Acording to Larry Seltzer of eWeek.Com
Someone is ripping off peoples domain name research for domains they wish to purchase and then beats them to the punch.

Allegedly a company called Chesterton Holdings puchases the domains shortly after they are researched  and then Information.Com is syndicated onto the page.  Larry Seltzer tried to verify this by doing it himself and sure enough the domains were bought up.

The only suggestion I can give is that if you are researching a name be sure you try it by surfing to that domain first, then research them and buy them quickly.  At Least until this problem is solved.

McAfee has released an Viral Alert for The FormSpy Tojan . SARC reports this virus as Infostealer.Snifula.

The Trojan is introduced by another trojan, then sends personal information.  It logs as you use your computer.  This includes email, paswords, bank accunt numbers, and so on.  It then sends the data to a malicious website.

The New Davinci Code Trailer

The legal move to block cell phones in theaters...even though the hardware has been done and used for years safely.

Man becomes Human Dynamo and starts carpet fires

A Mixologist in an IPod- IPod Bartender (Buy the Bartender a drink[Donate])

What did Bill Gates say when he was first told about Linux and who had to tell him?

Windows is Broken AND Microsoft actually admits it publicly... doesn't that open one of the Seven Seals of the Apocalypse or something???

In the online gaming worlds of Massively Multi-player Online Role Playing Games, where thousands of people exist and live a life, or several lives, in a computer generated game world.  Depending on the Game World you are living in you have property, a home town, a 'job', friends and opponents, allies and enemies, pets, and families.  You can accumulate virtual possessions on adventures or build up your skill set and turn raw materials into new more valuable items.  Some of these items are very rare, powerful, or difficult to acquire, so in the Game World they are worth allot of money.

The problem is that Game World money and objects are worth Real Life Money.  Real Life (or RL as the players call it) people who have the money are willing to pay for the Virtual Money, Items, services, and even the entire characters.  The characters are also highly valued as in the early stages of a characters development it takes allot of tedious work to build up from fragile and weak to the point where gameplay gets really interesting, let alone a character that has been built up to become very powerful, or even renown in the Game World.  Imagine skipping the weakling stages and playing a master sorcerer or feared warrior without the work.  What would that be worth to you?  How far would you be willing to go in an auction to get one of the top characters or the greatest weapon your character could use?

What if someone defeated you in the Game World and Took your Virtual Belongings?  Is it Really robbery?  The Item have an actual value, and in most cases you actually pay to play the game and accumulate these things. 

If I take them from you am I not depriving you of items of real value, unlike file sharing/piracy where nothing is actually deprived from the owner as it is a copy of the original that is taken and used? 

What if I robbed you then sold those items in Real Life?  Am I fencing it?

Am I actually stealing from you in Real Life?  Am I breaking the law in Real Life?

What if I cheated or Broke the End User Licencing Agreements to do so?

What If I used my superior character to hunt and harass your character, or run a protection scheme, Ponzi scheme, or other organized crime for Real World money either directly or indirectly?

The New Scientist wrote an article on an MMORPG "Mugger" that used 'Bots', computer automated programs that control your character for you, that gave his characters an unfair advantage in battle.  He then used These characters in Lineage II to rob weaker characters, then fence their goods through a Japanese Website for Real World Money. 

Farmers and Computer Game Makers seem like two groups that should have very little to do with each other let alone have a problem with each other, but it has become so bad they have ended up in court cases against each other.

One of the main problems is the farmer's aren't real.

Some of you, Especially those who, like me play Massively Multi-player Online Role Playing Games, know what I am talking about, but for the others I will explain. 

In the virtual worlds of Massively Multi-player Online Role Playing Games people don't adventure and battle all the time.  They also have trades and skills that you can use to build up your character's abilities and experience.  Some hunt and skin hides for leather, some mine and smith armour and weapons, some brew potions and make clothes.  I brew beer... expensive, STRONG beer.

