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*HOT* Tech News And Downloads, I Would Read This Thread And Post Any Good Info
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AfterDawn Addict
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3. April 2007 @ 21:19 |
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like this
Quote:
The system DLL user32.dll was relocated in memory. The application will not run properly. The relocation occurred because the DLL D:\WINDOWS\System32\hhctrl.ocx occupied an address range reserved for Windows system DLLs. The vendor supplying the DLL should be contacted for a new DLL.
the key to the problem...is the realtek drivers....
rthdcpl.exe illegle system dll relocation
Known issues
After you install this security update on a Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2)-based computer, Realtek HD Audio Control Panel (Rthdcpl.exe) may not start.
THE FIX HERE
http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/68/295688#2965021
This message has been edited since posting. Last time this message was edited on 3. April 2007 @ 21:46
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AfterDawn Addict
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3. April 2007 @ 21:35 |
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Sony's Secret Weapon Against HD DVD: 20GB
Sony commits Blu-ray to be bigger than HD DVD, literally
Although the high definition optical format camps are divided into two, they both share many of the same characteristics. Both formats support nearly identical video and audio codecs and when all things being equal, should deliver identical experiences.
Aside from movie studio exclusives support, the main differentiating factor between the formats is storage space. In their current market iterations, Blu-ray Discs hold a 20GB advantage with its dual-layer 50GB media when compared to HD DVD?s dual-layer 30GB discs.
Sony realizes this distinct advantage, and is committing to rolling out 80 percent of all its forthcoming Blu-ray titles as 50GB discs, according to Video Business.
When transferring a film onto Blu-ray, compression engineers may utilize the extra 20GB to attain higher bit rate video and to accommodate lossless audio streams. While many dual-format releases of late, such as The Departed, feature identical video streams encoded with the same codec, engineers recognize that the added space afforded by Blu-ray can be spent to improve quality.
The encoders responsible for Nine Inch Nails: Beside You In Time, released on both HD DVD and Blu-ray acknowledges the difference. On the difference between the HD DVD and Blu-ray versions of the concert, a FAQ document on the NIN Web site reads, ?Technically speaking, the video quality of the Blu-ray version has a slight edge over the HD DVD: It was encoded at a slightly higher bit rate due to the Blu-ray spec's higher bandwidth capabilities for encoded video streams. However, this difference is nominal and would only be noticeable by a pair of well-trained eyes on an extremely expensive professional 1080p monitor.?
No matter how indistinguishable the differences 20GB may make, Sony is keen on using every bit of that extra space to prove its superiority over HD DVD.
?It?s important, especially in this phase, that we make sure we are showing the absolute best quality in video and audio, and 50GB accomplishes that,? said Sony worldwide president David Bishop.
http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=6751
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AfterDawn Addict
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3. April 2007 @ 21:40 |
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Windows users: Patch your systems now
The MS07-017 update includes patches for a total of seven animated cursor (.ani) vulnerabilities, three affecting Windows Vista. In addition to Windows Vista, the update applies to Windows 2000 SP4, Windows XP SP2, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 SP1, and Windows Server 2003 SP2.
No doubt there will be other patches out on April 10, the regularly scheduled Microsoft Patch Tuesday. But Windows users shouldn't put off until then what they can (and should) patch today.
AND A MONKEY IN A TREE,A REAL MICROSUCK SCREW UP..
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AfterDawn Addict
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4. April 2007 @ 08:34 |
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New twist in RIAA, Santangelo
p2pnet.net news:- US district judge Colleen McMahon, who's hearing the Big Music file sharing charges levelled at Patti Santangelo, says she can move for an order of dismissal with prejudice and, "The Court has the power to entertain such a motion, and to grant it on whatever terms and conditions the Court deems appropriate."
Santangelo long ago decided to stand up to the members of the Big 4 music cartel, and p2pnet readers have been contributing not only to her, but also to Michelle and Bobby, two of her five children who also became RIAA victims when the RIAA failed to intimidate Patti.
The last thing the RIAA or Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG want is for the Santangelo case to be heard. If that happens, they'll have not only to defend their position, but prove it, and so far, they've managed to avoid that, instead using the media to judge close to 20,000 men, women and children, finding them guilty of the non-existent crime of file sharing without having to go anywhere near a court, a jury or a magistrate.
Richard Gabriel, the Holme Roberts & Owen lawyer acting for the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) in this and other sue 'em all cases, also wants the case halted before it gets to a trial, even knowing heavy costs would almost certainly be awarded against his clients.
Better that than actually having to go before a judge and jury, is the probable RIAA reasoning.
Dropping the case would in one sense relieve the pressure on Santangelo, who's beset by deep outside problems, and on her her lawyer, Jordan Glass, who's devoting hours of pro bono effort towards all three cases, at the same time trying to run a legal practice.
Now Santangelo, who's on record as saying she wants her case to be heard so she can clear her name and get on with her life, and Glass will have to think deeply about their next step.
Stay tuned.
http://p2pnet.net/story/11876
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AfterDawn Addict
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4. April 2007 @ 08:44 |
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Not our fault, Apple tells EU
p2pnet.net news:- In a variation of its 'DRM is down to the Big 4' theme, Apple spokesman Steve Dowling says the company wanted a one-stop iTunes 'store' for the whole of of Europe, but wasn't able to achieve that because of the music labels and publishers.
The European Commission has picked up on what consumers around the world have been complaining about for years.
"Consumers can only buy music from the iTunes online stores in their country of residence and are therefore restricted in their choice of where to buy music, and consequently what music is available and at what price," says Jonathan Todd, European Commission spokesman.
But, "We don't believe Apple did anything to violate EU law," Associated Press has Dowling saying.
Investigators, "have been gathering evidence on Apple's deals with Sony BMG Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group and EMI Group PLC for the past two years, after Britain's Consumers' Association filed a complaint with the commission in 2004," says AP. But, "We do not believe we have breached European competition law, and we will be making that case strongly," the story has EMI spokeswoman Amanda Conroy declaring.
"Sony spokeswoman Sylvia Shin offered no immediate reaction to the investigation and a call made to Universal Music was not immediately returned," says AP, adding Apple and the labels have two months to answer questions in a "statement of objections" from regulators and, "If found guilty, a company could face hefty fines, which in theory could total up to 10 percent of the company's worldwide annual revenue."
Agreements between Apple and the major labels violate EU rules prohibiting restrictive business practices, it says.
Downloading a track in Britain costs $1.56 (today, about $3), in Denmark $1.44 (today, about $2.85) , while in countries using the euro such as Germany and Belgium, a single costs $1.32 (today, about $2.60), says AP.
Meanwhile, Apple is also under intense international consumer pressure to allow people to be able to listen to iTunes downloads on any mobile player.
Norway, a non-EU country, says Apple's Fairplay DRM (Digital Restrictions Management) consumer control system isn't only unfair, it's unlawful.
"Fairplay is an illegal lock-in technology whose main purpose is to lock the consumers to the total package provided by Apple by blocking interoperability," says Torgeir Waterhouse, senior advisor at the Norwegian Consumer Council.
"For all practical purposes this means that iTunes Music Store is trying to kill off one the most important building blocks in a well functioning digital society, interoperability, in order to boost its own profits."
Norway has given Apple until October 1 to, "change its compatibility rules or face legal action and possible fines," AP points out.
In the background is yesterday's announcement that Apple and Britain's EMI which, with Vivendi Universal (France) and Sony BMG (Japan and Germany) and Warner Music (US) is a member of the Big 4, will sell EMI digital catalogue DRM-free.
And, "You all fell for it, the easiest PR trick in the book, Apple, EMI and DRM," says Charlie Demerjian in The Inquirer, going on:
The problem is they snowed you, there is no removal of anything, this is a completely different product. The older ones remain totally DRM infected, cost the same, and if you bought them, you are just as locked in as you were, unless you tithe more.
The content mafiaa distracted you with a shiny thing, and sold you back the rights they had no standing to take in the first place.
Stay tuned.
Slashdot Slashdot it!
Also See:
restricted in their choice - EU goes after Apple, major labels, April 3, 2006
Associated Press - Apple notified of EU inquiry, April 3, 2006
illegal lock-in technology - Apple Fairplay DRM 'illegal', January 25, 2006
DRM-free - Steve Jobs' DRM master-stroke, April 2, 2006
The Inquirer - Apple/EMI DRM deal is a big bad joke, April 2, 2006
http://p2pnet.net/story/11871
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AfterDawn Addict
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4. April 2007 @ 13:18 |
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Firefox Also Vulnerable to Windows Cursor Exploit
Contrary to other reports, Mozilla's Firefox 2.0 is vulnerable to attackers armed with the Windows animated cursor exploit, a researcher says.
Gregg Keizer, Computerworld
Contrary to other reports, Mozilla's Firefox 2.0 is vulnerable to attackers armed with the Windows animated (ANI) cursor exploit, a researcher said tpday.
Alexander Sotirov, the vulnerability researcher at Determina who discovered the ANI flaw last December and notified Microsoft of it later that month, yesterday posted a demonstration of an ANI exploit that hijacks a PC when Firefox users are conned into visiting a malicious site. Microsoft today issued a patch for the exploit.
"It turns out that Firefox uses the same vulnerable Windows component to process .ani files, which can be exploited in a way similar to Internet Explorer," Sotirov said during the demo.
Demonstration
He showed how both IE7 and Firefox 2.0, when run on a Vista-powered PC, can be hijacked by an attack using the ANI exploit he created in December as a vulnerability proof-of-concept, which he also shared with Microsoft's security team. When the attack was run against IE 7, the ANI exploit gave access to all files on the system. "However, we cannot alter any system files" because of IE's protected mode, which is enabled by default in Vista, said Sotirov.
