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Open source and the fear factor mentality.

Mon, 01 Sep 2008 22:17:48 GMT

clipped by: hotdoge3

Open source and the ‘fear factor’ mentality

In the current economic climate, businesses of every size are looking to reduce their spending wherever possible. Open source software, which has no upfront licensing fees, is one way of achieving significant savings.

However, in order to protect their enormous revenue streams, large software corporations have invested millions in spreading fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) about the security of open source software. In this post, I will examine and debunk five commonly held myths about open source security and why large corporations are promoting a “fear factor” mentality around open source software.

Tags: open source

Nigerian man to divorce 82 wives

Mon, 01 Sep 2008 09:59:19 GMT

clipped by: hotdoge3

Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

Nigerian man to divorce 82 wives

A Nigerian religious leader with 86 wives has accepted an Islamic decree ordering him to divorce all but four of them, local authorities say.

A spokesman for the emir of Bida told the BBC that Mohammadu Bello Abubakar, 84, agreed on Saturday to comply with the decree.

Last week one of Nigeria's top Islamic bodies, the Jamatu Nasril Islam, sentenced him to death.

The sentence was lifted but he was threatened with eviction from his home.

Earlier, Mr Abubakar had challenged Islamic scholars, saying there was no punishment stated in the Koran for having more than four wives.

"I have not contravened any established law that would warrant my being banished from the land... There is no law that says one must not marry more than four wives," the AFP news agency reported him as saying.

Many of the wives live three to a room, some have seven children

The former teacher and Islamic preacher lives in Niger State with his wives and at least 170 children.

Tags: wives

How to get thrown into a Chinese prison

Mon, 01 Sep 2008 01:11:55 GMT

clipped by: hotdoge3
clipper's remarks: don't do it.

Clip Source: news.cnet.com

How to get thrown into a Chinese prison

Powderly was among the would-be protesters detained in China without being charged of a crime.

What worked and what didn't go forward?
Powderly: None of them worked. We did nothing. We were arrested and detained in China...for doing nothing except for thinking about it.

While being detained, Powderly snapped this shot of a dozing interrogator.

They told some of my collaborators they were gonna shoot us. They really didn't know what we were doing or who we were...At about the 26th hour, they gave up. So they filed us all in vans...and started driving us way on the outskirts of town... Before long we see this ominous spectre of a giant building surrounded by barbed wire. That was Chongwen detention center.

They stripped us and took photos of us naked. They put us in little red shorts and red shirts, prison clothes, and marched us into general population prison cells...At that point we were in a position no or very few Americans had been before.

Tags: china

Boobs on Bikes see Video

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 07:48:36 GMT

clipped by: hotdoge3

Clip Source: www.3news.co.nz

Around 100,000 pack Queen St to see Boobs on Bikes

Watch extended coverage of the parade
WARNING: This video contains nudity

Downtown Auckland came to a grinding halt today as tens of thousands of people crowded the sidewalks to watch the controversial Boobs on Bikes parade.

An estimated 100,000 packed the CBD as around 30 topless women on motor bikes and two army tanks were driven along Queen Street.

The parade, organised by porn king Steve Crow to promote his erotica festival this weekend, had an almost carnival atmosphere with the crowd cheering and clapping as near-naked women went by.

Mr Crow, in a black Bentley convertible, led the parade and had instructed the topless women beforehand to keep the jiggling to a minimum and to not do anything that would be deemed offensive.

A legal bid to stop the parade failed in the High Court in Auckland yesterday.

The huge crowd, at times lined six deep, cheered and and snapped the topless women on cellphones and cameras.

Tags: boobs on bikes

Boobs on bikes tasteless but harmless,says judge

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 11:54:23 GMT

clipped by: hotdoge3

Clip Source: www.nzherald.co.nz

Boobs on bikes tasteless but harmless, says judge

Steve Crow said that he picked up the gauntlet laid down by Cathy Casey. Photos / Kenny Rodger, Paul Estcourt

Judge Nicola Mathers yesterday dismissed Auckland City Council's case for a court injunction to stop pornographer Steve Crow holding the event.

MetService forecaster Allister Gorman said a southwest breeze with a windchill temperature of 8C was predicted at lunchtime today.

"It may well be that the parade is tasteless but equally it may be that in a more mature society the vast majority might consider it harmless."

Judge Mathers said she took into account the attitude of the police in not opposing the parade, the lack of any public disorder and the fact 80,000 to 100,000 had voted with their feet and watched the parade.

