PATH: BS | Technology

Run Fire Off Water; Sacrifice Fuel Efficiency For Coolness

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[Faulty Products]
[Technology]
Tired of lugging firewood around? Want to spend $50,000 to impress your friends and show you can disproportionately waste huge amounts of energy while appearing to embrace alternative fuel sources? Then you need the Aqueon, a goofy high-tech fireplace that uses 220v/60amps to create hydrogen fuel via electrolysis to fuel its flames.

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Microsoft Enlists Outside Aid for New IE7 Browser

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Microsoft has enlisted some outside help for one of the most anticipated new features of its updated web browser: the ability to alert people that they may be about to enter a fraudulent website.

It was announced today that Microsoft has retained the services of anti-fraud expert, LARRY ODOGWU of the Nigerian National Petroleum and Computer Security Corporation.

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Microsoft Blacks Out Area 51; Google Doesn't

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[Beating Dead Horses]
In the war between Earth image browsers, it doesn't seem like much of a challenge. Microsoft's satellite imagery shows vintage stuff like the twin towers and the nonexistence of things like Apple's headquarters (presumably due to old satellite data) whereas Google's system is up to date and in color. Another interesting tidbit is that the infamous Area 51 shows up on Google but Microsoft has it blacked out. No word yet if Microsoft has also blacked out Barbara Striesand's home.

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Russia's Biggest Spammer Brutally Murdered

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[Spam]
Vardan Kushnir, notorious for sending spam to each and every citizen of Russia who appeared to have an e-mail, was found dead in his Moscow apartment on Sunday, Interfax reported Monday. He died after suffering repeated blows to the head.

READ MORE | 1 comment since 2005-08-02 21:19:38 | Comment on this Article

North Carolina Whores Itself to Dell for 1600 Jobs

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Winston-Salem politicians wanted so much to woo Dell to their state they gave away land, then created a phony payback scheme to cover their tracks.

After pumping North Carolina for more than $270m, Dell decided it wasn't done yet. Actually pay for the land its new factory will sit on? Hell, no!

In a confusing exchange deal, Dell will "pay" the city of Winston-Salem $7m for land in return for $7m worth of roads and grants from the city to Dell, so it gains the 200-acre factory site for free. Dell currently faces a massive lawsuit over other parts of the North Carolina package.

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Fox Acquires MySpace.com

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New Corporation, run by Rupert Murdock & Co., which also owns Fox, has acquired Intermix Media, Inc., operators of the popular MySpace.com online community. This move heralds the formation of a new division within Murdock's empire, Fox Interactive Media. News Corp shelled out $580 Million in the transaction.

It wouldn't be difficult to speculate that the motive behind this was to recapture the audiences that have been lost to New Corp's other television, print and cinema divisions. The big question is whether people will start a mass exodus from MySpace if they start seeing Bill O'Reilly ads all over the place? Can we now expect MySpace.com to be "Fair and balanced?"

READ MORE | 2 comments since 2005-07-21 23:38:13 | Comment on this Article

Lame Anti-Spyware Bill Passed House, Stuck in Senate

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[Spam]
Computer users MAY be excited by H.R. 29: Securely Protect Yourself Against Cyber Trespass Act, which passed (393-4) the House and is currently stuck in Senate committee. Also known as the Spy Act (no intended reference to Karl Rove), would outlaw the act of taking over a computer in order to send unauthorized information or code, as well as diverting a Web browser without the permission of the computer owner.

Unfortunately, as is typical in D.C., all is not what it appears. This Anti-Spyware bill does more to take away peoples' security and give comfort to spyware companies, but hey, it's got a catchy title that sounds effective, so maybe nobody will notice?

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Popular Web Site Desperately Tries to De-Promote Itself

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SomethingAwful got a segment on G4-TechTV and the order came down from high up, "If we see an increase in traffic as a result of your TV appearance, you've failed." Watch as the hilarity unfolds as a popular counterculture web site, desperately tries to de-emphasize its significance on a burned out cable channel.

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New Microsoft Anti-Spyware Tool Ignores Spyware

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[Spam]
In the wake of the availability of Microsoft's anticipated anti-spyware tool, closer examination indicates that Microsoft is ignoring their own rules for what classifies as spyware and what should be removed from a person's PC if found. Apparently major spyware purveyors have talked Microsoft into letting them off the hook, and there are rumors that Microsoft is in the process of acquiring a major spyware vendor itself.

