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==============================
Slashdot Daily Newsletter
In this issue:
* Web-based Anonymizer Discontinued
* Cheap Paint-able Solar Cells Developed
* FBI Used Spyware for Online Search
* Hotmail Delivers Far Fewer Emails with Attachments
* Richard Stallman Talks on Copyright V. The People
* U.S. Science and Engineering Research Flattens
* Patent Reform Bill Approved by House Committee
* W3C Considering An HTML 5
* Broadband Data Improvement Act Clears Committee
* Holes Remain Open in Firefox Password Manager
* Senate Committee Passes FCC Indecency Bill
* Former Spammer Reveals Secrets in New Book
* Which Google Should Congress Believe?
* Project Sylpheed Review
* AMD Phenom and John Woo’s Stranglehold In Action
* The Desktop — Time to Start Saying Goodbye?
* Open Library Goes Online With Public Domain Books
* Slot Machine with Bad Software Sends Players To Jail
* Custom Trojan Creation Tool Sold Online
* Huge Martian Dust Storm Threatens Rovers
* Google Set to Bid $4.6 Billion for Airwaves
+—————————–
| Web-based Anonymizer Discontinued |
| from the end-of-the-road dept. |
| posted by CowboyNeal on Thursday July 19, @20:29 (Privacy) |
| http://yro.slashdot.org
+—————————–
[0]RobertB-DC writes “With no fanfare, and apparently no outcry from the
privacy community, Anonymizer Inc. [1]discontinued its web-based Private
Surfing service effective June 20, 2007. No reason was given, either on
the Anonymizer web site or on founder Lance Cottrell’s [2]privacy blog.
Private Surfing customers are now required to download a anonymizing
client that handles all TCP traffic, but the program is Windows-only
(with Vista support still a work-in-progress). And of course it’s
closed-source, which means it has few advantages over several [3]other
[4]alternatives.”
Discuss this story at:
http://yro.slashdot.org
Links:
0. http://www.dixie-chicks.com/
1. http://www.anonymizer.com
2. http://www.theprivacyblog.com/
3. http://www.privoxy.org/
4. http://tor.eff.org/
+—————————–
| Cheap Paint-able Solar Cells Developed |
| from the finally-a-use-for-fullerenes dept. |
| posted by CowboyNeal on Thursday July 19, @21:49 (Power) |
| http://hardware.slashdot.org
+—————————–
[0]Invisible Pink Unicorn writes “Researchers at New Jersey Institute of
Technology have developed an [1]inexpensive solar cell that can be
painted or printed on flexible plastic sheets. According to the lead
researcher, “Someday homeowners will even be able to print sheets of
these solar cells with inexpensive home-based inkjet printers. Consumers
can then slap the finished product on a wall, roof or billboard to create
their own power stations.” The team combined carbon nanotubes with tiny
carbon buckyballs (fullerenes) to form snake-like structures. Add
sunlight to excite the polymers, and the buckyballs will grab the
electrons. The [2]article abstract is available through the Journal of
Materials Chemistry, with an illustration of the technology.”
Discuss this story at:
http://hardware.slashdot.org
Links:
0. http://filer.case.edu/~bct4
1. http://www.sciencedaily.com
2. http://www.rsc.org/publishing
+—————————–
| FBI Used Spyware for Online Search |
| from the not-surprised-here dept. |
| posted by CowboyNeal on Thursday July 19, @23:18 (United States) |
| http://it.slashdot.org/article
+—————————–
[0]juct writes “The FBI has used PC spyware for the first time to reveal
the identity of an offender who sent bomb threats to a high school in
Washington state. According to heise Security, a declaration from the FBI
official who applied for the search warrant describes the [1]mode of
operation of the spyware which the FBI is using under the abbreviation
CIPAV (Computer and Internet Protocol Address Verifier).”
Discuss this story at:
http://it.slashdot.org/comment
Links:
0. mailto:ju [Email address: ju #AT# ctmagazin.de - replace #AT# with @ ]
1. http://www.heise-security.co
+—————————–
| Hotmail Delivers Far Fewer Emails with Attachments |
| from the dead-letter-office dept. |
| posted by CowboyNeal on Friday July 20, @00:51 (Microsoft) |
| http://slashdot.org/article.pl
+—————————–
[0]biednyFacet writes “It has long been suspected that there is a silent
policy that makes Hotmail [1]automatically delete the majority of
attachments to save on bandwidth and internal disk space. Therefore it
really doesn’t matter if every client has access to 2GB of storage since
they don’t deliver the attachments to fill that space up anyway. If that
truly is the case, then Microsoft may be liable for several hundred
million cases of conspiracy and mail fraud.”
