Information freedom for open source users.

Gamasutra has an interesting article about how the push toward realistic graphics and extremely lifelike characters in modern games is making the term “murder simulator” — once laughed off for referring to pixelated dying Nazis — a concept to take more seriously. The author is careful to simply explore the issue, and not come to a specific conclusion; he doesn’t say that we should or shouldn’t prevent it from happening, only that it’s worth consideration. (One section is even titled “Forget the kids,” saying that decisions for what children play fall under parental responsibility.) Quoting: “We should start rethinking these issues now before we all slide down the slope together and can’t pull ourselves back up again. Or, even worse, before governments step in and dictate what can and can’t be depicted or simulated in video games via legislation. … Obviously, what makes an acceptable game play experience for each player is a personal choice that should be judged on a person-by-person basis (or on a parent to child basis), and I believe it should stay that way. As for me, I’m already drawing the line at BioShock — I can barely stomach the game as it is. Sure, I could play it more and desensitize myself, but I don’t want to. And that’s just me. It’s up to you and a million other adult gamers to decide what’s best for yourselves and to draw the line on virtual violence where you feel most comfortable.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Datamation: “So after months of stern warnings from the Chinese government, a controversial Internet filter got an 11th-hour reprieve today.”

Fedora is a giant among giants, in the shadow of a giant from which it was born. But every giant is born of humble beginnings. So to understand the giant, you first have to understand from where they came. So let me take you through a short history of Fedora, and show you where it all began, and some of the interesting, if not curious steps that it took to become what it is today. To start with the very deepest roots, we need to look to the kernel that makes Fedora what it is: The Linux Kernel. That was first introduced in 1991 by a then college student named Linus Torvalds.

Adobe Reader and Acrobat JBIG2 Filter Unspecified Memory Corruption Vulnerability

Adobe Reader and Acrobat Huffman-encoded JBIG2 Text Heap Overflow Vulnerability

1sockchuck writes “Yahoo has come up with a data center design called the Yahoo Computing Coop, which it says will make its new data center in Lockport, NY one of the most efficient on earth. The design features 120-foot by 60-foot metal prefabricated facilities with louvers on the side to support free cooling, and a peaked roof to manage the release of waste heat from the hot aisle. Chief Yahoo David Filo said the name was adopted ‘because it looks like something chickens live in.’ The $150 million data center in Western New York, which was announced earlier today, will run on cheap hydro power from the Niagara River.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

According to wordnetweb.princeton.edu, Computer Science is “the branch of engineering science that studies (with the aid of computers) computable processes and structures”. It’s the study of computer architectures, languages, and mathematical structures as applied to the process of computing. So what have Campbell, et al produced in this book…a Computer Science textbook that teaches Python? Kind of. Imagine you wanted to learn how the computer is used in the various scientific disciples. Further, you wanted to learn how computer programs and programming is used in this context to construct tools, perform investigations, and to solve problems. You also want to use a single programming language as your example. Welcome to “Practical Programming: An Introduction to Computer Science Using Python”. Not a book about learning Python as such, but an introduction to the discipline of Computer Science with Python as your guide.

WDVL: “odern programming languages, including Python, have tools which facillitate introspection. In the case of a programming language, introspection is the ability of a program to examine itself, or even the parent interpreter or compiler.”

Sugar Labs has issued a LiveUSB version of its “Sugar” Linux distribution and educational software, used by One Laptop Per Child (OLPC)’s XO-1. “Sugar on a Stick v1 Strawberry Learning Platform” can be plugged into any netbook or PC, offering 40 activities designed for K-12 students.

Every feature unearthed, every quirk revealed

Review  Two top-of-the-line smartphones were released in June: the Palm Pre and the iPhone 3GS. If you’re eyeing them, you’ll have to choose one or the other – no one in their right mind owns more than one smartphone. So which one is worthy of your pocket or purse?…

Offloading malware protection to the cloud

Google’s Linux-based mobile operating system — Android — has become a popular choice for phonemakers worldwide. Now, if Firefox developers are getting what they think they are, we may finally see the combination of Google’s power OS with Mozilla’s groundbreaking browser

An anonymous reader sends news from The Washington Post’s Security Fix blog of a new Trojan horse program that takes click fraud to the next level. The Trojan, dubbed FFsearcher by SecureWorks, was among the pieces of malware installed by sites hacked with the Nine-Ball mass compromise, which attacked some 40,000 Web sites this month. The Trojan takes advantage of Google’s “AdSense for Search” API, which allows Web sites to embed Google search results alongside the usual Google AdSense ads. (SecureWorks’ writeup indicates that Yahoo search is targeted too, but the researchers saw no evidence if the malware redirecting Yahoo searches.) While most search hijackers give themselves away on the victim’s machine by redirecting the browser through some no-name search engine, FFsearcher “…converts every search a victim makes through Google.com, so that each query is invisibly redirected through the attackers’ own Web sites, via Google’s Custom Search API. Meanwhile, the Trojan manipulates the victim’s PC and browser so that the victim never actually sees the attacker-controlled Web site that is hijacking the search, but instead sees the search results as though they were returned directly from Google.com (and with Google.com in the victim browser’s address bar, not the address of the attacker controlled site). Adding to the stealth is the fact that search results themselves aren’t altered by the attackers, who are merely going after the referral payments should victims click on any of the displayed ads. What’s more, the attackers aren’t diverting clicks or ad revenue away from advertisers or publishers, as in traditional click fraud: They are simply forcing Google to pay commissions that it wouldn’t otherwise have to pay.” If FFSearcher were the only piece of malware on the machine, it would have a better chance of staying under the radar.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Geek.com: “No longer are companies willing to pay the price (in money and the intentional depression of technology) by catering to Microsoft and its proprietary architectures and related policies and procedures.”

xVM Server left behind

Update: This story originally said that Sun had not open-sourced VirtualBox. Sun does offer an open source version…

The power of collaboration within unified communications

Breaks management ceiling

Desktop management specialist Kace is getting serious about Mac management, as Apple’s platform makes headway in the business world.…

The power of collaboration within unified communications

KDE e.V. President, Aaron Seiger, is calling for help to rescue freedesktop.org. Seigo warns of the danger of the free open source software platform sliding into insignificance and he’s appealing to community members for help.

LWN.net: “Thus, free applications do not normally implement “features” which allow their users to do less. One might think that the consensus against “antifeatures” in free software is nearly universal, but, as the case of the okular PDF reader in Debian shows, there are still exceptions.”

Keith Packard has been the release manager for the X Server 1.6 series and back in early May he issued an X Server 1.6.2 release cadndidate to close a few more X.Org bugs in this critical piece of software. After pulling in another heaping of bug fixes, Keith has now announced X Server 1.6.2 Release Candidate 2, which will go on to become the official 1.6.2 release assuming no bugs or regressions appear.In X Server 1.6.2 are over 36 bug fixes that address a variety of different problems from DRI2 to EDID to fixing up other problems…

Tries business model 3.0

Joost, the mostly harmless internet TV service created by the founders of Skype and Kazaa, is hoping the third business model is the charm.…

Offloading malware protection to the cloud

Perverted Justice

Federal prosecutors accused a Pennsylvania man of unleashing a crippling series of attacks against the websites of Rolling Stone and other groups after they published articles that cast him in an unfavorable light.…

Case Study: WhatsUp keeps Legoland turnstyles ringing