The judge also questioned the lawfulness of the bylaw and whether it restricted rights under the Bill of Rights Act.

"This is a free-for-all now. Any grubby parade can now happen on the street."

Tags: boobs on bikes

Video - Boobs on Bikes parade

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 11:40:54 GMT

clipped by: hotdoge3

Clip Source: www.infonews.co.nz

Video - Boobs on Bikes parade

AUCKLAND CITY

Did you miss Boobs on Bikes yesterday or do you just wan t to see it all again? Well here is a video of the parade and some (hard to hear) comments by Steve Crow about what being Aucklands mayor means to him.

Video - Boobs on Bikes parade

AUCKLAND CITY

Tags: boobs on bikes

Get married or you're fired

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 22:28:24 GMT

clipped by: hotdoge3

Clip Source: blogs.nzherald.co.nz

Get married or you're fired

While the US and Europe jump up and down over Iran's alleged nuclear weapons programme, spare a thought for its (single) workers.

Employees at a major state-owned company have been told to marry by September or face being fired .

The Pars Special Economic Energy Zone Company employs thousands of people, mostly young men, on Iran's Gulf coast. It controls Iran's large network of gas and petrochemical facilities around the coastal city of Assalouyeh on the Gulf coast.

Being married is a job requirement, a directive from the company is reported as saying. Its directive, according to the Etemad newspaper, says that despite requests "some of our colleagues did not fulfil their commitments and are still single".

It continues: "As being married is one of the criteria of employment, we are announcing for the last time that all the female and male colleagues have until September 21 to go ahead with this important and moral religious duty."

Tags: news

"Spear Phishers" land 15,000 sucker fish

Sun, 08 Jun 2008 22:35:31 GMT

clipped by: hotdoge3

Clip Source: arstechnica.com

"Spear Phishers" land 15,000 sucker fish

A recently released VeriSign report contains further evidence that targeted spam attacks are slowly on the rise. We covered this type of attack back in April, when it became apparent that a number of CEO's and their families had been "served" with subpoenas supposedly requiring them to testify in a federal case. This type of attack is known as "spear phishing," and it turns conventional spam wisdom on its head.

Instead of creating a general message with the goal of enticing a large number of people, spear phishers craft more personal missives that are directly targeted at a core group. The legal approach we saw last April was a novelty, but its one of an almost infinite number of angles, all of which can be tailored to groups ranging in size from a general profession (electrical engineers) all the way down to a specific person at a particular company.

Screensavers causing massive global pollution:

Mon, 09 Jun 2008 03:19:10 GMT

clipped by: hotdoge3

Clip Source: apcmag.com

Midnight, is, according to ancient lore, the witching hour. It's when ghouls, ghosts and computer viruses are at their most potent; a time of ill feelings and odd superstitions. And, as it transpires, if you were a Telstra employee working a bit of overtime last Monday, also the time you may have found your screen going black.

No warding of ghoulies or goblins here, however -- it's part of a company initiative to go green, by eliminating a standardised Telstra screensaver -- replete with company-affirming messages -- and replacing it with a black screen.

UK ISP bows to record industry, to send P2P warning letters

Sun, 08 Jun 2008 21:55:59 GMT

clipped by: hotdoge3

Clip Source: arstechnica.com

UK ISP bows to record industry, to send P2P warning letters

As we noted yesterday, one of the fondest dreams of the recording industry is to get Internet service providers to help them police the content flowing across their networks. Now, British ISP Virgin Media has taken a halting step in that general direction by agreeing to work with the BPI, the UK equivalent of the RIAA which represents the interests of the recording industry in that country. The agreement will have Virgin sending out warning letters to those who the BPI has identified as sharing copyrighted material.

Korea fines Intel $25 million for antitrust violations

Thu, 05 Jun 2008 05:11:44 GMT

clipped by: hotdoge3

Clip Source: www.computerworld.com

Korea fines Intel $25 million for antitrust violations

The Korea Fair Trade Commission has fined Intel a reported 26 billion won (US$25.42 million) for abusing its dominant position in the microprocessor market, by offering rebates to South Korean computer makers in a way that unfairly harmed its rival Advanced Micro Devices.

The KFTC said Intel offered rebates to Korean PC makers including Samsung Electronics and Trigem Computer, if they did not also buy chips from AMD, according to various reports. The KFTC couldn't immediately be reached for comment.

