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Author Topic: Tech News Weekly: Edition 17-09  (Read 6368 times)

Ehtyar

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Tech News Weekly: Edition 17-09
« on: April 26, 2009, 06:10 AM »
The Weekly Tech News
TNWeekly01.gifHi all.
Be sure to check out #10 if you haven't seen it, really great laugh  :-*
As usual, you can find last week's news here.


1. Study: Pirates Biggest Music Buyers. Labels: Yeah, Right
Spoiler
http://arstechnica.com/media/news/2009/04/study-pirates-buy-tons-more-music-than-average-folks.ars
A widely publicized study has shown that music pirates over the age of 15 are more likely to purchase music, online or otherwise, than their non-pirate brethren. It will come as no surprise to most that the recording industry disagrees.

Those who download illegal copies of music over P2P networks are the biggest consumers of legal music options, according to a new study by the BI Norwegian School of Management. Researchers examined the music downloading habits of more than 1,900 Internet users over the age of 15, and found that illegal music connoisseurs are significantly more likely to purchase music than the average, non-P2P-loving user.

Unsurprisingly, BI found that those between 15 and 20 are more likely to buy music via paid download than on a physical CD, though most still purchased at least one CD in the last six months. However, when it comes to P2P, it seems that those who wave the pirate flag are the most click-happy on services like the iTunes Store and Amazon MP3. BI said that those who said they download illegal music for "free" bought ten times as much legal music as those who never download music illegally. "The most surprising is that the proportion of paid download is so high," the Google-translated Audun Molde from the Norwegian School of Management told Aftenposten.


2. Google Boffins Unveil 'What's Up?' CAPTCHA
Spoiler
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/04/20/new_google_captcha/
http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2009/04/google-research-explores-using-image-orientation-for-captcha.ars
Google has unveiled a new form of CAPTCHA that makes use of images that rotated to a random degree. To pass, a user must select the image that is right-side-up.

Attempting to take the upper hand in the battle against bots, researchers from Google have devised a new CAPTCHA system that uses a series of randomly rotated images to distinguish between human visitors and automated scripts.

The technique, detailed in a paper titled What's Up CAPTCHA?, presents people signing up for site accounts or performing other website tasks with several pictures that are identical except for one attribute: some of them are upside-down or sideways. To gain permission to create the account or post a comment, a user must successfully click on the image that is right-side up.


3. Bluetooth "high Speed" Technology Becomes Official With 3.0 Spec
Spoiler
http://arstechnica.com/hardware/news/2009/04/bluetooth-high-speed-technology-becomes-official-with-30-spec.ars
Bluetooth 3.0 has been standardized, with higher speeds made possible by establishing an ad-hoc wireless network to transfer data.

The Bluetooth SIG today officially announced its new Bluetooth 3.0+HS specification, otherwise known as Bluetooth High Speed Technology. The spec has been in development for some time, and astute readers know that today's announcement was expected.

The new spec adds the ability to switch over to an 802.11 radio for fast data transfer speeds. It is completely backwards compatible with older Bluetooth devices, and still uses the same protocols for establishing connections. But if two devices support the 3.0+HS spec and have an 802.11 capable radio, then it will be utilized for large data transfers.


4. Chinese Spies Breach US Joint Strike Fighter Project, Wall Street Journal Reports
Spoiler
http://www.news.com.au/technology/story/0,28348,25368321-5014239,00.html
http://www.kimatv.com/news/tech/43394432.html
http://arstechnica.com/security/news/2009/04/chinese-hackers-nick-joint-strike-fighter-plans.ars
The Wall Street Journal has reported that Chinese hackers breached computer systems containing information regarding Lockheed Martin's F-35 Lightning II program and stole terabytes of information. Defense officials claim nothing classified was stolen.

COMPUTER spies have reportedly hacked into the United States' most costly weapons program, raising the prospect of adversaries gaining access to top-secret security data.

Citing current and former government officials, The Wall Street Journal said cyber-intruders were able to copy several terabytes of data on the $US300 billion ($430 billion) Joint Strike Fighter project, which may make it easier to defend against the aircraft, also known as the F-35 Lightning II.


5. Google Joins Effort for 3D Web Standard With New Plugin, API
Spoiler
http://arstechnica.com/software/news/2009/04/google-releases-3d-graphics-plugin-for-browsers.ars
Google have released a new open source, cross platform browser plugin capable of rendering hardware accelerated 3D graphics in-browser with javascript.