Vista's version of IE7 runs in a low-privilege mode--dubbed "protected mode" by Microsoft--that blocks disk write access to all but a temporary files folder.
An identical attack against Firefox 2.0, however, gave Sotirov complete and total access to the PC's drive. "Since Firefox does not have a low-privilege mode, similar to the protected mode in IE, we'll be able to overwrite files as well," he said.
Firefox Definitely Vulnerable
Third-party security vendors have claimed that Firefox 2.0 is not vulnerable. In a threat alert to its DeepSight customers, Symantec flatly stated "Mozilla Firefox is not vulnerable to the vulnerability."
Not so, said Sotirov. "The reason for the confusion over Firefox is that an exploit that works against it has not become public. So in a sense, since there are no attacks in the wild [that work in Firefox], it is safer. But people should also consider that the bad guys will figure out how to exploit Firefox."
Mozilla did not respond to requests for comment about Firefox's risk of exploitation, or confirmation that it is vulnerable.
So far this year, Mozilla has issued 10 Firefox patches.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,130368-page,1/article.html
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AfterDawn Addict
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4. April 2007 @ 13:22 |
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Microsoft Releases Emergency Windows Patch
Patch fixes Animated Cursor flaw and six others.
Robert McMillan, IDG News Service
Tuesday, April 03, 2007 11:00 AM GMT-08:00
With attackers finding more ways to exploit a new Windows problem, Microsoft today published an emergency software patch, fixing a critical flaw in its operating system.
The update, released as expected today, actually fixes seven separate Windows vulnerabilities, but security experts are most concerned about a bug in the way Windows processes .ani Animated Cursor files. Online criminals have been exploiting this bug since late last week.
This, however, is the only one of the seven vulnerabilities rated "critical" by Microsoft.
Background
Microsoft was forced to release the early update a week ahead of schedule because attacks had simply become too widespread, said Ken Dunham, director of malicious code intelligence with iDefense. "We have over 400 different URLs identified and related to attacks, and multiple e-mails have been sent out that direct people back there," he said. "We have proof that organized groups are now launching attacks."
Dunham added that the .ani attack vector will probably be one of the "most prevalent and persistant types of attacks we will see in the next months and years."
Exploit code for the flaw has now been added to the widely used Metasploit hacking tool, and there are automated malicious Web site generation tools available he added.
Other Emergency Patches
This is the third such "out-of-band" patch release Microsoft has made since January 2006. While attacks based on this .ani flaw are still considered "limited," exploitation of the bug is following trends "similar" to the WMF (Windows Metafile) and VML (Vector Markup Language) vulnerabilities that were patched in the other two updates, according to Mark Miller, director of Microsoft's Security Response Center.
Microsoft has seen only Web-based exploitation of the .ani flaw, Miller said. "There have been some indications that e-mail has been used, but we haven't seen anything on that front."
Microsoft was first notified of this flaw in December 2006 by security vendor Determina.
A Determina executive said today that Microsoft would have been better off issuing a patch for the .ani flaw sooner, rather than waiting for the April update and forcing customers to rush an emergency fix. "The customers are now going to incur the same cost as they would before, except that they are going to have to do this in panic," said Nand Mulchandani, Determina's vice president of marketing. "I have no idea why they didn't do this earlier."
Miller defended Microsoft's decision, saying that because the .ani flaw could affect other applications it required a great deal of testing. "The amount of time taken to patch was appropriate given the level of quality we were trying to release with," he said.
Windows users are strongly encouraged to install the patch, because the .ani flaw can be used to exploit computers running virtually any version of Windows, including Vista, even if they are running non-Microsoft browsers like Firefox and Opera, Mulchandani said.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,130361-page,1/article.html
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The_Fiend
Suspended permanently
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4. April 2007 @ 21:44 |
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WEP key wireless cracking made easy
Gone in 60 seconds
By John Leyden
Published Wednesday 4th April 2007 15:43 GMT
Code breakers have discovered a technique for extracting a 104-bit Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) key in under a minute.
Cryptographic weaknesses with the first generation wireless encryption standard have been known for years, but the latest attack requires the capture of just a tenth of the number of packets required by previous approaches. The technique allows for 50 per cent probability of the recovery of a 104-bit WEP key in around a minute (on a 802.11g network running at full speed), and with the capture of 40,000 packets. Doubling the capture period extends the probability of capturing the key to 95 per cent.
Processing this data on a standard PC to reveal the key takes as little as three seconds, as explained in a paper by researchers Erik Tews and Ralf-Philipp Weinmann and Andrei Pyshkin of Darmstadt Technical University HERE.
As before, the code breaking approach relies on exploiting cryptographic weaknesses in the RC4 stream cipher used by WEP that have been known about since 2001.
The latest attack illustrates the need to use the new WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access) standard, which is far more resistant to attack, though infrequently used, even on wireless networks that employ any form of defences. ®
Originally posted HERE
irc://arcor.de.eu.dal.net/wasted_hate
Wanna tell me off, go ahead.
I dare ya !
This message has been edited since posting. Last time this message was edited on 4. April 2007 @ 21:46
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AfterDawn Addict
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5. April 2007 @ 07:22 |
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Microsoft Zune to be DRM-free
p2pnet.net news:- Having created the most widely used DRM (Digital Restrictions Management) consumer control systems in the world, Bill and the Boyz now say they're all set to sell DRMless music on their Zune.
"We've been saying for a while that we are aware that consumers want to have unprotected content," CNET News has Zune marketing director Jason Reindorp, saying.
When will Microsoft set the music free? Reindorp doesn't have a time frame, says the story.
But it's a step in the right direction. Bill Gates is at long last acknowledging what people have been saying all along - We don' wan your steenkin' DRM! - the news coming hard on the heels of other news that EMI is dropping DRM from its music products in a move The Inquirer describes as the "the easiest PR trick in the book," and that the EU is going after Apple.
But, Sorry, folks. Microsoft isn't dropping DRM from Zune because it's listening to you. It's only bidnes.
"Reindorp said the move could help Microsoft's effort, loosening the tight bonds between the iTunes store and the iPod," says CNET.
It, "potentially makes the competition more on a device-to-device or service-to-service basis," he said. "This does open things up a little bit. It will force the various services to really innovate."
Not only but also, Microsoft is, "expanding its palette of hues for the Zune. A baby pink Zune shade is set to debut early next month, while a watermelon red version is slated for summer."
Ooooooooo.
"People are responding so well to the colors," Reindorp gushes, according to CNET. "We're having a lot of fun playing and experimenting with them."
Slashdot Slashdot it!
Also See:
CNET News - Microsoft sees DRM-free music in Zune's future, April 4, 2007
The Inquirer - Apple/EMI DRM deal is a big bad joke, April 2, 2006
going after Apple - Not our fault, Apple tells EU, March 31, 2007
http://p2pnet.net/story/11885
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AfterDawn Addict
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5. April 2007 @ 07:26 |
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Arctic Monkeys slags file sharers
p2pnet.net news:-"UK band Arctic Monkeys is doing well. Really well, not thanks to the efforts the Organised Music cartel," said a p2pnet story.
Then we quoted The Economist which said, "Music charts began as a way for record labels to market their acts.
"How galling then for the industry that the number-one spot in this week's chart was taken by Arctic Monkeys, a band from Sheffield whose first professional single owes its existence not to the image-makers but to internet file-sharing."
Nice one. File sharing, eh? So Arctic Monkeys owes Net music fans. Big Time.
Our post was in 2005 and the band is now Major, which means it's probably time it gave a little back to the people who made it what it is. Right?
Wrong.
Instead, Arctic Monkeys is giving the finger to fans. Or to put it another way, it's shitting on it's own doorstep.
"About to leak a copy of the new Arctic Monkeys album on the net?" - asks The Times Online? "Don't bother," it says, "unless you're willing to risk a knock on the door from the Web Sheriff."
Because, "when you have a million-selling album under your belt, letting your songs spread like a virus over the web doesn't seem so cool and ...
... Security surrounding Favourite Worst Nightmare, the hotly anticipated follow-up, is such that music writers must surrender to Arctic Monkeys' London HQ for an advance hearing.
Now cutting-edge bands who built a following by letting fans trade MP3 song files are secretly hiring web enforcers to track down and remove unauthorised leaks that might destroy album sales.
The web detectives trace the source of a leak and individuals found to have deliberately spread copyright-protected material receive a personal visit followed by legal threats.
Nice one.
But anyone who shares Arctic Monkeys and gets a threatening Web Sheriff missive as a result might think about following The Pirate Bay's example.
"A hardcopy of a reply from The Pirate Bay to Web Sheriff, in response to faxed legal threats, was sold on eBay June 8, 2005, for US $255," says Wikipedia.
Really nice one ;P
Slashdot Slashdot it!
Also See:
p2pnet - Big Music p2p wake up call, October 31, 2005
The Economist - Monkey Business, October 27, 2005
The Times Online - Arctic Monkeys go bananas over file-sharing, March 31, 2007
http://p2pnet.net/story/11884
This message has been edited since posting. Last time this message was edited on 5. April 2007 @ 07:28
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AfterDawn Addict
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5. April 2007 @ 08:28 |
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DirectX End-User Redistributable 9.0c (April 2007)
Author: Microsoft
Date: 2007-04-04
Size: 50 Mb
License: Freeware
Requires: Win All
Downloaded: 118278 Times
Quote:
This download provides the DirectX end-user multi-languaged redistributable that developers can include with their product. The redistributable license agreement covers the terms under which developers may use the Redistributable. For full details please review the DirectX SDK EULA.txt and DirectX Redist.txt files located in the license directory.
This package is localized into Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Czech, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Spanish, Swedish, and English.
