As a former Verizon customer, I must say I’m very surprised. From what I’ve seen of their track record, Verizon of all providers would be the last one I would expect to embrace openness.
Oh, and if you like this sort of news, I can’t help mentioning Openmoko and their upcoming FreeRunner phone. It’s a totally open, configurable, customizable, hackable phone running Linux. Features include touchscreen, gps, wifi, accelerometers, bluetooth. It’s due to be released within a month or so.
(AP) - Verizon Wireless is backing a free operating system that competes with programs from Microsoft Corp., Google Inc. and Qualcomm Inc. and expects it to become the “preferred” software on its network.
It’s the first U.S. carrier to join the LiMo Foundation, which aims to unite handset makers, software companies and carriers on a software platform that will make it easier and cheaper to create a wide variety of phones.
Red Hat’s Fedora Project launched today the new Fedora 9. The new version offers users of the Linux Operating System a whole new set of features, including the KDE 4 desktop environment which represents the system’s main characteristic.
Fedora is a Red Hat Package Manager – based, general purpose Linux distribution with several objectives, including the developer’s wish for its product to contain free and open source software and also to be on the leading edge of such technologies.
The new product allows users with a 1-GB or 2-GB memory stick to move around their desktop, transferring it on any common x86 instruction set hardware.
The Fedora Project has released Fedora 9, a significant upgrade for the popular Linux distribution. Fedora 9 packs in a number of new features including an improved package management system, KDE 4 and more.
Perhaps the best part of Fedora 9 is the new live USB options. Fedora has always made it easy to go from a live CD to a bootable USB stick, but the new options allow for a non-destructive install and persistent data. The non-destructive part means that, provided your USB stick has space, you can install Fedora 9 and none of your existing files will be lost.
Why-o-why did they decide to make Debian specific changes to OpenSSL? Seriously, leave cryptography to the people who are cryptographers. Distro-builders should keep the hell away from it. To get cryptography right is already hard enough as it is.
We’re checking our company keys now. If a few of them are invalid we have to get them signed again which is going to costs us thousands of dollars. This sucks!
Package : openssl
Vulnerability : predictable random number generator
Problem type : remote
Debian-specific: yes
CVE Id(s) : CVE-2008-0166
Luciano Bello discovered that the random number generator in Debian’s
openssl package is predictable. This is caused by an incorrect
Debian-specific change to the openssl package (CVE-2008-0166). As a
result, cryptographic key material may be guessable.
In that box is Lamborghini Reventon number one of twenty. Apparently, it’s the only example which will be sold privately via a traditional dealership — in this case, Lamborghini of Las Vegas. The other nineteen were all spoken for before ever leaving the factory. We’ve attached a sampling of photos here, but to see the complete, step-by-step gallery of the car’s unboxing in Sin City, you’ll need to drop by Fresh Tarmac.
A Website set up by the Epilepsy Foundation has been hit by hackers, according to an Associated Press report.
An official with the foundation said computer hackers breached the foundation’s site, bombarding it with hundreds of pictures and links to pages with rapidly flashing images.
The images can be harmful to people with photosensitive epilepsy, who sometimes suffer seizures when they’re exposed to flickering images.
The foundation said the successful attack triggered severe migraines and near-seizure reactions in some site visitors who viewed the images.
The foundation said the FBI is investigating the breach.
San Francisco (CA) – Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster has posted another blog article which criticizes eBay for its lawsuit. In the post titled “Kettles and Pots“, Buckmaster outlines what eBay is suing for, namely to stop Craigslist’s poison pill and right of first refusal contract clauses for major shareholders. He also points out that protections Craigslist has put in place have actually been used by eBay in the past.
“It’s worth pointing out that Ebay is suing us for implementing protections for craigslist that it clearly believes are perfectly appropriate for protecting itself,” says Buckmaster.
Buckmaster goes on to talk about his company’s implementation of the “poison pill” and helpfully links to an SEC filing of eBay using the same tactic to protect itself back in 2004.
This is why I’m a libertarian. If you give the government a power, they will find a way to abuse it. It doesn’t matter how benign or legitimate that power may seem on it’s surface. Some public official will find a way to torture the definition of a term to serve either his/her own agenda, or the agenda of someone who’s paying him/her off. That’s why government should be kept as small as possible.