Google has released an experimental browser plugin that will make it possible to display rich 3D graphics in Web content. Google hopes that the plugin will stimulate discussion within the Web development community and contribute to a nascent effort headed by the Khronos group to bring 3D graphics to the Web.

The plugin provides an implementation of O3D, a new API conceived by Google that facilitates the development of interactive 3D Web applications. It can be used to programmatically create and manipulate 3D graphics with the JavaScript programming language. It's far more sophisticated and ambitious than some of Google's previous experiments with 3D Web content, such as the ill-fated Lively service. The source code of the plugin is distributed under the open source BSD license, which broadly permits third-party developers to study, modify, and redistribute the plugin software.


6. Geocities to Close After 15 Years of Aesthetic "awesomeness"
Spoiler
http://arstechnica.com/web/news/2009/04/geocities-to-close-after-15-years-of-aesthetic-awesomeness.ars
Iconic web service Geocities will be closed by owner Yahoo due to lack of profit. Geocities has been around since 1994 and has housed some of the most popular user-generated content on the web.

Believe it or not, the webpage service Geocities is still alive—but not for long. Fifteen years after its original creation, Yahoo has announced that it will shut down the service later this year. An exact date is not specified, but Yahoo is warning current users to consider moving to other options, such as Yahoo's own Web Hosting service.

Started in 1994, Geocities was like the Facebook to Angelfire's MySpace—competing webpage services that allowed over-enthused HTML newbies to create artfully horrific webpages to represent themselves in the early days of the Internet. (I was a diehard Angelfire fan, myself.) Geocities was acquired by Yahoo in 1999 with the intent of extending Yahoo's reach with its Internet advertising and services.


7. Big Boost for Aussie Firewall
Spoiler
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/04/23/aussie_firewall_boost/
Australia's second biggest ISP, Optusnet (the slimy bastards), have come onboard with the trial of the Great Aussie Firewall, significantly boosting the project's credibility.

The controversial Great Aussie Firewall got a big boost yesterday when Australia's second largest ISP Optus agreed to join the pilot.

The testing of filtering technology has suffered credibility problems since the refusal of iiNet to take part, after it was unable to reconcile the trial with its opposition to censorship. iiNet said the proposed blacklist of unwanted material was much wider than just child sex abuse images.


8. Pirate Bay Lawyers Demand Retrial
Spoiler
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8014626.stm
It has been revealed that Judge Tomas Norstrom, who presided over the Pirate Bay case, is involed with several pro-copyright organisations. This has been used by The Pirate Bay gang to demand a retrial.

Judge Tomas Norstrom is a member of the Swedish Copyright Association and sits on the board of Swedish Association for the Protection of Industrial Property.

But the judge has told Swedish Radio: "These activities do not constitute a conflict of interest."

Sweden's Court of Appeal would rule on a possible retrial, the lawyers said.


9. Researchers Find Massive Botnet On Nearly 2 Million PCs
Spoiler
http://www.darkreading.com/security/attacks/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=217000166
An as-yet unnamed botnet being operated out of the Ukraine appears to have infected over 2 millions PCs, most situated in the United States and many attached to government and corporate networks.

Researchers have discovered a major botnet operating out of the Ukraine that has infected 1.9 million machines, including large corporate and government PCs mainly in the U.S.

The botnet, which appears to be larger than the infamous Storm botnet was in its heyday, has infected machines from some 77 government-owned domains -- 51 of which are U.S. government ones, according to Ophir Shalitin, marketing director of Finjan, which recently found the botnet. Shalitin says the botnet is controlled by six individuals and is hosted in Ukraine.


10. Achmed, The Dead Terrorist
Spoiler
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFMl7_SQg00
I'm sure plenty of you have seen this one, but i spent half a day giggling to myself at work after seeing this. Jeff Dunham performs some absolutely terrific comedy with his pupped Achmed, the dead terrorist.

onion.png



Ehtyar.
« Last Edit: April 29, 2009, 12:17 AM by mouser »

Deozaan

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Re: Tech News Weekly: Edition 17-09
« Reply #1 on: April 29, 2009, 12:17 AM »
https link to the previous tech news?

Thanks for putting all this info together, Ehtyar.  :Thmbsup:

mouser

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Re: Tech News Weekly: Edition 17-09
« Reply #2 on: April 29, 2009, 12:18 AM »
i edited to change to http from https.

Ehtyar

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Re: Tech News Weekly: Edition 17-09
« Reply #3 on: April 29, 2009, 01:24 AM »
Yw Deo :)

What's the deal with HTTPS around here lately? Far too much security-laxness around here...

Ehtyar.