Discuss this story at:
http://slashdot.org/comments
Links:
0. mailto:polskajason [Email address: polskajason #AT# yahoo.com - replace #AT# with @ ]
1. http://hubpages.com/hub
+—————————–
| Richard Stallman Talks on Copyright V. The People |
| from the it-takes-a-village dept. |
| posted by CowboyNeal on Friday July 20, @03:32 (Communications) |
| http://slashdot.org/article.pl
+—————————–
[0]holden writes “Richard M. Stallman recently gave a talk entitled
[1]Copyright vs Community in the Age of Computer Networks to the
University of Waterloo Computer Science Club. The talk looks at the
origin of copyright, and how it has evolved overtime from something that
originally served the benefit of the people to a tool used against them.
In keeping with his wishes to use open formats, the [2]talk and [3]QA are
available in ogg theora only.”
Discuss this story at:
http://slashdot.org/comments
Links:
0. http://blog.holdenkarau.com/
1. http://www.csclub.uwaterloo.ca
2. http://www.csclub.uwaterloo.ca
3. http://www.csclub.uwaterloo.ca
+—————————–
| U.S. Science and Engineering Research Flattens |
| from the height-of-the-golden-age dept. |
| posted by CowboyNeal on Friday July 20, @05:18 (United States) |
| http://science.slashdot.org
+—————————–
[0]Invisible Pink Unicorn writes “The National Science Foundation is
reporting that the number of published [1]U.S. science and engineering
articles plateaued in the 1990s, despite continued increases in funding
and personnel for research and development. This came after two decades
of continued growth. Since then, flattening has occurred in nearly all
U.S. research disciplines and types of institutions. In contrast, Asian
and EU research had significant increases in this period. They do point
to one positive for the US, however: article quality. According to one of
the researchers, ‘the more often an article is cited by other
publications, the higher quality it’s believed to have. While citation is
not a perfect indicator, U.S. publications are more highly cited than
those from other countries.’”
Discuss this story at:
http://science.slashdot.org
Links:
0. http://filer.case.edu/~bct4
1. http://www.nsf.gov/news/news
+—————————–
| Patent Reform Bill Approved by House Committee |
| from the long-time-coming dept. |
| posted by CowboyNeal on Friday July 20, @07:29 (Patents) |
| http://yro.slashdot.org
+—————————–
Alex Forster pointed us to this PC World story that opens, “The House
Committee on the Judiciary [0]approved far-reaching legislation to reform
the nation’s patent system Wednesday. The Patent Reform Act of 2007
largely reflects the IT sector’s lobbying effort to curtail lengthy,
expensive patent infringement lawsuits, but Wednesday’s committee
deliberations centered on finding compromises acceptable to opponents —
namely the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries, manufacturers,
and large research universities — so that the bill could win approval.
Committee Chairman John Conyers, D-Mich., described the current patent
system as inefficient, bogged down by inappropriate litigation rules,
unreliably funded, and resulting in patents of “questionable quality.”
The bill would make it harder to secure a patent and easier for rivals to
challenge one, and it would change how courts determine an infringed
patent’s value.”
Discuss this story at:
http://yro.slashdot.org
Links:
0. http://www.pcworld.com/article
+—————————–
| W3C Considering An HTML 5 |
| from the party-like-its-1999 dept. |
| posted by Zonk on Friday July 20, @08:36 (Software) |
| http://developers.slashdot.org
+—————————–
An anonymous reader writes “When the decision was initially made to move
in the direction of XHTML, instead of a new version of HTML proper, it
seemed like a good idea. Years later and the widespread adoption of CSS
(among other things) has proven that things don’t always develop the way
we expect. As a result, [0]HTML 5 has been revived by the W3C. After some
lobbying and continued work by the Web Hypertext Application Technology
Working Group, the old web markup language is getting [1]an official
face-lift. A post to the Webforefront blog explains the history behind
the initial decision to move to XHTML, and why things are so different in
the here and now.”
