Aidryane's blog

In a statement released Friday, the Justice Department said that it wants to extend certain parts of the final judgment in the case, set to expire in the fall of 2007, until 2009. It said that Microsoft has agreed to the two-year extension of the program, under which it licenses its Windows communications protocols.The department made its request as part of its regular status report to U.S. District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, who is overseeing the case.  Read More »

In a pair of security alerts released Thursday, Apple outlined 31 flaws that affect various versions of the operating system and a dozen vulnerabilities in its QuickTime media player software. Security experts have deemed the issues "critical," but Apple does not provide a severity rating. Fixes are available.The Mac OS X vulnerabilities lie in various components of the operating system and affect both the server and client versions, Apple said in an advisory. An attack could be launched using some of the bugs by creating a malformed file, or by building a malicious Web site and enticing someone to visit it, the company said.  Read More »

RCN Corporation, which offers cable, phone and Internet services, released a statement Friday afternoon assuring its customers that it had not contributed to the NSA's reportedly vast database of Americans' phone call records. The company hosts more than a million customers in some of the nation's largest metropolitan areas, including Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Washington, D.C. "We are committed to the privacy and confidentiality of our customers' personally identifiable information," said Richard Ramlall, a vice president of the Herndon, Va.-based firm. The assertions came a day after a USA Today report that AT&T, BellSouth and Verizon had turned over to the NSA "call detail records," database entries that document details such as parties in the conversation and the length of the call--but not the content. The same story noted that Qwest Communications, the smallest of the nation's four regional phone companies, had not turned over information requested by the NSA. That's because the company was concerned that doing so without a warrant in place would violate federal privacy laws, a lawyer to former CEO Joseph Nacchio told The New York Times on Friday. Qwest did not respond to requests for comment from CNET News.com.  Read More »

On the night of Dec. 29, 1999, a fire destroyed a building owned by Susan Anne Seifert's employer, for whom she worked as an accountant. A surveillance videotape, recovered from the rubble, shows a dark image of a person entering the area where the fire started and then smoke emerging afterwards. Jack Hunter, a recently retired employee of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, digitally enhanced the images taken from the videotape by brightening them.  Read More »

A top Microsoft engineer has thrown out a weekend challenge to the Windows Vista team: Find and fix a bug in the current code and earn $100. The employee who installs the latest Vista build at home and squashes the most bugs before Monday will get an extra $500.Brian Valentine issued the challenge Friday in an e-mail to members of the team working on Vista, the next update of the company's Windows operating system. The move comes as Microsoft is wrapping up work on a broad test version of Vista, expected by many Windows watchers to be released later this month. Microsoft has said it is on track to deliver a test version to roughly two million users this quarter. Microsoft is pushing to wrap up development of Vista this year, with a mainstream launch slated for January. The company had long hoped to release it this holiday season, but in March announced that the launch would be delayed.

Kenneth Kwak, 34, of Chantilly, Va., admitted to installing remote control software on the computer and using that access to read his supervisor's e-mail and monitor other Internet activity, the U.S Department of Justice said in a statement Friday.  Read More »

The high price of silicon--the most common material used in solar panels--is prompting engineers to design solar concentrators, devices that squeeze more electricity out of a slice of silicon or other photovoltaic cells. Concentrators are one of many solar technologies being tested with the hope of bringing down the cost of solar power, which is seeing a surge in demand. Relatively young companies are coming to market with concentrator products of various forms. The products, aimed mainly at the commercial space, are expected to hit the market this year and next, according to company executives. The idea of tracking the movement of the sun and intensifying sunlight with mirrors has been around for many years. But the rising cost of electricity, coupled with technical advances in making more efficient solar cells, are fueling new approaches to the concept, say experts.  Read More »

Not every young woman who picks up a bottle will end up addicted to alcohol or illicit drugs. But researchers know that alcohol can disproportionately affect young women compared to their male counterparts—sometimes to devastating effect. "The impact of one drink on a girl is roughly equivalent to the impact of two drinks on a boy, so girls who are keeping up with the boys are actually subjecting themselves to far worse consequences," says Susan Foster, director of policy research for the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University. Even in their 20s, women who chronically abuse alcohol can get serious liver disease and gastrointestinal problems like ulcers. They can also suffer from malnourishment because they're getting most of their calories from alcohol, not food. And they are more likely to engage in risky, unprotected sex and to perform poorly in school. Researchers are also investigating whether adolescent girls who drink too much may experience delayed onset of puberty, hurt their chances of getting pregnant later and even cause long-lasting changes to their brains. They already know that women are more likely than men to develop liver inflammation and to die from cirrhosis (a condition caused by chronic liver disease that has been linked to extensive alcohol use). The USDA’s dietary guidelines say anything more than one drink a day for women can increase the risk of a range of health problems, from injuries sustained in alcohol-related accidents to high blood pressure, stroke, suicide and even breast cancer.