There’s a story over at PC Pro, that says the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) has given up on the process for obtaining exemptions from the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act). They claim that the three year exemption period is meaningless. All of their requests for exemptions have been declined. Including requests to allow DVD purchasers to be able to play DVD’s purchased from any region, to allow CD purchasers to play copy protected discs on a PC, and to allow skipping of “unskippable” ads at the beginning of DVDs.
Tag: PC
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GMail vulnerability on Atom feed?
I don’t know about this, and will be curious to see what the answer is…. barrapunto.com had the link to a post from a Gmail user who notes… Gmail has the capability to have a feed of your new messages in Atom format. (We’re talking rss feeds here.) That’s all well and good. He went to bloglines though and tried to setup viewing of his feed…. and saw tons of email – NOT HIS.
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Mobile browsers also eat into Internet Explorer’s market share
Yesterday there were articles and blog posts comparing the next generation of the big three browsers, Internet Explorer, Firefox and Opera. Among the insightful comments on one of those articles, there was the observation that Firefox’s market share of (up to) 15% (more on tech oriented sites), gave webmasters a reason to abandon a one-browser design strategy. In fact, one reason I think all browsers should be standards compliant is to make web designer’s jobs simpler. What’s interesting though is the further point that Mobile web browsing in some parts of the world exceed PC web browsing and there is wide open competition there for browser market share.
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ZDNET.uk takes a look at linux on the business desktop
It was nice to see linux on the business desktop getting a serious look at zdnet.uk It looks like they give a fair run down of the main business class applications (Office Suite/email/etc.) While pointing out that the installers were something that in a business environment IT staff would be dealing with. They seem to favor the GNOME desktop over KDE as being able to sit down and get right to work in.
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Sony and Amazon to buyback cds
It looks as though the recall is being detailed for the Sony cds that use the XCP Digital Rights Management copy protection. Sony has setup a page where customers can request an exchange. Sony will swap cds with DRM for cds without the DRM software. Also, Amazon.com is offering refunds through this link, they advise customers to list “defective as the reason for return.
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Sony DRM Rootkit — it’s worse
I did this as updates to an earlier post, but it probably deserves it’s own post now. The morning brought us the news of SERIOUS flaws in the Uninstaller ActiveX control for Sony’s DRM, then came news of ANOTHER flaw, this one a privilige escalation “attacker can take control of PC” vulnerability in the DRM rootkit (XCP) itself. The other bit of news to come has been the extent of the install base of XCP.
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Sony discs to be recalled
It looks as though the uninstaller as claimed last night, does have more serious implications than the original rootkit, in Sony’s continuing DRM nightmare. Basically, the uninstaller will allow any web page to run arbitrary code and or remotely control your pc. Which is sort of the holy grail of remote exploits. The ActiveX control called CodeSupport that is required to get the uninstaller is the culprit here. It remains on system after uninstall and is marked safe for scripting.
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Getting rid of an old PC – wipe the hard drive!!
I’ve said it before and mentioned DBAN (Darik’s Boot and Nuke) as my favorite tool for this, but Sunbeltblog is mentioning this and it’s worth reminding you. When you replace a PC, you might keep the hard drive around for a short period to make sure you have all your data, but PLEASE plan on finding some way to delete or wipe or nuke or destroy ALL the data on the drive.
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Risk – type strategy game using Google Maps
This one caught my eye as I’ve spent many long hours playing different variations on the old strategy board game Risk. It appears that using Google Maps, a group has managed to write an API that let’s you Play Risk with Google maps as the backdrop.