System Requirements
Supported Operating Systems: Windows 2000; Windows 2000 Advanced Server; Windows 2000 Professional Edition ; Windows 2000 Server; Windows 2000 Service Pack 2; Windows 2000 Service Pack 3; Windows 2000 Service Pack 4; Windows ME; Windows Server 2003; Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1; Windows Server 2003, Datacenter x64 Edition; Windows Server 2003, Enterprise x64 Edition; Windows Server 2003, Standard x64 Edition; Windows Small Business Server 2003 ; Windows XP; Windows XP 64-bit; Windows XP Embedded; Windows XP Embedded Service Pack 1; Windows XP Embedded Service Pack 2 ; Windows XP Home Edition ; Windows XP Home Edition N; Windows XP Media Center Edition; Windows XP Professional Edition ; Windows XP Professional N; Windows XP Service Pack 1; Windows XP Service Pack 2; Windows XP Starter Edition; Windows XP Tablet PC Edition
Additional Information:
The DirectX redist installation includes all the latest and previous released DirectX runtime. This includes the bi-monthly D3DX, XInput, and Managed DirectX components.
The DirectX runtime cannot be uninstalled. We recommend Windows Me and Windows XP users create a "System Restore" point before installing.
This update is recommended for those user that do not have internet connection during installation
DOWNLOAD HERE
http://www.majorgeeks.com/DirectX_End-Us...able_d2924.html
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AfterDawn Addict
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5. April 2007 @ 08:35 |
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Find My Credit Card 2.2.0.0
Author: Smart PC Solutions, LLC.
Date: 2007-04-05
Size: 719 Kb
License: Freeware
Requires: Win All
Find My Credit Card is a software application intended for probing the confidential information stored on your computer on its vulnerability to unauthorized access by hackers. The software finds all personal information and suggests its unrestorable erasure. It supports Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox and Netscape web browsers.
DOWNLOAD
http://www.majorgeeks.com/Find_My_Credit_Card_d5276.html
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AfterDawn Addict
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5. April 2007 @ 08:40 |
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Spyware Terminator 1.8.5.986
Author: Crawler LLC
Date: 2007-04-05
Size: 8.4 Mb
License: Freeware
Requires: Win All
Spyware Terminator is a FREE, easy-to-use and effective spyware remover providing real-time protection against spyware, adware, keyloggers, trojan horses, browser hijackers and other malware threats.
Spyware Terminator protects your computer through powerful real-time protection shield, advanced system scanning and keeping found spyware in the safe quarantine.
Here are some key features of "Spyware Terminator":
Free 100% Real-Time Protection
Free 100% Real-Time Protection is included in Spyware Terminator basic version ? an essential function most other applications charge you extra for. Effectively remove spyware, adware, trojans, keyloggers, home page hijackers and other malware threats.
Safe Quarantine
Suspect files found during the scan are moved into Quarantine. Spyware Terminator prevents them from functioning and causing further damage to your computer. You can review and choose to permanently remove suspect files or safely store essential files.
Easy to Use
Spyware Terminator lets people of all skill levels detect and eliminate spyware. If you remove a program by mistake, you can easily put it back.
Manual & Scheduled Scan
Scan your computer manually or schedule an in-depth scan to be performed on a regular basis. The scan process runs in the background so that you will not be disrupted while working on other tasks.
Automatic Update Downloads
Spyware Terminator can be set to automatically download updates, ensuring the most effective protection for your computer.
DOWNLOAD
http://www.majorgeeks.com/Spyware_Terminator_d5242.html
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AfterDawn Addict
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5. April 2007 @ 09:17 |
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In the hen house with Firefox
p2pnet.net news:- Mozilla has joined the crowd so you can join the crowd.
It's developing The Coop, a Firefox add-on meant to let users, "keep track of what their friends are doing online, and share new and interesting content with one or more of those friends".
Should there maybe have been a hyphen in there to make it Co-Op? Or does Mozilla really mean 'coop' as in a place where a bunch of hens cackle together? 'Coop' is also slang for 'prison,' or a place where cops skive off.
Anyway, Mozilla says it'll, "integrate with popular web services, using their existing data feeds as a transport mechanism.
"Users will see their friends' faces, and by clicking on them will be able to get a list of that person's recently added Flickr photos, favourite YouTube videos, tagged websites, composed blog posts, updated Facebook status, etc. If a user wants to share something with a friend, they simply drag that thing onto their friend's face. When they receive something from a friend, that friend's face glows to get the user's attention."
But wait! They really do mean poultry run!
"Like a real chicken coop, the UI will have boxes in which each of a user's friends will live," says Mozilla. "The boxes will be filled with an avatar (drawn from flickr by default?) and represent that friend."
The name may be a bit unfortunate (IOHO) but the idea will attract interest because it's Mozilla, and also because a lot of people are tired of seeing Rupert Murdoch's MySpace, and other corporate hang-outs of this ilk, represented as the only gathering places.
Slashdot Slashdot it!
If your Net access is blocked by government restrictions, try Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at thIs the end (of the Net) nigh?zze University of Toronto's Munk Centre for International Studies. Go here for the official download, here for the p2pnet download, and here for details. And if you're Chinese and you're looking for a way to access independent Internet news sources, try Freegate, the DIT program written to help Chinese citizens circumvent web site blocking outside of China. Download it here.
rss feed: http://p2pnet.net/p2p.rss | | Mobile - http://p2pnet.net/index-wml.php | | And use free p2pnet newsfeeds for your site Tired of being treated like a criminal? They depend on you, not the other way around. Don't buy their 'product'. Do bug your local politicians. Use emails, snail-mail, phone calls, faxes, IM, stop them in the street, blog. And if you're into organizing, organize petitions, organize demonstrations and then turn up on your local political rep's doorstep, making sure you've contacted your local tv/radio station/newspaper in advance. Don't just complain. Do something!
(Thursday 5th April 2007)
http://p2pnet.net/story/11879
http://wiki.mozilla.org/Labs/The_Coop
Specification OF THE COOP
Overview
The Coop is a Firefox addon in development that will let users keep track of what their friends are doing online, and share new and interesting content with one or more of those friends. It will integrate with popular web services, using their existing data feeds as a transport mechanism.
Users will see their friends' faces, and by clicking on them will be able to get a list of that person's recently added Flickr photos, favourite YouTube videos, tagged websites, composed blog posts, updated Facebook status, etc. If a user wants to share something with a friend, they simply drag that thing onto their friend's face. When they receive something from a friend, that friend's face glows to get the user's attention.
Motivation
Perhaps the most common social interaction on the web today is sending someone a link. It's done over IM, email, weblogs, RSS feeds from aggregator sites, bookmark sharing sites like del.icio.us, social networking sites like Facebook or MySpace, and even over the phone. The desire is the same: "hey, friend, go check out this neat thing and then let's talk about it!"
The goal of The Coop is to ease this interaction, and merge it with similar tools provided by a large number of popular web services.
Use Cases
This product should minimally provide support for the following use cases, making them intuitive, pleasant and delightful experiences.
1. Share a link with a friend.
1. Share a photo / set of photos with a friend.
2. Share a blog post with a friend.
3. Share a favourite video with a friend.
2. Keep up to date with a friend's web activity.
1. Read latest blog posts / LiveJournal updates / MySpace updates.
2. See recently uploaded photos.
3. Show recently tagged websites.
4. Show recently marked favourite videos.
Non-Goals
The Coop should not require any net-new server infrastructure, and instead leverage and integrate with existing web services. It should also not be a new interface for interacting with those services (ie: uploading photos to Flickr, updating status on Facebook, etc.)
Requirements
The first iteration of The Coop (represented by P1 items) will be a proof-of-concept experimentation, stripped down and bare-bones. Future iterations (P2/P3) can expand that functionality and refine the experience.
* P1: setup/preferences dialog allowing user to provide login information for various services
* P1: add friend to the coop, attempting auto-discovery of their Flickr, del.icio.us & YouTube data feeds, asking for blog address, Facebook ID, and others.
* P2: ability to encapsulate one's set of data feed addresses into a XML snippet that can be shared with/imported by friends
* P2: UI for representing a group of friends to aggregate across / send to
* P2: extensibility for adding arbitrary services or alternative services
* P1: UI for displaying 1..N friends
* P1: UI for indicating presence of new data items for a friend
* P2: UI for pivoting to display datatypes as primary key instead of friends
* P1: support for dragging URI onto friend and having that send the link to the friend along with a description
* P2: also send a preview when sending a URI
[edit]
Design
[edit]
Interaction Design
Like a real chicken coop, the UI will have boxes in which each of a user's friends will live. The boxes will be filled with an avatar (drawn from flickr by default?) and represent that friend.
* Icons in the box will indicate new/recent content
o Clicking an icon will take the user to that content
o Hovering over the icon will show a preview of the content
* Dragging an item onto the box will send that item to the friend.
o Multiple selection of friends should allow sending a link to multiple friends.
* The box will glow if there's a sent item from that friend waiting to be seen.
* A drop-down will allow the user to pivot the display on types of data
o "Movies" will show all the latest movies aggregated from all friends
o "Pictures" will show all the latest pictures aggregated from all friends
o "Links" will show page previews aggregated from all friends
o etc, etc.
