P2P-Zone - View Single Post - The Newspaper Shop -- Tuesday edition

walktalker · 04-09-01, 05:43 PM

Beware That Company Box You Took
Dead dot-coms are still alive in some ex-employees' computers. But these haunted hard drives harbor huge security holes instead of memories. Inexperienced home users running corporate-configured computers are a security disaster just waiting to happen, said Christopher Budd, a manager at Microsoft's Security Response Center. Many who worked for now-defunct businesses inherited or appropriated the computers they had been using at the office. These computers are typically configured for use on a corporate network protected by skilled system administrators, firewalls and other industrial-strength security measures.
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,46417,00.html

Pioneer Steps Out of Net Rutt
The Internet is boring, according to a prominent Internet pioneer who recently left the online world in search of more intelligent life forms. Jim Rutt has been involved in almost every significant Net-based business of the past two decades. But he now believes that the age of interesting advancements on the Internet is over ... at least for the foreseeable future. "Mostly all I see in the Internet's future are mundane business applications, ad-driven content that will drag the intelligence of the Net down to the lowest common denominator, and the ever-growing selection of mostly boring porn," Rutt said.
http://www.wired.com/news/exec/0,1370,46360,00.html

Cheating's Never Been Easier
Plagiarists have vexed school officials since the dawn of the term paper. But only recently have students been armed with what might be the ultimate cheating tool. And if the fears of university professors prove true, cheating on papers will rise significantly in the near future. "There is just so much information out there, readily accessible in an anonymous fashion, that faculty (and students) see it as a very strong temptation," said Donald L. McCabe, one of the founders of the Center for Academic Integrity. In a survey underway at the University of Virginia, faculty cited the Internet as the No. 1 societal force leading students to commit acts of plagiarism.
http://www.wired.com/news/school/0,1383,45803,00.html

A Vaccine for Plants
Pesticides, a necessary evil for protecting crops, have toxic consequences, and genetically modified foods are as welcome in some quarters as the plague. It's not easy being an ecologically conscious farmer these days. But a relatively new product appears to be making inroads in the agricultural industry. Last summer Eden Bioscience of Bothell, Washington, released Messenger, a non-toxic pesticide, which like a vaccine in humans, tricks plants into defending themselves against intruders.
http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,45525,00.html

Young Gandhi's Crusade Is Dot-In
What would Mahatma Gandhi have thought about the Web? Probably that it was a British conspiracy. So says Tushar Gandhi, the great-grandson of the legendary freedom fighter, who is using the suffixes on the Internet to remind modern Indians about a forgotten concept called nationalism. Gandhi is asking Indians who are registering domains not to be colonized by dot-com or dot-org. The true Indian domain, he says, "is dot-in, so flaunt it."
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,46339,00.html

NASA Unveils New Robot Plane
NASA scientists on Tuesday unveiled what they called the next generation of firefighting technology: a robot plane able to circle for up to 24 hours over wildfires, beaming video images and information back to computers by satellite. The Altus II unmanned plane uses cutting edge technology usually seen in military aircraft, giving fire crews a real-time view of fires that can burn over hundreds of thousands of acres. The plane could map dozens of fires and topographical features in a day, never endangering a pilot.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,46519,00.html

Drug-Free Urine at $69 a Pee

Kenneth Curtis makes good money pissing his days away. Curtis sells his urine over the Internet to people who are skittish about using their own for workplace drug tests. Privacy Protection Services guarantees that his pee will pass even the strictest urinalysis exams. For $69 plus shipping costs, customers get 5.5 ounces of urine in a small, self-heating pouch that can be strapped onto the test-taker's body for easy concealment. And in an era where employees routinely pee into paper cups, Curtis says he has struck liquid gold. Over the past six years, he has sold over 100,000 of his "urine test substitution kits" and spawned many online competitors.
http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,46416,00.html

Privacy Flaw Found at Verizon Wireless Site
Verizon Wireless is leaking private information about cell phone customers who use its Web site, Newsbytes has confirmed. The privacy flaw, discovered by a Seattle software developer, enables unauthorized individuals to browse customer account information, including billing details. Using instructions posted Saturday by Marc Slemko to a security mailing list, Newsbytes was able to pull up detailed billing records of Verizon Wireless customers who use the firm's My Account service. Brian Wood, executive director of corporate communications, said Verizon Wireless is still investigating the validity and scope of the problem. "If our investigations uncover a security lapse, we will take immediate action to fix it," said Wood.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/169732.html