Some farm.  In the game Ultima Online a man had an idea: using cheats and cheap labour, he hired people to farm in the game, then  sell the produce in game for in game money.  He would then collect the in game money and sell it for real life money.  This gave an advantage to anyone who could afford to buy the money instead earning it in the game.  It has gone on in almost all other games, and the trade may change, and what is sold may change, but it is still called "Farming".

Now like many industries it has been offshored to nations that people can work for sweatshop wages to do the grunt work, while an organizer gets the lions share making a nice living in the real world.  Due to the location of many of these shops, the term "Farmer" has been replaced with "Chinese Farmer" and "Farming" is sometimes referred to as "Chinese Farming" inspite of who is doing it.

Now Computer Gaming Monthly has posted an article on 1UP.COM called "Wage Slaves" that goes into Farming and even goes to a "Farm" to check out how they work and the people that are involved in them.

In its continuing fight for online freedom, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has created a guide to help you south of the 49th Parralel to blog without suffering some of the consiquences that some of our fellow bloggers have suffered.

Don't want to be fired for your blog? 

Don't want to be sued by Apple? (Sorry Steve... I couldn't resist)

Don't want to go through a libel or defamation lawsuit?

Don't want to spend time in jail with a schizophrenic prisoner that doesn't sleep and starres at your tattoos obsesively? (Prison Break TV Show Reference)

Then the EFF's Legal Guide For Bloggers is for you.  In simple straight language they explain what you can and can't do and why.  It would be handy if us Canadians had one (Hint Hint).

 

Opera 8.50 is out now out and it is no longer Ad Banner supported and has no Google Text Ads.  Instead it has switched to a Pay for Premium Support profit model.  It has fixed many of the minor bugs in the browser that have cropped up in the transition for new upcomming features like a built in BitTorrent Client and Rumoured extended Plugin Support.

If you would like to see a list of the current features in Opera they are listed here.

If you want to get Opera 8.50 you can download it here.

Wired's article on the Militaries top Hacking Crew

Pentium 4 Cache Processor Vulnerablity reported at News.Com

Hack a XBOX controler to use a Thumbdrive as a Storage Card

BBC Interview with European Hacker on his activities and how they mirror Britons UFO Hacker

Iron Geek's collection of Flash Videos showing hacking and security demonstrations

The MIT Interesting Hacks Gallery

The World Infamous 'DVD Jon' announces on his Blog, So Sue Me, That his latest target is the Windows Media Streaming Format

Wired News report on Hacker's admimission that launched a Gold War DDoS Attack for a Cable Company

If you look to the top of this web page you will notice that the first advertizing link I have is for The Opera Web Browser, and I put it there for a reason.  It isn't there because I am paid to put it there, although if you do use that link The Useless Information File  will get recompence (and I will disclose that later), I would put it there anyway as a public service announcement.  I beleive ing the product that much, and use it almost exclusively.

Opera, for those of you who aren't familiar with it, was an intranet (Internal Internet like network) client that was originally programmed to be small and fast and fit on a part of a 3.5 inch floppy with room to spare.  It was developed outside of the back and forth of other software companies who were racing each other.  It was then converted into a web browser using the industry standards for HTML, something the other browsers violated to try and out do each other in the browser wars.

10 years ago today Opera was first announced and released to the world.

Many of the inovative features you see in browsers today, from alternitive browsers like FireFox, to the mainstream ones like Safari, Netscape, and Internet Exploiter, er... Explorer, were first pionneered by Opera.  It also is tested to be the fastest browser in the world. 

Right now Opera comes with an autodetecting RSS Newsfeed Reader, Multiple User Profiles, Configurable Popup Blocker, Databasing Mail Client, Chat Client, Integrated Mouse Gestures, Tabbed Web browsing, Completely Skinable Inteface (done with a single click), Fully Customizable interface, Password, Cookie, Security, and download managment, 100% WC3 Web Standards Compliance AND compatibility for most non standard formating used by mainline browsers, Notes and Personal Information Management, Links Interface, Web Page Zoom, Drag and Drop Support, Cascaded or Tiled Web Surfing within the same window (unlike IE where you have to launch another copy of IE to get a new window), an Sessions, where you can take a group of web pages that you regularlymight visit at the same time and save them as a session, then just open that session to open all the web pages at once.  Well... theres more...