[edit]
Initial Wireframes
Wireframe/Mockups
These are initial thoughts on how we might present the UI for The Coop. Of course we can skin it differently, and future mockups will add more detail highlighting the interaction of dragging content onto another user's face (ex: pop a little DHTML layer that showed a preview of the content you were sharing and let you comment) but these give a basic idea. Nothing's set in stone, hopefully this will stimulate future ideas and discussion:
coop-by-friends-2-thumb.jpg
* The Coop, sorted by friends
* The Coop, sorted by friends (alternate)
* The Coop, showing a preview of a friend's shared content
* The Coop, sorted by content type
(all images used in these mockups are Creative Commons licensed with the exception of the image of Elfina, which was totally lifted from this Penny Arcade cartoon)
[edit]
beltzner's thoughts on the wireframes
* More faces in less space is probably better
* Different zoom modes is probably best
* The drop a link to a friend interaction is the most powerful
* Subscribe to RSS feeds from flickr, youtube, etc is interesting, too, but secondary
* The ability to attach a comment is a must, but needs to be lightweight
* We could probably do some fun gesture based UI here, too
[edit]
Influences
Our design was influenced by Chris Messina's mockup for the unimplemented "People in the Browser" feature, with a horizontal bar containing avatars for a user's friends, and icons overlaid on those avatars to indicate the presence of new content:
people-in-the-browser-idea.jpg
mockup originally by Chris Messina
* comment by Canarsie
[edit]
Implementation Thoughts
The idea is to use RSS subscriptions to existing web service data feeds as a transport mechanism for all the various functionality. It will be up to us to cleverly mask this, but I'm thinking:
* When user adds a friend, subscriptions to their Flickr photo feed, del.icio.us tag feed, MySpace status (we might use a Microsummary here, since I don't think it provides RSS), YouTube favourites list, etc, etc.
* Indicators of new content are updated based on the content provided by those feeds (this is "pull").
* When a user sends something to a friend (which is "push") it is done by submitting the URI to del.icio.us with a special tag that indicates it's from The Coop and for a specific user (based on userid); when the other user checks the del.icio.us feed, items tagged with these special tags will cause the glow-effect. Or we could use the de.licio.us "send" feature. Need to think more about this.
Alternate idea, from Vlad:
* Set up an XMPP server that's the actual Coop that all users have to register with. They'll need an account somewhere anyway, unless everything is intended to be purely browser local.
* Use this XMPP server not for general IM, but for passing around data chunks about the stuff that's being shared.
* Depending on delicious/RSS/etc. seems extremely kludgey and fragile, not to mention intermittent. (IMO this thing would only work if the notification was instant.) So I don't see any value that delicious provides here, other than an extremely awkward way of passing links around between people.
Internal Representation (from danja, Apr 4 2007)
* I'd strongly recommend using FOAF as it can provide rich, extensible modelling of the interpersonal domain and is based on established web standards
* it already has: foaf:Person, foaf:knows, foaf:OnlineAccount etc.
* it has been mapped to many other person/social representations - microformats, vCard etc
* there is an XML serialization (RDF/XML) which can be used with XMPP, APP etc.
* many existing systems already have support, e.g. millions of users on LiveJournal
* it would give Mozilla a solid position on the Semantic Web of Data
Similar things to look at (Arnaud 4-Apr-2007)
* http://www.zweitgeist.com (used XMPP)
* http://www.dai.sy
[edit]
Great Ideas for The Coop
These are some great ideas...but possibly out of scope for the first release. Want to make sure we capture them someplace.
* Setup of custom server, the official Coop
* Bi-directional updating of multiple profiles.
http://wiki.mozilla.org/Labs/The_Coop
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5. April 2007 @ 10:58 |
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Protect Firefox From a Critical Windows Flaw
Firefox is vulnerable to the nasty Windows animated cursor flaw that can hand over control of your XP or Vista computer, according to a video posted by Determina, the company that originally discovered the vulnerability.
In the Determina video, the speaker (possibly Alexander Sotirov, who posted the blog entry) says that under Vista, IE7's Protected Mode mitigates the potential attack damage by not allowing the browser - or any attack that takes over the browser - to change system files or perform other common malware attacks. He goes on to say that Firefox doesn't have a similar protected mode.
It doesn't, in a regular install. But you can give it one using a Microsoft tool called DropMyRights. In essence, DropMyRights lets you easily put any program into a Protected Mode. Set it up for Firefox like this:
1. Download DropMyRights
http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/file/fi...escription.html
2. Double-click the downloaded file to install it. Keep note of where it installs (by default it will go into C:\Documents and Settings\[yourusername]\My Documents\MSDN\DropMyRights\DropMyRights.exe).
3. Right-click the shortcut you usually use to start Firefox and choose Properties. You can do this with a shortcut on your desktop or on the Quick Launch toolbar.
4. On the Shortcut tab, edit the line in the Target box to add a reference to DropMyRights before the location of the Firefox executable. For my shortcut, that looks like: "C:\Documents and Settings\Erik\My Documents\MSDN\DropMyRights\DropMyRights.exe" "C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe"
- note those quotation marks, you'll need them too.
dropmyrights.jpg
5. On the General tab, change the shortcut's name to something like DropMyRights Firefox.
Now, when you use that shortcut, DropMyRights will in effect start Firefox in a protected mode, and Firefox (or again, an attack that successfully takes over the browser) won't be able to mess around with important system files.
You can test whether it worked by trying to save a Web page into a system directory. On any page, choose File->Save Page As, and navigate into the WINDOWS\system32 directory. If you get an error window like the one below when you try to save a page there, you know it worked.
dropmyrights2.jpg
The only gotcha in doing this is that you won't be able to install many downloaded programs straight from Firefox anymore. The install will start but then fail when it tries to write somewhere where it isn't allowed. Instead, go to the download in Windows Explorer and install it from there.
DropMyRights changes user privileges to protect you. If you're curious, I wrote about admin rights, user privileges, and other programs like DropMyRights in a story called "Disarm Net Threats."
Also, Michael Howard, who wrote DropMyRights, has plenty of info on his Microsoft blog.
http://blogs.pcworld.com/staffblog/archives/004010.html
License Type: Free
Price: Free
Date Added: Sep 2006
Operating Systems: Windows 2000, Windows XP
File Size: 164KB
Downloads Count: 4942
Author: Michael Howard
Though other apps provide more-expansive security, DropMyRights gives you simple yet effective protection against malware by limiting user rights-and it works with any program.
A growing number of security tools are taking a new approach to fighting malicious software. Rather than blocking each virus, they aim to limit malware's power to cause harm even if it gets in. One of the better free apps that adopts this preventive strategy is DropMyRights, a small program that opens selected programs under limited user rights.
Developed by Michael Howard, a Microsoft senior security program manager, it has been around since 2004; though Howard works for Microsoft, the company doesn't market the app. It works with any program, but before using it you need to make some quick changes. After installing it, you must create a shortcut for each program that you want to use with it (or you must modify the existing one). Howard provides full instructions with screen shots at his Microsoft Security Developer Center page.
If you click a Web link in another program, such as Word, your default browser will start normally, without DropMyRights protection (unless it is running with DropMyRights, too). To get the extra security, copy and paste the link after starting your browser via the specially prepared shortcut.
Microsoft plans to include a "protected mode" in Vista that will run IE 7 without admin privileges, much as DropMyRights does. Redmond is also trying to take the aggravation out of running day-to-day with a LUA (least-privileged user account), though current Vista betas suggest that it still has some work to do.
Click here for more information on the new types of security tools that proactively limit the power of viruses and other malicious software to infiltrate and damage your system.
--Erik Larkin
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6. April 2007 @ 08:19 |
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Windows cursor patch causing trouble, the Realtek HD Audio Control Panel may not start after you install security update KB925902
Windows cursor patch causing trouble
Update for Windows XP (KB935448) is needed
Brief Description
Install this update to resolve an issue where the Realtek HD Audio Control Panel may not start after you install security update KB925902 (MS07-017) and security update KB928843 (MS07-008).
go here to get it
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/detai...&displaylang=en
Security: Installing Microsoft's Tuesday patch for a "critical" Windows vulnerability is c
=>Posted by: [NT].
=>Thursday, April 05 @ 14:08:12 CEST
Warp2Search News Microsoft broke with its monthly patch cycle Tuesday to repair a bug in the way Windows handles animated cursors. Cybercrooks had been using the hole since last week to attack Windows PCs. But the fix is not compatible with software that runs audio and networking components from Realtek Semiconductor, some Windows users have found.
"Apparently the update is not compatible with Realtek," CNET News.com reader Dave House wrote in an e-mail. "We lost all Ethernet and audio functions. Removing the update and doing system restores brought the systems back."
ZdNet has more.
Windows cursor patch causing trouble
By Joris Evers, CNET News.com
Published on ZDNet News: April 4, 2007, 3:01 PM PT
Installing Microsoft's Tuesday patch for a "critical" Windows vulnerability is causing trouble for some users.
Microsoft broke with its monthly patch cycle Tuesday to repair a bug in the way Windows handles animated cursors. Cybercrooks had been using the hole since last week to attack Windows PCs. But the fix is not compatible with software that runs audio and networking components from Realtek Semiconductor, some Windows users have found.
"Apparently the update is not compatible with Realtek," CNET News.com reader Dave House wrote in an e-mail. "We lost all Ethernet and audio functions. Removing the update and doing system restores brought the systems back."
Microsoft is aware of problems with Realtek's audio software. In fact, it knew about them before releasing the fix and published a support article with the security bulletin. An additional update is available from Microsoft to remedy the problem, according to the company's Web site. Microsoft is not aware of networking issues, a representative said.
The audio problem occurs on Windows XP PCs that have the Realtek HD Audio Control Panel installed, Microsoft said. The application may not start after the patch is applied and Windows may display an error message, the company said.
Microsoft consciously released the cursor flaw patch despite the compatibility problem, Mike Reavey, a Microsoft Security Response Center staffer, wrote on a corporate blog. The company tested the fix throughout February and March and eliminated many problems, he wrote.
"At one point our testing had uncovered over 80 potential issues with the update that were investigated and resolved...at the time of release, only one minor quality issue was known," Reavey wrote.