Activists Oppose Plan To Monitor Court Employees' Net Use
The privacy and digital-rights advocacy group Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is urging activists to rally against a proposal to monitor the Internet use of all federal judiciary employees. “If we can’t trust judicial employees to use computers appropriately, then we shouldn’t trust them to administer our courts,” the EFF said in an action alert urging members and supporters to join in a letter-writing campaign against the proposed policy. “Regardless of the legalities, spying on employees is bad policy, and anathema to a working environment that would otherwise attract trusted professionals and produce outstanding performance,” the EFF said.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/169713.html

Teens Take Diaries to Public on Web
Today's youngsters are increasingly choosing to write them in public, on the Internet, essentially a global billboard accessible by anyone and everyone. About one out of every five teenagers ages 12 to 17 -- more than 4 million of them -- now have personal Web pages, according to a recent study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project in the District. The sites are filled with daily logs, stories, poems, pictures and even real-time video of the authors. The coming-of-age logs of these "camgirls" and "camboys" are rewriting notions of public and private communication. Many of the teenagers believe the Internet affords them a sense of anonymity; some resent it when their parents check in.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/169721.html

New Worms Seek And Destroy Code Red
Amid a debate over the ethics of fighting a virus with a virus, security researchers have separately released two programs that hunt down and patch computers infected with Code Red II. CodeGreen, written by a German security expert who uses the nickname "Der HexXer," is designed to randomly scan the Internet for servers running Microsoft's IIS software that are infected with Code Red version II. When it finds a compromised IIS machine, the worm will attempt to download and apply the patch from Microsoft, and then will close the "back doors" left by the worm. The cleaned host will then itself begin the scanning process. CRclean, according to its author, Markus Kern, is a "passively spreading worm" which only targets systems that first attack the machine on which CRclean is running.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/169707.html

Smart shooting with 3D cameras
There have been 3D camera placement problems for as long as there have been 3D games. Run a character through a building, and walls get in the way. Place characters in natural settings, and the camera gets blocked by trees and hills. As Next Generation previews editor Blake Fischer puts it, “I hope people start thinking more about the camera. We’re still stuck with the legacy of Tomb Raider and Mario 64, and no one is thinking of new solutions for camera control.” Thanks to pionnering work from Naughty Dog, the Sony-owned development house that created Crash Bandicoot, a new idea for overcoming camera problems is on the horizon — a camera that thinks for itself.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/622389.asp?0dm=C19NT

