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The website of the National Bureau of Corruption Prevention (NBCP) crashed on Tuesday, just hours after its launch, as droves of people logged on to complain about corruption among officials. The website (yfj.mos.gov.cn) was closed for most of the afternoon, Beijing Youth Daily reported. An NBCP official, who did not want to be named, confirmed the breakdown had occurred.

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The security company's systems had decided that a virus called Huhk-C was present in the explorer.exe file, leading to its confinement or, in some cases, deletion. As Windows Explorer is the graphical user interface (GUI) for Windows' file system, this made it difficult to perform many common tasks within the operating system, such as finding files. David Emm, a senior technology consultant at Kaspersky Lab, told ZDNet UK on Friday that the company was still examining its checklist to find out why the false positive "slipped through the net."

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When searching the Windows XP computer for some sample video files, a technician named Stephen Richert allegedly spotted files that "appeared to be pornographic in nature" based on their names. Richert clicked on one that had listed a male name and an age of 13 or 14 and found a video he believed to contain child pornography. Then the usual series of events happened: Richert called Wyomissing police, who promptly showed up, seized the computer, and, after Sodomsky returned to pick it up, seized its owner as well.

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While radio does pay a fee to songwriters, it pays no performance rights fee, in contrast to just about every other developed country on the planet. The broadcasters argue that they are providing free advertising to musicians, who then make money from touring and record sales. Plenty of artists don't buy this (especially older artists who don't tour or sell albums, but whose hits still keep oldies stations in business), and they can't see why radio is exempted from paying for the music it uses to rake in ad dollars. Tom Waits, one of the most innovative singer/songwriters of the last quarter century, helped to found the musicFIRST coalition that advocates for a performance fee. "It's just plain wrong for radio to be allowed to build profitable businesses with growing revenues on the backs of artists and musicians without paying them fairly for it," he said in a statement today.

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Beyond the viral distribution aspect, marketers are attracted to the tracking and reporting that Interpolls and PointRoll can offer. Interpolls, for example, offers real-time data on how many times and in what way people have interacted with a particular widget ad. It also tracks how many times the ad has been grabbed and where it's been embedded--whether it was in a specific blog, Facebook or iGoogle. The ad companies also track all interactions within the widget ads that have been grabbed. "We're tracking all the impressions of the ads that were served," said Kim. "Then we track every single response to the question or click to any of the features, as well as any interactions on subsequent panels." Even Google has gotten in on the act, launching a beta of Google Gadget Ads three months ago. The ads are served on Google's content network, which reaches 800 million people, said Christian Oestlien, product manager of Google Gadget Ads.

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In its 2007 session, the New York State Legislature directed NYS Chief Information Officer/Director of the Office For Technology, Melodie Mayberry-Stewart, to gather stakeholder input regarding the mechanisms and processes for obtaining access to and reading electronic data so that such data can be created, maintained, exchanged, and preserved by the state in a manner that encourages appropriate government control, access, choice, interoperability, and vendor neutrality.

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It's not that Vista is awful. The integrated security and parental controls are nice, and the Aero interface is as whizzy as it gets. Searching and wireless networking are much faster and easier than under XP. It's just that Vista isn't all that good. Many of the innovations the operating system was supposed to bring--like more efficient file and communications systems--got tossed overboard as Microsoft struggled to get the OS out the door, some three years after it was first promised. Despite its hefty hardware requirements, Vista is slower than XP.

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U.S. Rep. Dave Weldon, a Republican whose Florida district includes the Kennedy Space Center, proposed extending the shuttles' lifetime to close the gap until their replacement ships, called Orion, are ready for their first manned flights in 2015. His proposal, which would cost about $10 billion, would have the shuttles make six or seven additional flights between 2010 and 2013 and speed up development of the Orion ships to be ready by then. A second proposal would keep the shuttles flying until 2015 and leave Orion's schedule alone. "This is an issue of priorities," said Weldon, who announced his plan at the Kennedy Space Center Visitors Center on Monday.

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Security Update 2007-009 (10.5.1) is recommended for all users and improves the security of the following components:

Core Foundation
CUPS
Flash Player Plug-in
Launch Services
perl
python
Quick Look
ruby
Safari
Samba
Shockwave Plug-in
Spin Tracer

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ahoo!'s support of the ASF stemmed from its work with the Apache HTTP Server and Lucene projects. Today, several members of Yahoo!'s development teams are active, long-term code contributors to Apache Hadoop, the open source platform that makes it possible to efficiently process vast amounts of data on a cluster of commodity hardware. Leading the industry in supporting free and open software for building the next-generation of Internet-scale web services, Yahoo! is contributing to an open source version of these powerful tools which are freely available to anyone who needs them. In addition, Yahoo! is committed to advancing the state-of-the-art in distributed computing through the incubation of new Apache projects.

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With Facebook saying it will license its developer platform to other organizations, it also could become even easier for companies to develop their own social networks. But the Gartner report says the hype around social networking doesn't necessarily mean it's a mature enough technology to make it a critical business requirement. There is also little evidence that social networking will be as beneficial for businesses as other Web-based communications technology, such as instant messaging.