The cursor vulnerability is one of seven flaws addressed by Microsoft's Tuesday patch--three of them also affect Vista. Cybercrooks moved quickly to exploit the cursor hole. Security firm Websense has spotted hundreds of Web sites that try to use the bug to compromise PCs, as well as an e-mail spam campaign with links to the malicious sites.
Microsoft plans to issue additional fixes next week on its regular monthly patch day, the company said.
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1009_22-6173413.html
This message has been edited since posting. Last time this message was edited on 6. April 2007 @ 08:30
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6. April 2007 @ 09:14 |
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p2pnet RIAA survey: online now
p2pnet.net news:- I've had an online question session going for just over a couple of weeks and I've found it so interesting, and useful, that I've decided to run a series of other surveys on a various subjects and I'm calling Survey #2 The Sultans of Spin.
Spin is the, "sometimes pejorative term signifying a heavily biased portrayal in one's own favor of an event or situation," the Wikipedia sums it up, continuing, spin, "often, though not always, implies disingenuous, deceptive and/or highly manipulative tactics." And it's, borrowed, says the post, "from ball sports such as cricket, where a spin bowler may impart spin on the ball during a delivery so that it will curve through the air or bounce in an advantageous manner".
The Sultans of Spin examines spin-doctoring in the pejorative sense --- the art of presenting stuff as it isn't.
I have Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG's RIAA in mind, for this particular exercise, but it's not alone. The RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) and most other cartel organisations are offered up as 'trade' outfits acting on various issues for, and on behalf of, 'members'.
And there are literally hundreds of them run by smooth-talking, twinkle-toed reality adjustment specialists who are so fast on their verbal feet that their words never actually touch the ground.
They're at the sharps ends of organisations such as the RIAA, MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America), BPI (British Phonographic Industry), IFPI (International Federation of Phonographic Industry), CRIA (Canadian Recording Industry Association of America), BSA (Business Software Alliance), FACT (Federation Against Copyright Theft), and so on and so forth.
One of the most extreme examples of what spin can achieve comes in the manner in which RIAA fact realignment experts have turned a straightforward commercial concept, copyright infringement, into a major crime on a level with robbery, with which it's now equated.
Below is p2pnet survey # 2 - The Sultans of Spin. The RIAA questions are all based on direct quotes from the highly reliable and factual RIAA site, which in Talking With Your Kids About Tough Issues still says Hilary Rosen is the 'chairman and ceo'.
She quit close to four years ago.
The results should be interesting and I'll run them in a post when I wind The Sultans of Spin up in a couple of weeks.
I'lll also do a post on the results of the #1, the Reader Survey, in couple of days :)
Cheers! And thanks a lot for your help ...
Jon
Slashdot Slashdot it!
If your Net access is blocked by government restrictions, try Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at thIs the end (of the Net) nigh?zze University of Toronto's Munk Centre for International Studies. Go here for the official download, here for the p2pnet download, and here for details. And if you're Chinese and you're looking for a way to access independent Internet news sources, try Freegate, the DIT program written to help Chinese citizens circumvent web site blocking outside of China. Download it here.
rss feed: http://p2pnet.net/p2p.rss | | Mobile - http://p2pnet.net/index-wml.php | | And use free p2pnet newsfeeds for your site Tired of being treated like a criminal? They depend on you, not the other way around. Don't buy their 'product'. Do bug your local politicians. Use emails, snail-mail, phone calls, faxes, IM, stop them in the street, blog. And if you're into organizing, organize petitions, organize demonstrations and then turn up on your local political rep's doorstep, making sure you've contacted your local tv/radio station/newspaper in advance. Don't just complain. Do something!
(Friday 6th April 2007)
http://p2pnet.net/story/11902
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6. April 2007 @ 12:23 |
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The Top 5 Things I Hate About Linux
Last update: 04-04-2007
Discuss this article | Print this article
Submitted by Matt Hartley
(Column) - Even though I enjoy using my Linux boxes a great deal for the most part, there are still those little annoyances that are enough to drive a guy batty. After all, even something as elegant and as effective as the top Linux distributions can still do certain things to drive you nuts from time to time.
1. Lack of Driver Support for Select Hardware Products. Don't get me wrong, in many ways, I have seen Vista lag behind where Ubuntu (among others) have blown past the Windows OS when it comes to out-of-the-box driver support.
Still, there is always that one manufacturer that chooses not to bother with providing any kind of Linux support whatsoever. And thus far, these companies have been able to get away with it. But as Linux adoption continues to grow, this will have to change as people like me will top spending money on hardware that will not work as we need for it to.
2. Half-Done, Poorly Supported Open Source Projects. One of the best examples would have to be the Gyach project. Not to be confused with the well developed project fork, known as Gyach Enhanced, Gyach (the original) project was created with a real lack of support at no extra charge. The lackluster "readme" file was the extent of the support offered. Many of you think that this was a free project, how dare I say such things. Well, I, too, maintain an open source Linux project, and my opinion is this. If you are going to start the project, then do everything you can to do it right if you are maintaining it.
Understand that I have no problem with the developer dropping it. But to release anything as a "tarball only" type of thing and then extend support as far as a ReadMe file is not acceptable and quickly becomes an ammunition round for Windows Developers.
RedHat Returns: Better Than Ever
3. The Politics of the GPL License. Unlike more flexible open source licenses that would have given the Linux kernel the same protection and freedom to grow, the GPL has been a thorn in my side for years. Call it a love-hate relationship. See, with a license like BSD or MIT, we could have kept the kernel pure, but allowed others to take the kernel and bundle it with whatever they darn well please. If there is going to be an abuse here, the abusers would only be hurting themselves. It has been this policy that has made sure that Linux adoption has been all but a sideshow event on the desktop until Ubuntu came along, ignored the license and included proprietary firmware anyway.
The end result? Nothing. Other pure distributions are fine, and the kernel has yet to explode with malware or other threatening problems.
4. Hatred Towards Proprietary Applications. This single item is a non-debatable issue in my eyes. As with the GPL licensing politics, Linux users are bred early on to believe that proprietary software is a dangerous thing. Not only is this kind of thinking absurd, it is ill-informed and downright irresponsible.
Until the day arrives when I can legally watch mainstream movies in OGG or Theora format, quit whining about this issue. Yes, both are superior formats in almost every way, as is often the case with many open source solutions, but the fact remains that until we can pressure fair adoption, there is no reason to punish the rest of us who are simply looking for a cost effective alternative to Windows. Not to become a software martyr for your misguided cause.
5. Animosity Towards the Inclusion of Ubuntu Feisty's Hardware Detection Utility and Linspire's CNR. I have read a number of posts from people who feel strongly that Feisty is walking on the dark side by "encouraging" the use of proprietary video drivers and/or CODECs. Give me a break! What the developers are finally doing is providing functionality that beginners have been screaming for since Dapper. Yes, there are some amazing inroads being made with the open source Nouveau video driver project. I?m thrilled to see it happening, and I?m going to work hard at promoting the heck out of it.
Polippix: The Political Linux Distribution of Denmark
But don?t dare to dictate to me which drivers I can use on my Linux box. If developers choose to provide me with tools to make driver and codec installation simpler, awesome. It will make showing it to my friends a whole lot more convincing than spending a fair portion of my day playing tag in a console with APT.
As for Linspire's CNR, I will go on record right now, and say that I applaud them with a thunderous round of clapping and cheering. To think that those of us living in the US, where installing many media CODECs and fonts is not legal, thanks to IP rights, will finally have the ability to do so legally, tickles me pink.
There we have it, my biggest pet peeves. This will surely serve to further label me as a black sheep. Rejected by the Windows lemmings, but equally hated by the GNU/Linux purists as well. I have but one answer to this - good. This is good because it shows that two completely different types of people with differing opinions are both in love with the same OS. Love my thinking or hate it, I will never change it, and I will continue to develop for the average user who is tired of the political nonsense. All of my endeavors will meet with the GPL standards, but not because I agree with them. It's because I agree with open source as a concept, not the specific license, known as the GPL.
http://www.madpenguin.org/cms/?m=show&id=7827
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6. April 2007 @ 15:24 |
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International Group Issues Global Warming Report
By Arthur Max
Associated Press
posted: 06 April 2007
09:50 am ET
BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP)?An international global warming conference approved a report Friday warning of dire threats to the Earth and to mankind?from increased hunger to the extinction of species?unless the world adapts to climate change and halts its progress.
Agreement came after an all-night session during which key sections were deleted from the draft and scientists angrily confronted government negotiators who they feared were watering down their findings.
"It has been a complex exercise,'' said Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Several scientists objected to the editing of the final draft by government negotiators but in the end agreed to compromises. However, some scientists vowed never to take part in the process again.
The climax of five days of negotiations was reached when the delegates removed parts of a key chart highlighting devastating effects of climate change that kick in with every rise of 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit, and in a tussle over the level of scientific reliability attached to key statements.
There was little doubt about the science, which was based on 29,000 sets of data, much of it collected in the last five years. "For the first time we are not just arm-waving with models,'' Martin Perry, who conducted the grueling negotiations, told reporters.
The United States, China and Saudi Arabia raised the many of the objections to the phrasing, often seeking to tone down the certainty of some of the more dire projections.
What is says
The final IPCC report is the clearest and most comprehensive scientific statement to date on the impact of global warming mainly caused by man-induced carbon dioxide pollution.
It said up to 30 percent of the Earth's species face an increased risk of vanishing if global temperatures rise 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit above the average in the 1980s and '90s.
Areas that now suffer a shortage of rain will become even more dry, adding to the risks of hunger and disease, it said. The world will face heightened threats of flooding, severe storms and the erosion of coastlines.
"This is a glimpse into an apocalyptic future,'' the Greenpeace environmental group said of the final report.