All this in a package smaller to install than FireFox without plugins and is on everything from PCs (Windows or GNU/Lin.

And the catch... It comes in 2 versions... Add Supported (a Banner or a strip of Google Text ads accross the top) or paid add free version.  You could also get an Ad free of you put a link on your website and get enough traffic through it getting Opera (that is the part I was talking about earlier).  Well that was until today.

I mentioned earlier that Opera was announced and released 10 years ago today... so they are having a birthday party!  The only difference is you get the gift.

FOR TODAY ONLY YOU CAN GET FREE REGISTRATION CODES FOR OPERA.  Please use the link at the top of the page and be patient, when you get through, click on the birthday sign while you giggle at thier latest mascot.

WAIT!!!

Before you go, you should know that there is a minor bug that is annoying opera users right now.  The latest version is Opera 8.02, and is a midway release before they integrate several new features, including a BitTorrent Client.  This inbetween step has caused the browser to mysteriously reset some of its download preferences every time you restart Opera.  This setting makes Opera try to use its Quicktime Plugin to play files like MP3s when you are trying to download them.  It should pop up a dialog box asking if you want to Open,Save, or Cancel this action.  To fix it you just go into the Tools/Preferences/Advaced/Downloads and edit the settings for the filetypeyou were trying to download from plugin to dialog box, but every time you restart it annoyingly resets this setting.

Until a Fix is available just download, but doan't install 8.02, but download Opera 8.01 from the Opera Archives.  You might want to try getting a registration code for both and only using one for Opera 8.01.  It might carryover when you upgrade, but I couldn't get a clear answer,  and they probably won't require you to have 8.02 to upgrade, but if it is taking long they may add a bug fix to the next security update which might require 8.02, and then you will wnat to use Opera 8.02.

Now that the Canadian Government has tabled its own version of the disastrous American Digital Millennial Copyright Act, or DCMA, it has moved onto creating its own version of the disastrous American Patriot Acts.  This version is Called the Lawful Access Initiative.  If there ever was an example of the public relations technique of only using positive words to name or describe things, this is it.

I usually try to stay objective but as a Canadian Citizen, a Pro-Privacy Person, and a regular Internet User I am very disturbed by this proposed 'Initiative'.

I came across this on Michael Giest's Blog, written by the Canada Research Chair in Internet & E-commerce Law at the University of Ottawa.  The story on his blog first appeared on the Monday, Aug 22, 2005 edition of the Toronto Star.

Among the usual proposals for unwarranted searches, surveillance, and seizures are rules for ISPs (Internet Service Providers) that would state that unless the ISP's size makes it prohibitive, they are to individually mark traffic, put in place protocols for trapping/cloning any information (including encrypting transfers like email that are using only cursory encryption to deter raw text from being casually read during transfer), and warehousing approximately 3 MONTHS ALL USERS TRAFFIC incoming and outgoing.

What do they propose for the process to request and receive this warehoused information for one, or all, of their customers?

A request made over the phone after which the ISP must relinquish it immediately or else suffer the SEVERE consequences!

Unless you belong to one of the small ISPs that couldn't afford the horrendous cost of this retrofit.

I hope that this law was conceived of to be so terrible that not only will it satisfy, albeit temporarily, the Current Governments of the US and Britain, but never make it past the first reading.

I'd like to remind people of one of my favourite quotes that I believe was coined by the writer, inventor, and politician Benjamin Franklin; "Those who trade Freedom for Security in the end get neither, and deserve neither.".

The International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) have produced a report that alleges that endagered species are slipping through online auction sites, thus bring those spiecies closer to extiction by accelerating the trade. The international group has started a campaign to get Ebay to better regulate their auctions here.

(Thanks to fellow Web Jounalist, Wendy Miller of the Sex Worker Resource and Activism Journal WHORE, for pointing out an error in presintation I made in reporting this report this report.)