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AMD Suing Intel Over Claim Their Compiler Sabotages AMD Software

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AMD has filed suit against Intel claiming the company is employing monopolist-like powers in sabotaging AMDs efforts to be competitive. Among the many claims is that Intel's compiler which prepares software to run on both Intel and AMD machines, checks to see which CPU is being used and intentionally generates less-efficient and slower code for machines running a non-Intel/AMD CPU.

IMO, considering how much faster and more-efficient AMD CPUs are over Intel, we may be looking at even more performance gains when using AMD CPUs if this claim is proven true and Intel has to correct their AMD-sabotaging code.

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Dell Shuts Down Part Of Its Online Customer Service

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Want to complain on Dell's website about its customer service? Too late - the Customer Support Forums, operational until last Friday, have been shut down, apparently to try to quell bad publicity there about Dell products and especially after-care service.

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Researchers Say Spam Is Good For You

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[Dubious Research]
[Spam]
According to a report published at LiveScience, A steady diet of spam -- the electronic variety -- can be good for you. Researchers split a group of more than 2,100 Canadians into two groups. One group got emails that promoted healthy lifestyles, the other got none. Those who were 'spammed' apparently saw their body mass go down..

Unfortunately, these boneheads sent out daily affirmations, not a barrage of teen sex, mortgage and stock scams, and cheap medications. It's quite a stretch for these people to call their research on "spam" as most of us define it.

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Koreans Launch Cyber-Attack Against Ill-Mannered Woman

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[Activists]
Ok, you're on a train in Korea carrying your little doggie and he makes a mess on the floor. What do you do?

a) Clean it up
b) Ignore fellow passengers requests that you clean up your dog's mess, tell them to F-off, have someone take pictures of you from their cameraphone and post it all over the Internet, creating a country-wide witch hunt, exposing your identity and ruining your life.

If you answered A, you'd be smart. If you answered B, you'd be this girl.

READ MORE | 1 comment since 2005-12-04 16:44:21 | Comment on this Article

Online Gamer Murdered Over Theft of Virtual Sword

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[Mean People]
You know you're taking gaming too seriously when you go out and stab someone because they snatched a sword from your fictional role-playing-game character, but that's exactly what happened in China.

Qiu Chengwei stabbed Zhu Caoyuan in the chest when he found out he had sold his virtual sword for 7,200 Yuan (~ $700).

The sword, which Mr Qiu had lent to Mr Zhu, was won in the popular online game Legend of Mir 3. Qiu was convicted and sentenced to life in prison in China. I guess Zhu didn't have time to buff before the melee started.

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BSA Publishes Fantasy Figures on Software Piracy

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[Dubious Research]
The Business Software Alliance, a group dedicated towards controlling software piracy, has come under fire for releasing a report claiming that 35% of software installed on computers is pirated and costs companies more than $33 Billion a year in lost revenue.

The Economist and others have blown the lid off the BSA's research methodology, which is apparently based on the illogical premise that any program someone would pirate, they would otherwise pay for.

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Hotmail Users' Security/Privacy at Risk

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Microsoft took part of its MSN Web site offline over the weekend, after it learned of a flaw that could let an attacker gain access to Hotmail accounts, the company said.

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Hackers Shut Down Phishing Sites

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[Activists]
In the wake of the government and law enforcement's seemingly profound inability to enforce fraud laws and go after spammers and scammers online, computer people are taking matters into their own hands and taking action against online scam operations.

READ MORE | 1 comment since 2005-05-26 14:48:01 | Comment on this Article

Anti-Virus Update Wipes Out Hundreds Of Thousands of Computers

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A faulty update to anti-virus software released over the weekend by Tokyo-based Trend Micro has caused PCs to slow down or stop working around the world.

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Microsoft DNS Exploit Hits IE Users All Over

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While most of the Internet is using Unix-based DNS servers to handle hostname resolution, some companies and ISPs using Windows servers have been hit with a nasty attack that redirects .com addresses to special web sites that look for users running Internet Explorer and loads their systems with spyware and other malicious programs. Reason # 34,987,343 why you should be using Firefox and stay away from ISPs who are foolish enough to be running Microsoft servers for stuff like DNS.

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PA Republican Wants To Stop Free Weather Reports

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Pennsylvania representative Rick Santorum, under the control of corporate interests who run commercial weather services, is introducing legislation to shut down the free weather information available online from the National Weather Service. This is taxpayer-funded, valuable information available to the people that is encroaching on profits of select corporate interests and they're buying politicians to shut it down. Shame Shame.

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