p2pnet headline roundups, June 27, 2008
p2pnet headline roundups | Last of the day
Microsoft update “could” fix Windows XP SP3 problems – Heise Online
A month ago, problems were reported in connection with Windows XP Service Pack 3. If Norton Internet Security 2008 was also installed, the device manager and the overview of network connections and devices remained empty after SP3 had been installed. In addition, a slew of useless keys turned up in the registry. heise Online was able to reproduce the latter, but not the former, problem in tests. Symantec claimed the problem was down to Microsoft, but nonetheless later supplied a patch. Now, Microsoft has followed suit and published its own update to fix the problem. But Redmond does not seem to be certain whether it really works – the flaw description closes with the statement, “Applying this fix could help resolve this problem”.
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Law Prof: ISP-Based Targeting Could Violate Site Trademarks – Daily Online Examiner
Charter Communications said it has temporarily scrapped a plan to share information about Web sites its customers visit with behavioral targeting company NebuAd, but Charter isn’t the only ISP to sign a deal with NebuAd. Other, smaller ISPs are still working with the company. And they’re almost certainly asking for lawsuits. The ISP-based targeting platform itself raises obvious privacy concerns, because ISPs have access to subscribers’ entire Web history – from every site visited to every search query performed. NebuAd says that users can opt out of the program, and that all of the information collected is anonymous. But advocates have doubts about whether people will even see, much less understand, the opt-out information. And users’ clickstream data often provides enough information to figure out their identities.
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New Flavors for Addresses on the Web Are on the Way – New York Times
Move over .com and .org. Get ready for a nearly infinite variety of new Web addresses ending in words like .perfume, .sports and .paris. On Thursday the Internet’s main oversight agency approved the most sweeping changes to the network’s address system since its creation. According to new rules unanimously passed by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or Icann, at its meeting here, any company, organization or country will soon be able to apply for a new Web address extension, called a top-level domain. That could smooth the way for Web addresses that end in city names, brands and generic words. It could also sow confusion in the minds of Web users, create a host of new ways to exploit the Web addressing system and start a wave of legal skirmishes over applications to register trademarks – .coke, for example. The Icann board also passed another less controversial proposal that would allow these domains to be registered in scripts other than Roman characters, like Chinese, Arabic and Cyrillic. Specific countries could receive the equivalent of their two-letter country code, like Bulgaria’s .bg, in their native alphabet.
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Bangkok offers 15,000 free Wi-Fi spots – Agence France-Presse
The Thai capital will offer 500,000 people free Wi-Fi access starting Thursday, in a pilot project that will provide 15,000 hotspots for them to get online, Bangkok’s municipal government said. The scheme is part of the city’s drive to cut back on its energy use as officials hope residents will drive less if electronic communication becomes more convenient. The free service, which is set to last for one year in its initial phase, will offer only slow 64K connections designed mainly for checking email or sending text messages.
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[OT] Tiny satellite will keep tabs on asteroids – Toronto Star
Canadian space know-how will soon be tracking hundreds of asteroids that regularly scoot across the Earth’s orbital path as well as keeping tabs on wayward space debris. A collision with a large asteroid could threaten life on Earth and the space debris could knock out telecommunications and weather satellites. This unique dual surveillance will begin in 2010 and use a modest space telescope aboard a made-in-Canada microsatellite, no larger than a suitcase and costing a bargain-basement $10 million.
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Woman accused of hacking Houston organ bank indicted - CNET News
On Tuesday, the FBI announced the indictment of a former technology director accused of hacking into the system at a Houston organ bank and deleting patient files. The indictment alleges that Danielle Duann, 50, illegally accessed and damaged LifeGift Organ Donation Center’s database in November 2005, shortly after she was fired as director of information technology for the company. She is alleged to have deleted organ donation database records and accounting invoice files from the network. LifeGift said that all of the records were restored from a backup and that no patients were put into jeopardy.
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June 27th, 2008 at 1:52 pm
I called Charter months ago to complain about those annoying invasive spam-pages, but just got the usual runaround.
Miss-type a single character in a long URL address, and get redirected to a Charter ad page. This requires typing the entire address all over again, instead of just inserting the missing letter, as it used to be before Charter interfered. As I have sloppy fingers, the onlyway around this has been to use a proxy.
http://www.internetnews.com/ec-news/article.php/3755631/NebuAd+The+Third+Rail+for+ISPs.htm