Discuss this story at:
http://developers.slashdot.org
Links:
0. http://www.webforefront.com
1. http://www.whatwg.org/specs
+—————————–
| Broadband Data Improvement Act Clears Committee |
| from the 200kbps-is-not-a-very-broad
| posted by Zonk on Friday July 20, @09:23 (The Internet) |
| http://politics.slashdot.org
+—————————–
[0]MBCook writes “Ars Technica is reporting that [1]the Broadband Data
Improvement Act has left committee with a unanimous vote. Among the
changes proposed are requiring the definition of ’second generation
broadband’ (enough to carry HDTV) instead of the current definition of
broadband as 200Kbps, and aggregating the data by ZIP+4 instead of just
the full ZIP code. The act can now move to the full Senate.”
Discuss this story at:
http://politics.slashdot.org
Links:
0. http://www.foobarsoft.com/
1. http://arstechnica.com/news
+—————————–
| Holes Remain Open in Firefox Password Manager |
| from the batten-down-the-hatches dept. |
| posted by Zonk on Friday July 20, @10:13 (Security) |
| http://it.slashdot.org/article
+—————————–
[0]juct writes “Although the Mozilla developers have fixed a known hole
in the password manager of Firefox & Co, a door remains open for
exploitation. According to an article on the heise site, [1]hackers can
still use JavaScript to steal passwords from users of the Mozilla,
Firefox, and Safari browsers. However, the real problem might not be
Firefox’ password manager. If users can set up their own pages containing
script code on a server, the JavaScript security model breaks. Heise
Security demonstrates the possible password theft in a demo. ‘From the
users’ perspective, this means that they should not entrust their
passwords to the password manager on web sites that allow other users to
create their own pages containing scripts. Otherwise somebody can easily
create a page that steals the password as soon as the page is opened …
Users could also disable JavaScript or use add-ons such as NoScript to
set up rules to provide additional protection. In the age of Web 2.0 this
would, however, mean that many pages would cease to function. On the
other hand it is doubtful that by not using a password manager security
levels would be raised, since the resultant need to remember passwords
often induces users to choose simplistic passwords and use them on
multiple sites.’”
Discuss this story at:
http://it.slashdot.org/comment
Links:
0. mailto:ju [Email address: ju #AT# ctmagazin.de - replace #AT# with @ ]
1. http://www.heise-security.co
+—————————–
| Senate Committee Passes FCC Indecency Bill |
| from the they-thought-of-the-children dept. |
| posted by Zonk on Friday July 20, @11:02 (Censorship) |
| http://yro.slashdot.org
+—————————–
An anonymous reader writes “US Senate Commerce Committee today passed a
bill that would allow the FCC to [0]fine broadcasters for slip of the
tongue expletives, negating a ruling by federal appeals court in New York
that commission’s policy on ‘fleeting expletives’ is arbitrary and
capricious. ‘A mandate by Congress that a “fleeting expletive” can now be
found indecent will create a vast chilling effect on broadcast speech,
the advocacy group Center for Democracy and Technology claims. CDT points
out that prior to this bill and the FCC’s policy change, the FCC
exercised discretion in determining which utterances were indecent, and
consistently found that one-time uses of curse words were not indecent.’”
Discuss this story at:
http://yro.slashdot.org
Links:
0. http://pressesc.com/0118492917
+—————————–
| Former Spammer Reveals Secrets in New Book |
| from the sleeps-better-on-his-bed-of
| posted by Zonk on Friday July 20, @11:50 (Spam) |
| http://it.slashdot.org/article
+—————————–
StonyandCher writes “A retired spammer is looking to make money from a
tell-all book rather than fleecing people dependent on pharmaceuticals
and people with gambling problems. In this Computerworld article ‘Ed’, a
retired spammer, [0]predicts the spam problem will only get worse, aided
by consumers with dependencies and faster broadband speeds. From the
article: ‘He sent spam to recovering gambling addicts enticing them to
gambling Web sites. He used e-mail addresses of people known to have
bought antianxiety medication or antidepressants and targeted them with
pharmaceutical spam. Response rates to spam tend to be a fraction of 1
percent. But Ed said he once got a 30 percent response rate for a
campaign. The product? A niche type of adult entertainment: photos of
fully clothed women popping balloons … “Yes, I know I’m going to hell,”
said Ed.”
Discuss this story at:
http://it.slashdot.org/comment
Links:
0. http://www.computerworld.com
+—————————–
| Which Google Should Congress Believe? |
| from the playing-with-the-big-boys-now dept. |
| posted by Zonk on Friday July 20, @12:41 (Google) |
| http://politics.slashdot.org
+—————————–
[0]theodp writes “In Congressional testimony last month, Google’s VP of
People Operations told the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration
that, due to limits on the number of H-1B visas, [1]Google is regularly
unable to pursue highly qualified candidates. But as Google stock tumbled
in after hours trading Wednesday, [2]Google’s CEO blamed disappointing
profits on a hiring binge and promised Wall Street analysts that the
company would keep a careful eye on headcount in the future. So which
Google should Congress believe?”