04-09-01, 05:43 PM	#4
walktalker The local newspaper man Join Date: Aug 2000 Location: Montreal Posts: 2,036	Beware That Company Box You Took Dead dot-coms are still alive in some ex-employees' computers. But these haunted hard drives harbor huge security holes instead of memories. Inexperienced home users running corporate-configured computers are a security disaster just waiting to happen, said Christopher Budd, a manager at Microsoft's Security Response Center. Many who worked for now-defunct businesses inherited or appropriated the computers they had been using at the office. These computers are typically configured for use on a corporate network protected by skilled system administrators, firewalls and other industrial-strength security measures. http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,46417,00.html Pioneer Steps Out of Net Rutt The Internet is boring, according to a prominent Internet pioneer who recently left the online world in search of more intelligent life forms. Jim Rutt has been involved in almost every significant Net-based business of the past two decades. But he now believes that the age of interesting advancements on the Internet is over ... at least for the foreseeable future. "Mostly all I see in the Internet's future are mundane business applications, ad-driven content that will drag the intelligence of the Net down to the lowest common denominator, and the ever-growing selection of mostly boring porn," Rutt said. http://www.wired.com/news/exec/0,1370,46360,00.html Cheating's Never Been Easier Plagiarists have vexed school officials since the dawn of the term paper. But only recently have students been armed with what might be the ultimate cheating tool. And if the fears of university professors prove true, cheating on papers will rise significantly in the near future. "There is just so much information out there, readily accessible in an anonymous fashion, that faculty (and students) see it as a very strong temptation," said Donald L. McCabe, one of the founders of the Center for Academic Integrity. In a survey underway at the University of Virginia, faculty cited the Internet as the No. 1 societal force leading students to commit acts of plagiarism. http://www.wired.com/news/school/0,1383,45803,00.html A Vaccine for Plants Pesticides, a necessary evil for protecting crops, have toxic consequences, and genetically modified foods are as welcome in some quarters as the plague. It's not easy being an ecologically conscious farmer these days. But a relatively new product appears to be making inroads in the agricultural industry. Last summer Eden Bioscience of Bothell, Washington, released Messenger, a non-toxic pesticide, which like a vaccine in humans, tricks plants into defending themselves against intruders. http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,45525,00.html Young Gandhi's Crusade Is Dot-In What would Mahatma Gandhi have thought about the Web? Probably that it was a British conspiracy. So says Tushar Gandhi, the great-grandson of the legendary freedom fighter, who is using the suffixes on the Internet to remind modern Indians about a forgotten concept called nationalism. Gandhi is asking Indians who are registering domains not to be colonized by dot-com or dot-org. The true Indian domain, he says, "is dot-in, so flaunt it." http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,46339,00.html NASA Unveils New Robot Plane NASA scientists on Tuesday unveiled what they called the next generation of firefighting technology: a robot plane able to circle for up to 24 hours over wildfires, beaming video images and information back to computers by satellite. The Altus II unmanned plane uses cutting edge technology usually seen in military aircraft, giving fire crews a real-time view of fires that can burn over hundreds of thousands of acres. The plane could map dozens of fires and topographical features in a day, never endangering a pilot. http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,46519,00.html Drug-Free Urine at $69 a Pee Kenneth Curtis makes good money pissing his days away. Curtis sells his urine over the Internet to people who are skittish about using their own for workplace drug tests. Privacy Protection Services guarantees that his pee will pass even the strictest urinalysis exams. For $69 plus shipping costs, customers get 5.5 ounces of urine in a small, self-heating pouch that can be strapped onto the test-taker's body for easy concealment. And in an era where employees routinely pee into paper cups, Curtis says he has struck liquid gold. Over the past six years, he has sold over 100,000 of his "urine test substitution kits" and spawned many online competitors. http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,46416,00.html Privacy Flaw Found at Verizon Wireless Site Verizon Wireless is leaking private information about cell phone customers who use its Web site, Newsbytes has confirmed. The privacy flaw, discovered by a Seattle software developer, enables unauthorized individuals to browse customer account information, including billing details. Using instructions posted Saturday by Marc Slemko to a security mailing list, Newsbytes was able to pull up detailed billing records of Verizon Wireless customers who use the firm's My Account service. Brian Wood, executive director of corporate communications, said Verizon Wireless is still investigating the validity and scope of the problem. "If our investigations uncover a security lapse, we will take immediate action to fix it," said Wood. http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/169732.html Activists Oppose Plan To Monitor Court Employees' Net Use The privacy and digital-rights advocacy group Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is urging activists to rally against a proposal to monitor the Internet use of all federal judiciary employees. “If we can’t trust judicial employees to use computers appropriately, then we shouldn’t trust them to administer our courts,” the EFF said in an action alert urging members and supporters to join in a letter-writing campaign against the proposed policy. “Regardless of the legalities, spying on employees is bad policy, and anathema to a working environment that would otherwise attract trusted professionals and produce outstanding performance,” the EFF said. http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/169713.html Teens Take Diaries to Public on Web Today's youngsters are increasingly choosing to write them in public, on the Internet, essentially a global billboard accessible by anyone and everyone. About one out of every five teenagers ages 12 to 17 -- more than 4 million of them -- now have personal Web pages, according to a recent study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project in the District. The sites are filled with daily logs, stories, poems, pictures and even real-time video of the authors. The coming-of-age logs of these "camgirls" and "camboys" are rewriting notions of public and private communication. Many of the teenagers believe the Internet affords them a sense of anonymity; some resent it when their parents check in. http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/169721.html New Worms Seek And Destroy Code Red Amid a debate over the ethics of fighting a virus with a virus, security researchers have separately released two programs that hunt down and patch computers infected with Code Red II. CodeGreen, written by a German security expert who uses the nickname "Der HexXer," is designed to randomly scan the Internet for servers running Microsoft's IIS software that are infected with Code Red version II. When it finds a compromised IIS machine, the worm will attempt to download and apply the patch from Microsoft, and then will close the "back doors" left by the worm. The cleaned host will then itself begin the scanning process. CRclean, according to its author, Markus Kern, is a "passively spreading worm" which only targets systems that first attack the machine on which CRclean is running. http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/169707.html Smart shooting with 3D cameras There have been 3D camera placement problems for as long as there have been 3D games. Run a character through a building, and walls get in the way. Place characters in natural settings, and the camera gets blocked by trees and hills. As Next Generation previews editor Blake Fischer puts it, “I hope people start thinking more about the camera. We’re still stuck with the legacy of Tomb Raider and Mario 64, and no one is thinking of new solutions for camera control.” Thanks to pionnering work from Naughty Dog, the Sony-owned development house that created Crash Bandicoot, a new idea for overcoming camera problems is on the horizon — a camera that thinks for itself. http://www.msnbc.com/news/622389.asp?0dm=C19NT __________________ This post was sponsored by Netcoco, who wants cookies, cookies, cookies and, you guessed it, more cookies