Negotiators pored over the 21-page draft meant to be a policy guide for governments. The summary pares down the full 1,500-page scientific assessment of the evidence of climate change so far, and the impact it will have on the Earth's most vulnerable people and ecosystems.
More than 120 nations attended the meeting. Each word was approved by consensus, and any change had to be approved by the scientists who drew up that section of the report.
Though weakened by the deletion of some elements, the final report "will send a very, very clear signal'' to governments, said Yvo de Boer, the U.N.'s top climate official.
Next steps
The summary will be presented to the G8 summit of the world's richest nations in June, when the European Union is expected to renew appeals to President Bush to join in international efforts to control emissions of fossil fuels.
This year's series of reports by the IPCC were the first in six years from the prestigious body of some 2,500 scientists, formed in 1988. Public awareness of climate change gave the IPCC's work unaccustomed importance and fueled the intensity of the closed-door negotiations during the five-day meeting.
"The urgency of this report prepared by the world's top scientists should be matched by an equally urgent response from governments,'' said Hans Verolme, director of the global climate change program of the World Wide Fund for Nature.
"Doing nothing is not an option,'' he said.
During the final session, the conference snagged over a sentence that said the impact of climate change already were being observed on every continent and in most oceans.
"There is very high confidence that many natural systems are being affected by regional climate changes, particularly temperature increases,'' said the statement on the first page of text.
But China insisted on striking the word "very,'' injecting a measure of doubt into what the scientists argued were indisputable observations. The report's three authors refused to go along with the change, resulting in an hours-long deadlock that was broken by a U.S. compromise to delete any reference to confidence levels.
It is the second of four reports from the IPCC this year; the first report in February laid out the scientific case for how global warming is happening. This second report is the "so what'' report, explaining what the effects of global warming will be.
Who gets hit
European Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas said the report will spur the EU's determination to curb greenhouse gas emissions.
"The world needs to act fast if we are to succeed in stabilizing climate change and thereby prevent its worst impacts,'' Dimas said in a statement.
For the first time, the scientists broke down their predictions into regions, and forecast that climate change will affect billions of people.
North America will experience more severe storms with human and economic loss, and cultural and social disruptions. It can expect more hurricanes, floods, droughts, heat waves and wildfires, it said. Coasts will be swamped by rising sea levels. In the short term, crop yields may increase by 5 to 20 percent from a longer growing season, but will plummet if temperatures rise by 7.2 F.
Africa will be hardest hit. By 2020, up to 250 million people are likely to exposed to water shortages. In some countries, food production could fall by half, it said.
Parts of Asia are threatened with massive flooding and avalanches from melting Himalayan glaciers. Europe also will see its Alpine glaciers disappear. Australia's Great Barrier Reef will lose much of its coral to bleaching from even moderate increases in sea temperatures, the report said.
Quote:
More to Explore
* 10 Surprising Results of Global Warming
* Emerging Environmental Technologies
* Video: Goldilocks and the Greenhouse
* How You Can Fight Global Warming
Global Warming Features
* Earth Will Survive Global Warming, But Will We?
* Strange Weather's Loose Link to Global Warming
* Global Warming or Just Hot Air? A Dozen Different Views
Recent Climate Change News
* Supreme Court Rebukes Bush on Carbon Dioxide Policy
* EU Presses United States on Global Warming
* Report Details Global Biological Change
* Charge: Carbon Dioxide Hogs Global Warming Stage
* Sun Blamed for Warming of Earth and Other Worlds
http://www.livescience.com/environment/070406_ap_GW_report.html
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6. April 2007 @ 15:28 |
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The World Rots Faster as Global Warming Fuels Fungi
By Jeanna Bryner
LiveScience Staff Writer
posted: 05 April 2007
02:00 pm ET
Fungi are fruiting and spreading more rapidly thanks to global warming, a new study finds. The result: Things are rotting faster.
From polka-dotted mushrooms that push through cracks to slender tendrils that peak out from beneath tree barks, fungal freaks are flourishing in their balmy environment.
Compared to 50 years ago, many of the fungal species in England and possibly elsewhere now fruit much earlier in the year, and some of them even reproduce twice a year due to warmer temperatures and increased rainfall.
It is ?unheard of for an organism to start reproducing twice a year instead of once,? said the study?s lead author Alan Gange of the University of London.
More fungi, more rot
The surge in reproduction means more fungi. ?The amount of mushrooms produced would be about doubled over the course of a year,? Gange said. ?My guess is if you would do the same study in North America you would get the same results because fungi respond to changes in the seasons.?
Since fungi ?devour? rotting leaves and other forest debris, a feast that boosts decomposition, Gange expects stuff will decay twice as quickly as in the past.
The research, detailed in the April 6 issue of the journal Science, adds another data point to the list of organisms affected by global warming.
?Birds, we know, are nesting earlier, and they will also nest perhaps twice in a springtime, whereas before they used to nest only once,? Gange said. ?But what birds do not do is nest in autumn as well as spring. They stay within the one season.?
Study details
Gange and his colleagues analyzed data spanning from 1950 through 2005 on 315 species of fall-fruiting fungi. They calculated average temperatures and rainfall amounts by month, season and years and compared these with the dates of fruiting for each fungal species.
Summer temperatures and rainfall amounts in the fall have increased since the 1950s, the scientists found. Statistical analyses showed the temperature and rain spikes caused early-season fungi to fruit earlier and late-bloomers to extend their fruiting to December, whereas before they only fruited until the end of October. On average, the fruiting season for the fungi examined has doubled since the 1950s, from 33 days to the current 75 days.
Many of the species that normally fruited only once in October now also fruit in April, a phenomenon the scientists think is the result of warmer temperatures in February and early spring.
Your backyard
Fungi don?t produce their own food, but instead degrade rotting tree trunks and leaf material to obtain energy and nutrients.
?Your compost heap would now rot, disappear, at twice the rate than it would have done in the 1950s,? Gange said.
Some nutrients contributed by fungal feeding also get released into the soil more rapidly now, where trees and leafy plants can access them. ?My guess is that trees now have access to twice the nutrients as they used to, so their growth rates will be much increased," Gange said.
Next, Gange wants to find out if mushroom-munching insects will follow the changing fungi behavior and reproduce more frequently. ?Lots and lots of insects feed on mushrooms," Gange said. "That?s really how and why a mushroom disappears.?
Quote:
* Fungus May Be Having Sex Among Us
* Top 10 Surprising Results of Global Warming
* Top 10 Ways to Destroy Earth
http://www.livescience.com/environment/0...s_fruiting.html
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6. April 2007 @ 15:33 |
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Mathematician: Yankees Will Dominate Baseball This Year
By Andrea Thompson
LiveScience Staff Writer
posted: 04 April 2007
11:57 am ET
The New York Yankees will win a whopping 110 games this season, more than any other major league team, according to a mathematician who applies math to real-life situations.
The projection comes from a model that Bruce Bukiet of the New Jersey Institute of Technology developed and has used and updated for the past six years to predict how many games each team will win during the 162-game season.
So far, Bukiet is on track. The Yankees won their season opener against the Tampa Bay Devil Rays on Monday.
How it works
Bukiet?s model also predicts the outcome of individual games, a resource for those who like to place wagers.
The projected results of games are determined by how each hitter should perform against each pitcher.
Bukiet, a Mets fan who started the project to show kids how math can be used in fun ways, uses the model only to predict outcomes in baseball and cricket. The reason it works well for these sports, Bukiet told LiveScience, is the games are ?a whole sequence of one-on-one events? that are easier to compare than team sports where multiple players affect the outcome of an event.
Bukiet starts each season with the most likely starting line-up for each team and uses data from the past three years for each player to compute how many runs each team will score in a given game.
Of course, he cannot account early on for unknowns such as trades, injuries or the unpredictable performance of rookies.
Best batting order
When Bukiet first developed the model, he used it to determine the best batting order out of 360,000 possibilities. One of his surprising findings was that pitchers, who typically are last in the order when there is no designated hitter, should actually bat second-to-last to optimize runs. And the team?s top slugger should bat third rather than cleanup (or fourth in the order).
Bukiet says his model can also determine how many more or fewer games a team would win if they traded a certain player. Managers also could use the model to set salaries based on players' hit predictions, he figures.
Were the model to be commercialized, it could be updated on a play-by-play basis, which fans could monitor to see how every play changes the outcome of a game. ?I think some fans would think that?s cool,? Bukiet said.
While Bukiet is the first to admit he?s not a baseball expert, in five out of the past six years, he says that his model has produced more correct than incorrect predictions.
?I thought it was neat that you can do just as well as the so-called experts,? he said.
The detailed projections are available here.
* Study Reveals Baseball's Great Clutch Hitters
* Baseball Science: Better Hitters See Ball as Bigger
* Study Finds Kids Can't Hit Slow Pitches
http://www.livescience.com/othernews/070404_baseball_math.html
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Bukiet's Forecast
Major League Baseball is divided into the National League and the American League. Each league comprises three divisions. The winners of each division (the team with the best record) and one wildcard team play in each league?s playoffs to determine who will face off in the World Series. Here are Bukiet?s predictions for this year?s division winners:
AL East: New York Yankees
AL Central: Cleveland Indians
AL West: Los Angeles Angels
AL wildcard: either the Boston Red Sox, the Toronto Blue Jays or the Minnesota Twins
NL East: New York Mets
NL Central: close race between the Houston Astros and the St. Louis Cardinals
NL West: San Diego Padres
NL wildcard: Philadelphia Phillies
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AfterDawn Addict
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6. April 2007 @ 15:36 |
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Seas Could Rise Dramatically in Rapid Ice Melt
By Kristin Elise Phillips
Scienceline
posted: 04 April 2007
09:01 am ET
Something is missing from the estimates of future sea level rise in the recent report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: the potentially catastrophic impact of a rapid melt of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets.