Discuss this story at:
http://politics.slashdot.org
Links:
0. mailto:theodp [Email address: theodp #AT# aol.com - replace #AT# with @ ]
1. http://googleblog.blogspot.com
2. http://www.theregister.co.uk
+—————————–
| Project Sylpheed Review |
| from the space-rangers-unite dept. |
| posted by Zonk on Friday July 20, @13:21 (XBox (Games)) |
| http://games.slashdot.org
+—————————–
Space shooters are beyond a dying breed. They’re dead. When a member of
this now-rarefied genre comes lurching at you from the darkness, it’s
always a good idea to be wary. And a shooter with an anime flavour,
evoking the memory of the Macross and Robotech series? It has to be bad,
right? Yet, somehow, Square/Enix has delivered a thrill-ride of a space
plane game; Ace Combat with blue hair. The frighteningly titled Project
Sylpheed has a clunky menu system, an overly complicated HUD, mediocre
voice acting, and an easily-skippable story. Thankfully, none of that
matters. When you’re in your fighter, it’s so … so good. Read on for my
impressions of this quirkily appealing arcade-style shooter.
This story continues at:
http://games.slashdot.org
Discuss this story at:
http://games.slashdot.org
+—————————–
| AMD Phenom and John Woo’s Stranglehold In Action |
| from the action-movie-and-chip-comparis
| posted by Zonk on Friday July 20, @13:56 (AMD) |
| http://hardware.slashdot.org
+—————————–
MojoKid writes “AMD hosted a small gathering in the Penthouse at the SoHo
Grand Hotel in New York City yesterday to demo some products due to be
released in the coming months. HotHardware [0]attended the event and
snapped some photos of the various demo stations. The [1]shots and info
regarding the AMD quad-core Phenom-powered system running John Woo’s
Stranglehold (Unreal 3.0 engine) will be of interest, as will the slick
notebooks, HTPCs, and hand-held devices, like the HTC Advantage 7501.
It’s essentially a cross between a UMPC, Phone, PDA, and portable GPS.
The device features and AMD Imageon processor, 8GB of flash memory, a 5″
touch screen, and a built in magnetic QWERTY keyboard, GPS navigator and
3MP camera.”
Discuss this story at:
http://hardware.slashdot.org
Links:
0. http://www.hothardware.com
1. http://www.hothardware.com
+—————————–
| The Desktop — Time to Start Saying Goodbye? |
| from the still-looking-for-a-headware
| posted by Zonk on Friday July 20, @14:40 (Portables) |
| http://it.slashdot.org/article
+—————————–
[0]Lucas123 writes “Robert Scheier at Computerworld writes that while
worldwide PC shipments are expected to grow 12.2% this year, portable PC
volumes are expected to grow 28% and will make up more than half of all
PC shipments in the U.S. this quarter. [1]Notebooks will dominate the
worldwide PC marketplace by 2010. ‘One researcher predicts it will be
five to seven years before only the “die-hard” desktop users are left.’”
Discuss this story at:
http://it.slashdot.org/comment
Links:
0. http://www.computerworld.com/
1. http://www.computerworld.com
+—————————–
| Open Library Goes Online With Public Domain Books |
| from the shakespeare-and-company dept. |
| posted by Zonk on Friday July 20, @15:34 (Books) |
| http://slashdot.org/article.pl
+—————————–
[0]mrcgran writes “A competitor to Google Book Search emerges as the
Yahoo-backed [1]Open Content Alliance launches an ‘open library’ of its
own. After several years of scanning and archiving, the Internet Archive
and the Open Content Alliance this week unveiled the [2]Open Library,
their attempt at bringing public domain books to the masses. The
[3]Internet Archive has hosted texts for quite some time, but the Open
Library makes fully-searchable, high-quality scans of books available,
along with downloadable PDFs. It offers an experience designed to match
paper: there’s even a page-flipping animation as readers move forward and
backward through the book. Ben Vershbow of the Institute for the Future
of the Book says that when it comes to presentation, ‘[4]they already
have Google beat, even with recent upgrades to the [Google Book Search]
system including a plain text viewing option.’” We have [5]previously
discussed this project, though this is a bit more complete rundown on the
initiative.
