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Submission + - Slashdot Alum Samzenpus's Fractured Veil Hits Kickstarter

Submitted by CmdrTaco
CmdrTaco writes: Long time Slashdot readers remember Samzenpus,who posted over 17,000 stories here, sadly crushing my record in the process! What you might NOT know is that he was frequently the Dungeon Master for D&D campaigns played by the original Slashdot crew, and for the last few years he has been applying these skills with fellow Slashdot editorial alum Chris DiBona to a Survival game called Fractured Veil. It's set in a post apocalyptic Hawaii with a huge world based on real map data to explore, as well as careful balance between PVP & PVE. I figured a lot of our old friends would love to help them meet their kickstarter goal and then help us build bases and murder monsters! The game is turning into something pretty great and I'm excited to see it in the wild!

Submission + - Facebook Data Collection Under Fire Again (computerworld.com)

Submitted by
JohnBert
JohnBert writes: "A German privacy protection authority is calling on organizations there to close their Facebook fan pages and remove the social networking site's "Like" button from their websites, arguing that Facebook harvests data in violation of German and European Union law.

The Independent Centre for Privacy Protection (ULD), the privacy protection agency for the German state of Schleswig-Holstein, issued a news release on Friday saying Facebook builds a broad, individualized profile for people who view Facebook content on third-party websites.

Data is sent back to Facebook's servers in the U.S., which the agency alleges violates the German Telemedia Act, the German Federal Data Protection Act and the Data Protection Act of Schleswig-Holstein. The agency alleges the data is held by Facebook for two years, and wants website owners in the state to remove links to Facebook by the end of next month or possibly face a fine."
Microsoft

Submission + - Windows 8: estimated transfer time is no more (extremetech.com) 1

Submitted by
MrSeb
MrSeb writes: "Ahh, the Windows Explorer progress dialog. For years it has been struggling to figure out how to calculate how long our copy and delete operations would take, sliding the progress bar back and forth in a seemingly random, haphazard way, the laws of time all but ceasing to exist — five seconds remaining one moment and 13 minutes the next. That’s (almost) all going to change, with the arrival of a greatly improved file management experience in Windows 8. Copy, move, delete, rename, and conflict resolution are all being overhauled for Windows 8 — and it's about time!"
Security

Submission + - Researchers Report Spike in Boot Time Malware (securityweek.com)

Submitted by wiredmikey
wiredmikey writes: In its most recent intelligence report, Symantec researchers reported a massive increase in the amount of boot time malware striking users, noting there have already been as many new boot time malware threats detected in the first seven months of 2011 as there were in the previous three years.

Also known as MBR (master boot record) threats, the malware infect an area of the hard disk that makes them one of the first things to be read and executed when a computer is turned on. This enables the threats to effectively dodge many security defenses.

In June, Microsoft warned Windows users about a bootkit Trojan known as Popureb, touching off discussions about whether or not infected users were better off completely re-installing Windows.

Infecting the MBR is not a new technique per se; many of the old boot sector viruses from over a decade ago did something similar, the report notes. The difference is modern MBR malware do so much more than just infecting the MBR. It certainly looks as if MBR malware is making a comeback in 2011.
Facebook

Submission + - Facebook Says That Google Plus Has No Users (digitizor.com)

Submitted by
dkd903
dkd903 writes: "Sean Ryan, Director of Games partnership at Facebook says "Google has emulated aspects of our system, which is what they have the right to do. We just need to be better. Google is at 5% because they don't have any users.""

Submission + - USPTO issues patent #8,000,000. (uspto.gov)

Submitted by toybuilder
toybuilder writes: It took nearly 80 years for the first 1 million patents to issue in the U.S.

On Tuesday, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office issued its eighth-million patent. This most recent 1 million patents took only about 5 years.
Bitcoin

Submission + - GPGPU Bitcoin mining trojan (theregister.co.uk)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Security researchers have unearthed a piece of malware that mints a digital currency known as Bitcoins by harnessing the immense power of an infected machine's graphical processing units.