The IPCC asserts that melting by dynamic processes is too poorly understood to be included in scientific simulations, but many scientists disagree and believe that the report underestimates the threat that global warming will pose to coastal cities over the next century. Dynamic melting begins at the base of an ice sheet, where it meets the ground. As ice turns to water, the whole sheet can move as if part of a stream.
Sea level could rise rapidly if dynamic melting pushes ice from land to ocean.
?The IPCC does not include dynamic processes where the ice flows rather than melts,? said Michael Oppenheimer, a geoscientist at Princeton University. ?The bottom line is that the ice sheets are a big threat.? Oppenheimer estimates that the volume of water trapped in the Greenland ice sheet is equivalent to over twenty feet in sea level rise, and the western Antarctic ice sheet is equivalent to about fifteen feet.
The IPCC report estimates that sea level will increase between seven inches and two feet by the year 2100.
Ice sheet flow was omitted from the report despite recent observations of the thinning of ice shelves and streams because some scientists are concerned that these are ?transient effects,? not necessarily due to global warming, according to Jonathan Gregory. Gregory, a meteorologist at the University of Reading in England, is an author of the report who thinks sea level changes will be slow. ?Sea level is more of a long-term issue,? he said. ?The time scale for ice sheets to melt is centuries.?
Aside from dynamic melting, global warming largely raises sea level through two other processes: the gradual melting of ice sheets and the thermal expansion of the oceans because of increased temperature. Imagine the ocean as a big fishbowl- the volume of water would increase by both adding melt from ice initially stored outside the bowl and by heating the fishbowl itself.
According to Dean Roemmich, an expert on ocean currents at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography in California, one quarter of the inch-per-decade sea level rise over most of the 20th century is from thermal expansion and the remainder is due to gradual melting of ice. This combination of melting and expansion caused sea level to rise between an estimated six and nine inches over the course of the last century.
?When we talk about global warming, we are talking mostly of the oceans because the atmosphere has little capacity to hold heat,? explains Roemmich. He and other scientists estimate the oceans have absorbed more than eighty percent of the heat produced by human emissions.
One problem in projecting oceanic change is that no one is sure exactly how and where warmer temperatures will influence thermal expansion in the oceans. ?Heat is not stored uniformly throughout the ocean,? explained University of Reading?s Gregory; the current models just aren?t good enough yet. An international group chaired by Roemmich has deployed about 3,000 flotation devices to collect data on the oceans, which Gregory said should help refine future models of sea level change.
But the ice sheets are ?already frittering away at the edges, adding to sea level rise,? emphasized Princeton?s Oppenheimer. Glaciers are shrinking and ice shelves such as the Larsen B, a shelf about the size of Yosemite National Park, are falling into the seas, he says.
Ice movement was incorporated into the models of a study published this January in the journal Science by Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany. His team projects a sea level rise between twenty inches and four and a half feet by the end of the 21st century. This is faster than the current IPCC predictions. Furthermore, a recent review by Rahmstorf and colleagues demonstrates that sea level rise has been following the upper limits of previous predictions?such as those from the 2001 IPCC report.
?What we are doing is irreversible,? warned Oppenheimer. ?The last time the earth was as warm as it will get this century, the sea level was four to six meters [or 12 to 18 feet] higher.? That was 125,000 years ago. At that point in earth?s history, of course, there weren?t billions of human beings living on the earth?s coasts. Today, for example, an 18-foot increase in sea level would swamp the barrier islands south of Long Island and flood JFK International Airport.
This article is provided by Scienceline, a project of New York University's Science, Health and Environmental Reporting Program.
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More to Explore
* 10 Surprising Results of Global Warming
* Emerging Environmental Technologies
* Video: Goldilocks and the Greenhouse
* How You Can Fight Global Warming
Global Warming Features
* Earth Will Survive Global Warming, But Will We?
* Strange Weather's Loose Link to Global Warming
* Global Warming or Just Hot Air? A Dozen Different Views
Recent Climate Change News
* NASA: Arctic Meltdown Threatens Ice Cap's Stability
* Supreme Court Rebukes Bush on Carbon Dioxide Policy
* EU Presses United States on Global Warming
* Report Details Global Biological Change
* Charge: Carbon Dioxide Hogs Global Warming Stage
* Sun Blamed for Warming of Earth and Other Worlds
http://www.livescience.com/environment/070404_GW_ice.html
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AfterDawn Addict
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7. April 2007 @ 07:32 |
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Are Cheap DVD Burners Worth the Trouble?
Patrick Schmid, Achim Roos
April 5, 2007 10:05
Just Any DVD Burner Will Not Do
It has been over a year since we last took a look at DVD burners. One reason for the delay is that there were few developments on which to report ever since the write speeds hit 16X. Manufacturers then focused on value-added features such as built-in disc labeling called LightScribe. Another reason is the incredibly cheap price level: It is absolutely possible to purchase a DVD burner for as little as $25. But there still are differences in quality.
There are various reasons why you might want to purchase a DVD burner for your PC. On one hand, it can serve as a versatile and inexpensive storage device, as recordable DVDs store 4.7 GB on single-layer discs or 8.5 GB of data onto double-layer media (DL). This provides plenty of space for storing your family pictures, wedding videos or other data. On the other hand, DVDs are the most popular medium for digital movies and audio. Most DVD players and recent car audio solutions support audio and video playback of various popular formats, and a single-layer DVD can hold over eight hours of DivX or XviD video in standard definition or 750 MP3 songs in 192 kb/s quality.
Another invaluable advantage is how DVD readers and writers probably are the most widely used storage devices today. Every new PC or notebook carries an optical drive and can at least read DVDs and CDs, and more and more computers have DVD writing capabilities. Rewriteable media allows users to re-record data many times instead of creating single-use DVDs (called WORMs - Write Once, Read Multiple). While DVDs are not extremely durable, the discs will store your data safely for several years. For very important data, we recommend redundant storage - even if your discs are kept in a safe place.
There are so many different DVD recordables and DVD writers. We recommend opting for branded products, especially the recordables, as we've already seen physical degradation of so-called no-name recordables only a few years after they were written. Storing data on a DVD is an irreversible process that burns physical marks into the dye layer(s), which is why we recommend relying on brands that you know and trust. Rewriteables utilize a phase-change recording layer, which can be altered approximately 1,000 times.
DVD Basics
There are DVD-ROM drives (Read Only Memory) and DVD burners (writers, recorders). Both read all types of DVD media, but only DVD burners write onto compatible discs. Data is read or written from or to the dye layer using a 650-nm wavelength. DVD-R by the DVD Forum was the first DVD standard, but it wasn't quite accepted by all device manufacturers, because it carried sectors which could not be written for the purpose of preventing illegal copies of copyrighted material. Some industry members them founded the DVD+RW Alliance, which developed its own standard. It's incompatible, but technically similar.
While the first DVD burner generations only supported one of the two standards, today's drives are capable of handling both (although only DVD-R products may carry the DVD logo) and there is no price difference between DVD-R and DVD+R anymore. Also, it doesn't matter which standard you use for data storage.
Single-layer discs are incredibly inexpensive and can be written in fairly quickly in five to six minutes at 16X write speed. The double-layer media (DL) is still somewhat expensive and requires at least 20 minutes to finish the 8.4 GB task. This is because the write speeds max out at 10X for DL, and the two layers have to be written consecutively.
Most DVD burners still use an UltraATA interface, but more and more devices come with modern Serial ATA interfaces. SATA has the advantage that you don't have to configure anything - just plug the device into an available SATA port. UltraATA devices require a jumper to be set to determine whether the drive runs in master or slave mode.
Performance Basics
There are two different ways of operating drives that are based on rotating media. This can be at constant angular velocity (CAV) or constant linear velocity (CLV). Hard drives typically operate at a constant angular velocity, which means that the absolute velocity increases towards the outer areas of the rotating platter by maintaining a fixed rotation speed of e.g. 7,200 RPM. Optical drives such as CD or DVD drives utilize either the technology, or a combination of both technologies, called PCAV (partial constant angular velocity). And there is the option of running drives in ZCLV mode, which holds a certain speed for a given zone on the disc.
While rotation speeds are very important, vibration is a serious issue that requires attention. For this reason, many drives have vibration sensors, which throttle media rotation speeds in case of read or write failures.
Optical drives show considerably slower access times than hard drives. Typically, the laser unit is driven by a small motor, guided within a little concentric rail. The results are access times that are at least 10 times longer than with hard drives. But as many applications for DVD storage require sequential reading of information, access time can be considered secondary.
Lightscribe
Labeling your own DVD is an interesting topic. The typical approach is to use a thin, permanent marker to write your title on the upper side of the DVD. This can be done with most DVDs you buy in retail channels. However, this doesn't look very professional. LightScribe is a technology that uses a drive's DVD laser unit that allows you to etch text or images onto the surface. As you can imagine, LightScribe requires appropriate recordable media and you have to insert your DVD upside down to be able to "lightscribe" it. More information can be found here.
LG's current DVD burner is called Super Multi GSA-H42L and it supports all DVD formats at up to 18X write speeds for DVD+R and DVD-R. It is also compatible with 6X DVD-RW and 8X DVD+RW. Double-layer discs can be written at 10X speeds. Last but not least, DVD-RAM is supported at 12X speed. CD speeds are supported at up to 48X (read and write).
According to LG's specifications, the burner's average access times are 140 ms for DVD-ROM, 175 ms for DVD-RAM and 120 ms for CD-ROM. The drive comes with 2 MB buffer, a buffer under run protection feature and it utilizes an UltraATA interface. The H42L supports LightScribe, whereas the GSA-H42N does not. We found the price difference to be small enough to justify the extra expense for the H42L with LightScribe.
