*HOT* Tech News And Downloads, I Would Read This Thread And Post Any Good Info

Well the EC is shutting down the power in certain grids for a few hours, with a brownout they just reduce it.

 

Yesterday we had a blip here in the power, only lasted for about 40 seconds but enough that it blow out an older stereo I had. Stupid thing won't turn off now just sits there and flashes lights.

 

Well it's got the cat going, keeps swatting at it.

 

ireland is back.
http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/61/322699#2244810

 

The RIAA, IP addresses, and evidence

8/3/2006 12:37:46 PM, by Ken Fisher

In the last few days a collection of opinion articles have circulated on the 'Net, their message summed up as follows: an IP address isn't enough "evidence" to sue someone for downloading copyrighted material," for example. This over-emphasizes recent happenings in court and also gives a false impression of what's really going on. Time for a quick trip to the fact-checking department.

The RIAA's recent failures in court have indeed taught us something about the limitations of their approach. The industry bailed on a case in early July when an Oklahoma mother stood up to the RIAA and challenged their evidence of wrongdoing. Faced with the possibility of losingif the case went to trial, the RIAA motioned to have the case dismissed, and it was dismissed with prejudice. Ms. Foster, the mother in question, was declared the "prevailing party" and the RIAA had to pay her legal fees.

go here to read it all
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060803-7416.html

 

Carmakers race to accommodate iPods

Apple Computer has partnered with Ford Motor, General Motors, and Mazda Motor to help drivers integrate their iPods into their cars' audio systems.

Owners of Ford, Mazda and GM cars who want to take their iPods on the road may no longer have to worry about purchasing quirky add-ons like the iTrip or chargers that plug into cigarette lighters.

go here to read it all
http://news.com.com/Carmakers+race+to+accommodate+iPods/2100-11389_3-6101744.html?tag=nefd.top

 

Apple disappoints Norwegian authorities again

Apple continues to raise the hackles of European consumer rights organizations, this time the Norwegian Consumer Agency. The company had been granted a deadline extension to August 1 for submitting a reply to the official complaint filed by the agency over iTunes policies, and Apple did submit a response. However, the Norwegian agency says that it's simply not good enough.

The battle is being fought over three principal issues: the closed iTunes DRM forcing consumers into cumbersome and quality-degrading workarounds in order to transfer purchased songs to non-Apple media players

go here to read it all
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060803-7415.html

 

It's cooled down quite a lot in Philly...only 100 degress today; down from 103 yesterday. Downing iced coffee by the gallon today.

I'm off to an organ concert in an hour. Philly boasts having the world's largest pipe organ (30,000 pipes) ... well, the second largest really; the largest is in Atlantic City but it doesn't work. The console itself is the size of a room. It's actually in a dept store, not a church. Should we have any instruments freaks, here is a pic:

 

gerry1
make sure ye take ye organ to them to get a tune up.....

 

LOL! That's about my speed!

 

Matt Damon as Kirk in Star Trek XI?
Posted by CmdrTaco on Thursday August 03, @01:55PM
from the jennifer-garner-as-nurse-chapel-please dept.
Sci-Fi Movies
GiggidyGiggidy writes "Our friends at IMDB.com are reporting that Matt Damon has been cast to play a young James T. Kirk in the new Star Trek Movie directed by J.J. Abrams. Is this the end of the Star Trek series we fans know and love, or the beginning of something bigger and better for the series?"

go here
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0796366/

 

UK ISP PlusNet Accidentally Deletes 700GB of Email
Posted by timothy on Thursday August 03, @10:47AM
from the reality-is-no-excuse-dammit dept.
Communications Data Storage
steste writes "A tale of email woe for PlusNET ISP. According to this announcement they have spent the last month attempting to recover 700GB of accidentally deleted emails. By their estimates, up to 12GB of these had yet to be read by their recipients. Despite the efforts of a data recovery specialist, they have now given up on recovering any of the deleted data. Well that's one way to deal with spam." Spam is one thing; I just wonder how inevitable losses like this one square with the EU-wide data retention laws.


go here to read it all
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4744304.stm

 

Norton Antivirus has created an unholy stink by mistakenly instructing vicars to delete a file used to create sermons



The Church of England's publishing arm has advised clergy to ignore Symantec threat warnings, after its Norton Antivirus product wrongly identified church software as spyware.