According to new research from antivirus provider Symantec, Trojan.Badminer uses GPUs to generate virtual coins through a practice known as minting. That's the term for solving difficult cryptographic proof-of-work problems and being rewarded with 50 Bitcoins for each per correct block.
Databases

Submission + - Fluidinfo.com is like a Wikipedia for databases (blogspot.com)

Submitted by Slags
Slags writes: The idea behind Fluidinfo is that read-only information is just not as useful as on the Web as openly writable information. Metadata is used routinely in the real world from name tags to post-it notes but it is much harder to apply metadata to information on the Internet. That is where Fluidinfo comes along. When information needs to be stored about an object the Fluidinfo database is queried. If the object exists in Fluidinfo, the information is appended to the object. If the object does not exist then it will be created and stored.

EDIT: Resubmission because there was no text in the first post.
http://slashdot.org/submission/1756838/Fluidinfocom-is-like-a-Wikipedia-for-databases
Security

Submission + - US and UK zombies demand top dollar (networkworld.com)

Submitted by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes: "Denizens of the malware underworld who sell access to compromised computers do so at varying rates depending on where the machines are located, researchers told the Usenix Security Symposium this week. The researchers followed what they called the pay-per-install (PPI) industry, which obtains infected machines from which malware can be launched and sells access to these machines to parties looking for someplace to execute malicious code. Sometimes the PPI sellers hire middlemen to supply the compromised machines, and the PPI dealer retails them."
Android

Submission + - Google to acquire Motorola Mobility for $12.5 bill (bgr.com)

Submitted by zacharye
zacharye writes: Google and Motorola Mobility have announced an agreement whereby Google will acquire Motorola for $12.5 billion. The acquisition price equates to $40 per share of Motorola stock, or a premium of 63% over Friday’s closing price. The move is considered to be an effort that will better-align Google to compete with Apple’s iPhone, which currently owns two-thirds of profits among the world’s top-8 smartphone vendors...
Networking

Submission + - The FCC Says ISPs Aren't Hitting Advertised Speeds (hothardware.com)

Submitted by
MojoKid
MojoKid writes: "The Federal Communications Commission has released the results of a year-long scientific study it conducted with regard to the upload and download speeds of thirteen American Internet service providers. Most of the ISPs hit 90 percent of their advertised upload speeds. Of the 13 providers tested, only four (or less than a third) averaged at or even above their advertised download speeds (Charter, Comcast, Cox, and Verizon Fiber). The tests were performed by a private firm that has run similar tests in the U.K. It measured performance at 6,800 "representative homes" nationally in March."
NASA

Submission + - NASA Opens New Office for Deep Space Missions. (space.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: NASA has been tasked with landing astronauts on a space rock by 2025, and on the Red Planet by the mid 2030s. To reach those goals, the United States must develop a new heavy-lift rocket capable of traveling that far, and a capsule to bring people safely there and back again.
United Kingdom

Submission + - Cameron Threatens To Shut Down UK Social Networks (thinq.co.uk)

Submitted by Stoobalou
Stoobalou writes: In a move worthy of China's communist regime, UK PM David Cameron wants to shut down social networks whenever civil unrest rears its head in Britain's towns and cities.

Speaking in the House of Commons, Cameron said, "Everyone watching these horrific actions will be struck by how they were, organised via social media.

"Free flow of information can be used for good. But it can also be used for ill. So we are working with the police, the intelligence services and industry to look at whether it would be right to stop people communicating via these websites and services when we know they are plotting violence, disorder and criminality."
Technology

Submission + - Fake Names On Social Networks: A Fake Problem (discovery.com)

Submitted by disco_tracy
disco_tracy writes: The leading social networks demand that members use their real names, and they're not afraid to evict violators. Many Facebook users have quietly complied, despite the problems that rule creates for political dissidents, stalking survivors and others. Much of this discussion has centered around people in physical or financial danger of having their identities revealed. But there are broader reasons for social networks to stop pushing real-name policies.

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We all agree on the necessity of compromise. We just can't agree on when it's necessary to compromise. -- Larry Wall

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