Archive for July, 2006

Pentagon Watching Youtube Closely

The Pentagon is keeping a close eye on what its troops post online, with special attention being paid to videos that show the aftermath of combat.

One soldier who served in Iraq in 2005 told the BBC there was “a tight watch” being kept on video and pictures posted to MySpace, with civilian contractors monitoring the internet on behalf of the Pentagon.

The BBC has not been able to confirm that contractors are scouring the internet for inappropriate material from the military.

But US Central Command – which is responsible for troops in Iraq and Afghanistan – does have a team reading blogs and responding to what they consider inaccuracies about the so-called war on terror.

Some troops just want people to know what they have been through

And a longstanding military public affairs officer in Iraq said the Pentagon is also worried about some of the images that are appearing online.

“There’s continuing concern about the use of these videos and stills being used by our enemies to propagate the false notion that our military members are barbaric, warmongers – which is unequivocally not the case.

The balancing act is hard, I can understand why the government wouldn’t want these videos to be used by enemies but I can also see why troops would want a record of what they have been through, and how rough it is. Regardless, I hope everyone who is or is going over there comes back ok.

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Ben Edelman: How Vonage Funds Spyware

Vonage spends huge amounts on advertising — more than $20 million per month. Unfortunately, among this spending is widespread and substantial spyware-delivered advertising. He goes into great detail, showing the money flow, from company to company with 12 great examples.

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Top News Stories from Internet News

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Latest Windows XP Knowledge Base Articles

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Latest Windows 2000 Knowledge Base Articles

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Spim, Splog and Spam On the Rise

Instant Messaging spam, or spim, blog spam, or splog, and spam are all on the rise, according to a report from MessageLabs. They said in the report the spammers are all targeting new means of communication that may not have the same safeguards as email. Well, what safeguards we do have really suck, spammers suck, the whole thing sucks.

“On IM and on the Web, we’ve seen a huge hike in link spam,” Sunner told ZDNet UK. “Spammers send just a hyperlink, which can lead to a malicious site, or a phishing site,” he said.

MessageLabs expects “cross-pollination” of ill-intended software across different protocols. It also said growing convergence between different proprietary Web-based IM systems will also help spammers.

In June, spam made up 64.8 percent of global e-mail traffic, an increase of 6.9 percent over the previous month, according to the report.

This was due to a fluctuation in the number of operational networks of compromised computers sending out spam, MessageLabs said.

“Over the year, spam levels are like a sine wave–they ebb and flow in tandem with botnet distributions–with how botnets grow and shrink. The bad guys seed more, but then more measures are taken against them,” Sunner said. Source: News.com

Interesting to note that spam is still increasing and still accounts for almost two thirds of the worlds email traffic, which is rediculous, how outraged would the world be if almost two thirds of all phone calls were people looking to sell you stuff unsolicited? Very, and i can’t believe it has gone on this long, we are long overdue for a revamping of how our email systems work.

Latest Tech News from Techmeme

Techmeme is a great site that pulls in data from many news sources and blogs, including two that I write for, Revenews.com, a blog featuring some of the top thinkers in revenue and making money circles and RealTechNews.com, the blog of former Cnet editor Alice Hill. Here is the latest news stories from their XML feed. Note: Do to caching, this post may be a couple hours behind the Techmeme site.

Frequent questions for PC/Windows connectivity: Top 10 expert Q&As

Shahar Mor, iSeries/i5 PC/Windows connectivity expert, has been answering Search400.com’s member questions for more than five years. iSeries users have asked Shahar the same questions again and again. In an effort to save you time, we’ve compiled the top 10 questions asked about iSeries/i5 connectivity for you. Do you have a question that’s not listed here?
1. Send a PC command from an iSeries program
2. Send files to a Windows machine from a CLP program
3. Automate the process of sending files from a PC to an iSeries
4. Access data in an external database from an RPG program
5. Pull an iSeries HTML file from the Web using HTTP
6. Importing iSeries database files to Excel
7. Send data from Excel to an iSeries database
8. Get a lot of files in one FTP script on the iSeries
9. Call an RPG program from VB using ODBC
10. Print a PDF file from the iSeries
Click here for the answers and more.

PS3 price must drop in 2007, says Ubisoft boss

Ubisoft president Yves Guillemot has warned that while his company is optimistic about the prospects for the next-gen consoles, Sony must be prepared to drop the price point of the PS3 in 2007 if it is to compete effectively with the Xbox 360.

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If they don’t drop the price, this will give people the perfect opportunity to set an Xbox 360 alongside their PS2.