Do you hear the laughters?

This is another example of DRM and anti-piracy measures gone awry:

"Over the past weekend, some owners of legitimate copies of Windows had their copies of Windows invalidated by Microsoft, while users of pirated copies were unaffected."

The people at apcmag report about a failure of Microsoft's WGA servers that mistook legitimate Vista and XP copies for pirated ones. The solution given wasn't swift or completely satisfactory, either:

"Microsoft engineers eventually managed to fix the problem around 19 hours after reports of it first surfaced, but not before it had to warn users on its forum that swearing wasn't acceptable."

Anybody who also thinks they weren't in the best scenario for telling people what is and what isn't acceptable, please raise their hands.

Most of you should have already noticed that Mobile-Review.com, the popular Russian website is down from the past 5 days because of a DDoS attack supposedly by Apple fan boys after the iPhone review was published on the site. The site gets upto 200,000 uniques per day and serves upto 700,000 pages exceeding a bandwidth of 500GB.

Eldar Murtazin, the Editor-in-Chief of Mobile-Review.com posted an open letter today talking about the attack. Here is an excerpt from the letter:

"The attackers hope that by crushing Mobile-Review.com, they wonÙt let our visitors get unbiased information on events in the mobile industry, read independent reviews and share their opinions on forums. In light of the fact that similar attacks can be performed by individuals or small groups of people, we regard this incident as an attempt to impose censorship in the Internet.

When the first attack was unfolding, the Editor-in-Chief of Mobile-Review.com received an anonymous message on his Internet-pager, which read that fans of Apple were behind the attack, as this was a sort of revenge forthe iPhone and the treatment it got over at Mobile-Review.com. Possibly, it is true, however there is a chance that the message was sent in order to put us off the track. It is not a secret that we release “burning”, critical articles that many donÙt like."

Murtazin also announced a reward of US$10,000 to any individual or group of individuals who can provide documented information on the mastermind of this attack. You can send all reports to eldar (at) mobile-review (dot) com.

Who should be Death?

It was a matter of time before Hollywood turned it's attention to the third Big Name in the comic industry: Neil Gaiman. Stardust (August 10) and Beowulf (November 16) are almost here. Just the beginning, Sandman and Death await their turn. I can imagine the casting for Death, particularly, as being the cause for rivers of ink (or bits in the Internet forums).

The young Harry Potter cast has recently admitted to drinking, smoking, partying, as well staring in wizard movies that draw worship from our Lord and Savior. Read on!

According to this article, me may some day need "printing rooms" to avoid the dangers this vice poses for us non-printing citizens:

"An investigation of dozens of laser printers revealed that almost 30 per cent emit potentially dangerous levels of particles into the air.

These ultra-fine particles were capable of infiltrating the lungs and causing lasting damage on the scale of inhaled cigarette smoke, said researcher Professor Lidia Morawska of the Queensland University of Technology."

And yes, they mention cancer, too. It's curious how some investigations take so long to come into effect. The relationship between brain tumors and cell phones was investigated ages ago, and both them and laser printers have been popular for more or less the same amount of time.

Sexual aid Jessica Alba says that she loves playing with super hero Sue Storm on the Wii, and loves playing as Sue Storm on film, and as soon as she gets the hang of quantum physics, she'll enjoy playing opposite Sue Storm in the theater production of Sense and Sensibility.

We all know the web is a fast way to communicate and get the latest news, but this is too much:

"[...] professional wrestler Chris Benoit [...] his wife, Nancy, and their seven-year-old son, Daniel, were found dead in their Atlanta home on Monday afternoon.

[...] But in a bizarre twist, reports surfaced yesterday that Benoit's Wikipedia page had been altered by users in the US and Australia to include details about his wife's death up to 14 hours before police found the bodies."

The poster says it all was "A HUGE COINCIDENCE", "a 1-in-10,000 chance of happening". I've heard better defenses.

"Dubbed 'Total HD' or 'THD' [...], the discs had been scheduled to arrive in the second half of this year but with Q2 just a few days away the Hollywood giant has been forced to admit it won't make this timeframe. Instead Warner is now quoting an 'early 2008' release date and maintains there is a role for a format which may only service to further confuse an already befuddled public.

Given that you haven't asked for it, here's my opinion: there's no need for Total HD. It works by making users flip the disc onto the right side for their player format (like old school vinyl records) and is likely to cause chaos as technophobes try buying and flipping opposing formats and doing all sorts of damage. It also means there is no 'safe side' to put the disc down..."

THD discs measure the same as other DVDs and are formed simply by two 0.6 mm discs bonded together. Each THD disc can contain both single layer and dual layers: 15 or 30 GB on the HD DVD side, and 25 or 50 GB on the Blu Ray side.

Does Warner only want to save money on the manufacturing process? Probably. Does this system have it's cons? Sure. Do the pros outweight those premises? You decide. But if the price is the same, I will always prefer a disc that works in two readers rather than on one alone. Compatible Blu Ray / HD DVD ROMs will become standar, so I see THD as having a back-up on the other sice of the disc.

Link: TrustedReviews.

Somebody managed to validate a Linux installation as a genuine copy of Microsoft Windows in order to download Windows Defender, on Xubuntu. He did the Genuine Advantage test trough the alternate authentication method and he got it verified! Now, what kind of "advantage" are true Microsoft customers getting here?

This story comes from the Ubuntu forums. The only source for checking it's veracity is a recording of the process you can find at rapidshare or YouTube.

"Hot bodied" "actress" Megan Fox heats up the new Transformers movie -- powering the film solely with her raw sexuality. Read more, in this completely serious and not-at-all-satirical news story.