Discuss this story at:
http://slashdot.org/comments
Links:
0. http://mgran.blogspot.com/
1. http://arstechnica.com/news
2. http://www.openlibrary.org/
3. http://www.archive.org/
4. http://www.futureofthebook.org
5. http://slashdot.org/article.pl
+—————————–
| Slot Machine with Bad Software Sends Players To Jail |
| from the can’t-you-see-the-code dept. |
| posted by Zonk on Friday July 20, @16:22 (The Courts) |
| http://yro.slashdot.org
+—————————–
dcollins writes “Previous discussions here have turned into debates over
who is liable for faulty software: the programmers, the publisher, etc.
Yahoo has a new option: perhaps [0]the users are criminally liable for
using the software. From the AP: ‘Prosecutors are considering criminal
charges against casino gamblers who won big on a slot machine that had
been installed with faulty software … A decision on whether to bring
criminal charges could come in a couple of weeks, said John Colin, chief
deputy prosecutor for Harrison County. He said ‘criminal intent’ may be
involved when people play a machine they know is faulty.’ Would your
average user be able to distinguish ‘faulty software’ from ‘lucky’?”
Discuss this story at:
http://yro.slashdot.org
Links:
0. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap
+—————————–
| Custom Trojan Creation Tool Sold Online |
| from the haxx0ring-made-e-z dept. |
| posted by Zonk on Friday July 20, @17:10 (Security) |
| http://it.slashdot.org/article
+—————————–
Finch writes “Net Security.org is reporting on the surprisingly
sophisticated ‘virus in a can’ software called Pinch. Pinch is a tool
sold on several online forums and designed to create Trojans. [0]It
allows attackers to specify the data that Trojans steal. One of the
interface tabs, PWD, allows malicious users to select the type of
password to be stolen by the Trojan: from email passwords to passwords
kept by the system tools. It is possible to order the Trojan to encrypt
this data when sending it, so that nobody else can read it. ‘Pinch also
lets users carry out other actions: turn infected computers into zombie
computers, pack Trojans to make detection more difficult, and kill
certain system processes, particularly those of security solutions.’”
Discuss this story at:
http://it.slashdot.org/comment
Links:
0. http://www.net-security.org
+—————————–
| Huge Martian Dust Storm Threatens Rovers |
| from the sit-tight-little-robots dept. |
| posted by Zonk on Friday July 20, @18:01 (NASA) |
| http://hardware.slashdot.org
+—————————–
[0]Riding with Robots writes “NASA reports that a [1]severe ongoing dust
storm on the Red Planet has blocked 99 percent of the direct sunlight
that powers the Opportunity rover. If these conditions persist for too
long, it could finally bring an end to the marathon mission of this robot
geologist, and perhaps of its partner Spirit as well. ‘Before the dust
storms began blocking sunlight last month, Opportunity’s solar panels had
been producing about 700 watt hours of electricity per day, enough to
light a 100-watt bulb for seven hours. When dust in the air reduced the
panels’ daily output to less than 400 watt hours, the rover team
suspended driving and most observations, including use of the robotic
arm, cameras and spectrometers to study the site where Opportunity is
located … A possible outcome of this storm is that one or both rovers
could be damaged permanently or even disabled. Engineers will assess the
capability of each rover after the storm clears.’”
Discuss this story at:
http://hardware.slashdot.org
Links:
0. http://www.ridingwithrobots
1. http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news
+—————————–
| Google Set to Bid $4.6 Billion for Airwaves |
| from the power-play dept. |
| posted by Zonk on Friday July 20, @19:12 (Google) |
| http://hardware.slashdot.org
+—————————–
Nrbelex writes “The Associated Press is reporting that Google has offered
to [0]bid at least $4.6 billion on wireless airwaves being auctioned off
by the federal government, as long as certain conditions are met. ‘The
Internet search company wants the Federal Communications Commission to
mandate that any winners lease a certain portion of the airwaves to other
companies seeking to offer high-speed Internet and other services. Such a
provision, Google argues, will give consumers — who traditionally get
high-speed Internet access via cable or telephone lines — a third option
for service.’” We discussed [1]AT&T’s objection to Google’s acquisition
of these airwaves last week; this article would seem to confirm Ma Bell’s
worst fears.
Discuss this story at:
http://hardware.slashdot.org
Links:
0. http://www.nytimes.com/aponlin
1. http://hardware.slashdot.org
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