The KFTC has shown no reluctance in the past to taking on large corporations that it found to have engaged in anticompetitive practices. In 2005, it fined Microsoft $34 million, and required that the company sell a Windows version in Korea that did not bundle instant messaging or Windows Media Player software.

XP SP3 omits critical security update

Thu, 05 Jun 2008 02:10:38 GMT

clipped by: hotdoge3
clipper's remarks: not up to date

Clip Source: computerworld.com

XP SP3 omits critical security update

While it doesn't install vulnerable version of Flash, it doesn't update Flash either

June 4, 2008 (Computerworld) Microsoft Corp. yesterday confirmed that Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3) omits a critical security update issued by the company in November 2006.

The AWOL update, MS06-069, patched five vulnerabilities in Adobe Systems Inc.'s Flash Player and was rated "critical" by Microsoft, the company's highest threat ranking.

Flash Player has made security news of late; last week, for example, researchers revealed that hackers were actively exploiting Flash Player 9.0.115.0, an edition released by Adobe in December 2007. On Monday, Computerworld reported that Windows XP SP3 shipped with that out-of-date and vulnerable version rather than the newer and more secure Flash Player 9.0.124.0, which Adobe issued in early April, about two weeks before Microsoft wrapped up the service pack and began distributing it to resellers.

Tags: windows xp

Firefox 3.0 memory v IE 7 memory the Test

Thu, 05 Jun 2008 01:22:52 GMT

clipped by: hotdoge3

Clip Source: blogs.zdnet.com

This morning I came across an article on Neosmart claiming that Firefox 3.0 is, despite the best attempts of the Mozilla dev team, still a massive memory hog.

I took two identical VMware virtual PCs, both running Windows Vista Ultimate SP1 32-bit. The systems were given a meager 512Mb of RAM. I then took both browsers for a good two hour browsing session, visiting some of the Internet’s best “hot sheets” websites and loading up 30 tabs for each browser (remember, IE7 and Firefox 3.0 are running in different virtual machines).

Internet Explorer 7

Memory usage: 319,260K
Total system: 436MB

Firefox 3.0 RC1

Memory usage: 159,168K

Total system: 376MB

Seems pretty clear to me which browser is the winner - and it isn’t Internet Explorer 7! Not only did IE7 consume more system resources, it made the system noticeably sluggish when running with 30 tabs loaded. Firefox 3.0 on the other hand felt fast and responsive throughout.

But this test does raise some interesting questions:

Tags: windows

Friends quit smoking? You probably will too

Thu, 29 May 2008 23:24:08 GMT

clipped by: hotdoge3

Clip Source: www.chinadaily.com.cn

Friends quit smoking? You probably will too

LOS ANGELES - The urge to smoke is contagious, but quitting apparently is, too. A team of researchers who showed that obesity can spread person-to-person has found a similar pattern with smoking cessation: A smoker is more likely to kick the habit if a spouse, friend, co-worker or sibling did.

Turkish students light up in Istanbul in January 2008. A law banning smoking in public places has come into effect in Turkey -- a country where nearly two-thirds of men smoke. [Agencies]

What's more, smokers tend to quit in groups and those who don't stop puffing increasingly find themselves pushed to the edge of their social circles, the researchers found.

"Your smoking behavior depends upon not just the smoking behavior of the people you know, but also the people who they know" and so on, said Dr. Nicholas Christakis, a medical sociologist at Harvard Medical School and lead author of the new report.

Tags: smoking

Green tea may shield brain from sleep apnea effects

Thu, 29 May 2008 23:31:00 GMT

clipped by: hotdoge3
clipper's remarks: Drink Green tea

Clip Source: www.chinadaily.com.cn

Green tea may shield brain from sleep apnea effects

Researchers found that when they added green tea antioxidants to rats' drinking water, it appeared to protect the animals' brains during bouts of oxygen deprivation designed to mimic the effects of obstructive sleep apnea (OSA).

The findings suggest that green tea compounds should be further studied as a potential OSA therapy, the researchers report in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.

OSA is a common disorder in which soft tissues in the throat temporarily collapse and block the airway during sleep, causing repeated stops and starts in breathing throughout the night.

The immediate symptoms include chronic loud snoring and gasping, as well as daytime sleepiness. Left untreated, OSA can eventually have widespread effects in the body; it's linked to high blood pressure, and research suggests that the intermittent dips in oxygen to the brain may lead to memory and learning difficulties.

Tags: china