-day vulnerability, but sans.org found no evidence of this.
Apparently a malicious iframe was added to one of the machines in
asus.com‘s DNS round-robin.

Discuss this story at:
http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=07/04/07/2031248

Links:
0. mailto://juha-matti%2Elaurio [Email address: //juha-matti%2Elaurio #AT# netti.fi/ - replace #AT# with @ ]
1. http://isc.sans.org/diary.html?storyid=2582
2. http://www.viruslist.com/en/weblog?weblogid=208187358
3. http://secunia.com/advisories/24659/

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