Piracy has been called many things, but Los Angeles County is adding a new appellation to the list: public nuisance. As first reported by Wired, the county’s Board of Supervisors has just adopted a new ordinance (PDF) that gives the authorities broad discretion to crack down on properties where piracy happens.
Fines, temporary evictions, and the seizure and sale of the property involved in piracy are all remedies that the county can pursue now that piracy is classed as a public nuisance that “substantially interferes with the interest of the public in the quality of life and community peace, lawful commerce in the county, property values, and is detrimental to the public health, safety, and welfare of the county’s citizens, its businesses, and its visitors.” Also, to tax revenue; one report notes that “state and local tax revenue loss to the County [from counterfeit goods] is estimated at over $483 million.”
Within hours of its release, Microsoft’s Service Pack 3 for Windows XP began drawing hundreds of complaints from users who claim the update is wreaking havoc on their PCs.
The problems with XP SP3, according to posters on Microsoft’s Windows XP message board, range from spontaneous reboots to outright system crashes.
“My external disks are having trouble starting up, which results in Windows not starting up,” complained user Michael Faklis, in a post Wednesday. “After three attempts [to install XP SP3] with different configurations each time, System Restore was the only way to get me out of deep s**t,” said ‘Doug W’.
The cool thing about eBay’s support system is it will always answer your question; unfortunately, that answer will always be a form letter on how to reset your password, as Timothy discovered when he tried to figure out how to sell his laptop to someone who wasn’t a Nigerian scammer. Timothy has discovered the awful truth behind today’s eBay—something many readers here already know—which is that it’s become virtually impossible to sell any sort of medium-to-high end electronics there anymore.
They have a point. Google stores a ton of illegal files but no one is filing a lawsuit against them. Ugh.
While the RIAA has waged a full-on legal assault against individual file-sharers, the MPAA has instead chosen to go after individual web sites. In 2006, the motion picture industry trade group filed copyright infringement lawsuits against a number of BitTorrent sites, including TorrentSpy and isoHunt. TorrentSpy lost, thanks to its admins’ willful destruction of evidence, but isoHunt is fighting back. A recent filing in the case opposes the MPAA’s motion for summary judgment, arguing that isoHunt is just another search engine.
“There are hundreds of public torrent sites, some limited to a specific subject matter, others general aggregators like isoHunt, who like Google, try to cover as much of the Internet as possible,” reads isoHunt’s filing. “The essential functions performed at a torrent site are also performed at a comprehensive search site like Google or Yahoo!.”
I really can’t believe Microsoft would even consider doing this - why, when you are at least a small part of the dominant new distribution mechanism for media, would you even consider giving in to the demands of someone who’s already giving their content away for free on Hulu? And it’s rather unfortunate that I could potentially have this forced on me by Microsoft with a patch.
As much as I dislike Apple’s overpriced hardware, I respect what they’ve forced media companies to do - adapt to a new technology rather than pander to them.
If you like to download the latest episodes of “Heroes” or other NBC shows from BitTorrent, maybe you shouldn’t buy a Microsoft Zune to watch them on.
A future update of the software for Microsoft’s portable media player may well include a feature that will block unauthorized copies of copyrighted videos from being played on it.
I realize this is a silly example, but when people wonder, “why should I care about privacy?” It makes a little sense with such a “sensational” example. Checkout the ACLU website for more “official” info on protecting your privacy.
Four Hightower students being investigated after scores were changed for 60 students.
SUGAR LAND — Four high school students are being investigated on suspicion of breaking into the Fort Bend Independent School District’s computer network and changing the grades of at least 60 students, according to court documents and school officials.
Investigators estimated the financial loss to the school district at more than $190,000, making the case a possible felony.
Whitehat SEO, while not at a standstill, is certainly feeling a pinch from Google lately. Penalties are being handed out to sites much like a fratboy would cups of beer to the only attractive girl at the party. And yet many still refuse to learn anything remotely blackhat. I understand that they don’t want to implement the tactics specifically that I talk about, but there’s a lot more to it, and a lot that can be learned. So without further delay….