The retail package comes with beige and black front panels for the drive, which allows the user to adjust its appearance to the color of the computer case. The drive is very quiet, but its DVD ripping speed was clearly too long, as Pioneer and Sony finished the same task 40% faster (11 minutes versus 27 minutes).
Pioneer can be called a Pioneer for optical drives, as the firm has always rapidly come to market with new technologies. Examples include Blu-ray burners BDR-101A and 101ABK (black), which the firm has been offering for a while.
The DVR-112 comes with an UltraATA interface, and it offers up to 18X write speeds for DVD-R and DVD+R, up to 10X write speeds for DVD-R dual-layer discs and fast 18X speeds for DVD+R dual layer. Rewriteables can be written at up to 8X speeds for either standard. DVD-RAM is supported at up to 12X speeds.
The drive isn't as quiet as the LG, but the difference is tolerable. It was the fastest drive to rip an entire 7.52 GB DVD; the process was completed in as little as 10 minutes and 40 seconds. DVD creation time was quick, but the drive took almost 13 seconds to load, spin-up and recognize a disc. LightScribe is not supported, either.
This is the first of two Samsung drives we received. The SH182 is an UltraATA device, while the SH183 (see next page) is equipped with a Serial ATA interface. Both devices are called Super-WriteMaster DVD Writers and offer up to 18X recording speeds for DVD-R and DVD+R media. DVD-RW can be written at up to 6X, DVD+RW at up to 8X speeds. DVD-RAM writing is supported at up to 12X speeds. Samsung-specified access times are 130 ms for DVDs and 110 ms for CDs.
Samsung offers a low-noise operating mode called Magic Speed, and there is a feature to adjust the disc rotation speed to the quality of the inserted DVD. Finally, the drive carries 2 MB cache and a buffer under run protection feature. LightScribe is supported as well.
The Samsung drives' performance is acceptable when it comes to burning single-layer DVDs. DVD ripping performance was in the mid range as well. We liked how newly inserted discs were recognized quickly, but the SH-S182 as well as its SH-S183 counterpart took too long to import digital audio into Apple's iTunes 7.1.
Samsung's SH-S183 is the Serial ATA version of the SH-S182. All the write speeds and features such as LightScribe, Magic Speed and the buffer under run control are included with the S183 as well.
Both Samsung drives were fast for ripping a DVD-9, but they were the slowest models for burning a DVD with 4.3 GB of data. Then again, both drives are quick in loading and recognizing an inserted disc, which took roughly 10 seconds. Unfortunately, both are slow at ripping digital audio into iTunes 7.1.1.5. The other drives took less than three minutes while the two Samsungs required almost seven minutes for the task.
Optiarc represents Sony and NEC's optical drives alliance. The AD-7170S is a modern drive that supports the latest read and write speeds for all sorts of DVD and CD media, although LightScribe is not supported.
DVD-R and DVD+R writing is supported at a maximum of 18X speeds. DVD+R double-layer can be written at 8X speeds and the DVD-R DL at 6X speeds. The same applies for rewriteable discs for the two DVD standards. This drive comes with a Serial ATA interface, which makes it very simple to install; simply plug it in and you're done.
The Sony/NEC AD-7170S was quick, and ripped our 7.52 GB video DVD in only 11 minutes and 13 seconds. Only Pioneer's DVR-112 was faster. The DVD-creation time was quick as well, but the drive isn't the fastest in loading and recognizing a newly inserted DVD. However, it was very fast at importing digital audio.
We were glad to see that all five drives were able to execute all of the tasks that comprised our tests. We had them rip a DVD with DVD Decrypter, write a DVD with Nero and extract audio into Apple iTunes 7.1. In addition, we measured the time the drives required to load and recognize a freshly inserted disc.
The LG GSA-H42L is slow at ripping DVDs, but it is quiet and it comes with different front panels, so you can adjust the appearance to your computer case. The drives from Pioneer and Sony offered the best performance, but both don't support the LightScribe feature to label your discs using the drive laser unit. The Pioneer DVR-112 is a bit noisier, but supports faster speeds when writing to DL media.
Our recommendation goes to both the Sony/NEC AD-7170S and the Pioneer DVR-112. Both drives showed excellent performance when ripping and writing DVDs. The only drawbacks are missing support for LightScribe and somewhat longer times required to recognize new discs.
PLEASE GO HERE TO SEE THE TOTAL ARTICLE AS I COULD NOT POST ALL THE INFO AND GRAPHS AND PIXS
http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/04/05/a...th_the_trouble/
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AfterDawn Addict
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7. April 2007 @ 09:40 |
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The MPAA's Singapore lie,
p2pnet.net news:- In a new 'educational' material flooding Singapore schools, Hollywood's MPA has been caught out in one of the most blatant propaganda lies yet seen.
Anti-p2p leaflets from Hollywood MPAA clone the MPA (Motion Picture Association) are being fronted by something called the HIP Honour IP alliance.
Through it, Time Warner, Viacom, Fox, Sony, NBC Universal and Disney are inundating all 164 of the country's secondary schools and 16 junior college students with an indoctrination booklet written and published by the MPA, "outlining the dangers of illegal peer-to-peer file sharing".
Any dangers, such as they may be, come wholly and solely from the MPA and similar entertainment cartel-owned units.
The country's 23 National Library branches will also be receiving 'Illegal File-Sharing: The Risks Aren't Worth It' and backing the studios up is the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore.
Schools staffs, paid from school fees and local taxes, will be expected to disseminate the corporate squibs and MPA representatives will be readily available to 'help' teachers 'educate' students.
The front cover (right) shows a frightened girl chewing her fingernails as she peers at some unidentified horror on her laptop screen.
Says the booklet, "pirates frequently make 'spoofs' of titles available on peer-to-peer networks, so what you think you are downloading might in fact be a fake".
But, this is one of the most blatant examples of an out-front corporate lie ever. Because what's 'fake' is the statement itself.
By far the vast majority of, if not all, spoofs come from cartel-hired online bounty hunters such as the Mediasentry, whose 'evidence' of file sharing has been repeatedly discredited, or from the likes of the Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG music cartel, who admit, "inserting promotional material into the decoy files, and then planting those files prominently on file-sharing sites".
The idea is either:
* People download a 'spoof' file mistakenly thinking it's the real thing and one or other of the enforcement organisations hopes to later use any associated IP address to produce a subpoena; or
* The Big 4 and other marketeers can then, "turn what is now an anti-piracy tool into an advertising medium".
Stay tuned
Slashdot Slashdot it!
Also See:
iproduce a subpoena - The RIAA vs Don Leadbetter, February 5, 2007
advertising medium - Big Music spoof 'marketing' ploy, October 19, 2006
http://p2pnet.net/story/11908
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AfterDawn Addict
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8. April 2007 @ 17:30 |
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Quote:
ATTORNEY'S ADVICE - NO CHARGE
Read this and make a copy for your files in case you need to refer to it
someday. Maybe we should all take some of his advice! A corporate Attorney
sent the following out to the employees in his company.
1. Do not sign the back of your credit cards. Instead, put "PHOTO ID
REQUIRED."
2. When you are writing checks to pay on your credit card accounts, DO NOT
put the complete account number on the "For" line. Instead, just put the
last four numbers. The credit card company knows the rest of the number, and
anyone who might be handling your check as it passes through all the check
processing channels won't have access to it.
3. Put your work phone # on your checks instead of your home Phone. If you
have a PO Box use that instead of your home address. If you do not have a PO
Box, use your work address. Never have your SS# printed on your checks.
(DUH!) You can ad d it if it is necessary. But if you have It printed,
anyone can get it.
4. Place the contents of your wallet on a photocopy machine. Do both sides
of each license, credit card, etc. You will know what you had in your wallet
and all of the account numbers and phone numbers to Call and cancel. Keep
the photocopy in a safe place. I also carry a Photocopy of my passport when
I travel either here or abroad. We've all heard horror stories about fraud
that's committed on us in stealing a Name, address, Social Security number,
credit cards.
Unfortunately, I, an attorney, have firsthand knowledge because my wallet
was stolen last month. Within a week, the thieve(s) ordered an expensive
monthly cell phone package, applied for a VISA credit card, had a credit
line approved to buy a Gateway computer, received a PIN number From DMV to
change my driving record information online, and more. But here's some
critical information to limit the damage in case this happens to you or
someone you know:
5. We have been told we should cancel our credit cards immediately. But the
key is having the toll free numbers and your card numbers handy so you know
whom to call. Keep those where you can find them.
6. File a police report immediately in the jurisdiction where your credit
cards, etc., were stolen. This proves to credit Providers you were diligent,
and this is a first step toward an Investigation (if there ever is one).
But here's what is perhaps most important of all: (I never even thought to
do this.)
7. Call the 3 national credit reporting organizations Immediately to place a
fraud alert on your name and also call the Social Security fraud line
number. I had never heard of doing that until advised by a bank that called
to tell me an application for credit was made over The Internet in my name.
The alert means any company that checks your Credit knows your information
was stolen, and they have to contact you by phone to authorize new credit.
By the time I was advised to do this, almost two weeks after the theft, all
the damage had been done. There are records of all the Credit checks
initiated by the thieves' purchases, none of which I knew about before
placing the alert. Since then, no additional damage has been done, and the
thieves threw my wallet away this weekend (someone turned it in). It seems
to have stopped them dead in their tracks.
Now, here are the numbers you always need to contact about your wallet ,
etc., has been stolen:
1.) Equifax: 800-525-6285
2.) Experian (formerly TRW): 888-397-3742
3.) TransUnion: 800-680-7289
4.) Social Security Administration (fraud line):800-269-0271
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