Blackhacker

BetaNews | OpenOffice 3.0 beta natively supports Mac OS X
Download OpenOffice.org 3.0.0 Beta for Mac OS X from BetaNews FileForum now.

The latest beta of OpenOffice.org 3.0 is the first to support Mac OS X without the need for X11.

The first alpha edition of OpenOffice 3.0, code-named Aqua, went live just shy of one year ago, and was reported to be extremely buggy. Naturally, however, when an update contains as many broad additions as this release does, a certain level of bugginess is expected, especially considering the nature of the program itself.

Update:
From Ars Tech

Speaking of Mac users, a significant enhancement to OpenOffice.org 3.0 beta is that it now runs on Intel Macs without the need for the X11 Unix environment. Sorry, PowerPC Mac owners—this release is Intel-specific, and not a Universal Binary.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!! HIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIISSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!
Some of us still have PPC macs. I know we ar a dying breed but can’t we get some love too?

This is cool. modular robots that are smart enough to put themselves back together. When disassembled. but when you see Robert Patrick in a Cop’s uniform, you know what’s up.

Dap /.

You would think we would learn our lesson. Robotic killing machines NEVER stay on their leash, and eventually turn on their masters. Case in point.

Dap: /.

A lack of peers leads AllPeers to close up shop
P2P startup AllPeers announced today that it would be closing its doors due to insufficient growth. “We are tremendously proud of the product that our team has built, and we remain convinced of the potential of adding social features like file-sharing to the web browser,” the company wrote on its blog today. “However, we have not achieved the kind of growth in our user base that our investors were expecting, and as a result we are not able to continue operating the service.”

I had high hopes for this when it started but fell out of love pretty soon after it launched. Oh well “Allpeers! We barely knew thee !!”

US seizes domain name of Spanish company selling Cuba trips
If the US intends to continue presenting itself as the guardian of Internet rights, situations like this require a bit more delicacy. By effectively shutting down Marshall’s business, the United States has committed the censorship it condemns in other nations. Even worse, the Department of Treasury effectively shut down an international business without any type of due process. Both France and Germany followed a court process when investigating Yahoo for alleged improprieties, and the company in question (Yahoo) had the opportunity to respond to the charges in a court of law. Marshall was afforded no such luxury.

While the Internet may be global in nature, foreign companies may very well limit their use of US registrars and hosting services out of concern that activities targeted at other countries could be shut down here.

Couple of points:

Cuba is not a threat and as not been since the fall of the USSR. I also think that our policy towards Cuba, only plays in to keeping the ‘Castos’ (I see that the Raul Castro as an extension of the Fidel regime) staying in power. If we established relations and lift the embargo, and softened our policy to a nation that is NO military threat to us what so ever, Castro’s supporters would quickly see what a raw deal they where getting, and would inspire there own revolt. The hard line only supplies a villain for Castro rhetoric for propaganda.

While the Internet was born in the US it is a GLOBAL entity. If it is to remain global it cannot be used as instrument of US policy. There is no medium MORE capable of giving voice to the concerns of ALL people without respect of person than the Internet. Not only that we put at risk the very reason why the Internet is so successful as a platform for innovation, it’s openess.

BetaNews | EC clears Google + DoubleClick merger
The two largest players in the Internet advertising industry are now officially one this morning, as the final hurdle to their merger has been cleared, and the final lines on the papers have officially been signed, according to Google’s CEO.

In the meantime, we do have a statement from the EC, which includes the following: “The Commission’s in-depth market investigation found that Google and DoubleClick were not exerting major competitive constraints on each other’s activities and could, therefore, not be considered as competitors at the moment. Even if DoubleClick could become an effective competitor in online intermediation services, it is likely that other competitors would continue to exert sufficient competitive pressure after the merger. The Commission therefore concluded that the elimination of DoubleClick as a potential competitor would not have an adverse impact on competition in the online intermediation advertising services market.”

emphasis mine
All I can say that Google must have GREAT lobbyists.

You end up with crap like this coming out of Kentucky.

Lawmaker’s attempt to criminalize anonymous posting doomed
Kentucky lawmaker Tim Couch has proposed a bill that would criminalize anonymous Internet posting. Web site and forum operators would be forced to collect and publicly disclose identifying information about all of the visitors who post content on their sites. Failing to do so would lead to a fine of $500 for the first offense and $1,000 for each subsequent offense.

The bill, which extends Chapter 369 of the Kentucky Revised Statutes, would mandate collection of the complete name, mailing address, and e-mail address of all visitors who post Internet content. Web sites would have to display names next to all relevant content and establish procedures that enable anyone to obtain the rest of the information. The bill stipulates that mailing address and e-mail address only have to be supplied to supplicants in cases where someone has posted “false or defamatory” information.

I think the main problem is that people, especially those who seek to regulate the Internet, don’t understand that all things are different where the Internet is concerned. While I do think it is a good attempt to try to try to control those would defame, and libel others on the Internet. Such a law, even if it where constitutional, would have absolutely no teeth. Fact the WORLD WIDE WEB is bigger than Kentucky. How many web hosts are based in, or even have a presence in Kentucky? I don’t think it is that many.

PayPal to Safari users: ‘Ditch it’
While current browser share estimates for Apple’s Safari web browser hover somewhere in the 4.5 percent range, Safari is attracting some unwanted attention from PayPal, the eBay-owned payment company. PayPal is urging its users to ditch Safari and instead use alternative browsers such as Internet Explorer 7, IE 8, Firefox 2, Firefox 3, or even Opera.

This I feel is unfair to Safari. The problem here is not that the browser is particularly insecure, but lacks the capability to check URLs against phishing databases, which is not a core function of browsers, in my opinion, but it is an important one. Camino, another Mozilla browser for Mac, also has this problem. Switching to Firefox, or Opera, is the prefered way to handle this problem.

You could also, if you know what you are doing, update the DNS settings in your network config, to use opendns, when you browser reaches out to find the IP of an URL open DNS will sheck ti against its database of phishing sites. This should work in most cases except where the host in link is given as IP. The browser won’t do a DNS lookup in that case. Even if you are using a firefox an other browser that provides phishing protection, I still think you should you openDNS as your primary DNS. There are a host of benefits to doing this, add prhish protection, I mentioned, as well blocking of porn and adult sites(if you like), faster dnslookup which wil increase the over all net web experience.

It had to happen someday…

BetaNews | Spammers bypass Google’s Gmail signup security
An Internet research firm discovered spam bots are now able to register on Google’s Gmail for spamming purposes. This latest attempt by spammers has been the most sophisticated recorded attempt to get around CAPTCHA, using both humans and bots.

Hacker breaks link between iTunes and the iPod - Times Online
A notorious Norwegian hacker known as DVD Jon is preparing for another run-in with the music industry after he released software that lets iPod owners copy music and videos bought from iTunes and play it on other devices.

The program allows people to drag and drop songs from iTunes into a folder on their desktop, which in turn copies the files to other devices such as mobile phones and games consoles via the web.

This guy is one of my heroes. Usually I frown when someone breaks the law, but the law being broken is in my view immoral, because it allows someone else to dictate how I use something that I have legally purchased. Shutting down networks that distribute illegally stolen merchandise is one thing, but if I bought the song, and I want to play it on my Zune, or my Stone or what ever then I should be able to do that. So what ever network I set up to facilitate that is legal, and moral.

Dap to LB for pointing me to this article, but she apparently has NO idea what a “hacker” really is. To that end I pointer to Paul Graham.