Many Church of England vicars use a software tool called Visual Liturgy to plan, create and deliver church services. Four weeks ago, on Saturday, 8 July, Symantec issued a new virus definition which has had "a significant detrimental effect on Visual Liturgy," according to Church House Publishing (CHP), the publishing arm of the Church of England.

Norton's auto-update wrongly identified a file integral to Visual Liturgy as Sniperspy, a piece of spyware. After receiving the update, users were prompted to accept the Sniperspy threat warning and delete the file, called vlutils.dll. This rendered Visual Liturgy useless.


GO HERE TO READ IT ALL
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/0,39020330,39280391,00.htm

 

Hackers Clone E-Passport
Posted by timothy on Thursday August 03, @09:57AM
from the thank-heavens-for-black-hat dept.
Privacy Security Encryption Data Storage
mrops writes "I guess the skeptical Slashdot community always knew that e-passports are a big waste of time and money; now German security consultants have been able to successfully clone e-passports, even onto building access cards. FTA: 'The whole passport design is totally brain damaged,' Grunwald says. 'From my point of view all of these RFID passports are a huge waste of money. They're not increasing security at all.'"

go here to read it all
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,71521-0.html?tw=rss.index

 

Less Than a Minute to Hijack a MacBook's Wireless
Posted by timothy on Thursday August 03, @08:10AM
from the uh-oh dept.
Security Wireless Networking Bug Apple
Kadin2048 writes "As reported by Ars Technica and the Washington Post, two hackers have found an exploitable vulnerability in the wireless drivers used by Apple's MacBook. Machines are vulnerable if they have wireless enabled and are set to connect to any available wireless network, fairly close to their default state, and the exploit allows an attacker to gain "total access" -— apparently a remote root. Although the demo, performed via video at the BlackHat conference, takes aim at what one of the hackers calls the "Mac userbase aura of smugness on security," Windows users shouldn't get too smug themselves: according to the Post article, "the two have found at least two similar flaws in device drivers for wireless cards either designed for or embedded in machines running the Windows OS." Ultimately, it may be the attacks against embedded devices which are the most threatening, since those devices are the hardest to upgrade. Currently there have not been any reports of this vulnerability 'in the wild.'" According to this story at ITwire.com, they were able to exploit Linux and Windows machines, too. (Thanks to Josh Fink.)
Less Than a Minute to Hija

GO HERE TO READ IT ALL
http://www.itwire.com.au/content/view/5182/53/

 

Japan Plans a Moonbase by 2030
Posted by timothy on Thursday August 03, @11:36AM
from the then-acknowlege-name-change-to-ix dept.
Space Science
Aglassis writes "The Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) announced at a conference that they are planning to build a Moonbase by 2030. Since JAXA doesn't currently have a 100 ton-class heavy lift rocket or a human transportation system perhaps now is a good time for JAXA to join in with NASA on the Project Constellation rocket program."


GO HERE
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/exploration/spacecraft/index.html

OR HERE
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_base

AND HERE FOR THE MAIN STORY
http://www.newscientistspace.com/article/dn9658-japan-aims-for-moon-base-by-2030-.html

 

Anybody want to Buy an iPod?
By Jason Cross

Back in February I wrote an opinion column about Switching to iPod after years of using competing portable music players. In it, I described my decisions for giving up on the PlaysForSure camp and plunking down the money for a 60GB fifth-generation video playing iPod. Basically, it boiled down to this: I felt iTunes was a much better integrated music library, especially with its great podcast (and video podcast) directory. Boy, was I happy with my purchase.

You know what's funny? I haven't used it in a couple months.


So why the switch? Why go away from the tightly integrated iTunes/iPod experience I liked so much, and even cut my capacity down from 60GB to 30GB? Am I really that anti-Apple? No, I'm not anti-Apple at all. I still have, use, and love the Macbook Pro I bought back in April when I wrote about switching to Mac, and I'm looking forward to news out of the WWDC next week about what Apple has up their sleeves. I switched because of performance, organization, and subscription services.


go here to read the total article
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,1998167,00.asp?kc=ETRSS02129TX1K0000532



Read Jason's rant on how IE7 just isn't good enough.
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1998169,00.asp


Still, I'm going to put up with it, at least until the final version of Urge comes and makes it all go away (crosses fingers). Why? Because $.99 cents a track is for suckers, $1.99 for low-res video that only plays on one device is an even worse deal, and an affordable music subscription with higher quality encoding trumps easy podcast integration.