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"For those of us worrying about online privacy, Oakland-based Ask.com gives people the power to prevent their search from being deposited in data banks. The new privacy control, named “Ask Eraser” is scheduled to be unveiled on Tuesday. The new feature enables users to delete records of all future search queries from Ask.Com’s servers. "For people who are worried about search privacy, we let them take the issue off the table completely rather than dickering with questions about how long we'll store their search information or what we do with it," said Jim Lanzone, Ask.com's chief executive. The new feature comes as many people complain about search engines compiling records about their queries because the records could be subpoenaed or mined by advertisers."

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NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft has found that our solar system is not round but is "dented" by the local interstellar magnetic field of deep space, space experts said on Monday. The data was gathered by the craft on its 30-year journey into the edge of the solar system when it crossed into a sweeping region called the termination shock, they said. It showed that the southern hemisphere of the solar system's heliosphere is being pushed in or "dented."

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Cory Doctorow, co-editor of influential technology blog Boing Boing and a former director of the Electronic Freedom Foundation advocacy, on Monday wrote that the government's plan is now in disarray. "Word is that the minister had no idea that this would be such a big deal for Canadians," he wrote. "Word is that the minister and his advisers are scrambling, rethinking the entire matter because of the public outcry."

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Pål asked 50 Cent: “How are G-Unit Records doing in these times of file-sharing?

“Not so good.” he responded. “The advances in technology impacts everyone, and we all must adapt. Most of all hip-hop, a style of music dependent upon a youthful audience. This market consists of individuals embracing innovations faster than the fans of classical and jazz music.”

“What is important for the music industry to understand is that this really doesn’t hurt the artists.”

Thats quite a statement. Organizations like the RIAA are always talking about how the artists get hurt by file-sharing but 50 Cent clearly doesn’t agree. In fact, he appears to appreciate the value of a good fan, whether he buys or file-shares his music, as he explains:

“A young fan may be just as devout and dedicated no matter if he bought it or stole it.”

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The DoJ also says that Thomas' motion ignores the fact that statutory damages are given in place of actual damages. "Statutory damages compensate those wronged in areas in which actual damages are hard to quantify in addition to providing deterrence to those inclined to commit a public wrong," argues the DoJ. It's also impossible for the true damages to be calculated, according to the brief, because it's unknown how many other users accessed the files in the KaZaA share in question and committed further acts of copyright infringement. That's significant, because it shows that the DoJ is siding with the RIAA when it comes to the issue of whether making a file available for download on a P2P network constitutes distribution. It was a contentious issue during the Thomas trial, with the jury instructions originally stating that making songs available is not the same as distribution. The RIAA objected to that instruction, and in its final form, all the jury had to do was find that Thomas made the files available.

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Unless a school using the tool has firewalls on the borders of its network designed to block unsolicited Internet traffic -- and a great many universities do not -- that Web server is going to be visible and accessible by anyone with a Web browser. But wait, you say: Wouldn't someone need to know the domain name or Internet address of the Web server that's running the toolkit? Yes. However, anyone familiar enough with the file-naming convention used by the toolkit could use Google to search for the server. But surely there are ways a network administrator might keep this information from being available to the entire Web, right? Yes. The toolkit allows an administrator to require a username and password for access to the Web server. The problem is that the person responsible for running the toolkit is never prompted to create a username and password. What's more, while Apache includes a feature that can record when an outsider views the site, that logging is turned off by default in the MPAA's University Toolkit.

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Meanwhile, the progress towards KDE 4.0 is astonishing. Most parts, such as the KDE Development Platform and a lot of applications are considered stable and well-usable. Some parts of the desktop experience do not yet meet the KDE community's quality standards and expectations for a stable release. There are also some issues which need to be addressed upstream, for example a bug in certain codecs of xine that cut off audio fragments prematurely. The developers are confident to be able to release a more polished and better working KDE 4.0 desktop in January. The changed plans involve releasing on January 11th, 2008.

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he merged business will be called Activision Blizzard and its chief executive will be Activision's current CEO Bobby Kotick. Vivendi will be the biggest shareholder in the group. Jean-Bernard Levy, Vivendi chief executive, said: "This alliance is a major strategic step for Vivendi and is another illustration of our drive to extend our presence in the entertainment sector. "By combining Vivendi's games business with Activision, we are creating a worldwide leader in a high-growth industry."

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Verizon Wireless will continue to provide a full-service offering, from retail stores where customers can shop, to 24/7 customer service and technical support, to an easy-to-use handset interface and optimized software applications. While most Verizon Wireless customers prefer the convenience of full service, the company is listening through today’s announcement to a small but growing number of customers who want another choice without full service. Both full-service and “bring-your-own” customers will have the advantage of using America’s most reliable network.

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Any operating system that provokes a campaign for its predecessor's reintroduction deserves to be classed as terrible technology. Any operating system that quietly has a downgrade-to- previous-edition option introduced for PC makers deserves to be classed as terrible technology. Any operating system that takes six years of development but is instantly hated by hordes of PC professionals and enthusiasts deserves to be classed as terrible technology.

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A surge of e-commerce traffic on Thanksgiving night and all day Friday apparently caught several retail giants by surprise, with Lowe's, Macy's and Victoria's Secret especially hard hit. But they were far from the exception, as almost a third of leading retailers suffered significant slowdowns on Black Friday, according to statistics released this weekend by Keynote Competitive Research, a firm that tracks Web site performance.