Some Great Reasons that a Whitehat SEO should Learn Blackhat SEO Read more »
Let’s be honest here. The reason your average Joe should be scared about this: is because of porn.
Here’s how it works: most guys have this huge stash of porn and no way to verify that every last file is 100% legal. There’s a good chance they don’t even know what’s in there. You just used bit torrent or whatever to download a bunch of huge archives and quit looking at it once you got your rocks off. Somewhere deep in one of those folders, a file with a 17 year old might have snuck through. You know you’re not a pedophile, but you can’t produce the USC legal age verification forms for some thumbnail cache file somewhere, so you go to jail.
Make no mistake, this is bullshit. But to avoid the whole thing, and also to keep our kids from going through our porn and learning we’re human, we encrypt it. At this point, the border guard is probably going to detain you for even having anything that remotely looks like encryption. Your laptop will be handed to someone who knows about TrueCrypt and they will want to know your hidden password. There’s no way to prove or disprove the existence of a hidden volume, so if you’re a bad liar you will be arrested and if you’re a good liar your laptop will probably get confiscated just in case.
All of which amounts to one thing: What the Border Guard is doing is not only unreasonable, it is tantamount to searching and caching your brain for signs of thoughtcrime. There need to be protections against this sort of thing. (Yeah like the 4th amendment… but we’re not using that anymore.)
While I don’t think this is huge news (Flash “effects and transitions” are “slow and annoying”), it’s still good to see more open source platforms.
Flash’s future lies in media delivery (youtube, gawker, etc) in which they now compete with Silverlight.
Having TV’s able to access hulu and iplayer would be cool but I don’t think it will happen. The TV would need wifi access, a hard drive (or similar storage) a web browser and some way to interface with the TV other than the remote. At which point it would basically be a PC anyway. Things like iplayer are easier used through a 3rd party device (like the Wii), and not through the TV itself.
Specifically, this work will include:
Removing restrictions on use of the SWF and FLV/F4V specifications
Publishing the device porting layer APIs for Adobe Flash Player
Publishing the Adobe Flash® Cast™ protocol and the AMF protocol for robust data services
Removing licensing fees – making next major releases of Adobe Flash Player and Adobe AIR for devices free
Unlinker Firefox Add-On
BeautyandtheBoost.com
As a former Verizon customer, I must say I’m very surprised. From what I’ve seen of their track record, Verizon of all providers would be the last one I would expect to embrace openness.
Red Hat’s Fedora Project launched today the new Fedora 9. The new version offers users of the Linux Operating System a whole new set of features, including the KDE 4 desktop environment which represents the system’s main characteristic.
The Fedora Project has released Fedora 9, a significant upgrade for the popular Linux distribution. Fedora 9 packs in a number of new features including an improved package management system, KDE 4 and more.
San Francisco (CA) – Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster has posted another 
Piracy has been called many things, but Los Angeles County is adding a new appellation to the list: public nuisance. As first reported by Wired, the county’s Board of Supervisors has just adopted a new ordinance (PDF) that gives the authorities broad discretion to crack down on properties where piracy happens.
Within hours of its release, Microsoft’s Service Pack 3 for Windows XP began drawing hundreds of complaints from users who claim the update is wreaking havoc on their PCs.
While the RIAA has waged a full-on legal assault against individual file-sharers, the MPAA has instead chosen to go after individual web sites. In 2006, the motion picture industry trade group filed copyright infringement lawsuits against a number of BitTorrent sites, including TorrentSpy and isoHunt. TorrentSpy lost, thanks to its admins’ willful destruction of evidence, but isoHunt is fighting back. A recent filing in the case opposes the MPAA’s motion for summary judgment, arguing that isoHunt is just another search engine.
I really can’t believe Microsoft would even consider doing this - why, when you are at least a small part of the dominant new distribution mechanism for media, would you even consider giving in to the demands of someone who’s already giving their content away for free on Hulu? And it’s rather unfortunate that I could potentially have this forced on me by Microsoft with a patch.
While I don’t think this is huge news (Flash “effects and transitions” are “slow and annoying”), it’s still good to see more open source platforms.
We’re checking our company keys now. If a few of them are invalid we have to get them signed again which is going to costs us thousands of dollars. This sucks!