Slashdot Mirror

An anonymous reader writes "The author of the Echelon decided to take his fight against software piracy to the next level and then threw in the towel. After someone began posting new serial numbers on a well known hacking site, the author took matters into his own hands. With version 1.0, entering a hacked serial number causes the software deleted the user's Home directory. Yes, you read it right, the software completely erases it (aka rm -rf ~). A variety of people have voiced some some strong opinions on this. While some argue that piracy is good for established companies, a few large companies are battling piracy and having limited success. Small, independent developers, however, are recognising this is a serious problem and are generally stumped by what to do about it."

Andrew D Kirch writes "After being barraged by spam and 419 scams from Rima-TDE and telefonica.es [translated], the AHBL has announced that all of Spain's national ISP's e-mail will be blocked by their blacklisting service. One has to ask though, is blocking an entire country like this the future of spamfighting, or has something gone horribly wrong?"

An anonymous reader writes "Russian and NASA scientists published in the March journal of Solar System Research, the proposition that a 1980 Yemenite meteorite originated from the martian moon, Phobos. It would be the first moon rock from another planet. New Scientist has a short description and Astrobiology Magazine has the picture. Unique among the 20,000 meteorites collected, this is similar to heat-shocked charcoal and shows several mineral phases not found terrestrially."

purduephotog writes "Doctoral candidate Saul Griffith of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and inventor of the Lego powered chocolate printer was awarded the Lemelson-MIT Student Prize for inventing a device that molds eyeglasses rapidly and cheaply. Best of all, he's motivated for the good of humanity."

belswick writes "UW has posted a paper titled "Measuring and Analyzing the Characteristics of Napster and Gnutella Hosts" at Washington in PDF form. Interesting reading for those who implement P2P software, with actual measurements, tools, and topologies. You 3l33t H4x0rz are ACM members, R1gh4?" You can get a cache of the PDF and view it online as well.

bluelark writes "A few days ago, a friend of mine fowarded to me some spam apparently from the Howard Dean campaign. The sender's return address, however, was dean@america.propulsive.net. In addition, this is not the Texas email we've all heard about. Being bored, I did some research, and I found some intriguing results. If you are interested, I've posted the the technical details and the the spam. Even though the images in the email are being served from Venezuela, the links in the body of the spam are actually redirects from a marketing partner called eScriptions.net to a Dean for America registration page. It appears that the campaign is outsourcing their email with some dubious marketing partners who are then using notorious spamhauses to send out the actual email. Why does a supposedly "net savvy" campaign even think for one second that this approach is acceptable?"

It's just a few hours after the Northeast U.S. power outage, and facts are trickling in; as of right now, it looks like an accidental overload knocked out a large part of the Niagara Mohawk power grid. A few years ago, California went through rolling blackouts that were largely due to a poorly-executed deregulation of that state's power industry. The question that's probably occurring to many of us is, did late-'90s deregulation play a role in today's power event? I don't know the answer, so I'm turning it over to you -- moderators, please check links and up-mod the most informative, pro or con. Here is some information to get you started: "We support deregulation 100 percent..." (N-M spokesman, 1997; notes N-M wanted to sell generators and "concentrate on the transmission and distribution of energy" -- did it?); N-M made some bad investments and is scheduled to request a rate hike (did it?); and N-M's own website says: "Deregulation [has] changed the laws and regulations governing the electricity industry to promote competition..." (how so?).

Greedo writes "According to their press release, "Pool.com, one of the Internet's hottest new ventures (their words, not mine), has launched a lawsuit challenging the right of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to proceed with a monopolistic new Wait-Listing Service (Google cache) this fall." You can read Pool.com's Statement of Claim, if you like."